2 Bolívares

Venezuela operated a network of leprosaria — enforced isolation colonies for people diagnosed with leprosy — well into the mid-twentieth century. Patients confined to these facilities were prohibited from handling ordinary currency on the grounds of contagion, so the Ministerio de Sanidad y Asistencia Social issued a parallel scrip currency valid only within colony grounds. This was not a fringe policy: the Venezuelan state maintained it with bureaucratic seriousness, complete with denominated notes across multiple values.

The practical result is one of the more unusual issuing authorities in Latin American notaphily. Survivors of the leprosy colony scrip series are genuinely scarce — the colonies were closed populations, and most circulating stock was destroyed or simply lost within the facilities themselves.