5 Centavos Tetela del Oro y Ocampo

Tetela del Oro y Ocampo was one of dozens of Mexican municipalities that issued emergency copper coinage during the Revolutionary period, when the collapse of federal authority and the competing currencies of Villistas, Zapatistas, and Constitutionalists made commerce at the local level nearly impossible. These municipal issues were a purely pragmatic response — local merchants and authorities needed a medium of exchange that people in their immediate area would actually accept.

The municipality takes its full name from a merger of two communities, one honoring Melchor Ocampo, the liberal reformer executed in 1861. Few of these local revolutionary issues survived circulation in quantity; they were redeemed, hoarded, or simply lost once federal currency stabilized after 1916.