1000 cordobas

Nicaragua's 1972 1000 Córdobas was issued under the Somoza dictatorship at a time when the Banco Central was effectively a tool of regime finance. Thomas De La Rue printed the series in London, as they had for Nicaragua through much of the mid-twentieth century, providing the engraving quality a domestic print facility could not match.

The December 1972 Managua earthquake — one of the most destructive in Central American history — struck the same year, collapsing the capital and triggering massive international aid that the Somoza family was widely documented to have diverted. High-denomination notes from this period circulated in an economy already being looted from within.