Paper money carries images of what is supposed to identify the nation, generally related to the past and heritage. In Colombia, these images have traditionally been selected by authorities such as Congress or the Central Bank (Banco de la República). This investigation gives an overview of the iconographic tradition in Colombian paper money and focuses on the most recent “family”, launched in 2016. How it is composed, why was it issued and who made the decisions are some of the questions that this investigation addresses. Moreover, appealing to the concepts of public use of history and public history, it approaches to the reception of these images, with no aspiration of giving a representative result in terms of statistics, but to acknowledge that people have something to say about the symbols and personages that others have chosen to identify the nation as a whole.
