Facundo
Civilization and Barbarism: Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga, later published and better known as Facundo, is a book written in 1845 by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a writer and journalist who became the seventh president of Argentina. It is a cornerstone of Latin American literature: a work of creative non-fiction that helped to define the parameters for thinking about the region's development, modernization, power, and culture. Subtitled Civilization and Barbarism, Facundo contrasts civilization and barbarism as seen in early 19th-century Argentina. Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría calls the work "the most important book written by a Latin American in any discipline or genre".
Facundo describes the life of Juan Facundo Quiroga, a caudillo who had terrorized provincial Argentina in the 1820s and 1830s. Kathleen Ross, one of Facundo's English translators, points out that the author also published Facundo to "denounce the tyranny of the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas". Juan Manuel de Rosas ruled Argentina from 1829 to 1832 and again from 1835 to 1852; it was because of Rosas that Sarmiento was in exile in Chile, where he wrote the book. Sarmiento sees Rosas as heir to Facundo: both are caudillos and representatives of a barbarism that derives from the nature of the Argentine countryside. As Ross explains, Sarmiento's book is therefore engaged in describing the "Argentine national character, explaining the effects of Argentina's geographical conditions on personality, the 'barbaric' nature of the countryside versus the 'civilizing' influence of the city, and the great future awaiting Argentina when it opened its doors wide to European immigration".
Throughout the text, Sarmiento explores the dichotomy between civilization and barbarism. As Kimberly Ball observes, "civilization is identified with northern Europe, North America, cities, Unitarians, Paz, and Rivadavia", while "barbarism is identified with Latin America, Spain, Asia, the Middle East, the countryside, Federalists, Facundo, and Rosas". It is in the way that Facundo articulates this opposition that Sarmiento's book has had such a profound influence. In the words of González Echevarría: "in proposing the dialectic between civilization and barbarism as the central conflict in Latin American culture Facundo gave shape to a polemic that began in the colonial period and continues to the present day".
The first edition of Facundo was published in installments in 1845. Sarmiento removed the last two chapters of the second edition, but restored them in the 1874 edition, deciding that they were important to the book's development.
The first translation into English, by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, was published in 1868. A modern and complete translation by Kathleen Ross appeared in 2003 from the University of California Press.
Background
While exiled in Chile, Sarmiento wrote Facundo in 1845 as an attack on Juan Manuel de Rosas, the Argentine dictator at the time. The book was a critical analysis of Argentine culture as he saw it, represented in men such as Rosas and the regional leader Juan Facundo Quiroga, a warlord from La Rioja. For Sarmiento, Rosas and Quiroga were caudillos—strongmen who did not submit to the law. However, if Facundo's portrait is linked to the wild nature of the countryside, Rosas is depicted as an opportunist who exploits the situation to perpetuate himself in power.Sarmiento's book is a critique and also a symptom of Argentina's cultural conflicts. In 1810, the country had gained independence from the Spanish Empire, but Sarmiento complains that Argentina had yet to cohere as a unified entity. The country's chief political division saw the Unitarists, who favored centralization, counterposed against the Federalists, who believed that the regions should maintain a good measure of autonomy. This division was in part a split between the city and the countryside. Then as now, Buenos Aires was the country's largest and wealthiest city as a result of its access to river trade routes and the South Atlantic. Buenos Aires was exposed not only to trade but to fresh ideas and European culture. These economic and cultural differences caused tension between Buenos Aires and the land-locked regions of the country. Despite his Unitarian sympathies, Sarmiento himself came from the provinces, a native of the Western town of San Juan.
Argentine civil war
Argentina's divisions led to a civil war that began in 1814. A frail agreement was reached in the early 1820s, which led to the unification of the Republic just in time to wage the Cisplatine War against the Empire of Brazil, but the relations between the Provinces reached again the point of breaking-off in 1826, when Unitarist Bernardino Rivadavia was elected president and tried to enforce a newly enacted centralist Constitution. Supporters of decentralized government challenged the Unitarist Party, leading to the outbreak of violence. Federalists Juan Facundo Quiroga and Manuel Dorrego wanted more autonomy for the provinces and were inclined to reject European culture. The Unitarists defended Rivadavia's presidency, as it created educational opportunities for rural inhabitants through a European-staffed university program. However, under Rivadavia's rule, the salaries of common laborers were subjected to government wage ceilings, and the gauchos were either imprisoned or forced to work without pay.A series of governors were installed and replaced beginning in 1828 with the appointment of Federalist Manuel Dorrego as the governor of Buenos Aires. However, Dorrego's government was very soon overthrown and replaced by that of Unitarist Juan Lavalle. Lavalle's rule ended when he was defeated by a militia of gauchos led by Rosas. By the end of 1829, the legislature had appointed Rosas as governor of Buenos Aires. Under Rosas's rule, many intellectuals fled either to Chile, as did Sarmiento, or to Uruguay, as Sarmiento himself notes.
Juan Manuel de Rosas
According to Latin American historian John Lynch, Juan Manuel de Rosas was "a landowner, a rural caudillo, and the dictator of Buenos Aires from 1829 to 1852". He was born into a wealthy family of high social status, but Rosas's strict upbringing had a deep psychological influence on him. Sarmiento asserts that because of Rosas's mother, "the spectacle of authority and servitude must have left lasting impressions on him". Shortly after reaching puberty, Rosas was sent to an estancia and stayed there for about thirty years. In time, he learned how to manage the ranch and he established an authoritarian government in the area. While in power, Rosas incarcerated residents for unspecified reasons, acts which Sarmiento argues were similar to Rosas's treatment of cattle. Sarmiento argues that this was one method of making his citizens like the "tamest, most orderly cattle known".Juan Manuel de Rosas's first term as governor lasted only three years. His rule, assisted by Juan Facundo Quiroga and Estanislao López, was respected and he was praised for his ability to maintain harmony between Buenos Aires and the rural areas. The country fell into disorder after Rosas's resignation in 1832, and in 1835 he was once again called to lead the country. He ruled the country not as he did during his first term as governor, but as a dictator, forcing all citizens to support his Federalist regime. According to Nicolas Shumway, Rosas "forced the citizens to wear the red Federalist insignia, and his picture appeared in all public places... Rosas's enemies, real and imagined, were increasingly imprisoned, tortured, murdered, or driven into exile by the mazorca, a band of spies and thugs supervised personally by Rosas. Publications were censored, and porteño newspapers became tedious apologizers for the regime".
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
In Facundo, Sarmiento is both the narrator and a main character. The book contains autobiographical elements from Sarmiento's life, and he comments on the entire Argentine circumstance. He also expresses and analyzes his own opinion and chronicles some historic events. Within the book's dichotomy between civilization and barbarism, Sarmiento's character represents civilization, steeped as he is in European and North American ideas; he stands for education and development, as opposed to Rosas and Facundo, who symbolize barbarism.Sarmiento was an educator, a civilized man who was a militant adherent to the Unitarist movement. During the Argentine civil war he fought against Facundo several times, and while in Spain he became a member of the Literary Society of Professors. Exiled to Chile by Rosas when he started to write Facundo, Sarmiento would later return as a politician. He was a member of the Senate after Rosas's fall and president of Argentina for six years. During his presidency, Sarmiento concentrated on migration, sciences, and culture. His ideas were based on European civilization; for him, the development of a country was rooted in education. To this end, he founded Argentina's military and naval colleges.
Synopsis
After a lengthy introduction, Facundos fifteen chapters divide broadly into three sections: chapters one to four outline Argentine geography, anthropology, and history; chapters five to fourteen recount the life of Juan Facundo Quiroga; and the concluding chapter expounds Sarmiento's vision of a future for Argentina under a Unitarist government. In Sarmiento's words, the reason why he chose to provide Argentine context and use Facundo Quiroga to condemn Rosas's dictatorship is that "in Facundo Quiroga I do not only see simply a caudillo, but rather a manifestation of Argentine life as it has been made by colonization and the peculiarities of the land".Argentine context
Facundo begins with a geographical description of Argentina, from the Andes in the west to the eastern Atlantic coast, where two main river systems converge at the boundary between Argentina and Uruguay. This river estuary, called the Río de la Plata, is the location of Buenos Aires, the capital. Through his discussion of Argentina's geography, Sarmiento demonstrates Buenos Aires' advantages; the river systems were communications arteries which, by enabling trade, helped the city to achieve civilization. Buenos Aires failed to spread civilization to the rural areas and as a result, much of the rest of Argentina was doomed to barbarism. Sarmiento also argues that the pampas, Argentina's wide and empty plains, provided "no place for people to escape and hide for defense and this prohibits civilization in most parts of Argentina". Despite the barriers to civilization caused by Argentina's geography, Sarmiento argues that many of the country's problems were caused by gauchos like Juan Manuel de Rosas, who were barbaric, uneducated, ignorant, and arrogant; their character prevented Argentine society's progress toward civilization. Sarmiento then describes the four main types of gaucho, and these characterizations aid in understanding Argentine leaders such as Juan Manuel de Rosas. Sarmiento argues that, without an understanding of these Argentine character types, "it is impossible to understand our political personages, or the primordial, American character of the bloody struggle that tears apart the Argentine Republic".Sarmiento then moves on to the Argentine peasants, who are "independent of all need, free of all subjection, with no idea of government". The peasants gather at taverns, where they spend their time drinking and gambling. They display their eagerness to prove their physical strength with horsemanship and knife fights. Rarely these displays led to deaths, and Sarmiento notes that Rosas's residence was sometimes used as a refuge on such occasions, before he became politically powerful.
According to Sarmiento, these elements are crucial to an understanding of the Argentine Revolution, in which Argentina gained independence from Spain. Although Argentina's war of independence was prompted by the influence of European ideas, Buenos Aires was the only city that could achieve civilization. Rural people participated in the war to demonstrate their physical strengths rather than because they wanted to civilize the country. In the end, the revolution was a failure because the barbaric instincts of the rural population led to the loss and dishonor of the civilized city—Buenos Aires.