Why "peso" is the name of so many currencies in Latin America

And why do many American countries use this denomination for their currency?

The origin of the peso as a monetary unit in the region dates back to the conquest of the continent by the Spaniards.

But it took many years and cultural changes to arrive at the concept of what we now call weight.

We go by parties.

Natural transaction

When the Spanish and the Portuguese arrived on the American continent, the currency did not exist as we currently conceive it.

"According to the chroniclers of the Indies, the Amerindians used it as currency, especially for the payment of taxes, cocoa beans, certain types of shells and other products", explains Julio Torres, curator of the Casa de la Moneda museum in Spain. author of the essay "The Implication of Money in America".

In the Iberian Peninsula, coins existed and were minted with gold, silver, fleece or copper. Some of them began to be exported to the "new continent".

But the import of coins and the introduction of coins in America did not mean the end of the use of cash for commercial purposes. The Indians first refused to accept the new currency and made it disappear.

It was in 1535 that Carlos I of Spain ordered the establishment of mint factories in Mexico and Santo Domingo.

In a second phase were born the exchange houses of Lima (1565) and La Plata (1573) which were replaced in 1574 by that of Potosi, the current Bolivia.

And in a third was founded the Casa de Moneda Santa Fe de Bogotá (1626).

Weight and dollar

Until the sixteenth century, commercial operations were conducted with bars, yews or gold bars, gold powder as well as coins and silver bars, described Torres.

In the Spanish kingdom, the "Castilian" or "peso" amounted to about 4.6 grams of gold.

It was not until the middle of the 16th century that silver began to replace gold as the principal means of transaction.

At the beginning of the strike, the name "peso" was applied to one type of currency: the "real ocho", or about 27 grams of gold tepuzque, which was essentially copper.

This piece was first manufactured in Mexico during the reign of Philip II between 1556 and 1598 and was extended to other currencies of the continent.

Parallel also began to hit silver coins with these features.

"The silver piece of eight rees, also called" peso "or" duro ", was the Hispanic continuation of a pattern of large thick coins initiated in the Central European regions at the end of the fifteenth century. century, "says Torres in his essay.

"This denomination, as well as the type of currency that it has designated, have traveled in other languages ​​of Germanic origin, including English, which gave birth to the dollar," adds -t it.

In summary, different measures of the weight of metals used in the past have been behind the denomination of some piece of money become so strong and respected that it was adopted by many countries.

Over time, the piece of metal began to be struck on industrial metals (with bank notes) and became a fiduciary currency, that is, a currency that relies on the trust of a corporation and not on the value itself. of metal.

At present, the peso is the currency of countries of the region such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay.

BBC.