20 Pesos

The Compañía Sud-Americana de Billetes de Banco was established in Buenos Aires in the early 1890s specifically to give Argentina domestic printing capacity after years of dependence on European houses — a direct response to the Baring Crisis of 1890, which had exposed how badly foreign creditors could destabilize the country's monetary infrastructure. That this note was printed locally rather than in London or Paris is itself a policy decision made visible in paper.

Two signature combinations are recorded for this emission, suggesting sequential administrations at the Banco de la Nación during a period when the institution itself was still young, having been founded in 1891 from the ruins of the Banco Nacional.