½ Libra Peruana de Oro

The Junta de Vigilancia was a temporary supervisory body created in Peru in 1914 specifically to manage the suspension of gold convertibility — a direct consequence of the financial panic that swept Latin American economies at the outbreak of the First World War. Notes issued under its authority were emergency instruments, not regular banking currency, filling the vacuum left when gold coinage disappeared from circulation almost overnight as hoarding took hold.

The fractional half-libra denomination is the telling detail: it signals just how acute small-change shortages had become. P#21 is among the scarcer pieces from this brief issue.