MEXICAN BANKNOTE'S ENDANGERED SALAMANDER

On Oct. 29, 2021, Banco de México, Mexico's central bank, issued a new 50-peso ($2.51) bill, the last in a series of redesigned bank notes intended to combat counterfeiting, facilitate people with visual impairments, and increase the note's longevity.

While the reverse of the old 50-peso bill featured the famed Morelia aqueduct and monarch butterflies, the new note depicts the axolotl in its natural habitat, among the chinampas and ahuejote trees, a willow species native to Mexico. The decision to feature an axolotl — which many people believe is an axolotl named Gorda, although Banco de México clarified that it used various images for reference — has shone a spotlight on decadeslong efforts to rehabilitate the species.

The bill received the International Bank Note Society's 2021 Bank Note of the Year Award and has caught local imagination to such an extent that online sellers are offering it for as much as 500,000 pesos (approximately $25,000). Rocío Espinoza de los Monteros, a curator at Mexico's Numismatic Society, a collective devoted to studying currency, says people are collecting the bill rather than spending it due to perceived scarcity, although the note is currently in circulation.

We've been getting approximately 1,700 visitors on the weekends, which is great news, says Pamela Valencia, founder of Museo del Ajolote, in western Mexico City. The museum hosts a colony of 15 axolotls and works to improve the ecosystem to release them into their natural habitat. There have been times when we wouldn't get any.

Paola Vargas, 26, one of the visitors at the Museo del Ajolote, waited with her young son for over 30 minutes to enter the museum. My 7-year-old son saw on TikTok that the axolotl from the bill was here, she says. He showed me the video, and I told him, ‘We should go see it.' People of all ages visit the museum, but children seem most keen, Valencia says.

 

Georgina Ruiz, 48, visited the museum with her spouse and children. We didn't know about the axolotls. We hadn't seen them until they came out on the bills. We found out that they are in danger of extinction, she says. We can help by coming and contributing a little, spreading the word about the project.

Luis Zambrano, a researcher at the Institute of Biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, has studied axolotls for 14 years. Since the rollout of the new note, many have approached him to learn more about the species. A woman in Barcelona, Spain, emailed him, requesting he talk about salamanders at her son's school; a German couple asked him to accompany them to Xochimilco to meet the creatures.

I'm not a travel agency, says a laughing Zambrano, who decided to connect the couple with a chinampa farmer that participates in his conservation project.

His team has also begun receiving donations from children. It's not a stratospheric amount, but we like it, he says, because the seed of true environmental education is there, in the next generation, who will probably do more for the conservation of species — in particular, this species.

To read the complete article, see:
Meet the Surprising Star of Mexico's New Bank Note (https://globalpressjournal.com/americas/mexico/meet-surprising-star-mexicos-new-bank-note/)

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