2 Escudos – La Rioja

In 1824, the Argentine province of La Rioja, like much of the newly independent United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, was mired in a profound monetary crisis. The collapse of central authority after the May Revolution had led to the proliferation of countless forms of money. The national coinage from the Buenos Aires mint was scarce, Spanish colonial coins were still in circulation but hoarded, and the first disastrous experiments with paper money (the billetes of the 1813-1816 period) had eroded public trust. This vacuum created a chaotic and fragmented monetary landscape where barter became a necessity for daily transactions, severely hampering trade and economic stability within the province.

The situation was acutely felt in La Rioja, a region whose economy was closely tied to the mining of non-precious metals like copper and to mule breeding for the trade routes to Upper Peru (modern Bolivia). The lack of reliable, standardized currency disrupted these vital commercial links. In response, provincial authorities and even private merchants began to issue their own crude copper tokens and script, known as señas or fichas, to facilitate local exchange and pay laborers. These tokens had no backing beyond the credibility of their issuer and were often worthless outside their immediate locality, further fragmenting the provincial economy.

This chaotic backdrop set the stage for the rise of the caudillo Juan Facundo Quiroga, who would soon dominate the region. Control over La Rioja's limited resources and its struggling economy became a source of political power. The currency anarchy of 1824 was not merely an economic issue but a symptom of the broader struggle between federalist provinces and the centralist government in Buenos Aires. It underscored the inability of the nascent nation to establish unified economic institutions, a failure that would fuel the internecine conflicts of the Argentine Civil Wars for decades to come.