Al leerlo entendemos un poco más nuestra historia ( )

a nineteenth Century novel by a man who was president of the Argentine Republic for a while. The main character is reasonably well drawn, though not very attractive to modern tastes, and the action is pretty good. Very Spanish in its morality and style. The original was printed in 1831. ( )

Written in exile and published originally by installments in 1845 in Chile, "Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie" is a work of great literary and historical significance for Argentina and all of post-colonial Latin America, by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. The author was a forensic writer and journalist who became the seventh president of Argentina.

Sarmiento describes the isolated lawless feudalistic estates of the Argentine interior in political opposition to the educated progressive trade-based prosperity of Buenos Aires. This is the dichotomy between barbarism and civilization. "Facundo" is a historical figure who rose up from the pampas of the gaucho as a fighter.

The values of the frontier tended to favor those who wielded absolute power. The ignorant but tough gaucho and the caudillos who command their obedience, regarded law as an insufferable interference with their "rights". The progressive Unitarians sought to introduce education and their central government interference with the feudal powers of the countryside were brutally opposed by a succession of dictators.

Facundo himself was eventually assassinated by the caudillo Rosas, on whose behalf he had fought the Unitarians. ( )

Considering that it had been many years since Sarmiento last invoked the terrible shadow of Facundo for me, and also bearing in mind that my only reading of this eminently important 19th century Argentine text had been an incomplete one (for an undergraduate class wherein we were assigned just enough chapter to be able to discuss the major themes), I decided it was time to have a go at this book in its entireity. It seems like the kind of book that is read more out of a sense of obligation than for personal enjoyment. I confess it has sat on my bookshelf for many years, and I've never thought, "man, I bet I would really enjoy reading Facundo right now!" A friend saw that I was reading it, and said that she felt sorry for me and that I should skip lots of pages like she did when she read it. Nonetheless, I was able to read the whole thing, a few chapters at a time, and I'm glad I did.

The book attempts to illustrate the conditions that led to ascension of Juan Manuel de Rosas from estanciero to governor of Buenos Aires and later of the Argentine Confederation. It does so by telling the life story of Juan Facundo Quiroga, explaining that the barbarism of Quiroga prefigured the tyranny of Rosas. In the eyes of Sarmiento, Rosas used the barbarous caudillo as a model, systematizing his violent methods: the atrocities committed by Facundo were ones born of the unrestrained passions of a rural "gaucho malo," while those of Rosas were premeditated acts of political violence. Rosas' reign of terror was an application of Facundo's rural barbarism to the civilized realm of Buenos Aires, a barbarization of the metropolis. If I'm using the word barbarism a lot, it's because the "Civilización y Barbarie" theme is omnipresent in Facundo. Sarmiento affirms that this dualism defines and characterizes the nation of Argentina, and it was indeed the original title of the book.

Sarmiento doesn't just begin with Facundo's story; he asserts that it's necessary first to understand the geography of Argentina and the ways that the desolate, open pampas have molded the personalities of the people who inhabit them. He then defines a few different gaucho prototypes: the baqueano who can read the nuances of the rural terrain like a book, the rastreador who can track down any living creature, the gaucho malo who lives the life of a white-skinned savage, and the cantor who mixes his own exploits into his songs of gaucho life (Martín Fierro will fit this blueprint closely a few decades later in José Hernández's epic poem). Now that he's explained the land and a few of the stock characters who inhabit it, Sarmiento moves on to discuss the ways that gauchos associate amongst themselves, coming to the pulpería (saloon) to engage in competitions of manhood and horsemanship. To him, these forms of association, in contrast with the everyday solitude of the countryfolk who live miles apart, are barbaric and stand in contrast with the tighter-knit cities that sprinkle the Argentine plains, where civilization has forged a tenuous hold. Finally, he explains the revolution of 1810 and contrasts the early post-independence growth of provincial cities like la Rioja and San Luis with their current, barbarized state. He always has an eye to the present as he tells the past, so at the end of the first four chapters you've got a pretty good idea of how Argentines lived in the interior, how the country was organized, and how Rosas' tyranny had quashed any early civilizing impulses.

Then comes the violent, impulsive Facundo, who builds rural, cavalry-based armies by intimidating local populations into emptying their purses into his war coffers, and who at one point controls the backbone of Argentine provinces that lie along the Andes. After Facundo has lived and died, the book continues with a chapter explaining the present conditions in Argentina (circa 1845, when Facundo was first published in serial form in Chile), where Rosas has consolidated his power, created a cult to his personality, and eliminated all resistance through a reign of terror inspired by that of France a half century earlier. For Sarmiento, this terror differs from its French antecedent in one notable way: in France the terror was an excess, almost accidental, an overextension of revolutionary passion; in Rosas it is cold, calculated, and absolutely intentional. He brands all those who are not with him as enemies, "inmundos, salvajes unitarios," and proclaims that they must die. The citizens of Buenos Aires live in perpetual fear and the intelligentsia is either dead or in exile. Nonetheless, the book's final chapter takes the form of a highly optomistic series of predictions regarding Argentina's future: no matter what, Rosas will fall, a New Government will be formed, and a unified Argentina will rise up out of the ashes.

For me, the genius of this book lies in its organization. The progression from geography to typology to interpersonal association to revolutionary history was, I thought, the perfect way to frame the life of Facundo. I was also pleased with the use of the life story of Facundo to explain the ascension of Rosas, and consequently the ascension of barbarism to the very heart of civilized Argentina. The various parts of the book come together to form an expansive whole, a panoramic portrait of Argentina that encompasses its past and Sarmiento's present, crossing into a speculative future in the final chapter. It's an epic book, told by an inspired storyteller.

Is it sometimes dull? Yes, for most people it is dull (myself included, although my particular interest in Argentina and its literature certainly helped me as I progressed from beginning to end). Are you going to agree with Sarmiento 100% of the time? Certainly not: he's got strong opinions and you'll repeatedly want to explain to him that any reality is bound to be so much more complex than one dualism of civilization versus barbarism. I think I disliked him more after my first, partial read of this book. Reading the whole thing made me appreciate his particular genius for reading and interpreting the various parts of a country's citizenry and history, and I was willing to dismiss most of his flaws. I'm glad I read this book. I'm also glad that I can begin tracing the influence of Facundo on Argentine literature: for starters, a friend of mine told me that César Aira's Un episodio en la vida del pintor viajero closely follows Sarmiento's description of the ideal American literature--for him, the only great American writer as of 1845 is James Fenimore Cooper--, and indeed sticks closely to the blueprint given by Sarmiento in Chapter 2 when he speaks of what sort of things an Argentine poet might write about as he looks out over the open countryside. ( )

¿Es una biografía? creo que es un ensayo novelado sobre el país. ALgunas cosas pasadas de moda pero que fuerza, que vigor, Que prosa la de Sarmiento, que idea y que voluntad de empujar para hacer un país para todos mejor ( )