Calle Valores

It is a short stretch of barely a hundred meters. Most streets in the Estrella neighborhood look to the heavens, with the names of stars and constellations; this one, instead, points to the work done a few steps away, at the Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre. Around it cluster other names of the trade: Calcografía, Moneda, Patio de Imprenta and this Calle Valores. In the mint’s jargon, the valores are the printed instruments backed by the State: postage stamps, banknotes, stamped paper, securities. Each name corresponds to a section of the factory carried onto the map. The housing in this group was built around the mid-twentieth century as a colony for the factory’s staff. Hence the street plan echoes the work of the mint on the other side of the wall, beside the institution that still mints the country’s coins and prints its stamps.