5 Pesos

The Estado Soberano del Cauca was one of nine sovereign states under Colombia's federal Rionegro Constitution of 1863 — a political arrangement that gave each state extraordinary autonomy, including the right to issue its own paper currency. That experiment in radical federalism collapsed in 1886 when Rafael Núñez imposed the centralist Regeneración and abolished the sovereign states entirely, making emissions from this period both short-lived and institutionally extinct by definition.

Lithographed by Bernardo Páredes in Bogotá, not in Cauca itself — a reminder that the Cauca Valley lacked the infrastructure to produce its own notes. Surviving examples are genuinely scarce; the issuing authority ceased to exist within four years of this note's production.