10 Pesos

The Tesorería General notes of 1888 were fiscal instruments issued directly by the Colombian state treasury rather than through a chartered bank — a reflection of the chronic banking instability that plagued Colombia throughout the 1880s, when private banks repeatedly failed to maintain convertibility. Villaveces was one of the few domestic printers capable of producing currency-grade work in Bogotá at the time, though their output rarely matched the technical quality of European contract printers.

Colombia's monetary situation in 1888 was further complicated by the lead-up to the Regeneration government's decision to establish the Banco Nacional as a monopoly issuer — a move that effectively made treasury notes like this one transitional artifacts, issued in the gap between failed free banking and centralized state control.