Posted 03/23/2013 9:31 pm
This is a Mexican hacienda token. In the 18th and 19th centuries large plantations would make these to pay their workers. This was legal, as long as the "coin" did not use the name of an official unit of currency ("peso," etc.). They commonly were issued in fractional measure, such as "octavo," or, in this case, "quartilla," which is the word they had some trouble spelling out on the coin in the first picture. ALVA may refer to the place name or the hacienda (Alvarado, in Yucatan?)
