10 Pesos Plata Boliviana

Otero y Cía. was a private commercial house in Córdoba, Argentina, operating during the period when provincial and merchant-issued quasi-money filled the vacuum left by the absence of a functioning national banking system. The 1867 date places this note squarely in the early years after the Mitre government's first serious attempts at monetary consolidation — which is precisely when private issuers in the interior provinces were most active, and most vulnerable to sudden suppression.

The denomination in plata boliviana is the telling detail. Bolivian silver coinage was the dominant hard currency across the Argentine northwest through much of the nineteenth century, and a merchant promising pesos in that unit was making a specific, credible commitment to a locally understood standard.