"Write, fight and die in the shadows". Florencio Del Mármol, from the Mitrista revolution to the War of the Pacific, 1874-1880

Abstract

This article intends to trace the trajectory of Florencio Del Mármol (1851-1881), author of the News and documents on the 1874 revolution and member of the revolutionary forces during that armed protest. A young revolutionary, soldier and writer unknown in later public history, whom we find in 1879 fighting as a volunteer in the Bolivian forces during the War of the Pacific. In 1880 he published a book about his recent war experience and died in Buenos Aires a few months later. This article intends to examine those unexplored writings, together with other sources of the period that account for the brief and intense career of the author. The proposed biographical study is framed in a perspective that addresses the trajectory of the actors and institutions that have concurred to transform the dynamics of relations between the national State, the provinces and other agents of Argentine society during the second half of the 19th century.