Currency of the Dominican Republic 500 Pesos Dominicanos banknote 2014
Central Bank of the Dominican Republic - Banco Central de la República Dominicana
Dominican Republic Banknotes - Dominican Republic Paper Money
Obverse: Engraved effigies of Salome Ureña de Henriquez, in three-quarter view toward the right, and her son Pedro Henriquez Ureña in three-quarter view toward the left. Both images are located on the right half of the banknote. Seal of the Central Bank of the Republic. Blossoms of the Mahogany Tree, La caoba (Swietenia mahagoni), formerly (1957-2011) the national flower and now the national tree of the Dominican Republic.
Signatures: Hector Valdez Albizu (Gobernador del Banco Central) and Simón Lizardo Mézquita (Secretario de Estado de Finanzas).
Reverse: Vignette of the lateral facade of Central Bank’s headquarters and the front facade of the Central Bank’s Auditorium, both on the left half of the banknote (Banco Central is a 13-story high-rise building in Santo Domingo).
Texts: Banco Central de la Republica Dominicana. Este billete tiene fuerza liberatoria para el pago de todas las obligaciones publicas o privadas. Gobernador del Banco Central. Ministro de Hacienda. Quinientos Pesos Oro. Dios. Patria. Libertad.
Watermark: The watermark on the banknote shows the image of patriot Juan Pablo Duarte, which can be observed by holding the banknote against the light. The image is neither drawn nor printed. It was incorporated into the body of the paper during while it was manufactured; therefore, it is an integral part of the paper; Electrotype 500.
Dimensions: 157 x 67 mm.
Security Features:
1. Latent Image (hidden): The effect of this image is created through the process of Intaglio printing. The shadows caused by microscopic channeling and slots create an image that is only perceivable when observed under a light, at a 45-degree angle.
2. Mark for the Visually Impaired: It consists in the placement of a geometric figure in bas relief along the lower left-hand edge of the banknotes.
3. Micro-printing: Small-letter inscriptions which, upon simple inspection, resemble a solid line but can only be deciphered if seen through a magnifying lens.
4. Asymmetrical horizontal numbering: Numbering characterized by ascending type fonts; each letter and numbering is of a different and increasing size.
5. Year of printing: The year in which the banknote was printed is located on the front of the banknotes and helps identify the series to which it belongs.
6. Vertical numbering: Numbering appears in the form of printing same-size letters in a vertical line along the right-hand edge of the banknotes.
7. Security thread with clear text: A thin thread made of synthetic material, printed with a clear text, is inserted within the paper’s mass. The banknote’s denomination is spelled out in the text and it can only be read by holding the banknote against the light. As of 2001, the thread appears on the front of the banknote, over the paper’s surface, in the form of bars that are alternatively shiny and reflective, extending from one end of the banknote to the other. The thread can also be seen on the back of the banknote, inside the paper’s mass, yet without the reflective surfaces.
8. Optical variable ink: The banknotes are printed in optical variable ink which changes color depending on the viewing angle.
9. Watermark: The watermark on the banknote shows the image of patriot Juan Pablo Duarte, which can be observed by holding the banknote against the light. The image is neither drawn nor printed. It was incorporated into the body of the paper during its manufacture; therefore, it is an integral part of the paper.
10. Optical variable band: An optical variable band has been placed on the back of the banknotes. When the banknote is held flat, the band appears in a golden color and tends to disappear when the banknote changes position.
Dominican Republic Banknotes - Dominican Republic Paper Money
Peso Dominicano System
2011-2013 Issue & 2014-2015 Modified Design Issue
50 Pesos Dominicanos 100 Pesos Dominicanos 200 Pesos Dominicanos
500 Pesos Dominicanos 1000 Pesos Dominicanos 2000 Pesos Dominicanos
Salome Ureña de Henriquez
Salomé Ureña de Henríquez (October 21, 1850 – March 6, 1897) better known as Salomé Ureña, was a revered poet and pedagogist of the Dominican Republic. Born in Santo Domingo in 1850, she was one of the central figures of lyrical poetry of the 19th century and an innovator of women's education in her country.
Salomé Ureña was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on October 21, 1850. She was the daughter of writer Nicolás Ureña de Mendoza and Gregoria Díaz de León, who gave her daughter her first lessons of education. At an early age Salomé was well influenced by literature. Her father taught her the classic works of Spanish and French writers that helped the young Salomé to develop her own career.
She began publishing her first works at the age of seventeen and soon became known for her spontaneity and tenderness. Later on, her poetry became more tragic and sad with poems such as "En horas de angustia" (In Hours of Anguish) or very patriotic and strong in poems such as "La Patria" (The Motherland) and "Ruinas" (Ruins). She would include more themes of her own life in her poetry, as noted in "Mi Pedro" (dedicated to her son, perhaps her most affectionate poem), "La llegada del invierno" (The Arrival of the Winter), and a book that became very popular called "Steven", where she talks about her country, her family, the plants and flowers, and the island itself.
At the age of thirty in 1880, she married Dr. Francisco Henríquez y Carvajal, himself a writer, and an important figure in politics. She had four children with him: Francisco, Pedro, Max, and Camila Henríquez Ureña. Their children would later become highly respected figures of the mid and late 20th century as writers, philosophers, poets, and critics of the arts.
Around 1881, Salomé with the help of her husband opened the first center of higher education for young women in the Dominican Republic, which she did under the name of "Instituto de Señoritas". Within five years, the first six female teachers were graduated from the Institute, something uncommon at the time. The first graduating class included: Mercedes Laura Aguiar, Leonor M. Feltz, Altagracia Henríquez Perdomo, Luisa Ozema Pellerano, Catalina Pou, and Ana Josefa Puello.
Ureña died on March 6, 1897, due to complications with tuberculosis. She was 46 years old.
Pedro Henriquez Ureña
Pedro Henríquez Ureña (born June 29, 1884 - May 11, 1946) was a Dominican essayist, philosopher, humanist, philologist and literary critic.
Early works
Pedro Henríquez Ureña was born in Santo Domingo, the third of four siblings. Henríquez's father was Francisco Henríquez y Carvajal, a doctor and politician who was also an intellectual who maintained permanent contact with the most important representatives of the Hispanic Modernism movements from the early 20th century. Henríquez Carvajal would become president of the Republic for a brief period in 1916, before the American occupation. His mother was the eminent poet and feminist Salomé Ureña. Both played a key role in Pedro's formation and education. His brother, Max, and sister, Camila, were also writers.
The young Pedro traveled to Mexico in 1906, where he lived until 1913. About these times he wrote in Horas de estudio. In these years he also wrote about philosophical criticism, specially the seriousness of the thought. Here he made his criticism of positivismo, being one of the first in the Hispanic America, in his articles "El positivismo de Comte" and "El positivismo independiente".
In 1914, in Cuba, he defined what according to him a good critic must be: a flexible scholar who knows how to adopt any point of view. But mainly he must know the spirit of the time and the country he is studying. The critic will always be tributary of the values of the society to which he belongs and thus must fight against them. He obtains his flexibility, sometimes without proposing to it.
Maturity
Between 1915 and 1916 Henríquez Ureña worked as a journalist in the United States, living in Washington and New York. In this last year he joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota where he taught until 1921. No doubt his travels influenced his work and his thinking. His humanism and Americanism – that is, his firm defense of Hispanic-American cultural values – made him write a final lecture for the Club of International Relations of the University of Minnesota about the "intervencionist policy of the United States in all the Caribbean", since his own nation had been invaded in 1916. In 1921 he traveled to Mexico where his americanismo would acquire a new vigor. Influenced by this atmosphere of enthusiasm towards the culture, he wrote his famous article "The utopia of America".
In 1923 he married Isabel Lombardo Toledano, sister of the famous union leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano. The two had a daughter, Natacha, the following year.
He went to La Plata in Argentina to continue with the study of literature to explain la expresión americana, to try to reach a language that would clarify the fundamental object of its investigation, the American continent. America is for Henríquez Ureña somewhat similar to a text that must be explained and nothing better for the interpretation of that text that the study of the totality of its language. The language is the system par excellence, since through it we registered and we organized our perceptions of the outer world. For that reason the differences of the American Spanish, not only took us to the knowledge to a phonetic study of the region but of the geographic area that each dialectal zone describes. Henríquez Ureña dedicated his research more directly towards linguistics when in 1930 he moved to Buenos Aires, to exert the position of Secretary in the Institute of Philology directed by Amado Alonso.
He was the first Spanish speaker invited to teach at the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1940-1941. As results he wrote and published "Literary Currents in Hispanic America" in 1945.
For Henríquez Ureña, linguistics was a form to analyze in a scientific way the power of the American word, its wealth and its evolution through time. He sustained that language was one of the main instruments that would give rise to a social transformation in the America of the future.
He died in 1946, after suffering a heart attack during his daily commute from Buenos Aires to La Plata. He had been in the process of grading and correcting students' work.
The Biblioteca Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña (in English: Pedro Henríquez Ureña National Library) is the national library of the Dominican Republic. It was inaugurated on February 28, 1971.