Abstract This article examines the correspondence and commercial ventures of Ramón Gil Navarro, an Argentine exile who migrated to California during the Gold Rush of 1849. Drawing on his surviving letters and diaries, the study reconstructs Navarro’s trajectory across the Hispanic American Pacific Axis—linking Chile, Peru, Panama, and California—and highlights the central role of epistolary practices in sustaining business, kinship, and political ties across long distances. Navarro’s letters illuminate the circulation of news, goods, and material objects, while also revealing the anxieties and aspirations of migrants embedded in transnational networks. By analyzing written and oral communication, as well as the complementary role of newspapers and symbolic objects, the article demonstrates how the Gold Rush revitalized Pacific connections that had declined under Bourbon rule. It contributes to historiographical debates on merchant families, exile, and communication in nineteenth-century Latin America, while situating Hispanic actors within broader histories of globalization and the Pacific world.
Ignacio Zubizarreta (Thu,) studied this question.