50 Centavos Fuertes Banco del Paraguay

The Banco del Paraguay was established in 1871 — the first formal bank in the country's history — in the immediate aftermath of the War of the Triple Alliance, which had killed an estimated 60 to 70 percent of Paraguay's entire population and left the national economy in ruins. This note belongs to the 1882 series, issued during a period when the bank was attempting to stabilize a monetary system that had essentially collapsed during and after the conflict.

ABNC's involvement here is worth noting: the company's New York engraving work on Latin American issues of this period is consistently fine, and their intaglio printing quality typically outlasted the institutions that commissioned it.