5 Pesos 2nd. issue

The second issue of this denomination came at a catastrophic moment. Colombia's Thousand Days War broke out in October 1899, and the Banco Nacional — already under strain from years of forced emissions used to paper over government deficits — was printing notes that a large portion of the population had little reason to trust. The bank was formally liquidated in 1904, partly as a consequence of the monetary chaos this period accelerated.

Printing by Litografía Nacional kept production domestic, which mattered when wartime disruption made foreign contracting impractical. The quality reflects those constraints.