20 Centavos Fuertes

Banco de San Juan was a provincial institution operating under Argentina's pre-1890 free banking period, when individual provinces and private banks could issue their own circulating notes with minimal federal oversight. The Tucumán branch issuing its own notes under the San Juan charter reflects just how fragmented Argentine provincial banking was in the 1870s — a San Juan-chartered bank issuing paper redeemable in Tucumán was not unusual then, but it complicates the attribution of surviving examples.

The "fuertes" denomination signals hard-currency equivalence, distinguishing these notes from the depreciated "moneda corriente" notes that plagued Argentine commerce throughout the same decade.