2 Pesos Fuertes

The Banco de la Província de Buenos Aires was, at this point, effectively the financial backbone of the Argentine interior — operating independently of the national government in a way no provincial bank could manage after the 1890 crisis reshaped the system. The American Bank Note Company produced the plates in New York, as it did for the great majority of South American issues in this period, and the quality of the intaglio work here reflects that company's dominance of the regional market through the 1870s.

The *peso fuerte* denomination is a specificity worth noting: it distinguished specie-backed or nominally hard-currency obligations from the inflationary *papel moneda* that had plagued Buenos Aires since the 1820s. By 1871, that distinction was already under pressure.