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

200 reframing latin america
Discussion Questions
• What impact does the success of other civilizations (France, Rome,
etc.) have on Sarmiento’s description of Argentina?
• How does this selection of Facundo make clear Sarmiento’s appeal to
other nations as models for Argentina, while simultaneously calling upon
Argentina to promote its own individuality?
• In what way does this selection from Facundo reveal Sarmiento’s
racialist foundations?
• Romantics often focused on a nation’s landscape as an expression of
its uniqueness. Sarmiento identifi ed Argentina’s vast rural expanses as the
home of barbarism. Is there a parallel between Sarmiento’s portrayal of
Argentina’s natural landscape and its gauchos?
notes
1. Liberalism refers to the ideology emerging out of the Enlightenment
and the French Revolution, among other key events in history. Most liberal
ideologues advocated laissez-faire capitalism, individual liberty, freedom of
worship and a decentralized, federalist government. Of course, the meaning
of liberalism varied signifi cantly from one region to the next, and the
extent to which liberal political leaders implemented their ideologies in
actual practice varied signifi cantly as well. In Latin America, liberalism was
a principal motive behind the independence movements in the early 1800s.
After an initial success, however, liberals failed to maintain control and
their ideological perspective was rivaled by older, conservative approaches
which advocated retaining elements of the colonial era. Economic opportunities
brought on by the second Industrial Revolution in the latter part of
the nineteenth century promoted the liberal’s vision of social change. They
rode the economic wave into power all across the continent. Arguably, they
have remained in power in some form or fashion throughout most of the
continent to this day—socialist Cuba being one of the exceptions. Today,
neoliberal policies have pushed liberalism to a new global level.
2. Domingo Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of
Tyrants or, Civilization and Barbarism (New York: Collier, 1966) 43. (This
translator of Facundo: civilización y barbarie used Life in the Argentine
Republic as the title, as did other translators.)
3. Letter from Sarmiento to Bartolomé Mitre, 1861, quoted in John
Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin
America (New York: Norton, 2001) 169.
4. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic. The excerpt is from 25–33,
40, 44–45, 47–52, 58.