Adiós, Benito

The blue, twenty peso banknotes with a portrait of President Benito Juárez will be a thing of the past.  As of October 10th, banks in Mexico began withdrawing the bill from circulation.

You will still be able to spend these bills, but financial institutions are required to hand the Juárez bills in to the Central Bank where, I assume, they will be destroyed.  Eventually the blue twenty peso bills will disappear.

In recent years new designs for all of the bills were introduced.  In 2018 a new 500 peso note was introduced that is also blue and has a picture of Benito Juárez.

Some people complained that it was too easy to mix up the 20 and 500 peso bills, although the later is larger in size.  Well, eventually it won't be possible to make that mistake.

In 2018 a new twenty peso bill was introduced.  I features a scene of the mangrove ecosystem found in the state of Quintana Roo.

However, eventually these bills will also be withdrawn from circulation.  It is the government's plan to substitute the banknotes with 20 peso coins.  The coins first appeared in 2019.  At first it was rare to see one.  On the infrequent occasions when I would receive one in change, I would set it aside and save it.  Now, although I still get the notes most of the time, it is becoming more common to see the coins, and I throw them in with the rest of my change.