Lucio V. Mansilla – författare

The encounter between Native American peoples and Europeans and their descendants has marked the history of every nation in the Americas, both North and South. Lucio Mansilla's Una excursiÓn a los indios ranqueles, published in Argentina in 1870, is one of very few works in American letters that presents a vivid, firsthand account of a noncombative encounter between Native American and European civilizations. This volume is the first English translation of Mansilla's classic work. Long noted for its humor, adventurousness, and narrative ingenuity, the book offers penetrating insights into fundamental issues of "civilization and barbarism," immigration, ethnic and racial diversity, and land ownership and tenancy. Mansilla alone among his contemporaries espoused open dialogue as the best approach to the "Indian problem." Although the peace accord he sought to enact with the Ranquels was summarily disregarded by the Argentine government, which slowly gravitated towards a policy of ethnic cleansing and expropriation of Indian lands, the Expedition does narrate a rehearsal for a reconciliation that in the end never took place.

Lucio V. Mansilla (1831–1913), the widely traveled and cultured scion of a famous family, was a colonel in the Argentine army when he undertook an "excursion" to the Argentine interior in 1870 to visit natives in areas then largely unknown. Mansilla's uncle, dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, dominated most of Argentina from 1829 to 1852 and had led successful military expeditions against the frontier Indians in 1852. Mansilla set out for a reconnaissance into the tense border region just after a peace treaty had been signed with the Indians. Over the course of this expedition, Mansilla sent to a friend in the capital a series of letters which were then serially published in a leading Buenos Aires newspaper. His careful observations offer valuable ethnographic data, as Argentina's Indians were almost totally extinguished or assimilated within a few generations of Mansilla's expedition. Furthermore, his account, which contains thoughtful perspectives on the "Indian question" and the dichotomy of civilization and barbarism, stands as a lasting contribution to Argentine and Spanish-American literature. Mansilla's work both in this account and elsewhere made him a leading figure in the Argentina "Generation of 1880," a group crucial in the development of Argentine literary and intellectual life.

El excursionista del planeta reúne por primera vez un amplio conjunto de escritos de viaje de Lucio V. Mansilla, en los que este protagonista de la cultura y la política argentinas del siglo XIX narró sus recorridos por el mundo entre 1850 y la primera década del siglo XX. En todos ellos, sean relatos de viaje, noticias periodísticas o las exitosas causeries, Mansilla tiene un mismo objetivo: cautivar a los lectores que lo siguen en la prensa, donde publica todos sus textos, con sus anécdotas, con las últimas novedades y con un ingenio excepcional.Curioso y excéntrico, tal como se dio a conocer desde Una excursión a los indios ranqueles, Mansilla evidencia su originalidad en las tempranas impresiones de viaje por Oriente, mientras su gusto por la aventura anima las Cartas de Amambay, en las que narra una expedición en busca de oro por Paraguay. La figura de escritor viajero se completa en los relatos sobre Europa: los viajes a Europa son el tema privilegiado de las causeries del jueves, donde Mansilla juega a exhibir su vida privada, y son también el material de sus corresponsalías periodísticas, en las que se muestra tan atento a los cambios políticos como a las novedades tecnológicas. Digresivo sin perder eficacia, conversador a la vez que observador, siempre cosmopolita y moderno, Mansilla logró construir en sus notas para la prensa un estilo propio que no perdió actualidad: el estilo Mansilla.Tras una exhaustiva investigación, Sandra Contreras recuperó un invalorable caudal de escritos inéditos que, al sumarse a los ya conocidos, renuevan por completo la imagen de Mansilla. Con la lectura de El excursionista del planeta, su figura, como demuestra Contreras en su prólogo, adquiere una nueva dimensión: "Glotón de múltiples destinos, extravagante en los placeres del consumo, eterno afortunado en infinidad de travesías, Mansilla –el más joven y el más viejo de su generación– puede convertirse a su vez, para todos, en genio protector de los buenos viajes".