100 Pesos

Waterlow & Sons held the Uruguayan printing contract through much of the early twentieth century, and this high-denomination note reflects the relative monetary stability Uruguay enjoyed before the Depression forced a series of fiscal contractions in the early 1930s. The twenty-one year date range on P#12 is unusually long for a 100-peso issue, suggesting the plates were simply re-used across multiple print runs with minimal revision rather than redesigned as administrations changed.

The watermark-only security approach was already considered inadequate by the 1920s, when regional central banks were pushing for more sophisticated protection on large denominations. Uruguay was slow to update.