100 Pesos

El Banco Español de la Habana was established by royal decree in 1856 as Cuba's first chartered bank — a colonial institution created explicitly to serve Spanish commercial and fiscal interests on the island. This 100 Pesos note, among the first issues, was engraved and printed by the American Bank Note Company in New York, a common arrangement for Latin American and Caribbean issuers in the mid-nineteenth century who needed security printing expertise that no local facility could provide.

The irony of a Spanish colonial bank's inaugural notes being produced in the United States was apparently of no concern to anyone at the time.