1 Centavo – Dominican Republic

In 1968, the Dominican Republic's currency situation was characterized by relative stability under the authoritarian rule of President Joaquín Balaguer, who had taken power in 1966 following the 1965 civil war and U.S. intervention. The country operated with the Dominican peso (DOP), which was pegged to the U.S. dollar at a fixed exchange rate of 1 peso = 1 dollar. This peg, a legacy from the Trujillo era, was a cornerstone of government policy aimed at providing monetary stability and attracting foreign investment to rebuild the nation's shattered economy. The Central Bank maintained strict controls over foreign exchange transactions to defend this parity, requiring most conversions to go through official channels.

However, this official stability masked underlying economic pressures. The economy was heavily dependent on sugar exports, whose volatile global prices created balance-of-payment strains. Furthermore, the government's significant spending on infrastructure projects and a growing public sector, while stimulative, fueled inflationary pressures that the fixed exchange rate could not fully suppress. These factors, combined with a limited supply of U.S. dollar reserves, led to the emergence of a small parallel black market for currency, where U.S. dollars traded at a slight premium to the official rate, indicating some market distrust in the peso's long-term viability at the one-to-one parity.

Overall, 1968 represented a period of calibrated control rather than crisis. Balaguer's government prioritized the fixed exchange rate as a symbol of recovery and order, successfully avoiding a devaluation that year. The primary challenges were managing inflation and diversifying an economy still recovering from political turmoil, all while maintaining sufficient reserves to uphold the cherished dollar peg. This stability, however, was administratively enforced and would face increasing tests in the coming decades as economic realities gradually eroded the peso's artificial parity.