Idár quarter an ‘easy choice’ for top prize
Coinweek awards U.S. Mint's coin its 2023 gold medal
It was an easy choice. That’s what editors and writers of Coinweek, a leading publication about coins and paper money, said about awarding its top prize of 2023 to the Jovita Idár quarter.
Released by the U.S. Mint last August as part of the American Women Quarter series, the coin showcases a sleek, refined portrait of Idár on the tails side to the one featuring George Washington.
Idár’s modern depiction was drawn from an early 20th century photograph of the native Laredoan and San Antonian who fought for the educational, social, economic and civil rights of Mexican Americans.
She did it as a journalist, teacher, suffragist and pioneering activist.
Idár, who died in San Antonio in 1946 at only 60, was an uncompromising Tejana of the borderlands who wrote for and founded newspapers and organizations when it was highly uncommon, even dangerous to do so, especially for women of color.
The Rev. Elizabeth Lopez, a retired United Methodist Church minister in San Antonio, says her great aunt wrote about the militarization of the U.s.-mexico border, receiving the wrath of the U.S. Army and the Texas Rangers.
She wrote about racism against Mexican Americans, state-sanctioned violence and lynchings, the Catholic Church’s outlook on women, school segregation and the promotion of Anglo-american culture in those schools.
Idár helped organize La Cruz Blanca, the White Cross, leading a regiment of Mexican American women across the border to treat wounded soldiers during the Mexican Revolution.
Idár founded a kindergarten in San Antonio, too. But all of those achievements are only parts of her incredible career.
Lopez said her great aunt was a strict woman who wasn’t confined by her time and circumstances. Lopez noted Idár’s famous slogan: “Educate a woman and you educate a family.”
She also lamented that Idár is most remembered for her standoff against the Texas Rangers in front of one of her family’s newspapers.
Admittedly, that’s the dramatic scene if Idár’s life is ever made into a feature film. But there was so much more to learn about her.
It’s what Coinweek did in announcing that the Idár quarter won its gold medal for best coin design, adding how unusual it is for the award to go to a coin in circulation.
That’s because the U.S. Mint mass produces coins for far less than their face value — with the exception of the penny and nickel.
The Idár quarter competed against commemorative or premium coins that greatly outspend mass-produced coins “with all the bells and whistles.”
Coinweek’s silver medal went to the Royal Canadian Mint and its bronze went to the Austrian Mint. Both outspent the Idár coin.
The online publication also noted the American Women Quarters Program, the “most artistically exciting series of circulating commemorative coins ever produced by the United States Mint,” in part because it wasn’t restricted to sterile portraits of “politicians, inanimate objects, or concepts.”
The quarter series began in 2022 and concludes next year.
Coinweek editor Charles Morgan said the Idár coin stood out from the start, especially in comparison to the staid political figures on U.S. coins of the past.
Instead, the coin, like the series to which it belongs, draws from “a wealth” of figures that memorialize the powerful impact women had on U.S. history, said Morgan, a former governor of the American Numismatic Association and member of the American Numismatic Society and the Numismatic Literary Guild.
Morgan said the Idár quarter “breaks the rules of what a coin typically looks like” in its beauty, bilingualism, innovation and scale.
Not only are its bilingual inscriptions beautifully handwritten, but they tell a life story.
They include “Mexican American rights,” “teacher,” “nurse,” “journalist,” “La Cruz Blanca”, “La Crónica,” “El Progreso” and “La Liga Femenil Mexicanista.”
They show Idár was “a publisher of note in her community,” Morgan said.
The words are all imprinted on the coin, not in the edges around her portrait, but on her billowy blouse, a garment common in the early 20th century.
Designs like this grow in importance in an increasingly cashless society for those with what Morgan called “the enthusiasm to look.”
The coin also requires you to look up what it says.
In that way, Idár remains a teacher. The coin requires us to take that extra step, to look up, to Google, to see what Jovita Idár did as she moved about the borderlands.
She was important to her country, Morgan said. “She was an American.”
On March 9, a mural featuring Idár will be blessed and dedicated at Dress for Success San Antonio on Frio Street, just steps away from where she lived and worked.
It’s the first public art commissioned by the Mexican American Civil Rights Institute to based on the city’s West Side.