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Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (February 15, 1811 – September 11, 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the "Generation of 1837", who had a great influence on nineteenth century Argentina. Sarmiento himself was particularly concerned with educational issues, and is now sometimes considered "The Teacher" of Latin America. He was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento
grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for
much of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850 he was
frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was Facundo, a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper El Progreso during
his exile in Chile. The book brought him far more than just literary
recognition; he expended his efforts and energy on the war against
dictatorships, specifically that of Rosas, and contrasted enlightened
Europe — a world where, in his eyes, democracy, social services, and
intelligent thought were valued — with the barbarism of the gaucho and especially the caudillo,
the ruthless strongmen of nineteenth century Argentina. While
president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento championed
intelligent thought — including education for children and women — and
democracy for Latin America. He also took advantage of the opportunity
to modernize and develop train systems, a postal system, and a
comprehensive education system. He spent many years in ministerial
roles on the federal and state levels where he travelled abroad and
examined other education systems. Sarmiento died in Asunción, Paraguay, at the age of 77 from a heart attack. He was buried in Buenos Aires. Today, he is respected as a political innovator and writer. Sarmiento was born in Carrascal, a poor suburb of San Juan, Argentina, on February 15, 1811. His
father, José Clemente Quiroga Sarmiento y Funes, had served in
the military during the wars of independence, returning prisoners of
war to San Juan. His mother, Doña Paula Zoila de Albarracín e Irrázabal, was a very pious woman, who lost her father at a young age and was left with very little to support herself. As
a result, she took to selling her weaving in order to afford to build a
house of her own. On September 21, 1801, José and Paula were
married. They had 15 children, 9 of whom died; Domingo was the
only son to survive to adulthood. Sarmiento
was greatly influenced by his parents, his mother who was always
working hard, and his father who told stories of being a patriot and
serving his country, something Sarmiento strongly believed in. In Sarmiento's own words: "I
was born in a family that lived long years in mediocrity bordering on
destitution, and which is to this day poor in every sense of the word.
My father is a good man whose life has nothing remarkable except [for
his] having served in subordinate positions in the War of
Independence... My mother is the true figure of Christianity in its
purest sense; with her, trust in Providence was always the solution to
all difficulties in life." At
the age of four, Sarmiento was taught to read by his father and his
uncle, José Eufrasio Quiroga Sarmiento, who later became Bishop of Cuyo. Another
uncle who influenced him in his youth was Domingo de Oro, a notable
figure in the young Argentine Republic who was influential in bringing Juan Manuel de Rosas to power. Though
Sarmiento did not follow de Oro's political and religious leanings, he
learned the value of intellectual integrity and honesty. He developed scholarly and oratorical skills, qualities which de Oro was famous for. In 1816, at the age of five, Sarmiento began attending the primary school La Escuela de la Patria. He was a good student, and earned the title of First Citizen (Primer Ciudadano) of the school. After completing primary school, his mother wanted him to go to Córdoba to
become a priest. He had spent a year reading the Bible and often spent
time as a child helping his uncle with church services, but Sarmiento soon become bored with religion and school, and became involved with a group of aggressive children. Sarmiento's
father took him to the Loreto Seminary in 1821, but for reasons
unknown, Sarmiento did not enter the seminary, returning instead to San
Juan with his father. In 1823, the Minister of State, Bernardino Rivadavia,
announced that the six top pupils of each state would be selected to
receive higher education in Buenos Aires. Sarmiento was at the top of
the list in San Juan, but it was then announced that only ten pupils
would receive the scholarship. The selection was made by lot, and
Sarmiento was not one of the scholars whose name was drawn. In 1826, an assembly elected Bernardino Rivadavia as president of the United Provinces of Río de la Plata. This action roused the ire of the provinces, and civil war was
the result. Support for a strong, centralized Argentine government was
based in Buenos Aires, and gave rise to two opposing groups. The
wealthy and educated of the Unitarian Party, such as Sarmiento, favored centralized government. While Sarmiento was pro-American and two contemporary U.S. presidents (John Quincy Adams and John Adams) belonged to Unitarian churches, the two similarly named groups were not the same. In opposition to them were the Federalists, who were mainly based in rural areas and tended to reject European mores. Numbering figures such as Juan Manuel de Rosas and Juan Facundo Quiroga among their ranks, they were in favor of a loose federation with more autonomy for the individual provinces. Opinion of the Rivadavia government was divided between the two ideologies.
For Unitarians like Sarmiento, Rivadavia's presidency was a positive
experience. He set up a European staffed university and supported a
public education program for rural male children. He also supported
theater and opera groups, publishing houses and a museum. These
contributions were considered as civilizing influences by the
Unitarians, but they upset the Federalist constituency. Common laborers
had their salaries subjected to a government cap, and the gauchos were arrested by Rivadavia for vagrancy and forced to work on public projects, usually without pay. In 1827, the Unitarians were challenged by Federalist forces. After the resignation of Rivadavia, Manuel Dorrego was
installed as governor of the Buenos Aires province. He quickly made
peace with Brazil but, on returning to Argentina, was overthrown and
executed by his own troops. The Unitarian general Juan Lavalle took Dorrego's place. However, Lavalle did not spend long as governor either: he was soon overthrown by militias composed largely of gauchos led by Rosas and Estanislao López.
By the end of 1829 the old legislature that Lavalle had disbanded was
back in place and had appointed Rosas as governor of Buenos Aires. The
first time Sarmiento was forced to leave home was with his uncle,
José de Oro, in 1827, because of his military activities. José de Oro was a priest who had fought in the Battle of Chacabuco under General San Martín. Together, Sarmiento and de Oro went to San Francisco del Monte, in the neighbour province of San Luis. He spent much of his time with his uncle learning and began to teach at a small school in the Andes. Later
that year his mother wrote to him asking him to come home. Sarmiento
refused, only to receive a response from his father that he was coming
to collect him. His father had persuaded the governor of San Juan to send Sarmiento to Buenos Aires to study at the College of Moral Sciences (Colegio de Ciencias Morales). Soon after Sarmiento's return, the province of San Juan broke out into civil war and Facundo Quiroga invaded Sarmiento's town. As historian William Katra describes this "traumatic experience": At
sixteen years of age, he stood in front of the shop he tended and
viewed the entrance into San Juan of Facundo Quiroga and some six
hundred mounted montonera horsemen.
They constituted an unsettling presence [. . . ]. That sight, with its
overwhelmingly negative associations, left an indelible impression on
his budding consciousness. For the impressionable youth Quiroga's
ascent to protagonist status in the province's affairs was akin to the
rape of civilized society by incarnated evil. Unable to attend school in Buenos Aires due to the political turmoil, Sarmiento chose to fight against Quiroga. He
joined and fought in the unitarian army, only to be placed under house
arrest when San Juan was eventually taken over by Quiroga after the battle of Pilar. He is later released, only to join the forces of General Paz, a key unitarian figure. Fighting
and war soon again resumed, but, one by one, Quiroga vanquished the
main allies of General Paz, including the Governor of San Juan, and in
1831 Sarmiento fled to Chile. He did not return to Argentina for five years. At
the time, Chile was noted for its good public administration, its
constitutional organization, and the rare freedom to criticize the
regime. In Sarmiento's view, Chile had "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 began to write political
commentary. In addition to writing, he also began teaching in Los Andes.
Due to his innovative style of teaching, he found himself in conflict
with the governor of the province. He founded his own school in Pocuro
as a response to the governor. During this time, Sarmiento fell in love
and had an illegitimate daughter named Ana Faustina, who Sarmiento did
not acknowledge until she married. In
1836, Sarmiento returned to San Juan, seriously ill with typhoid fever;
his family and friends thought he would die upon his return, but he
recovered and established an anti-federalist journal called El Zonda. The
government of San Juan did not like Sarmiento's criticisms and censored
the magazine by imposing an unaffordable tax upon each purchase.
Sarmiento was forced to cease publication of the magazine in 1840. He
also founded a school for girls during this time called the Santa Rosa
High School, which was a preparatory school. In addition to the school, he also founded a Literary Society. It
is around this time that Sarmiento became associated with the so-called
"Generation of 1837". This was a group of activists, who included Esteban Echeverría, Juan Bautista Alberdi, and Bartolomé Mitre,
who spent much of the 1830s to 1880s first agitating for and then
bringing about social change, advocating republicanism, free trade,
freedom of speech, and material progress. Though,
based in San Juan, Sarmiento was absent from the initial creation of
this group, in 1838 he wrote to Alberdi seeking the latter's advice; and in time he would become the group most fervent supporter. In 1840, after being arrested and accused of conspiracy, Sarmiento was forced into exile in Chile again. It was en route to Chile that, in the baths of Zonda, he wrote the graffiti "On ne tue point les idées," an incident that would later serve as the preface to his book Facundo. Once on the other side of the Andes, in 1841 Samiento started writing for the Valparaíso newspaper El Mercurio, as well working as a publisher of the Crónica Contemporánea de Latino América ("Contemporary Latin American Chronicle"). In 1842, Sarmiento was appointed the Director of the first Normal School in South America; the same year he also founded the newspaper El Progreso. During this time he sent for his family from San Juan to Chile. In 1843, Sarmiento published Mi Defensa ("My Defence"), while continuing to teach. And in May 1845, El Progreso started the serial publication of the first edition of his best known work, Facundo; in July, Facundo appeared in book form. Between
the years 1845 and 1847, Sarmiento travelled to Uruguay, Brazil,
France, Spain, Algeria, Italy, Armenia, Switzerland, England, Canada,
Cuba, and the United States in order to examine different education
systems and the levels of education and communication. Based on his
travels, he wrote the book Viajes por Europa, África, y América which was published in 1849. In
1848, Sarmiento voluntarily left to Chile once again. During the same
year, he met widow Benita Martínez Pastoriza, married her, and adopted her son, Domingo Fidel, or Dominguito, who would be killed in action in 1866 as soldier during the War of the Triple Alliance at Curupaytí. Sarmiento continued to exercise the idea of freedom of the press and began two new periodicals entitled La Tribuna and La Crónica respectively,
which strongly attacked Juan Manuel de Rosas. During this stay in
Chile, Sarmiento's essays became more strongly opposed to Juan Manuel
de Rosas. The Argentine government tried to have Sarmiento extradited
from Chile to Argentina, but the Chilean government refused to hand him
over. In 1850, he published both Argirópolis and Recuerdos de Provincia (Recollections
of a Provincial Past). In 1852, Rosas's regime was finally brought
down. Sarmiento became involved in debates about the country's new
constitution. In
1854, Sarmiento briefly visited Mendoza, just across the border from
Chile in Western Argentina, but he was arrested and imprisoned. Upon
his release, he went back to Chile. But in 1855 he put an end to what was now his "self-imposed" exile in Chile: he arrived in Buenos Aires, soon to become editor-in-chief of the newspaper El Nacional. He was also appointed town councillor in 1856, and 1857 he joined the provincial Senate, a position he held until 1861. It
was in 1861, shortly after Mitre became Argentine president, that
Sarmiento left Buenos Aires and returned to San Juan, where he was
elected governor, a post he took up in 1862. It was then that he passed the Statutory Law of Public Education,
making it mandatory for children to attend primary school. It allowed
for a number of institutions to be opened including secondary schools,
military schools and an all-girls school. While
governor, he developed roads and infrastructure, built public buildings
and hospitals, encouraged agriculture and allowed for mineral mining. He resumed his post as editor of El Zonda. In 1863, Sarmiento fought against the power of the caudillo of La Rioja and found himself in conflict with the Interior Minister of General Mitre's government, Guillermo Rawson.
Sarmiento stepped down as government of San Juan, but ran
unsuccessfully for president of the Argentine Republic in 1864 against
General Mitre. He
did, however, become the Plenipotentiary Minister to the United States
where he was sent in 1865, soon after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Moved by the story of Lincoln, Sarmiento ended up writing his book Vida de Lincoln. It was on this trip that Sarmiento received an honorary degree from the University of Michigan. A bust of him still stands in the Modern Languages Building, as well as a statue at Brown University. While on this trip, he was asked to run for President again. He won, taking office on October 12, 1868. Domingo
Faustino Sarmiento was President of the Republic of Argentina from
1868 – 1874. He became president despite the maneuverings of his
predecessor Bartolomé Mitre. According
to biographer Allison Bunkley, his presidency "marks the advent of the
middle, or land owning classes as the pivot power of the nation. The
age of the gaucho had ended, and the age of the merchant and cattleman
had begun." Sarmiento
sought to create basic freedoms, and wanted to ensure civil safety and
progress for everyone. Sarmiento's tour of the United States had given
him many new ideas about politics, democracy, and the structure of
society, especially when he was the Argentine ambassador to the country
from 1865 to 1868. He found New England, specifically the Boston - Cambridge area to be the source of much of his influence,
writing in an Argentine newspaper that New England was "the cradle of
the modern republic, the school for all of America." He described
Boston as "The
pioneer city of the modern world, the Zion of the ancient Puritans ...
Europe contemplates in New England the power which in the future will
supplant her." Not
only did Sarmiento evolve political ideas, but also structural ones by
transitioning Argentina from a primarily agricultural economy to one
focused on cities and industry. Historian David Rock notes
that, beyond putting an end to caudillismo, Sarmiento's main
achievements in government concerned his promotion of education. As
Rock reports, "between 1868 and 1874 educational subsidies from the
central government to the provinces quadrupled." He
established 800 educational and military institutions, and his
improvements to the educational system enabled 100,000 children to
attend school. He also pushed forward modernization more generally,
installing 5,000 kilometres (3,100 mi) of telegraph line across
the country for improved communications, modernizing the post and train
systems which he believed to be integral for interregional and national
economies, as well as building the Red Line, a train line that would
bring goods to Buenos Aires in order to better facilitate trade with
England. By the end of his presidency, the Red Line extended
1,331 kilometres (827 mi). In 1869, he conducted Argentina's first
national census. Though Sarmiento is well known historically, he was not a popular president. Indeed, Rock judges that "by and large his administration was a disappointment". During
his presidency, Argentina conducted an unpopular war against Paraguay;
at the same time, people were displeased with him for not fighting for
the Straits of Magellan from Chile. Though he increased productivity, he increased expenditures, which also negatively affected his popularity. In addition, the arrival of a large influx of European immigrants was blamed for the outbreak of Yellow Fever in Buenos Aires and the risk of civil war. Moreover,
Sarmiento's presidency was further marked by ongoing rivalry between
Buenos Aires and the provinces. In the war against Paraguay,
Sarmiento's adopted son was killed. Sarmiento suffered from immense grief and was thought to never have been the same again. On August 22, 1873, Sarmiento was the target of an unsuccessful killing attempt, when two Italian anarchist brothers shot at his coach. They had been hired by federal caudillo Ricardo López Jordán. A year later in 1874, he completed his term as President and stepped down, handing his presidency over to Nicolás Avellaneda, his former Minister of Education. In
1875, following his term as President, Sarmiento became the General
Director of Schools for the Province of Buenos Aires. That same year,
he became the Senator for San Juan, a post that he held until 1879,
when he became Interior Minister. But he soon resigned, following conflict with the Governor of Buenos Aires, Carlos Tejedor.
He then assumed the post of Superintendent General of Schools for the
National Education Ministry under President Roca and published El Monitor de la Educación Común, which is a fundamental reference for Argentine education. In
1882, Sarmiento was successful in passing the sanction of Free
Education allowing schools to be free, mandatory, and separate from
that of religion. In May 1888, Sarmiento left Argentina for Paraguay. He was accompanied by his daughter, Ana, and his companion Aurelia Vélez. He died in Asunción on September 11, 1888, from a heart attack, and was buried in Buenos Aires. His tomb at La Recoleta Cemetery lies under a sculpture, a condor upon a pylon, designed by himself and executed by Victor de Pol. Pedro II,
the Emperor of Brazil and a great admirer of Sarimento, sent to his
funeral procession a green and gold crown of flowers with a message
written in Spanish remembering the highlights of his life: "Civilization and Barbarism, Tonelero, Monte Caseros, Petrópolis, Public Education. Remembrance and Homage from Pedro of Alcantara." Sarmiento
was well known for his modernization of the country, and for his
improvements to the educational system. He firmly believed in democracy
and European liberalism, but was most often seen as a romantic.
Sarmiento was well versed in Western philosophy including the works of Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill. He
was particularly fascinated with the liberty given to those living in
the United States, which he witnessed as a representative of the
Peruvian government. He did, however, see pitfalls to liberty, pointing
for example to the aftermath of the French Revolution, which he compared to Argentina's own May Revolution. He
believed that liberty could turn into anarchy and thus civil war, which
is what happened in France and in Argentina. Therefore, his use of the
term "liberty" was more in reference to a laissez-faire approach to the
economy, and religious liberty. Though a Catholic himself, he began to adopt the ideas of separation of church and state modeled after the US. He believed that there should be more religious freedom, and less religious affiliation in schools. This was one of many ways in which Sarmiento tried to connect South America to North America. Sarmiento
believed that the material and social needs of people had to be
satisfied but not at the cost of order and decorum. He put great
importance on law and citizen participation. These ideas he most
equated to Rome and to the United States, a society which he viewed as
exhibiting similar qualities. In order to civilize the Argentine
society and make it equal to that of Rome or the United States,
Sarmiento believed in eliminating the caudillos, or the larger
landholdings and establishing multiple agricultural colonies run by
European immigrants. Coming
from a family of writers, orators, and clerics, Domingo Sarmiento
placed a great value on education and learning. He opened a number of
schools including the first school in Latin America for teachers in
Santiago in 1842: La Escuela Normal Preceptores de Chile. He
proceeded to open 18 more schools and had mostly female teachers from
the USA come to Argentina to instruct graduates how to be effective
when teaching. Sarmiento's
belief was that education was the key to happiness and success, and
that a nation could not be democratic if it was not educated. "We must educate our rulers," he said. "An ignorant people will always choose Rosas." The impact of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento is most obviously seen in the establishment of September 11 as Latin American Teacher's Day which was done in his honor at the 1943 Interamerican Conference on Education, held in Panama. Today, he is still considered to be Latin America's teacher. In
his time, he opened countless schools, created free public libraries,
opened immigration, and worked towards a Union of Plate States. His
impact was not only on the world of education, but also on Argentine
political and social structure. His ideas are now revered as innovative, though at the time they were not widely accepted. He
was a self-made man and believed in sociological and economic growth
for Latin America, something that the Argentine people could not
recognize at the time with the soaring standard of living which came
with high prices, high wages, and an increased national debt. Today, there is a statue in honor of Sarmiento in Boston on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, between Gloucester and Hereford streets, erected in 1973. There is a square, Plaza Sarmiento in Rosario, Argentina. One of Rodin's last sculptures was that of Sarmiento which is now in Buenos Aires. |