5000 Nuevos Pesos Presidential Meeting

Issued to commemorate a summit of South American presidents held in Chile in 1988, this coin arrived at a politically charged moment — Pinochet's regime was just months away from losing the October plebiscite that would ultimately end military rule. The decision to mint a commemorative celebrating regional presidential cooperation while Chile itself had no elected president was not lost on contemporary observers.

The .900 silver specification follows the same standard Chile adopted for most commemorative issues of the 1980s, a period when the Casa de Moneda was actively courting collector markets to generate hard currency revenue.