Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
President of Argentina
1811 CE to 1888 CE
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 – September 11, 1888) is an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina.
His writing spans a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history.
He is a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the "Generation of 1837", who have a great influence on nineteenth-century Argentina.
He is particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature.
Sarmiento grows up in a poor but politically active family that paves the way for much of his future accomplishments.
Between 1843 and 1850,he is frequently in exile, and writes in both Chile and in Argentina.
His greatest literary achievement is Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento writes while working for the newspaper El Progreso during his exile in Chile.
The book brings him far more than just literary recognition; he expends his efforts and energy on the war against dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasts enlightened Europe—a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and intelligent thought are valued—with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillos, the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth-century Argentina.
While president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento champions intelligent thought—including education for children and women—and democracy for Latin America.
He also takes advantage of the opportunity to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive education system.
He spends many years in ministerial roles on the federal and state levels where he travels abroad and examines other education systems.
Sarmiento dies in Asunción, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack.
He is buried in Buenos Aires.
Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer.
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South America and The Eastern Isles
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Domingo Sarmiento establishes an anti-federalist periodical called El Zonda in 1836.
The government of San Juan does not like Sarmiento's criticisms and censors the magazine by imposing an unaffordable tax upon each purchase.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Albarracín, unable to attend school in Buenos Aires thanks to the disorder of the civil war, had chosen to fight against Quiroga, joining and fighting in the army of General Paz, only to be placed under house arrest when San Juan was eventually taken over by Quiroga.
Fighting and war resumed, and in 1831, Sarmiento had fled to Chile, which at this time is noted for its good public administration, its constitutional organization, and the rare freedom to criticize the regime.
In Sarmiento's view, Chile has "Security of property, the continuation of order, and with both of these, the love of work and the spirit of enterprise that causes the development of wealth and prosperity."
As a form of freedom of expression, Sarmiento had begun to write political commentary.
In addition to writing, he also began teaching in the Andes.
Due to his innovative style of teaching, he had found himself in conflict with the governor of the province.
He had founded his own school in Pocura as a response to the governor.
During this time, Sarmiento had fallen in love and had an illegitimate daughter named Ana Faustina, who Sarmiento will not acknowledge until she marries.
In 1836, Sarmiento, now twenty-five, had returned to San Juan, seriously ill with typhoid fever; his family and friends thought he woukld die, but he has recovered.
Juan Bautista Alberdi, an Argentinian law student, had participated in the so-called "Generation of '37,” a group of young and liberal intellectuals like Esteban Echeverría and Domingo Sarmiento, heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and liberal thought traditions.
This connection, together with refusal to swear allegiance to the Federal regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas, leads Alberdi to begin a voluntary exile in 1838, initially in Montevideo.
Argentine poet Esteban Echeverría is forced to go into exile in nearby Uruguay, where he will write La Insurrección del Sur and his powerful short story "El Matadero" ("The Slaughterhouse," written in 1838 but not published until 1871), on which his renown as a writer largely rests.
A landmark in the history of Latin American literature, it is mostly significant because it displays the perceived clash between "civilization and barbarism,” that is, between the European and the "primitive and violent" American ways.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, another great Argentine writer and thinker, is to characterize this clash as the core of Latin American culture.
Read in this light, "The Slaughterhouse" is a political allegory.
Its more specific intention is to accuse Juan Manuel de Rosas of protecting the kind of thugs who murder the cultivated young protagonist at the Buenos Aires slaughterhouse.
Rosas and his henchmen stand for barbarism, the slain young man for civilization.
Echeverría, who will remain in Uruguay until his death, had returned to Buenos Aires in 1830 from four years of close contact with the Romantic Movement in Paris.
In 1832, he had written “Elvira”, one of the earliest romantic poems written in the Spanish language, and in 1837 published a book of romantic poetry entitled “La Cautiva”, a long narrative poem about a white woman abducted by Mapuche Indians; it will become one of the better-known works of nineteenth century Latin American literature.
He is a member of the group of young Argentine intellectuals who in 1838 had organized the Asociación de Mayo ("May Association", after the May Revolution that initiated Argentina's move towards independence).
This institution, which seeks to disseminate romantic ideas by establishing political liberalism and creating a literature based on national concerns, aspires to develop a national literature responsive to the country's social and physical reality.
Echeverría has also devoted himself to the overthrow of Rosas.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a country schoolteacher exiled to Chile in 1840 for his vocal opposition to dictator Rosas, here writes and edits for various newspapers, agitates against Rosas, and studies public education.
In 1845, he writes “Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants,” an eloquent anti-Rosas tract (destined to become a classic of Spanish-American literature).
Sarmiento attacks “caudillismo” (military dictatorship) in his study of the charismatic Argentine leader Juan Facundo Quiroga, Facundo, Civilization and Barbarism, in which he defines the influence of caudillo leaders as "barbarism" in the Argentine political and social life, but writes also as a protest to Rosas' regime, and a call for European education and life style.
The Argentine provinces of Entre Rios and Corrientes, allied with Brazil and members of Colorado Party of Uruguay, defeat Buenos Aires troops under Juan Manuel de Rosas on February 3, 1852.
Rosas, Governor of Buenos Aires with powers delegated from the other provinces, and thus de facto Argentina's dictator, had declared war on Brazil in 1851, which had led to the signing of a treaty among the governments of Uruguay, the Brazilian Empire, and the adjacent Argentinian provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes, on November 21 of that year.
Justo José de Urquiza has served governor of Entre Ríos during the government of Rosas, who has frequently presented a resignation to his charge, but only as a political gesture, figuring that the other governments would reject it.
Urquiza, resentful of the economic and political dominance of Buenos Aires, had accepted Rosas’ resignation in 1851 and resumed for Entre Rios the powers delegated to Buenos Aires.
Along with the resumption of international commerce without passing through the port of Buenos Aires, Urquiza has replaced the slogan "Death to the savage unitarians!" with "Death to the enemies of national organization!", requesting the making of a national constitution that Rosas has long rejected.
Corrientes Province supports Urquiza's action, but Rosas and the other provinces had condemned the "crazy, traitor, savage, unitarian" Urquiza.
The exiled liberal Bartolomé Mitre had returned at the head of an army of Uruguayans, and Argentinian educator and author Domingo Faustino Sarmiento had returned from exile to join the coalition of Argentinian, Uruguayan and Brazilian forces formed by Urquiza, defeating Rosas’s forces at the Battle of Caseros and terminating his twenty-year reign.
The Liberation Army captures about seven thousand prisoners, but Rosas is not among them: he had escaped with some of his officers just some minutes before his army gave way, getting aboard a British ship on this same night.
He will never return to Argentina again, living in permanent exile as a farmer in Southampton, England.
The other provinces that had supported Rosas against Urquiza's pronunciation change sides and support his project of creating a National Constitution.
Justo José de Urquiza had lost the election for president of Argentina in 1868 but, chosen by the provincial legislature in April of this year, had again became governor of Entre Ríos, in spite of the popular support for López Jordán's candidacy.
On July 31 of this same year, López Jordán and Justo Carmelo Urquiza, son of the caudillo, defeat national forces invading in support of a revolution in Corrientes even while rumors are circulating that López Jordán might start a rebellion against Urquiza in Entre Rios.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento takes office on October 12, 1868, and sets about the task of revamping the national school system and helping to stabilize liberal institutions.
Argentina’s economy, legal system, communications infrastructure and education system had grown rapidly under Bartolomé Mitre.
Despite victory in the Paraguayan War, Mitre's popularity had declined severely because of it, since a broad section of the Argentine population was opposed to the war due to the alliance with Brazil (Argentina's historic rival) that had taken place during the war and the betrayal of Paraguay (which had been until then one of the country's most important economic allies).
One of the major hallmarks of Mitre's presidency is the "Law of Compromise", in which Buenos Aires joined the Argentine Republic and allowed the government to use the City of Buenos Aires as the center of government, but without federalizing the city and by reserving the province of Buenos Aires the right to secede from the nation if conflict should arise.
The worldly Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, while governor of Argentina’s San Juan province, has developed roads and infrastructure, built public buildings and hospitals, encouraged agriculture and allowed for mineral mining.
He had also resumed his post as editor of El Zonda.
In 1863, Sarmiento had fought against the power of the caudillo of La Rioja and found himself in conflict with the Interior Minister of Mitre's government, Guillermo Rawson.
Stepping down as governor of San Juan, Sarmiento had run unsuccessfully for president of the Argentine Republic in 1864 against General Mitre.
He had, however, become the Plenipotentiary Minister to the United States, where he had been sent in 1865, soon after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
Moved by the story of Lincoln, Sarmiento had ended up writing his book Vida de Lincoln, and it was on this trip that Sarmiento had received an honorary degree from the University of Michigan.
(A bust of Sarmiento will stand in the Modern Languages Building at the University of Michigan until multiple student protests prompt its removal. Students had installed plaques and painted the bust red to represent the controversies surrounding his policies towards the indigenous people in Argentina. There still stands a statue of Sarmiento at Brown University.)
While on this trip, he had been asked to run for President again, which he does, and wins, despite the maneuverings of his predecessor Mitre.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento has worked to end the war against Paraguay; the cost to Argentina has been more than ten thousand deaths.
Justo José de Urquiza receives Sarmiento, whom the Federalists regard as the chief of their enemies, the embodiment of all they oppose, at his lavish country seat, San José palace.
Ricardo López Jordán prepares himself for revolution.