5 Pesos

The Estado Soberano del Cauca was one of nine sovereign states under Colombia's 1863 Rionegro Constitution — a federalist experiment that gave individual states the right to charter their own banks and issue currency. The Banco del Estado operated out of Popayán, the regional capital, and printed its own notes locally rather than contracting a foreign security printer, which was unusual for the period and explains the relatively crude execution compared to contemporaneous Colombian issues from Bogotá or Medellín.

By 1886, the federalist system was collapsing. Rafael Núñez's centralist Regeneración movement was dismantling state sovereignty, and the new constitution of that same year abolished the estados soberanos entirely. Notes issued in 1886–1887 were circulating into the death of the very political authority that backed them.