1 Peso

The Tesorería General de Guerra — the General War Treasury — issued this note during one of the most turbulent stretches in Colombian federal history. The 1863 Rionegro Constitution had just remade the country into the United States of Colombia, a loose confederation of sovereign states, and the central government's financial apparatus was perpetually strained by regional conflict and an almost complete absence of specie reserves.

War treasury notes of this period were fiscal instruments of last resort, issued to pay troops and suppliers when coin simply wasn't available. Survival rates are low — these circulated hard in wartime conditions and were rarely preserved.