5 Centavos

El Salvador's 1977 coinage was produced during the presidency of Carlos Humberto Romero, whose electoral victory that year was widely condemned as fraudulent — a crisis that deepened the political instability preceding the 1979 coup and eventual civil war. The shift to nickel brass for this denomination reflected broader pressures on Central American mints to substitute cheaper alloys as global copper and nickel prices climbed through the mid-1970s.