Facundo: civilización y barbarie

Front Cover
Cátedra, 1990 - Fiction - 457 pages
Sarmiento, proscrito por la tiranía rosista y exiliado por dos veces en Chile, fue periodista brillante, político y polemista literario. "Facundo" es una biografía concebida como historia, historia de las guerras civiles de su patria centradas en la figura de Juan Facundo Quiroga, el más famoso, cruel, violento y despiadado caudillo de las guerras civiles argentinas. El desarrollo de los acontecimientos impulsó a Sarmiento a unir el tema biográfico a la realidad presente, denunciando a su enemigo Rosas.

About the author (1990)

Born into a humble family, Sarmiento became president of the Argentine republic in 1868. He was a driving force in the effort to Europeanize Argentina and in the struggle against the rural power elite. His reputation in literature is based on Civilization and Barbarism: Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga (1845), a combination of essay and history that often approaches the novel in its handling of imaginative narrative. Demonstrating the barbaric actions of both Juan Manuel de Rosas, the dictatorial governor of Argentina, and the gaucho Facundo in Tiger of the Pampas (o.p.), Sarmiento advocated the civilizing influences of education and economic progress. His ambivalent feelings and romantic view of the gaucho led him to create a mythical character rather than a historical figure. The narratives and sketches in Travels (1849) have been described as "a virtual novel" (Anderson Imbert) for their imaginative quality.