This talk examines newspapers in late nineteenth-century Buenos Aires in order to analyze the effects of the submarine telegraph cable. After a brief description of the cable's installation, it traces how international news was circulated, focusing particularly on the role of Havas, the first European press agency to provide such news to South America. The analysis focuses on two dimensions of the submarine cable's effect: changes in the spatial breadth of news coverage, and the acceleration of news circulation. The talk argues that the incorporation of the press into the submarine cable network was part of a long process that introduced extremely fragmented representation of the world and placed new reading demands on South American news consumers.