WILLIAMSOM, EDWIN, THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF LATIN AMERICA, CHAPTER 8. ‘Civilization and Barbarism’: Literary and Cultural Deveolpment I. [i]
Sarmiento’s seminal essay became embroiled in endless controversy (still very much alive today) because he allowed his hatred of Rosas to distort his analysis of the condition of the post-independence Argentina. The great flaw in his argument is his identification of the pampas as the source of barbarism and of the gaucho as its agent. In this he was influenced more by his friend Echeverría and the sterotypes of gauchesque literature than by direct observation – Sarmiento was a city man with minimal experience of life on the pampas when he wrote Facundo. The fact was that neither Facundo Quironga nonr Rosas were gauchos, they simply used themo and other lower class gropus to further their ouwn ambitions. Sarmiento could well have argued that reactionary caudillos had exploited the gauchos and perverted their values. In this way wh would have avoided the controversial association of the gaucho with the ‘barbarism’ which hat to be overcome. As would occur with the cowboy in the USA ot the bandeirante of Sâo Paulo in Brazil, the gaucho could have been converted by the Argentine liberals into a mythical figure of progress, an authentic son of the Argentine soil whose rugged individualism and love of freedom foreshadowed the entrepreneurial culture that would carry the young republic towards greatness and prosperity,. Instead, he was portrayed in Facundo as the embodiment of barbarism and cultural backwardness.
This missed ideological opportunity haunts the pages of Facundo in the ambivalence with Sarmiento depicts the life and customs of the gauchos. As a romantic, he cannot fail to admire the strength of their autochthonous culture –their intimate knowledge of the pampas, their rustic skills, their prowess with knife and guitar; and yet the manner in which he has framed the argument demands that he reject their way of life as a pattern for modern Argentina. After Facundo the idea of progress in Argentina would forever seem to be at odds with the country’s very fragile sense of identity.
This self-defeating conflict would be given a mythical resonance bya José Hernández’ highly influential narrative poem, El gaucho Martín Fierro (part I, 1872; part. II, 1879), written well after the fall of the caudillo Rosas in 1852, when Sarmiento himself had become president of the republic and the fee wheeling life of the pampas was rapidly giving way to a modern economy based on well-defined property rights, wheat-growing estancias , settlements of foreign immigrants and a network of railways.
José Hernández realized in a single work of art the enormous mythic potential of the gaucho when his traditional way of life was on the point of disappearing. The first part of Martín Fierro tells the story of an innocent gaucho’s forced conscription into the army to serve in a frontier garrison against the Indians of the pampas. After constant abuse and explitation by the authorities he deserts and is forded to take refuge with the Indians. This first part is a moving lament fo a doomed way of life, in which the gaucho enjoyed the feedom of the pampas as wel as a sense of camaraderie with his tellows under the patriarchal authority of a benevolent patrón. It reads as the protest of a Hispanic conservative against a modernizing government that had froken faith with the gauchos, the authentic representatives of Argentine people.
The sequel, however, is confused; it was written seven years later, when the author was famous and had become a supporter of a new liberal president Avellaneda. Still, the unevenness itself reveals the ideological problems of nation-building in Argentina. Martín Fierro is repelled by the barbarism of the Indians, but when he returns to ‘civilization’ hi finds that nothing has changed: all that society can offer him is work as a hired hand on an estancia. Since Hernández could do nothing with his persecuted gaucho that would not humiliate him, the central narrative breaks up into a number of rambling stories by differente characters until it draws to an inconclusive end with Fierro offering his sons the counsels of an errant father fefore they all ride off onve more inte the unknown.
[i] Williamsom da aquí su punto de vista sobre la imposibilidad del “liberalismo” argentino crear un mito fundador. Fracaso que primero experimenta sarmiento con Facundo y completa Hernández con el Martín Fierro. Pags. 291 y 292. Publicado dn PENGUIN BOOKS Inglaterra, 1992. Copyright Edwin Willamson, 1992 All right reserved.
