The current state of currency/El estado actual de moneda

This post is about money. Not about how I have very little money, or what I do with said money. I'm talking about the aesthetic qualities of Dominican currency.

One day last week I saw a 2000 peso note for the first time since I arrived. It had two dudes on the front, one named Emilio Prud'homme. I didn't think much of it other than "hm, he might be Haitian/French" as Hispaniola was once a French nation.

Today in history class, his name came up again and I learned he's one of the authors of the Dominican national anthem, Quisqueyanos valientes. I looked at the bills I have in my cash stash in my room to see if I could place the other Dominican national heroes on the bills, and I know who most of them are.

It got me thinking about American currency and which famous Americans are on our bank notes and coins. Unlike US currency, Dominican bills and coins have national heroes other than presidents. I don't know a lot about the famous Dominicans on peso notes and coins. I am learning about them.

It made me ask: how many Americans really know about the men (and women) on our currency?

I did a quick blurb on each piece of common US currency with facts I recall from history classes and stuff I found via Google. Before I get to that, I want to point out that many of our national heroes have streets named after them in the DR; Avenida Lincoln, Washington, etc. They're just as important as Simon Bolivar (liberator of Latin American nations from Spain) and Maximo Gomez (Dominican born in Bani but general in the Cuban army and helped Cuba gain independence).

Here's what I can tell you about the guys featured on American money, in a nutshell.

$1: George Washington. The father of our country, brilliant military strategist, destroyer of cherry trees. The reverse side has the Great Seal of the United States.

$2: Thomas Jefferson. Purveyor of black women, writer (author of the Declaration of Independence), philosopher, founder of the University of Virginia, imperialist president who acquired tons of land via the Louisiana Purchase and commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition. The reverse is an artistic depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The original painting us hanging in the US Capitol Rotunda.

$5: Abraham Lincoln. Shot in the head. Morbid. Before that he was the president during one of the most challenging times for the country. He emancipated slaves and modernized economics and finance in the country. A self-made man and main character of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter a novel that came out last year with a movie set for a 2012 release. Beat that, George Washington! The reverse side of the bill has the Lincoln Memorial.

$10: Alex Hamilton. A founder of US, born and raised in West Indies--bet you didn't know that! He was born Nevis, when the current federation of St. Kitts and Nevis was part of the British West Indies. He was also the first US Secretary of the Treasury. The reverse side is the US Treasury building.

$20: Andrew Jackson. Father of the Democratic party, supporter of slavery and relocation of indigenous American people, managed to pay off the national debt in 1835--the only time that's ever happened in US history--but only two years later a depression came along and wrecked the economy anew. He was also against the electoral college (good man). The reverse side is the White House.

$50: Ulysses S. Grant. Commander of the Union army during the Civil War, crusader for civil rights for African Americans and Native Americans, passed the 15th Amendment (prohibiting the government from denying a citizen's right to vote based on the citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude), tried to annex Hispaniola in the 1870s but failed, survived quite a few political scandals during this presidency. The reverse side is the US Capitol.

$100: Ben Franklin. True renaissance man who liked beer, physics, satire, and turkey. A working-class man with musical talents, journalism experience, and a knack for foreign diplomacy. Probably one of my favorite American heroes. The reverse side of this bill has Independence Hall, a building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and adopted.

American coins have several repeats from the bank notes (Jefferson on the nickel, Washington on the quarter, Lincoln on the penny). Basically the only widely used coin that doesn't feature a bank note figure is the dime, Franklin Delano Roosevelt coin. FDR was a badass. He gets the smallest coin in size. Meh.

The reverse side of the coins change so much that I won't even bother analyzing them. Plus we had the 50 State quarters thing for a while and that was a gimmick at best.

The rest of the US coins are rarely used and annoying. I used to work as a cashier and I would dread half dollars and gold dollars. There aren't spaces for those in the till drawers and I was always pushed to give them out in change to customers. The customers didn't want them and be rude to me because of it. I really don't care who's on those. Sorry, JFK, Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea, and Statue of Liberty.

Now for the Dominican currency. With pictures! As you will see here, the reverse sides of the Dominican notes are much more interesting than those of the US bank notes.

20 pesos: Gregorio Luperón/National Pantheon

Luperón was a military and state leader in the Dominican Restoration War after Spanish annexation in 1863. He was 22 years old when he took up the fight against Spain and fled briefly to the US after he was arrested for his dissidence. His initial efforts against Spain were unsuccessful but he regrouped and led his forces again, which prevailed in 1865. Since then, the DR has been an independent country. The reverse side shows the National Pantheon, a mausoleum which holds the bodies of Dominican national heroes, including several of the men on the larger Dominican bills. Luperón is buried there. The pantheon was renovated in the 1950s by order of Rafael Trujillo, Dominican history's greatest monster.

50 pesos: Catedral de Santa María de la Encarnación de Santo Domingo/Basílica de Nuestra Señora de la Altagracia

El cathedral was the first cathedral built in the New World. I posted pictures of it from my Zona Colonial post back in September. The reverse side has a picture of La Basílica is a very important church in the eastern part of the country, also known as La Basílica de Higüey.

100 pesos: Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, Juan Pablo Duarte y Matías Ramón Mella/Puerta del Conde

Sánchez, Duarte, and Mella. Think Jefferson, Washington, and John Adams. These three dudes are the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic. All three were leaders of the 1844 Dominican War of Independence from Haiti, a 22 year war that eventually broke the DR free from Haitian invasion. The three are buried together at Altar de la Patria in Santo Domingo. They were known as Los Trinitarios. To write about each of their contributions to Dominican history and national identity would require a book, but know that Duarte has a mountain named after him--Pico Duarte, the highest point in the DR. On the reverse side of the bill is La Puerta del Conde (the count's gate), where the three are buried.

200 pesos: Hermanas Mirabal/Monumento a las Hermanas Mirabal

Las Hermanas Mirabal were four Dominican sisters who strongly opposed Trujillo's regime in the 1950s and 1960s. Three of the sisters were assassinated, and the killers are still unknown today. Two of the sisters were arrested and tortured and three of their husbands faced similar fates. The second youngest sister Minerva became a lawyer and was the de facto leader, taking extreme action after experiencing sexual harassment and general asshattery from Trujillo himself. The second oldest sister Dede is alive today and established the Museo Hermanas Mirabal in the sisters' hometown of Salcedo. The sisters' lives have been subjects of several books and films, including the most famous In the Time of Butterflies. The reverse side is of course the monument for the sisters in Salcedo. These women were badasses in a time when women weren't allowed to be badasses, but also during a time when it was absolutely necessary for them to do so. I like them.

500 pesos: Salomé Ureña y Pedro Henríquez Ureña/Banco Central de la República Dominicana

Salomé was a poet and crusader for the education of women in the DR in the mid 1800s--another woman who was a badass. In the 1880s she opened a school for higher education of women, which produced female teachers, a groundbreaking thing for the country. She had four children who all became respected writers and artists, one being Pedro. Pedro wrote a ton of important works in Dominican literature and was a strong proponent of Hispanic-American cultural values. The national library is named after him, and the street I have to cross every day to go to classes at UNIBE is also named after him. The reverse side of the bill has an image of the central bank of the country. Better respect where the money comes from.

1000 pesos: Palacio Nacional/Alcázar de Colón

Two buildings on the same bill. El Palacio  houses the offices of the executive branch (president and vice president) of the DR. Unlike the White House, the president and VP don't live there. It was built in 1944-the centennial of DR's independence from Haiti.  Alcázar de Colón is the oldest residence in the Americas and is part of the Colonial Zone World Heritage site. It is a museum that houses the Caribbean's most important works of late European Renaissance and medieval works of art. It was built in 1509 under Diego Colón (Christopher Columbus' son).

Fun fact: most of the ATMs here dispense money in 500 and 1000 notes.

2000 pesos: Emilio Prud'homme y José Rufino Reyes Siancas/Teatro Nacional

Like I said before, Prud'homme and Reyes composed the DR's national anthem. Prud'homme helped establish Dominican national identity following the country’s independence from Spain. He was a legislator in Congress and was an outspoken critic of the US. He was also an author who wrote fervently nationalist works and wrote the words to Quisqueyanos valientes. Reyes wrote the music. Reyes was a youth during the 1844 independence and was inspired to join the army. As a soldier he studied music and learned to play several instruments, cello being his best. Most of his compositions were unpublished. The anthem was written in 1883 but was not made official until 1934, again by Trujillo. The Teatro Nacional is part of La Plaza de Cultura and hosts a theatre, a library, and a center for the recovery, preservation and dissemination of Dominican Music.

Believe it or not, I wrote about half of all of that from memory. The rest is Google and Wikipedia (en español at times, what).

The coins are more complex than the coins in the US. There's a lot going on with these. Most of them have an important figure (Duarte, Sánchez, Mella, and Luperón) on the front and the DR coat of arms on the back. The 25 peso piece for example features Luperón. 

Reading about the heroes on DR currency tells me a little bit more about the country. There's no way to know everything about how the country was shaped just by looking at the money. But this entire exercise started by me seeing a French name like Prud'homme and wondering what that was all about. I fell down the rabbit hole. I liked what I found.

Also I apologize for some of the wonky HTML. Holy hell was it a pain in the ass to get it right. Blogger should have an easier interface.