5 Centavos Fuertes

The Banco de Cuyo was one of several provincial Argentine banks authorized to issue notes under the 1854 banking legislation that allowed individual provinces to establish their own chartered institutions. Cuyo, encompassing what is now Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luis, had an economy driven by wine production and trans-Andean trade with Chile — commerce that demanded small-denomination instruments the national monetary system could not adequately supply.

The "fuertes" designation distinguished these notes from the heavily depreciated paper pesos circulating elsewhere, pegging nominal value to hard-currency standards. Whether that peg held in practice is another matter.