Depicts the seal of the United Mexican States.

The Seal of the United Mexican States is a modified version of the national coat of arms, with the addition of the full official name of the country Estados Unidos Mexicanos, in a semi-circular accommodation in the upper part of the seal. Current and past Mexican peso coinage have had the seal engraved on the obverse of all denominations.

The coat of arms depicts a Mexican golden eagle perched on a prickly pear cactus devouring a rattlesnake. To the people of Tenochtitlan this would have strong religious connotations, but to the Europeans, it would come to symbolize the triumph of good over evil (with the snake sometimes representative of the serpent in the Garden of Eden).

Don Miguel Ramos Arizpe (1775–1843) was a Mexican priest and politician, and known as "the father of Mexican federalism." The former colony was not constituted as a sovereign state but the former colonial regional districts considered themselves the units to form a new constitution. Ramos Arizpe was chosen as the chair of the committee to write the new constitution. In less than two weeks in 1824, the committee drafted the Acta Constitutiva, which was the founding legislation. An issue was the extent to which the Mexican states had sovereignty.