Argentina in the 19th Century: Gauchos and Cultured City Folk

¶ … Independence

What did Domingo Sarmiento think of Latin America in the 1800s?

As president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento had a very close-up vantage point from which to draw conclusions about Latin America, and he reported on what he had observed through the book Facundo. It is not rare that a country's president becomes a published author following his term in office -- although modern day presidents and prime ministers use ghost writers and editors -- but Sarmiento's work is unique, personal, and very descriptive albeit his biases are sharply noted.

Sarmiento believed that most of the "barbarism" occurred in the countryside, where the gauchos lived and worked, and he believed that the civilized people tended to live in the cities, not the countryside. "Everything that characterizes cultured peoples" can be found in the city, he wrote. He mentions "European" often as he is describing the "elegant manners" and the "conveniences of luxury" -- and clearly he is partial to the big cities like Buenos Aires and Cordoba because men in those cities wear "European dress" and live "civilized" lives.

Sarmiento witnessed two separate and "distinct" societies in Argentina, one civilized and European-themed (the cities) and the other, uncivilized, rough-hewed, and resentful of the politeness and luxuries found in the cities.

The specific answer to the question is this: Sarmiento viewed a paradox in his society; one a civilized European style environment in the city, and the other a barbaric, unsophisticated separate subculture living in the country. That having been said, Sarmiento spent a great deal of his narrative on those living and working in the countryside. His narrative is very well written but his bias against the gauchos and the living styles in the country stands out as a direct assault on the way many if not most of the people in Argentina lived. "Two distinct societies," he said, caused people to be "strange to one another." He scoffs at the lack of education in the country, and paints a picture that is dreary. Women do all the work and boys spend most of their time harassing goats and calves until they enter puberty, at which time they jump off cliffs and fall off horses "on purpose." These men are "Spanish only in language," he writes, and they eschew proper religious instruction. The men in the countryside have "distain" for any "city dweller" that may have read books but has never pulled down "a fierce bull" to kill it.

What kind of society did Sarmiento believe that Latin Americans were creating?

He believed that in Argentina there were two separate societies in existence. The one, gauchos and others living in the countryside, and the other, civilized men and women living out European lifestyles in the city. He explained that there was "hatred" on the part of the gaucho for the city dweller, because, after all, the city person had never killed a tiger, or tried to prove he was "superior to nature" as the gaucho had done. In fact Sarmiento believed that the gaucho would be an instigator in future conflict because their customs produce "valor and tolerance for war"; they are accustomed to "slaughtering cattle," a necessary cruelty, and hence the gauchos are familiar with the "…spilling of blood that hardens their hearts against the victim's moans."