Civilization and Barbarism Cruelty

¶ … Civilization and Barbarism and Cruelty

The works of Esteban Echeverria's El Matadero/The Slaughterhouse and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's Facundo two classic works Argentinean 19th century literature

How does one behave like a civilized human being when one is confronted with a brutal dictator and what causes a dictator to rise to power in a land such as Argentina? These are the central questions posed both by the literature of the poet Esteban Echeverria (1805 -- 51) in his work El Matadero/The Slaughterhouse and that of the educator and writer, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. The latter author was President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, while the author Echeverria was an early proponent of romanticism in Latin America. Echeverria's earlier text suggested that Argentina's reversion to a dictatorship was simply the result of a brutal man's tyranny upon a pure and uncomplicated land, while Sarmiento suggests a more complicated cause at oppression's roots, pointing to the complexities of the region's sprawl. For Echeverria, barbarism is in dictatorship's attempts to impose a false construct of civilization, but for Sarmiento, a lack of education and civilization amongst the gaucho people of Argentina is also partly to blame and must be remedied.

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's Facundo thus functions as a study of the Argentine character, a prescription for the modernization of Latin America, and a protest against the tyranny of the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1835-1852). In contrast, Echeverria, although he also opposed tyrannical forms of governance, cried out for a return to old ways, rather than advancement into what he saw as a false form of progress. Reflecting his contrasting assumptions to Echeverria, Sarmiento (1811-1888) also subtitled his work Civilization and Barbarism, to contrast not only the barbarism of principal character, the nineteenth century caudillo or dictator Juan Facundo Quiroga with the fundamentally pure spirit of his people, but also the displays of barbarism and purity already extant in the Argentinean topography of the land of the pampas, and the variety of cultures and national characters encompassed within Argentinean borders.

As the caudillo is a dictator, and the matador is a killer, thus both author's texts use figures of blood and terror, such as the matador or brutal commander, to both culturally describe a particular contemporary moment of the Argentinean world in which they dwelled, and to critique the ruling authority. Neither author approved of the tyranny of de Rosas. But Echeverria extols the purity of pampas, while Sarmiento saw its lands and the land's lack of governance and education giving rise, not to purity, but the conditions that allowed Echeverria's slaughterhouse of a metaphor to become reality.

Thus Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's work presented an Argentina that was rich and cultured in its heritage, yet wild and ungoverned in a dangerous, rather than a romantic fashion as did Echeverria. In Chapters II and III of Sarmiento's text, respectively entitled "Argentine Originality" and "Characters and Association," the author painted a picture of a Latin American land that was both charming and cultured, and refined and social -- a world that was destroyed by the Revolution of 1810 and the subsequent dictatorship, but which had fundamentally barbaric elements that could not be fully extricated, thus giving rise to de Rosas' leadership.

This cultured spirit was not entirely destroyed, suggests Sarmiento, although it was indeed injured by the actions of the dictatorial protagonist of Facundo. Once upon a time, Sarmiento wrote, "music too" was found among our people," as a "national taste and recognized by all our neighbors. When an Argentine was first introduced to a Chilean family, the Chilean family at once invite him [the Argentine] to the piano, or hand him a guitar, and if he excuses himself on the ground he does not know how to play they express wonder and incredulity saying, "An Argentine who is not a musician? This general supposition bears witness to our natural habits and culture." This romantic view of the pastoral beauty and musical quantity at the hearts of the aristocracy, the aboriginal, and the rural populace, both Sarmiento and Echeverria extolled, and astounded even other Latin American peoples an already music-dominated Latin American continent. (Sarmiento, Chapter II)

In Argentina, because of its intense civility and culture, stated Sarmiento "it is a fact that the young city people of the better classes play the piano, flute, violin or guitar. And even the wild half-breed children of the streets devote themselves almost wholly to music, and many "skillful composers" have come from their midst. Esteban Echeverria, who spent many years in Europe, praised the musicianship of his own populace, even after hearing some of the finest singing and playing in Europe. ("Echeverria," 2005, Encyclopedia.com)

But Sarmiento in contrast to Echeverria also suggested that the nature of the Argentinean possessed a brutality to its populace and multitudes of life that was not present in Europe, and called for harsher forms of unifying governance. "Moral progress, the culture of intelligence neglected in the Arab or Tartar tribe, is thus here not only neglected, but impossible. Where could a school be placed so that children disseminated over ten leagues in every direction could attend classes? Civilization, then, can never be attained, barbarism is the norm, and we can be thankful if domestic customs preserve a small measure of morality." (Sarmiento, Chapter I)

Even before the dictators came to power, the country people, suggested the author Sarmiento, were not civilized but existed more or less in a state of nature and were isolated in a way that meant their manners and songs were peculiar to themselves in a fashion that resisted centralized and modern, civil authority. "The triste prevalent among the people of the northern districts is a fugue melody expressive of lamentation such as Rousseau considers natural to man in his primitive state of barbarism." (Sarmiento, Chapter II) Civilization, music, and culture was equated, for the author with music and the finer things of life, true, and was reflected in some of the works of the people, but it also meant that such barbarism impeded democratic governance, and encouraged more tyrannical forms of authority as are often imposed upon states of nature where individuals are resistant to education. Echeverria's pure but ultimately ruined state of nature by the matator becomes fertile ground for oppression in Sarmiento's estimation, precisely because of nature's ungoverned roughness.

Interestingly, however, Sarmiento was more forgiving of the Indian and indigenous, as opposed to the rural populace of Argentina. "The vidalita is a popular song with a chorus accompanied by the guitar and tabor, in the refrain of which the bystanders join, and the number and volume of the voices increase. I suppose this melody originated with the aborigines, for I once heard it at an Indian festival at Copiapo, held to celebrate Candlemas. As a religious song it must be very old, and the Indians of Chili can hardly have adopted it from the Spaniards of the Argentine Republic." (Sarmiento, Chapter II) Thus, given the evidence of such cultural displays, merely because a people are aboriginal does not mean that they are uncivilized or primitive, suggests the author, provided that they have a vibrant culture that has some structure. "Even the savage tribes of the Pampas are better organized for moral development than is our countryside." (Sarmiento, Chapter I) What is so dangerous about gaucho life, believed Sarmiento, as opposed to indigenous life is that, unlike the aboriginal people, gaucho's civilization was not fully ancient, like the indigenous structures, nor subject to influence of modernity as was present in urban life.

But's the Sarmiento text brought the author's contemporary nineteenth-century Latin American world life it also suggested that the "civilized" city vs. The "barbaric" countryside, was not always so easy to define, as quite often the urban types portrayed by the author can have a hint of the rural, and even the indigenous and African populations, can seem quite cultured in contrast. "The majo or troubadour, the type of a large class of Spaniards, is still found there and in Buenos Aires especially. He may be recognized in the gaucho of the country or in the swaggerer of the town ... All the movements of the city swaggerer disclose the majo; the action of his shoulders, his gestures, all his ways from that in which he puts on his hat, to his style of spitting through his teeth, all are of the purest Andalusia type," wrote Sarmiento, that is, of the urban city type who spurned country culture, yet possessed a questionable cultural identity of his own. Echeverria similarly mocked such figures in his romantic extolling of anything that did not smack of modernism.

Sarmiento desired modernity, in contrast, to Echeverria. But the author Sarmiento equated Argentinean barbarism not so much wildness or indigenous qualities but a failure to work and participate in the modern work ethic, much as Echeverria equated barbarism with a dictator's governance of humanity's purer impulses. But for Sarmiento, as exemplified by the gaucho and his dependence upon his female domestic partners to work, barbarism was not in modernity but in the current state of what he called country life, which had "developed the gaucho's physical faculties, but none of his intelligence. His moral character is affected by his custom of triumphing over obstacles and the power of nature. Although like Echeverria, Sarmiento did describe the gaucho as strong, haughty, vigorous and admirable, he could not condone the gaucho's lack of instruction. Worse yet, the gaucho also saw himself as without need of higher education and modernization, either, and thus, rather than seeing the gaucho as embodying the pure and romantic power of nature, Sarmiento saw the gaucho as a man without a means of subsistence and without needs, who was happy in the midst of his poverty and privations, but whose lack of governable character left Argentina open to political abuse and effective modernization. He is one, wrote Sarmiento "who has never known greater pleasures or set his desires any higher," the ultimate condemnation for this advocate of progress and modernization. (Sarmiento, Chapter I)

Sarmiento, who was actually an admirer of Echeverria's poetry if not the poet's rough political and educational philosophy conceded that, in the gaucho, although the figure's "dissolution of society deeply implants barbarism because of the impossibility and uselessness of moral and intellectual education," the gaucho's ways of life "in another way it is not without its attractions. The gaucho does not work; he finds food and clothing at hand in his home. His livestock provides both of these, if he is a proprietor, or the house of his employer or relatives, if he owns nothing. The attention the livestock requires" simply "boils down to excursions and pleasurable games." (Sarmiento Chapter I)

The lack devotion of both the aboriginal, urban, and country dwellers to culture, civility, and modernization is shown, according to Sarmiento, to show how the dictator who came to power was preyed upon the worse parts of true nature. In the country, "This, then, is what religion is reduced to in the pastoral countryside: to natural religion. Christianity exists, like the Spanish language, as a sort of tradition that is carried on, but corrupted, embodied in coarse superstitions, with no instruction, rites, or conviction...thus, by explaining these peculiarities of Argentina, wrote Sarmiento, one can "subsequently the nature, causes and effects of its civil wars." (Sarmiento, Chapter I)

The people themselves are to blame, suggested Sarmiento, for the government they receive. But while painting a portrait of the varied yet cultured nature of even its rural populace, however, Sarmiento wrote that the fall of the nation into turmoil is partly due to its expansive territory. In Chapter I of the text of Facundo, he wrote: "The disease from which the Argentine Republic suffers is its own expanse: the desert wilderness surrounds it on all sides and insinuates into its bowels; solitude, a barren land with no human habitation, in general are the unquestionable borders between one province and another. There, immensity is everywhere," in the land of Argentina. The land was rough and wild, yet cultured, just as the appearance of some of its people may appear rough, yet always is the palpable presence of vidalita is the popular measure for songs about the topics of the day, and even amongst the rudeness of some of the national urban and rural customs, the fine arts always serve to embellish city life and infuse it with the nature of civilized life, giving voice and musicality "to many generous passions are honored and favored even by the lowest classes who exercise their uncultured genius in lyrical and poetical composition." (Sarmiento, Chapter I) The vestiges and possibilities of culture were present, if only properly developed. In contrast, Echeverria wrote that if only the populace was left properly alone, to simmer in its songs, natural poetry, and natural ways of life, the true Argentinean universal and unified character would emerge, from the hearts of its rural and indigenous peoples.

For Echeverria, thus, civilization was inherent to humanity in an untouched state of nature, while for Sarmiento civilization was something that must be created and to some extent imposed by democratic yet vigorously modernizing authorities, else the barbarism in the rural areas become common currency to all of Argentina. Despite his praise for the wild music of the aboriginal and rural peoples that give civilized authority to Argentina, Sarmiento feared the juxtaposition of such varied cultures and climates also gives rise to the potential for tyranny -- one of the dangers that allowed for the central character of De Roseas to come to power and accumulate such dangerous authority. Rather than the gentle romantic visions of the poet that are destroyed by the dictator, Sarmiento opened his text up with a horrific vision of settlers wandering in a "solitary caravan" of wagons "slowly traversing the Pampas that stops to rest for a few moments, the crew, gathered around a poor fire, mechanically turn their eyes toward the south at the least murmur of wind blowing the dry grass, to bore their gaze into the profound darkness of the night, searching out the sinister bulks of savage hordes that from one moment to the next can surprise them unprepared. If their ears hear no sound, if their eyes cannot pierce the dark veil that covers this quiet solitude, to be absolutely sure they turn their gaze to the ears of some horse next to the fire, observing if these are at rest and easily folded back. Then their interrupted conversation continues, or they put the half-singed strips of dried beef that are their food into their mouths. If it is not the proximity of savages that worries the man of the countryside, it is the fear of a tiger stalking him, of a viper he might step on." (Sarmiento, Chapter 1).

Interestingly enough, the poet and author of The Matador himself made an appearance in Facundo. "In 1840, Echeverria, then a young man, lived for some months in the country where the fame of his verses about the pampas had already preceded him; the gauchos surrounded him with respect and affection and when a new comer showed signs of the scorn he felt for the little minstrel, someone whispered into his ear, "He is a poet,' and that word dispelled every prejudice," wrote Sarmiento, while chronicling his praiseworthy aspects of variegated Argentinean life. But although he respected Echeverria's poetry, he did not regard the poet's reconfiguration of traditional rhythms and songs of the populace, nor of his romantic view of rural civilization being destroyed by the cruelty and modernization to be a fungible vision for the future of a land in need of greater governance, unity, and restraint to proceed into the modern world.