Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

chapter 11
Civilized Folk Defeat the Barbarians:
The Liberal Nation
The excerpt in this chapter is by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who exemplifi
es the lettered citizen in Latin America. Sarmiento served as president
of Argentina in the mid-nineteenth century and was one of Latin America’s
most important writers. His renowned work, Facundo: civilización y
barbarie (Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism), motivated generations of
politicians and remains infl uential today. In fact, so canonical is Facundo
that Sarmiento has achieved that rare status of transcending nationality and
becoming a de facto citizen of all Latin America.
Born in 1811 in San Juan, Argentina, Sarmiento grew up on the frontier
between Argentina and Chile. Largely self-taught, he became involved in
Argentina’s tumultuous political scene as a young man in the late 1820s. At
the time, the emerging nation of Argentina was divided between Unitarians
and Federalists. The Unitarians were based in Buenos Aires and espoused
liberal programs rooted in the ideals of the European Enlightenment. But
because they were positioned in Argentina’s main port they adopted a political
stance that was conservative, defending the colonial era tradition of
a strong central government. The Federalists were based in Argentina’s interior
provinces; aside from the issue of governing structures, they were
deeply conservative. Refusing to bow to Buenos Aires, they espoused a decentralized
form of government.
Although Sarmiento was from the interior, his disposition toward liberalism
led him to the Unitarian side. 1 By the age of twenty, he was forced
into exile in Chile. He returned briefl y to Argentina to open a school and
publish a politically oriented newspaper, only to be imprisoned and exiled
once again in 1835. During his second exile he traveled to the United States,