5 Pesos Fuertes

The Banco de San Juan was a provincial institution operating under Argentina's free banking period, when individual provinces could charter note-issuing banks with minimal federal oversight. A branch in Tucumán issuing notes denominated in pesos fuertes — the hard peso, nominally tied to silver — was not unusual for the early 1870s, but the arrangement was fragile. The 1876 financial crisis triggered by Buenos Aires bank failures cascaded through the provincial banking system and effectively ended most of these institutions' note-issuing operations within a year or two of this note's print date.

PS#1898 is sparsely documented in the standard Pick South America catalogue, suggesting surviving examples are genuinely scarce rather than merely overlooked.