History of Latin America: Facundo

 

          In the book Facundo, or Civilization and Barbarism, by Domingo F. Sarmiento, there are two forces that are seen as rocking the Argentine world, mainly those of civilization and barbarism.  Sarmiento describes civilization as “centres on the cities, where are to be found the manufactories, the shops, the schools and colleges” along with an “Elegance of style, articles of luxury.”  Basically throughout the book, the reader gets the impression that anything emulating customs in Europe, or things that were seen as a part of progress, were considered civilized.  Anyone that tried to overthrow these aspects of civilization, such as the gauchos and the caudillos of Argentina, were seen as barbarous.  He describes barbarism as anything opposite of civilization, using the way in which a gaucho dresses, lives outside of cities, and opposed to education, as an example.

          Sarmiento describes Argentina as a battleground between civilization and barbarism, where there are the beginnings of cities, with people dressing in frock coats, and trying their best to emulate the ideals of the Enlightenment in Europe.  This characterizes civilization.  They find the ideas of free trade and democracy, and education to be essential to the success of Argentina, and try such measures as building schools and colleges in the cities.  But the gauchos, or the Argentine equivalent to the cowboy, lives by his own rules and lives out on the pampas, and are described as not being able to stand anything that has to do with civilization.  That is the personification of barbarism.  Whenever a civilized person, dressed in a frock coat and other items of luxury wanders outside of the city, the gaucho will quickly do away with the unfortunate individual.  These gauchos were into anything from riding and breaking horses, to thievery, and they fought the advance of civilization with their freedom. 

Some of these gauchos grew to power through the fear of their names, and eventually became caudillos, or tyrants.  A couple of caudillos that feature prominently in this story are Facundo and Rosas, both who use violence and fear to maintain their power.  They use all of the money coming into the government that they are in charge over for themselves instead of the betterment of the people.  An example of this is when Facundo plays his beloved card games, and when he loses, it is his opponent that suffers for this, and even when he wins, the opponent is still not guaranteed safety, for he often kills on a whim and usually finds it amusing.  Or on a different not, there is the time when Facundo was in Tucuman, and a group of young girls comes up to him and pleads with him to set certain soldiers free that were to die that day.  He takes great care to listen to every word that they say and acts very concerned, until they are startled by gunfire, and he says that those were the deaths of the very soldiers that they had been pleading for.  He had been toying with them, when all along he did not care what anyone had to say. 

It is through many instances of spontaneous cruelty that these caudillos are able to keep the power of their names with the people of the surrounding areas.  This is barbarism in the most basic sense of the word, and acts as a direct opposing force to civilization.  Where there is a town, such as Buenos Aires, that has begun to make many improvements in the ways of progress, and a caudillo comes in and takes over, dismantling everything that the people had been working for.  Rosas did this in Buenos Aires, and directed all the revenue from the city to him, while stopping the growth of the civilization that had begun to blossom there.  They also had no beliefs in loyalty either because the church had been supporting their efforts, since they were both on the conservative end of things, and Facundo killed the priests just as easily as he had killed anyone else.  Not only is barbarism seen as an opposing force to civilization, but it is also seen as in a constant state of almost swallowing civilization as it begins to crop up.  Sarmiento had been very concerned that barbarism would gain ground on civilization and wipe it out through these gauchos and caudillos.