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

192 reframing latin america
same confl ict between uniqueness and homogeneity, celebrating the individuality
of citizens while calling upon them to surrender to the sacredness
of their national project, and hailing national uniqueness while recognizing
the need to incorporate foreign models.
Essentialists situate Facundo in the Romantic tradition in order to substantiate
their interpretations. So, if the Romantics were right (or wrong),
then perhaps Sarmiento was as well. Semioticians, on the other hand, see
Facundo’s debt to romanticism as part of a discursive framework that constructed
ideas in the mind of its author. While not ignoring Sarmiento’s astounding
intellectual capacity, they see him as a “dead” author and political
actor who envisioned Argentina through a dizzying storm of discourse. In
time, Sarmiento’s civilization/barbarism dichotomy would become its own
discourse, a sort of metanarrative about Latin American nation building
that would infl uence generations of thinkers and policy makers. But before
we look at Sarmiento’s impact on his progeny, we should read his own
words from Facundo.
Domingo Sarmiento, FACUNDO 4
Physical Aspect of the Argentine Republic: Its Effect on the People
The Continent of America ends at the south in a point, with the Strait
of Magellan at its southern extremity. Upon the west, the Chilean Andes
run parallel to the coast at a short distance from the Pacifi c. Between that
range of mountains and the Atlantic is a country whose boundary follows
the River Plata up the course of the Uruguay into the interior, which was
formerly known as the United Provinces of the River Plata, but where blood
is still shed to determine whether its name shall be the Argentine Republic
or the Argentine Confederation. On the north lie Paraguay, the Gran Chaco,
and Bolivia, its assumed boundaries.
The vast tract which occupies its extremities is altogether uninhabited,
and possesses navigable rivers as yet unfurrowed even by a frail canoe. Its
own extent is the evil from which the Argentine Republic suffers; the desert
encompasses it on every side and penetrates its very heart; wastes containing
no human dwelling, are, generally speaking, the unmistakable boundaries
between its several provinces. Immensity is the universal characteristic
of the country: the plains, the woods, the rivers, are all immense; and the
horizon is always undefi ned, always lost in haze and delicate vapors which
forbid the eye to mark the point in the distant perspective, where the land
ends and the sky begins. On the south and on the north are savages ever on
the watch, who take advantage of the moonlight nights to fall like packs of