Portal:Argentina/Selected article/17
Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (original Spanish title: Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie) is a book written in 1845 by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a writer and journalist who became the seventh president of Argentina. It is a cornerstone of Latin American literature: a work of creative non-fiction that helped to define the parameters for thinking about the region's development, modernization, power, and culture. Subtitled Civilization and Barbarism, Facundo contrasts civilization and barbarism as seen in early nineteenth-century Argentina. Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría calls the work "the most important book written by a Latin American in any discipline or genre".
Facundo describes the life of Juan Facundo Quiroga, a gaucho who had terrorized provincial Argentina in the 1820s and 1830s. Kathleen Ross, one of Facundos English translators, points out that the author also published Facundo to "denounce the tyranny of the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas". Sarmiento sees Rosas as heir to Facundo: both are caudillos and representatives of a barbarism that derives from the nature of the Argentine countryside. ('Full article...)