Civilization vs. Barbarism in Echeverría and Sarmiento
This paper examines two landmark works of nineteenth-century Argentine literature — Esteban Echeverría's El Matadero (The Slaughterhouse) and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism — to explore how each author diagnoses the causes and conditions of political tyranny in Argentina under Juan Manuel de Rosas. While both authors opposed the Rosas dictatorship, they differed sharply in their prescriptions: Echeverría idealized an unspoiled rural nature corrupted by authoritarian rule, whereas Sarmiento argued that the ungoverned, uneducated gaucho culture of the pampas itself created fertile conditions for tyranny. The paper traces these contrasting visions through themes of music, landscape, indigenous culture, and modernity.
- Introduction: Two Authors, One Dictatorship: Echeverría and Sarmiento respond to Rosas' tyranny
- Sarmiento's Portrait of Argentine Culture and Character: Music and culture as markers of Argentine civilization
- Barbarism, the Gaucho, and the Failure of Civilization: Gaucho lifestyle as obstacle to modernity and governance
- Religion, Territory, and the Roots of Political Tyranny: Geography and corrupted religion enable political abuse
- Echeverría and Sarmiento: Contrasting Visions of Nature and Progress: Romantic purity versus imposed modernizing civilization
- Conclusion: Civilization as Imposition or Inheritance: Authors' divergent legacies and personal philosophies
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- The paper establishes a clear comparative framework from the outset, identifying the central philosophical disagreement between Echeverría and Sarmiento — not just their shared political opposition to de Rosas — and sustains that contrast throughout.
- It uses well-selected direct quotations from both primary texts to ground abstract claims about civilization, barbarism, and culture in concrete textual evidence.
- The paper moves fluidly between literary analysis and historical context, connecting each author's biographical circumstances (Echeverría's Europeanism, Sarmiento's admiration for the United States) to their divergent political and artistic philosophies.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates comparative literary analysis across two primary texts. Rather than treating each work in isolation, the author identifies a shared thematic axis — the civilization/barbarism binary — and uses it to reveal how fundamentally different assumptions about human nature, education, and political authority produce contrasting diagnoses of and prescriptions for Argentina's crisis. This technique is especially effective for undergraduate literary studies.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with two guiding questions, then establishes each author's core position. Subsequent paragraphs develop Sarmiento's argument chapter by chapter, using quotation and analysis, while periodically contrasting Echeverría's romantic counter-position. The paper closes by returning to the central opposition, synthesizing the two authors' divergent legacies and life philosophies into a final comparative judgment.
Introduction: Two Authors, One Dictatorship
How does one behave like a civilized human being when 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 by both the poet Esteban Echeverría (1805–1851) in his work El Matadero (The Slaughterhouse) and the educator and writer Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Sarmiento served as President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, while Echeverría was an early proponent of romanticism in Latin America. Echeverría's text suggests that Argentina's reversion to dictatorship was simply the result of a brutal man's tyranny imposed upon a pure and uncomplicated land, while Sarmiento proposes a more complicated cause rooted in the complexities of the region's vast expanse. For Echeverría, barbarism lies in dictatorship's attempts to impose a false construct of civilization; for Sarmiento, however, a lack of education and civilization among the gaucho people of Argentina is also partly to blame and must be remedied.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's Facundo functions as a study of the Argentine character, a prescription for the modernization of Latin America, and a protest against the tyranny of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1835–1852). In contrast, Echeverría, although he also opposed tyrannical governance, called for a return to old ways rather than advancement into what he saw as a false form of progress. Reflecting his contrasting assumptions, Sarmiento (1811–1888) subtitled his work Civilization and Barbarism to contrast not only the barbarism of the nineteenth-century caudillo Juan Facundo Quiroga with the fundamentally pure spirit of his people, but also the existing displays of barbarism and purity within the Argentine topography of the pampas, and the variety of cultures and national characters found within Argentine borders.
As the caudillo is a dictator and the matador is a killer, both authors employ figures of blood and terror — the matador or brutal commander — to describe a particular contemporary moment in the Argentine world and to critique ruling authority. Neither author approved of the tyranny of de Rosas. Yet Echeverría extols the purity of the pampas, while Sarmiento saw the land's lack of governance and education as giving rise, not to purity, but to the very conditions that allowed Echeverría's slaughterhouse metaphor to become reality.
Sarmiento's Portrait of Argentine Culture and Character
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's work presented an Argentina rich and cultured in its heritage, yet wild and ungoverned in a dangerous rather than romantic fashion. In Chapters II and III of Facundo, respectively entitled "Argentine Originality" and "Characters and Association," the author painted a picture of a Latin American land that was both charming and refined — a world destroyed by the Revolution of 1810 and the subsequent dictatorship, but one that 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 recognized by all our neighbors. When an Argentine was first introduced to a Chilean family, the Chilean family at once invited him to the piano, or handed him a guitar, and if he excused himself on the ground that he did not know how to play, they expressed 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 quality at the hearts of the aristocracy, the aboriginal, and the rural populace — extolled by both Sarmiento and Echeverría — astonished even other Latin American peoples on an already music-dominated 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 Echeverría, who spent many years in Europe, praised the musicianship of his own people even after hearing some of the finest singing and playing in Europe. ("Echeverria," 2005, Encyclopedia.com)
Works Cited
"Echeverria." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Columbia University Press. 2005.
"Echeverria, Esteban." Censorship, A World Encyclopedia. Edited by D. Jones. 2004.
Echeverría, Esteban. El Matadero / The Slaughterhouse.
"Facundo." 2005.
Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino. Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism. Translated from the Spanish by Kathleen Ross, with an Introduction by Roberto González Echevarría. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.