Luis Lorenzo Domínguez

Luis Lorenzo Domínguez combined literary work with public finance and diplomacy. Associated with the generation of 1837 and remembered for the poem El Ombú, he went into exile in Montevideo during the Rosas period and worked in its press. After returning to Buenos Aires following Caseros, he entered provincial politics, participated in constitutional debates, and edited El Orden with Félix Frías. His Historia Argentina became a widely used account of the national past. ¹

Domínguez served as finance minister under Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and subsequently undertook financial and diplomatic assignments abroad, including Peru, Brazil, the United States, and Britain. During his Washington posting, he renewed an old Argentine grievance concerning the USS Lexington's destruction of the settlement at Puerto Soledad in 1831. Acting on instructions in 1884, he asked the American government to disavow the action and provide compensation, including for Luis Vernet's heirs. Washington did not concede the claim. ^{1, 2}

His later career brought him back to London, where he continued historical writing as well as diplomatic work. He died there in 1898. ¹