2 Reales Plata Boliviana

San Luis was one of the poorer interior provinces of Argentina, and in 1871 its treasury was operating without access to adequate coin — a chronic problem across the interior that the national government had done little to resolve. This 2 Reales note, denominated in Bolivian silver reales rather than the Argentine peso, reflects a practical reality: Bolivian coinage circulated more freely than Argentine in the Cuyo region throughout much of the nineteenth century, and a note pegged to it would have been more readily accepted by the local population than one tied to a distant Buenos Aires standard.

The official stamp is the only security measure, which tells you a great deal about the production budget of the Tesorería de San Luis in that period.