Macuquina

With the name of macuquina the type of coin roughly minted manually and with hammer blows is known in Spain and Spanish America, a method widely used since the century XVI until the middle of the XVIII century. There are various opinions on the origin of the word: while some maintain that it comes from the Arabic word "machuch" ('approved' or 'sanctioned'), Others claim that it comes from the Quechua expression Makkaikuna —or macay pina—, which would refer to its manufacture with hammer blows.

Origin

Although the minting of coins manually and with hammer blows has been used by humanity since time immemorial: from the second millennium BC to the century XVI of our era and although this was the most used system in the world to make coins previously, this does not directly explain why, so far into time, coins of this type existed in America, given that Both Mexicas and Incas already worked gold and silver in a fairly traditional and correct way.

On the other hand, the absence of modern machinery to mint money, manufactured outside of Spain, and the needs of commerce in said territories caused the appearance of the macuquinas. The urgent need for coins in Latin America since the beginning of the XVI century motivated the opening of mints such as the Mexican Mint., founded in 1536 by the first Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco; the Lima Mint in 1565 ordered by the provisional governor Lope García de Castro and the Royal Mint of Potosí, all before the year 1600, in order to take advantage of the great production of silver and gold in American lands in order to minting currency that was essential both for paying tribute to the Spanish crown and for commercial traffic in the colonies.

The coinage in several places in Europe was already carried out using the "flying press", a large and complex device invented in Italy in the XVI where metal discs were engraved and cut on both sides using a press. However, such machines, complex for their time and tiring to transport, were not available in America until the beginning of the 18th century and The first centuries of Spanish colonization were supported by the Macuquina currency.

Manufacturing

To make macuquina currency, the following procedures were used:

• The metal was melted and then turned into foils by hammer blows. After this the cospels were cut in a handmade way and the cloaks were recorded manually on the surface of each cospel, adding also in the same way the acronyms of the essayer (which assured the weight and law of the coin) and the date of the coinage.
• A doctile metal plate was placed between two cloaks and with a hammer the upper cloak was struck to record an image on the upper side of the plate, then the operation was repeated in the lower cloak more coarsely, the details were just placed in the coin by a simple puncture. Once this procedure was completed, the sections of the ductile metal were manually cut and small pieces of rough edge were obtained (due to the very constitution of the metal): the coins themselves.

Another way to obtain them was to cut portions of the end of a metal bar with a hammer to obtain fragments to beat them later and obtain what would become blanks and then stamp them with the die.

To this is added that the carvers of each mint were in charge of making the official dies according to the models brought from Spain (which as molds should be applied to each coin coin) and the making of the dies itself was usually defective due to lack of of the carver's skill or imperfections in the purity of the blank metal. The poor quality of the dies and their manual application caused the assayer's initials (a requirement mandated by Spanish laws) to not always appear on the coin or the date of issue to be missing, making it impossible to know who the assayer was responsible for. defects that could be discovered in each piece.

Likewise, the macuquinas, as always, were rarely completely round in shape (most were heart-shaped, rhombus-shaped, or square-shaped), so the gráfila (the ring around the obverse and reverse) did not come out complete and therefore it was easy to cut off the coins by cutting tiny pieces of silver and gold from them while they remained in circulation as it could not be determined if the lack of edges was the result of a common defect of the coin, or if this happened because the metal of the coin had been maliciously cut off by someone. In fact, since all circulating coins were made of silver or gold, the cutting of these coins was highly profitable, although it attacked the intrinsic value of each piece, which was totally linked to the amount of precious metal contained in it.

Disappearance of the macuquinas in America

The cutting of coins was a common practice throughout history. The case of Spain and its American colonies was not an exception, but since it implied a reduction in the amount of precious metal in each coin, the damage that this practice caused to the economy was evident, since there was no reliability regarding the authenticity and intrinsic value. of the coins supposedly guaranteed by the Crown, and the monetary pieces themselves did not always have the same value indicated in their face denomination (one Spanish real, 2, 4 or eight reales in the case of silver coins). This situation was compensated by the fact that being a completely artisanal product, the macuquinas did not require complex machinery for their production, nor a special workshop for this purpose, nor was it necessary to have highly specialized operators and fuel was even saved by Only a single foundry was needed, from which all remaining metal was used.

The enormous flow of silver and gold coins to Spain from America, partly as tribute and partly for reasons of trade, increased the severity of the problem while the quantity of Spanish coins in the metropolis was increased by the pieces viceregals, damaging the value of Spanish currency in Europe. Added to this is that in the Spanish mints of America the macuquina was the only monetary unit issued by the state authority, and even in Venezuela the Guipuzcoan Company itself minted in the century XVIII his own silver macuquinas with the monarch's authorization, of as poor quality as the others.

Such a situation stimulated the Spanish crown to order from the middle of the XVI century the progressive mechanization of all the mints of its dominions in the Iberian Peninsula, as well as other European nations, began to apply the manufacture of coins by mechanical means. Spain began with the Segovia mint in 1585, where roller coinage was established by order of King Philip II, and then in the century XVII coinage by flywheel press was imposed in the peninsular mints. This method was the one that was established in the mints of the Spanish viceroyalties of America, since 1730, starting with the Mint of Mexico, to eliminate the issuance of macuquinas; despite the opposition of officials who obtained benefits from the minting of these coins that were so easy to cut off or adulterate.

The exceptional wealth of the American silver mines was an element that determined an enormous volume of coin minting; This in turn was an incentive for Crown officials to illegally take advantage of the cutting or adulteration of macuquinas and thus try to delay by all means the application of the King's orders in the American colonies. Proof of this was the scandal that arose in the city of Potosí (present-day Bolivia) in the middle of the XVII century when mint officials They adulterated a large number of coins over the years, adding less silver than necessary in the minted pieces.

Despite these cases, the new system was adopted in the following years by all the Hispanic colonies until the year 1767, after great resistance and many delays, the Royal Mint of Potosí minted the last macuquinas of the Spanish colonial empire, giving way to the mechanized manufacture of coins.

Nowadays, macuquinas are sold in a VF to F condition, since there are very few collectors who have them in UNC or "flor de cuño" quality.