100 Pesos El Banco de Durango

El Banco de Durango was one of the provincial banks licensed under Mexico's 1897 Ley General de Instituciones de Crédito, which allowed state-chartered banks to issue their own circulating notes — a decentralized arrangement that held until the Díaz regime collapsed and the post-revolutionary government began consolidating monetary authority. The American Bank Note Company supplied plates for dozens of Latin American issuers during this period, and the Durango series shows the typical ABNC production quality of the era: tight intaglio printing, clean registration.

The series spans a long window — 1891 through 1914 — meaning later issues would have circulated into the chaos of the Mexican Revolution, when banknotes from Porfirian-era institutions were frequently rejected, counterfeited, or burned outright by revolutionary factions who saw them as instruments of the old order.