20 Centavos

Cuba's aluminium coinage was a direct consequence of the U.S. embargo and the subsequent collapse of nickel-alloy supply chains that had defined Cuban currency since the Republic's founding. The shift to aluminium in the late 1960s was a pragmatic response to economic isolation, not a design choice — the country simply worked with what domestic and Soviet-bloc supply could sustain.

The span of dates across this type reflects decades of uninterrupted use with minimal retooling, a sign of how little Cuba's monetary infrastructure changed between the Revolution's consolidation and the peso's diminishing role in a dollarizing economy.