Commemorative $20 coins

Octavio Paz

KM 638 KM 638 reverse
KM-638

Octavio Paz Lozano was born in 1914 into a highly educated family who would influence him throughout his life and career. His father and grandfather were political journalists and his grandfather was the first Mexican to write a novel with an overtly Indian theme. They routinely kept company with other progressive intellectuals, including Emiliano Zapata.

Paz began his writing career early and travelled abroad. In 1938 riding the crest of the wave of a new generation of Mexican writers, he began the publication Taller. Several years later he entered diplomatic service and travelled to France where he was influenced by the surrealists and wrote El Laberinto de la Soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude), his definitive work on Mexican national identity. He travelled to Asia, Japan, Germany, Switzerland and India where he wrote El mono gramático (The Grammarian Monkey) and Ladera este (Eastern Slope). His travels brought the influence of Buddhism, surrealism, Hinduism and Marxism to his work. He resigned from diplomatic service in 1968 in protest over the government's bloody slaughter of protesting students during the Olympic Games in Mexico. He continued his work as an editor for several years and published the magazine Plural and later, Vuelta. In the course of his life Paz wrote a prolific quantity of essays on poetry, literary and art criticism, economics, sexuality, anthropology, Mexican politics, culture and history.

The list of awards, fellowships and prizes received by Octavio Paz is lengthy. They include, among many others, an honorary doctorate at Harvard in 1980, the 1981 Miguel Cervantes Award (the most important literary award in the Spanish speaking world) and the 1982 American Neustadt Prize. In 1990 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his “impassioned writing with wide horizons characterised by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity”.

Octavio Paz died in Mexico in 1998 at the age of 84.This was authorised on 6 January 2000

Mintage was 14,943,000 in 2000 and 2,515,000 in 2001.

Fuego Nuevo (New Fire)

KM 637 KM 637 reverse
KM-637

In Aztec mythology, Xiuhtecuhtli, whose name means “Turquoise Lord” was the god of fire and the owner of time He was the parent of all the gods and ruled over volcanoes, daylight and warmth; among other important roles he was believed to carry souls into the afterlife. A young and vigorous god, he is thought to have a dual nature, with his other aspect being Huehueteotl, the “Old God” who is also associated with fire.

At the end of each 52-year cycle the cosmos was fought become dangerous and unstable; the Aztecs protected the world during this time with the New Fre ceremony. Preparations and rituals were carried out for days in every household and temple. At the culmination of the ceremony, every fire in the land was extinguished, from the homes to the temples. The fire in the temple of Huehueteotl was kindled anew in the body of a sacrificial victim. Torches were lit from the fire and carried to the other temples to re light their braziers, and from those braziers all the other fires in each city were relit from those in the temples. Xiuhtecuhtli/Huehueteotl was appeased and order was temporarily restored to the world.

This was authorised on 6 January 2000

Mintage was 14,850,000 in 2000 and 2,478,000 in 2001.

Twentieth Anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Octavio Paz (Vigésimo Aniversario de la entrega del Premio Nobel a Octavio Paz)

KM 943 KM 943 reverse
KM-943

This was authorised on 27 January 2011

Mintage was 5,000,000^{Bailey (Bailey, Don, Lois. (2015) Whitman Encyclopedia of Mexican Money, Volume 2. Whitman Publishing, Atlanta Georgia USA) had 4,954,000} in 2010.

Centennial of the Mexican Army (Centenario del Ejército Mexicano)

KM 969 Km 969 reverse
KM-969

This was authorised on 26 March 2013.

Mintage was 5,000,000^{Bailey had 4,956,000} in 2013.

150th Anniversary of the Birth and 100th Anniversary of the Death of Belisario Domínguez (150 Aniversario del Natalicio y el 100 Aniversario Luctuoso de Belisario Domínguez Palencia)

KM 970 KM 970 reverse
KM-970

Belisario Dominguez Belisario Domínguez was born on 25 April 1863 in Comitán, Chiapas (then Comitán de las Flores, nowadays Comitán de Domínguez) and grew up and worked in the middle of a country convulsed first by the struggle of the liberals and conservatives, then by the re-electionist struggles, which bookended the presidency of Porfirio Díaz. He enjoyed a privileged and comfortable upbringing, in a family of liberal and anticlerical belief, with nine brothers and eight halfbrothers. After basic studies in his home town, from 1879 to 1889 Belisario migrated to France, where he would study medicine at the University of the Sorbonne. There he learned about the currents of modernist liberal thought in full swing, such as the positivists and the utopian socialists, and decided to guide his life by the precepts of rationality and scientific knowledge rather than belief in religion. During his stay abroad he could also appreciate the differences in European and Mexican reality, the lack and restriction of existing rights, all that would explain the turn he gradually took from his profession to enter politics.

Back in Mexico, he returned to his beloved Comitán, where he began his journey as a social reformer by opening a clinic and pharmacy that operated for free for poor people, always with the doors open, called “La Fraternidad”. In Europe he had observed the power of a press critical of the government and this led him to found his own newspaper, “El Vate”, in February 1904. He also set up a Club Democrático and in 1909 was elected Municipal President for the Liberal Party.

At the time of the presidential succession in 1911, Chiapas’s political perspective worsened: between 1910 and 1911 there were eleven governors. The Liberal Party invited Belisario to run for the Senate in the elections in 1912. Belisario declined, because he wanted to remain with a family life, but agreed to be a substitute of the official candidate, his friend Leopoldo Gout, who won. On 19 February 1913 Victoriano Huerta took power after the decena trágica. On 3 March Senator Gout died due to an unexpected stroke, so Belisario Domínguez found himself forced to take up office, which he held until the day of his death on 7 October 1913.

His participation against Huerta’s usurpation was notable. He claimed Mexico was an arbitrary state, devoid of legality, political future and the rule of law and from the beginning he was opposed to any project that arrives at the Congress from the National Palace. His energetic speeches lead him to being denied the rostrum, so he used clandestinely printed material to defend his position. Probably the crucial moment of his life as a congressman came on 23 September when he delivered the following speech, to which the loss of his life weeks later is attributed.

… The truth is this: during the government of Don Victoriano Huerta, not only has nothing been done for the peace of the country, but the current situation of the Republic is infinitely worse than before: the Revolution has spread to almost all the states; many nations, formerly good friends of Mexico, refuse to recognize her government, as illegal; our currency is depreciated abroad; our credit in agony; the press of the Republic gagged, or cowardly sold to the government and systematically hiding the truth - our abandoned fields, many people devastated and, finally, hunger and misery in all its forms, threaten to spread rapidly across the surface of our unfortunate homeland. Why this sad situation? First, and first of all, because the Mexican people cannot resign themselves to having Don Victoriano Huerta as President of the Republic, the soldier who seized power through treason and whose first act when he became president was cowardly to assassinate the president and vice president legally anointed by the popular vote […]

The national representation must depose Don Victoriano Huerta from the presidency of the Republic for being the one against whom all our brothers raised in arms protest and, consequently, for being the one who least can carry out the pacification, the supreme yearning for all Mexicans. You will tell me, gentlemen, that the attempt is dangerous because Don Victoriano Huerta is a bloodthirsty and fierce soldier, who murders without hesitation or scruple all those who serve as an obstacle. It does not matter, gentlemen! The country demands that you do your duty, even with the danger and even with the security of losing your existence […]

On midnight on 7 October 1913 Belisario was abducted from the Hotel Jardín where he was staying, taken to the Pantheon of Xoco and shot. Several accounts allege that he was physically tortured just before he died. A few days later the Senate authorized an exhaustive investigation into this matter. Huerta’s Council of Ministers requested its withdrawal. When the Senate refused, the Permanent Deputation was forcibly dissolved and 110 congressmen imprisoned.

This issue was authorised on 29 March 2013.

Mintage was 1,000,000^{Bailey had 985,000} in 2013.