20 Quetzales

Thomas De La Rue printed this series for Guatemala across a sixteen-year span, an unusually long run that reflects both the political instability of the period and the practical difficulty of establishing domestic printing capacity. Guatemala spent much of the 1970s and 1980s under successive military governments, and currency continuity — same design, same printer, same security specification — was one of the few constants the Banco de Guatemala could reliably maintain.

Dating individual notes within the 1972–1988 window matters considerably for cataloging purposes; the series includes multiple signature combinations tied to short-tenure finance ministers and central bank presidents who changed with each administration.