Issues from 1920

In 1920 there was a national shortage of small currency which the government tried to address with its issue of Comisión Monetaria vales. In Veracruz some organisations resorted to their own devices.

Misantla

Chapa-Chapa

M4048.5 25c Chapa-chapa

This vale, dated March 1920, comes from a finca (probably a coffee plantation) in Chapachapa, Misantla.

It is for 25c, or a sixth of the day rate of $1.50.

Papantla

La Huaxteca

Jose Buil Belenguer was born on 5 August 1879, in Valencia, Spain and in January 1911 arrived in Mexico to set himself up in Papantla. He had lost his first wife and son to an epidemic in 1909 and decided to give himself a second chance, in Mexico. In Papantla he married Remedios Güemes, with whom he would have seven children.

Buil was a doctor surgeon, with his own laboratory, and then from 1925 to 1940, ran a cinema. He was a pioneer of Mexican cinema, and in 1995 his grandson used family movies that Buil had shot in the 1920s and 1930s with a 9.5 mm Pathé Baby camera to produce the documentary La línea paterna. In it Buil shows his desire  to integrate himself into the culture of the Papanteca by participating in community events or happenings, such as posing proudly next to a group of flyers (voladores) or at the pyramid of El Tajín.

He died on 21 September 1959, in Papantla, at the age of 80.

The 5c note has the handstamp of "La Huasteca" (sic) of José Buil y Compañía, dated 6 April 1920: the 20c has the handstamp of "Gran Farmacia Nueva" of doctor José Buil.

M4069 5c La Huaxteca

M4070 20c La Huaxteca