“Ecos de Europa” by Lucio V. Mansilla: The Correspondent Between the Breaking News and the Dissemination of the Wonders of Electricity

Abstract

This paper addresses the columns published under the title “Ecos de Europa” in La Tribuna Nacional between March 1881 and October 1883. On this occasion, we will analyze how Mansilla builds his figure as a correspondent and the temporalities that support his writing in relation to the modes of dissemination of the news. Firstly, we will study the modes of configuration of the “breaking news” required by the urgency of political events. Secondly, we will work on another central topic in Mansilla’s columns that, while obeying the need to be up to date, synchronizes in another way with the current impulse: the need to spread the scientific and technical advances, particularly, those related to electricity. Th is work is carried out within the framework of a broader and collective investigation that produced as a result the “Lucio V. Mansilla Collection” available at the Mariano Moreno National Library’s website, where scattered materials produced by Mansilla are collected to reexamine them and enable new readings of his work.