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NOTOFILIA Numismatics and Notaphily
ES — Spanish EN — English
Vintage 3D relief map of Guatemala on parchment, with Tikal, the volcanoes Acatenango, Fuego, and Agua, Lake Atitlán, Antigua, a quetzal stamp, a 1908 passport, and the title Guatemala

Virtual collection

Guatemala · Notaphily Banknote printing and El Banco Colombiano

Paper money in Guatemala was born of fiscal urgency and private banking, not of a state issuer. In 1834 the state had some 3,000 pesos printed to cancel a forced debt. The Banco Nacional of 1874 ordered all its plates from the Columbian Bank Note Company. From 1877 to 1926, with no general banking law, an oligopoly of private houses paid for trade with bearer notes engraved in New York and London.

This case concentrates on that printing history. The American Bank Note Company, Waterlow & Sons, Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co., and the Hamilton Bank Note Company signed the foot of the series. They recycled vignettes — allegories, the Great Seal of the United States, stock landscapes — from country to country. The Banco de Occidente and El Banco Colombiano looked to London; the Americano and the private Banco de Guatemala, to New York.

El Banco Colombiano, founded in Guatemala City in 1878 with Antioquian capital around Recaredo de Villa, is the Colombian chapter of that press. It issued until 1901. The sections that follow reconstruct the founder, the coffee Guatemala of Justo Rufino Barrios, and the series Bradbury Wilkinson engraved in London — without reproducing the notes, which will be published as catalog pages when they are documented in the collection.

The 1924–1926 reform, with studies by Edwin W. Kemmerer and the government of José María Orellana, created the quetzal and, on 30 June 1926, the Central Bank with the monopoly of issue. The Banco de Guatemala of 1945–1946 inherited that right. Its first notes of its own design are dated 15 September 1948.

The free banking from which this bank came is documented in the Colombia case. Colombia · Free banking and the Banco de la República

Notes in the collection

This page does not reproduce banknotes. Individual note pages will be published as they are documented, as in the other notaphily cases.

1834–1874

First papers and the Banco Nacional

Before an oligopoly of private banks, the state and an 1874 bank ordered paper from security printers.

Paper money in Guatemala was born of a debt, not of a central bank. In 1834 the government issued notes for about 3,000 pesos to cancel a forced loan — a fact local notaphily takes from Yeoman. The republican peso, struck from Rafael Carrera’s government onward, remained the unit of account; paper was exceptional. The country’s first bank, the Banco Nacional de Guatemala, was founded in 1874. All of its notes — reales and pesos — came from the Columbian Bank Note Company, a U.S. engraving house. That choice opens this case: who printed the paper, and from which plates, matters as much as who signed it.

1877–1926

Plates from New York and London

Private banks of issue without a general banking law: American Bank Note, Waterlow, Bradbury Wilkinson, and Hamilton.

Uninterrupted banking began in 1877. Until 1926 there was no general banking law: each house operated under concession and the right to issue notes payable to bearer. The Banco Internacional de Guatemala and the Banco Comercial (both 1877) opened the way; El Banco Colombiano (1878), the Banco de Occidente in Quetzaltenango (1881), the Banco Americano, the Agrícola Hipotecario, and a private Banco de Guatemala (1894–1895) followed. The plates came from abroad. The American Bank Note Company engraved series for the Banco Americano and the Banco de Guatemala — and recycled vignettes, even the Great Seal of the United States, onto Guatemalan paper. Waterlow & Sons of London later took the Banco Americano and the Internacional. Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. engraved the Banco de Occidente and El Banco Colombiano. The Banking Committee of 1899, created under Manuel Estrada Cabrera to issue against state revenues and property, ordered from the Hamilton Bank Note Company. Those imprints at the foot of the note are the printing archive: intaglio, crossed numbering, and stock vignettes that travelled from country to country.

1924–1948

The quetzal and the monopoly of issue

Orellana and Kemmerer reform, the 1926 Central Bank, and the Banco de Guatemala’s first own notes in 1948.

The oligopoly of issuing banks, regulated under Estrada Cabrera, left the state indebted to those same houses. Kemmerer visited in 1919 and returned at José María Orellana’s invitation in 1924. The Regulatory Fund of 1923 stabilized the exchange — the peso had fallen to more than 60 to the dollar. In November 1924 the Monetary Law created the quetzal, equal to the dollar, under the gold standard; one quetzal equalled 60 pesos. On 30 June 1926 a government agreement founded the Central Bank of Guatemala as sole issuer. The “chemas,” with Orellana’s effigy, and later the “centrales” of the Ubico years, closed the chapter of private plates. After the October Revolution of 1944, Decree 215 of 11 December 1945 — the Organic Law of the Banco de Guatemala — and Decree 203 (Monetary Law) created the state bank. On 15 June 1946 the old Central Bank waived the right to issue. The Banco de Guatemala’s first notes of its own design — 50 centavos and 1, 5, 10, 20, and, for the first time, 100 quetzales — are dated 15 September 1948. This case investigates that printing trajectory; individual note pages will be published as pieces are documented.

El Banco Colombiano

Three facts of the period: Recaredo de Villa’s Antioquian exile, the coffee Guatemala of 1878, and the London plates that signed the series through 1901.

1873–1878

Recaredo de Villa and Antioquian capital

From the Banco de Antioquia and the presidency of the Sovereign State to exile in Guatemala.

Don Recaredo de Villa y Piedrahita (1826–1905) was first manager of the Banco de Antioquia in 1873 and, on General Pedro Justo Berrío’s death in 1875, his successor as president of the Sovereign State of Antioquia. He promoted the Antioquia Railway with the Cuban engineer Francisco Javier Cisneros. Overthrown by the revolution of 1876, he left Colombia and settled with his family in the Republic of Guatemala. He never returned. The Constitution of Rionegro of 1863 — a defender of private economic liberty — had opened banks of issue in Colombia; Berrío promoted the Banco de Antioquia with an initial capital of 500,000 pesos, a true bank of issue. El Banco Colombiano in Guatemala was formed in the image and statutes of that house: an extension of Antioquian free banking beyond the border. Some historians suggest that its notes circulated in both Guatemala and Colombia.

1878–1901

Guatemala in the years of the bank

Coffee, Antioquian exile, and the stock company formed on 12 August 1878.

A year after the Banco Internacional, on 12 August 1878 the stock company “Banco de Colombia” — known in notaphily as El Banco Colombiano — was formed with 218 shares of 1,000 pesos. Most of the capital came from Medellín and Antioquia: Vicente B. Villa e Hijos, Recaredo de Villa, the Vásquez Calle family, the Jaramillos, and Mariano Ospina Rodríguez, former president of the Granadine Confederation, exiled after the civil war of 1861. In Guatemala, Justo Rufino Barrios, finance minister José María Samayoa — tied to the London house Stiebel Brothers — and other capital families subscribed shares. The bank was born to credit coffee growers; Ospina had owned Finca Las Mercedes, in Escuintla, one of the great gold-bean producers of the time. Alejandro Sinibaldi was named director. The building stood at 7th Avenue South and 9th Street in Guatemala City. The bank issued its own notes until 1901, in the years of Barrios, of coffee’s expansion toward the Pacific coast, and of a peso that, by the end of the century, was no longer struck in the higher denominations.

1879–1901

The Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. series

Six denominations engraved in London; the 1-peso of 17 April 1900 is the most cited piece.

The bank ordered the series from Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. Engravers, London: large format — about 180 × 120 mm on the 1-peso — with intaglio and double numbering in the upper corners, a practice of Central American private banking. The Standard Catalog of World Paper Money — Specialized Issues and the Bank Note Museum record the 1879–1901 issue as Pick S121–S126: 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 pesos. The vignettes, described in the sources and not reproduced here, distinguish each value: the peso, with the arms of Guatemala and Colombia flanking a muleteer and an ox cart, and at left a figure in armor holding the Phrygian cap; the 5, a cactus; the 10, workers loading a boat on a beach; the 20, a farm; the 50, a landscape; the 100, cattle. Known dates run from 1879 to September 1901; the most cited 1-peso is 17 April 1900. The face promises payment to bearer in current and effective coin; the ornamental back, in green, repeats the bank’s legend “en Guatemala.” This page does not exhibit those pieces: it documents who ordered them engraved and in which Guatemala they circulated.

Sources

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