Important Symbols on Mexican Money

For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of travel is using another country's currency.  You can often learn what's important to a country by what they put on their money.

Outside of the Europeans, who put bridges and windows that don't even exist on their money, most countries put depictions on their money of objects or ideas they consider important.  Look at US money, both coins and currency--the people and objects on those coins (except for the back of the $1 bill and the dime) are fairly important to our history and culture.  Sure, I'd prefer to go back to the days when a representation of Liberty, rather than dead presidents, is on the face of our coins, but what is on our money mostly represents what is good in America.

In a few recent posts I've shown pictures of some of the monuments and history of Mexico.  They must be pretty important, because they've shown up on Mexican money over the years.

The most important of all Mexican symbols is the eagle, on a cactus, eating a snake.  This symbol dates back to the Aztecs!  It's the central image on the Mexican flag.  Here it is on a 20 peso note from 1914, during the Mexican Revolution:

 Here's a statue of it in the National History Museum, a statue that predates the note above:

And here's a modern 10-peso coin.  This image is on all current Mexican coins:

As I said, the symbol of the eagle on a cactus eating a snake comes from Aztec mythology surrounding the founding of their capital city at Tenochtitlan, today's Mexico City.  Also from Aztec lore was Cuauhtemoc, the final leader of the Aztecs who took over after Montezuma was killed by the Spanish.  Here's a monument to him in the Zocalo, the main square in the city:

My guess is that no one has any idea what he looked, because every representation of him looks different, but he made an appearance in 1950 on the 50-centavo coin:

Even though no one knows who built the pyramids at Teotihuacan (they're pre-Aztec), they still represent a strong national tie to the country's heritage.  Here's a picture I took of the Pyramid of the Sun last Tuesday:

And here's that same pyramid on a 20-centavo coin from 1970:

 

Here is a picture I took last week of the Monument to Independence:

 

The angel on top is just beautiful.

That monument appeared on a 1985 200-peso coin:

The monument also appeared on the reverse of the 1970 1-peso bill:

Lastly, the so-called Aztec Calendar.  No other object encapsulates "Aztec" more than the huge round stone, which we today know was not a calendar but was more of a "fighting arena" akin to a boxing ring.  It's proper name is the Stone of the Sun.  Here are two pictures of it that I took in the National Anthropology Museum:

It appeared on the 1970 1-peso bill:

The center part of the stone appears on today's 10-peso coin:

The Mexican people enjoy strong ties to their past, both pre-Columbian and post-independence.  Their pride as a people is both abundant and clear, as demonstrated over the years even on their money.