Catalog
5 Centavos
| Issuer | Banco Mauá y Ca., Rosario |
|---|---|
| Year | 1865 |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Horizontal format note with a guilloche border framing the entire composition. The bank name BANCO MAUÁ & Cª appears in bold letterpress across the upper portion, above a central large numeral '5' within a circular vignette. The text VALE POR appears to the left of the central numeral, with CENTAVOS DE PESO FUERTE below it. A payment clause in Spanish runs across the lower half of the note, with the place and date of issue — ROSARIO DE STA. FÉ, 1° de Julio de 1865 — inscribed above a manuscript signature. The bank name is also printed vertically in the side margins. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | BANCO MAUÁ & Cª VALE POR 5 CENTAVOS DE PESO FUERTE Pagaremos a la vista UN PESO FUERTE al portador de VEINTE de estos billetes ROSARIO DE STA. FÉ 1° de Julio de 1865 por el Banco CENTAVOS |
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| Comments |
Banco Mauá & Ca. was the Argentine arm of the financial empire built by Irineu Evangelista de Sousa — Baron Mauá — the Brazilian industrialist whose banking network stretched across the Río de la Plata region in the 1850s and 1860s. The Rosario branch operated during a period when provincial and private banks in Argentina routinely issued their own fractional notes to compensate for the chronic scarcity of small coin.
1865 is the year the Paraguayan War began, and the resulting monetary disruptions across the region almost certainly accelerated demand for exactly this kind of low-denomination private paper. Mauá's broader financial house collapsed in 1875, which puts a hard outer limit on the active life of anything bearing his institutions' name.