20 Centavos

Issued to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus's 1492 landing, this coin was part of a broader Latin American commemorative impulse that swept several republics simultaneously — Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua struck related types the same year. El Salvador's participation reflected an official nationalism that was, in practice, being actively constructed during the coffee-boom decades of the late nineteenth century, when the ruling oligarchy was remaking the country's identity as rapidly as it was reorganizing land tenure.

KM#111 is a one-year type, struck solely for 1892.