10 Quetzales

Banco de Guatemala had relied on Giesecke & Devrient for successive generations of its quetzal series, and this 10 Quetzales issue spans a turbulent stretch of Guatemalan history — the 1983–1988 window covers the tail end of Ríos Montt's military regime, the subsequent Mejía Víctores administration, and the country's fragile return to civilian rule under Vinicio Cerezo in 1986. Notes from this series therefore passed through radically different political orders without any change to their face.

The security thread on this issue is an early embedded type, relatively unsophisticated by later G&D standards, and counterfeiting of quetzal denominations was a documented problem during the mid-1980s economic stress period.