Miguel Cane

Miguel Cané (Montevideo, January 27, 1851 – Buenos Aires, September 5, 1905) was an Argentine writer and politician, one of the most representative pens of the Generation of 80 of the Argentine literature. He held the position of Mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, as well as many other public positions: he was ambassador, university professor and director-in-charge of various public offices.

Life and work

He was the son of Miguel Toribio Cané Andrade and Eufemia Casares Morales, both from Buenos Aires, and was born in Montevideo in 1851, during his family's expatriation. At the age of two he arrived in Buenos Aires with his family, shortly after the fall of Juan Manuel de Rosas.

Between 1863 and 1868 he completed his baccalaureate at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires (located in what is now the historic walk of the "Manzana de las Luces"), at the time when it was a boarding school as boys, during the direction of Canon Eusebio Agüero and as a student of the French professor Amadeo Jacques. The experiences lived in this school were narrated in Juvenilia (1884), the most remembered of his books.

He began journalism early in the newspaper La Tribuna, owned by his cousins the Varela, and later in El Nacional, written by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Vélez Sársfield.

In 1870, Miguel Cané traveled to Europe with the family of his cousin Rufino Varela. From the Old Continent, he was a correspondent for the Franco-Prussian War. In those articles, which were mainly published in La Tribuna, it is also possible to appreciate another journalistic facet of the author: that of a music critic.

On September 27, 1875, he married María Sara Belaústegui Cueto, with whom he had two children, Miguel Ramón and Sara Cané Belaústegui.

He graduated as a lawyer from the University of Buenos Aires in 1878. He was a provincial and national deputy, director of the Post Office and a diplomat before Colombia and Venezuela. From his time in the Colombian capital at the end of the 19th century and from being a participant in its intense cultural and intellectual activity in those years, he left behind the famous phrase that "Bogotá is the South American Athens", with the one that is still known to that coffee city. As a result of these experiences abroad, he wrote On a Journey (1884).

He was Mayor of the city of Buenos Aires between 1892 and 1893, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Interior and Argentine diplomat in Paris. In the year 1894 he was president of the Jockey Club of Buenos Aires. In 1898 he held a seat in the Senate, where he promoted the Residency Law (1902) at the request of the Argentine Industrial Union.

He died in Buenos Aires in 1905.

Published Works

In addition to a prolific and exhausting activity in newspapers with a popular circulation at the time, an activity for which he can be classified as a journalist, he has published:

Of literature.

• 1877 Essays by Mariano El Encargado.
• 1882 Youth. (the critical edition by Américo Castro of 1900, to download, the edition with a prologue by Horacio Ramos Mejía, of 1919 edited by La Cultura Argentina, to download)
• 1884 Travel (1881-1882) (downloading)
• 1885 Literary letters (downloading)
• 1900 Translation of "Enrique IV"
• 1901 Notes and impressions (the 1918 edition of La Cultura Argentina with an introduction of Ernesto Quesada, to download)
• 1903 Light supply. (the 1916 edition of La Cultura Argentina along with Youth, with a prologue by Horacio Ramos Mejía, to download, the 1919 edition, with an introduction by Martín García Mérou, for [1].
• 1905 Travel notes on Venezuela and Colombia

You have written the introduction to:

• José Sixto Alvarez (Fray Mocho). Tales of Fray Mocho, with an introduction of Miguel Cané (edited in 1920 by La Cultura Argentina, download)
• José Sixto Alvarez (Fray Mocho). City Pictures, with a prologue by Miguel Cané and illustrations by Giménez, Cro and others. (Edited in 1920 by La Cultura Argentina, download)

Non-literary texts:

• 1870-71. On my first trip (1870-1871) [Corresponse written by Cané in his youth for the newspaper The Tribune and published in book in 2021].
• 1899. Expulsion of aliens (puntes) (downloading)
• Roque Sáenz Peña. 1905. American public law: writings and speecheswith an introduction to Doctor Miguel Cané.

Criticism received at the time:

• Ernesto Quesada. 1893. Reviews and reviews. It contains a critique of Youth and Travel (downloading)