ABSTRACT
Sources: The Economist, London (1886/87); SONNDORFER [1900], pp. 220f. (1899); Boletín Financiero y Minero de México. Diario Consagrado a los Asuntos Financieros y Mineros del País (19001914). Concordance: WdW VII, pp. 315-336
Currency: The Mexican currency system of the 19th century was based on the system of colonial times, i.e. on the Spanish Coin Acts of 1772 and 1786 (see p. 307). The main means of payment was the silver peso (peso de plata) or Mexican dollar (24.43 grammes of fine silver) of 8 reales at 12 granos. Its minting was confirmed by the Coin Act of March 15th 1864, which changed only slightly in 1867. In wholesale trade and customs procedures it had already been common practice to divide the peso into 100 centavos, which became obligatory for the retail trade in 1864 as well. Maintaining the free silver strike, the silver standard was effective until 1905 although the global decline in silver prices became especially noticeable in Mexico, the ‘classic’ country of silver, from the second half of the 1870s:
Mexican pesos silver per 100 Mexican pesos gold
Source: Almanaques “Prevision y Seguridad”, Monterrey, N.L. Thus ‘pesos in gold’ means payable in Mexican onzas de oro or doubloons (23.4219 grammes of fine gold) at 16 pesos, in other South American currencies (‘Patriot’, especially Colombian) onzas de oro or doubloons at 15 to 15¼ pesos or – from the 1860s – in hidalgos (14.8059 grammes of fine gold) of 10 pesos.
