1 Real Tesoro Nacional

Paraguay's Tesoro Nacional issued this 1 Real note under the López government during a period of strict state control over the economy — private banking was effectively nonexistent, and the treasury functioned as the sole monetary authority. The Riviere lithography was one of the few commercial print operations in Asunción at the time, and its use for currency production reflects the near-total absence of foreign printing relationships that characterized pre-war Paraguay.

The watermark security on a domestically lithographed note from this period is worth noting — it places this issue above the purely utilitarian emergency scrip common elsewhere in mid-19th century Latin America. The series would be superseded by the chaos of the War of the Triple Alliance, which began in 1864 and ultimately destroyed both the Paraguayan state's finances and a significant portion of its male population.