Too Cute to Spend

The Bank of Mexico released a report revealing that nearly 13 million people are hoarding millions of dollars’ worth of the nation’s stylish 50-peso note, featuring Mexico’s cutest critter—the axolotl. The front of the note bears an adorable depiction of Gorda, an axolotl from a museum in the country’s capital. The note entered circulation in 2021, dazzling the judges of the International Bank Note Society (IBNS), who awarded it the Note of the Year. 

The members of the judging panel weren’t the only ones impressed by the notes; the public doesn’t want to spend them and would rather keep them as pieces of art. The survey found that only 12 percent of those holding on to the 50-peso issues said they did the same for other notes. Some of the first axolotl notes to be printed are even being traded for 100 times their intended value. 

Save the Axolotls

Axolotls, which are forever tadpoles, never lose their gills to become land dwellers like other salamanders. They predate the Aztecs and once inhabited Lake Texcoco. When the Aztecs arrived in roughly A.D. 1300, they built Tenochtitlan, the seat of their empire, on an island in the middle of the lake, a scene depicted on the back of the bank note. The Aztecs named the axolotl after their god of fire and lightning. After the Spanish conquered Tenochtitlan, the new rulers drained the lake, restricting axolotls to Xochimilco. 

Today, few axolotls survive in the wild. Gorda is one of six specimens living in Axolotitlán, the Mexico City museum dedicated to the country’s cutest critter. Now elderly, she is rarely put on display in the museum, but the museum’s founder, Pamela Valencia, said it had been worth putting her in the limelight for the photo shoot for the bank note’s design to bring attention to an iconic species at risk of extinction. “We used to see souvenirs of jaguars and hummingbirds. Today we can see how the axolotl is becoming part of our culture, our everyday lives,” says Valencia. “We cannot save something if we don’t know it exists.”