1 Peso Fuerte Banco del Paraguay

The Banco del Paraguay was established in 1880 as the country's first proper banking institution, a full fifteen years after the War of the Triple Alliance had left Paraguay demographically devastated and financially insolvent. This note dates from just two years into the bank's existence, when the country was still rebuilding monetary infrastructure almost from nothing — the pre-war Paraguayan economy had operated largely without a formal banking sector at all.

ABNC's involvement guaranteed a level of engraving quality entirely out of proportion to the issuing economy's size. The "Fuerte" denomination designation distinguished these notes from devalued paper issues and signaled an intent toward hard-currency equivalence that the bank could not always back in practice.