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3	DOMINGO FAUSTINO SARMIENTO Civilization and Barbarism: The Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga: 1 Introduction to the 1845 Edition *

Je demande à l’historien l’amour de l’humanité ou de la liberté; sa justice impartiale ne doit pas être impassive. Il faut, au contraire, qu’il souhaite, qu’il espère, qu’il souffre, ou soit heureux de ce qu’il raconte.—Villemain, Cours de littérature²

I will evoke you, dread shadow of Facundo, so that, shaking off the bloodstained dust that covers your ashes, you may rise up to explain the secret life and internal convulsions tearing at the innards of a noble people! You hold the secret: reveal it to us! Ten years after your tragic death, the man of the cities and the gaucho of the Argentine plains, when taking different trails through the desert, would say: “No, he is not dead! He is still alive! He will return!”

True! Facundo is not dead; he is alive in the popular traditions, in the politics and revolutions of Argentina; in Rosas, his heir, his complement: his soul has passed into this other, more finished, more perfect mold; and what was in him merely instinct, beginning, tendency, became in Rosas system, effect, and end. Rustic, colonial, barbaric nature changed in this metamorphosis into art, system, and regular policy capable of presenting itself to the face of the world as the way of being

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of a people embodied in one man who has aspired to take on the airs of a genius dominating events, men, and things.

Facundo, provincial, barbaric, courageous, bold, was replaced by Rosas,³ the son of cultured Buenos Aires, without being so himself; by Rosas, false, cold-hearted, calculating mind, who does evil without passion and slowly organizes despotism with all the intelligence of a Machiavelli. A tyrant without rival today on Earth, why do his enemies want to deny him the title of Great, which his courtiers lavish on him? Yes, great and very great he is, to the glory and shame of his homeland, for if he has found thousands of degraded beings to yoke themselves to his wagon and haul it over corpses, there are also thousands of generous souls who, in fifteen years of bloody combat, have not given up hope of vanquishing the monster presented to us by the enigma of the political organization of the Republic. A day will finally come when they will solve it; and the Argentine Sphinx, half cowardly woman, half bloodthirsty tiger, shall die at their feet, giving the Thebes of the Plate the elevated rank that is its due among the nations of the New World.

It is necessary, however, to untie this knot that the sword has been unable to cut, to study thoroughly the twists and turns of the threads that form it, and search in our national precedents, in the physiognomy of our soil, in our popular customs and traditions, the places where they are attached.

The Argentine Republic is today the region of Hispanic America that, in its outward expression, has drawn the preferential attention of the European nations, which on no few occasions have found themselves embroiled in its disturbances, or drawn, as if by a maelstrom, toward the center where such conflicting elements swirl. France was on the point of giving in to this attraction and, not without great efforts of rowing and sailing, not without losing the rudder, managed to steer away and remain at a distance. Its most skilled politicians have been unable to understand anything their eyes have seen when casting a hasty glance over the American power challenging that great nation. On seeing the burning lavas that churn, boil, crash, and roar in this great hub of internecine struggle, those who hold themselves to be best informed have said: “It is an insignificant volcano, without a name, one of many that appear in America: soon it will be extinguished”; and they have turned their gaze

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elsewhere, satisfied at having provided a solution as easy as it is exact to the social phenomena they have seen only superficially as a group. South America in general, and especially the Argentine Republic, has lacked a Tocqueville who, equipped beforehand with the knowledge of social theories, like the scientific traveler with barometer, octant, and compass, would come to penetrate into the interior of our political life, as into a vast field not yet explored or described by science, and reveal to Europe, to France, so eager for new phases in the life of the different portions of humanity, this new way of life, which has no known, clearly marked precedent. The mystery of the obstinate struggle tearing the Republic to shreds would then have been explained; the conflicting, unconquerable elements that collide would have been classified distinctly: the configuration of the land and the habits that this engenders; the Spanish traditions and the iniquitous, plebeian national consciousness left by the Inquisition and Hispanic absolutism; the influence of the opposing ideas that have disrupted the political world; indigenous barbarism; European civilization; the democracy enshrined by the revolution of 1810; equality, whose dogma has penetrated to the lowest layers of society, all these would have been allocated their part. This study, which we are not yet in a state to conduct due to our lack of philosophical and historical instruction, conducted by competent observers, would have revealed to the astonished eyes of Europe a new world in politics, a naïve, frank, and primitive struggle between the latest progress of the human spirit and the rudiments of savage life, between populous cities and shady forests. The problem of Spain would then have become clearer, that straggler behind Europe which, cast between the Mediterranean and the ocean, between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, joined to cultured Europe by a broad isthmus and separated from barbaric Africa by a narrow strait, is teetering between two opposing forces, now rising up on the scales of the free peoples, now falling on those of despotism; now unholy, now fanatical; now a declared constitutionalist, now an imprudent despot; sometimes cursing its broken chains, now folding its arms and crying out for the yoke to be imposed upon it, which appears to be its condition and its mode of existence. What! The problem of European Spain could not be resolved by a minute examination of American Spain, as the ideas and morality of the parents are traced through the education and habits of the children? What! Does it mean nothing for

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history and philosophy this eternal struggle of the Hispanic American peoples, that supine dearth of political and industrial ability that has them worried and twisting and turning with no fixed north, no precise object, no knowing why they cannot find a day of rest, nor what enemy hand tosses and pushes them into the fatal whirlwind that drags them, against their will and without being able to evade its evil influence? Was it not worth knowing why in Paraguay, a land cleared by the wise hand of the Jesuits, a wise man educated in the classrooms of the ancient University of Córdoba turns a new page in the history of the aberrations of the human spirit, encloses a people within the bounds of its primitive forests, and, erasing the paths that lead to this hidden China, conceals and hides its prey for thirty years in the depths of the American continent, without letting it utter a single cry, until, dead from old age and the still fatigue of standing motionless trampling on a submissive people, it may in the end say, in a weary and barely intelligible voice to those who roam his environs: I am still alive!, but how I have suffered! quantum mutatus ab illo!⁴ What a transformation Paraguay has suffered; what bruises and sores the yoke has left on its neck, which put up no resistance! Does the spectacle of the Argentine Republic deserve study, which, after twenty years of internal convulsion, of experiments with organization of all kinds, produces, in the end, from the depths of its bowels, from the depths of its heart, the same Doctor Francia⁵ in the person of Rosas, but greater, more self-possessed, and more hostile, if that is possible, to the ideas, customs, and civilization of the peoples of Europe? Is not the same rancor against the foreign element discovered in him, the same idea of government authority, the same insolence to challenge the disapproval of the world, and in addition, his wild originality, his coldly fierce nature, and his obstinate will, even to the sacrifice of the fatherland, as in Saguntum and Numantia;⁶ to the abjuration of the future and the rank

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of a cultured nation, like the Spain of Philip II and Torquemada?⁷ Is this an accidental whim, a mechanical deviation caused by the appearance on the scene of a powerful genius; just as the planets leave their regular orbits, attracted by the approach of another, yet without quite escaping the attraction of their center of rotation, which then resumes its preponderance and brings them back into their regular course? M. Guizot⁸ has said from the French rostrum: “There are two parties in America: the European party and the American party; the latter is the stronger”; and when alerted to the fact that 108 Frenchmen have taken up arms in Montevideo and have joined their futures, their lives, and their welfare to the triumph of the civilized European party, he merely adds: “The French are most meddlesome, and compromise their nation with other governments.” God be praised! M. Guizot, the historian of European civilization, who has determined the new elements that modified Roman civilization, and has penetrated into the tangled labyrinth of the Middle Ages to show how the French nation has been the crucible in which the modern spirit has been elaborated, mixed, and recast; M. Guizot, minister of the king of France, as the only solution to this expression of deep sympathy between the French and the enemies of Rosas just says: “The French are most meddlesome!” The other American peoples who, indifferent and impassive, look on this struggle and these alliances of an Argentine party with any European element lending its support, filled with indignation in their turn, exclaim: “These Argentines are very friendly with the Europeans!” And the tyrant of the Argentine Republic takes it upon himself officiously to finish their sentence, adding, “Traitors to the American cause!” True! they all say; traitors!, that is the word. True! we say; traitors to the barbarian, absolutist, Spanish, American cause! Have you not seen the word savage fluttering over our heads?

There’s the rub: to be or not to be savage. Is not Rosas, according to this, an isolated incident, an aberration, a monstrosity? Or is he, on the contrary, a social manifestation; is he a formula for the way of being of a people? Why do you insist on fighting him, then, if he is inevitable, necessary, natural, and logical? My Lord! Why do you fight him! … Because a venture is arduous, is it therefore absurd? Because the evil principle

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triumphs, should the field be abandoned with resignation? Are civilization and freedom weak in the world today because Italy groans under the weight of every despotism, because Poland wanders the face of the Earth begging a loaf of bread and a little freedom? Why do you fight him! … Are we not alive, those of us who, after so many disasters, still survive; or have we lost our awareness of what is right and of our homeland’s future because we have lost a few battles? What! are ideas also left among the remains of the fighting? Are we able to do something different than what we do, precisely as Rosas cannot stop being what he is? Is there nothing providential in these struggles of the people? Was victory ever awarded to him who does not persevere? Indeed, are we to abandon one of the most privileged soils of America to the ravages of barbarism and have a hundred navigable rivers abandoned to the water-birds that are in calm possession and wander them ab initio?

Are we voluntarily to close the door on European immigration, which knocks repeatedly on it to people our deserts, and make us, in the shadow of our flag, a people as innumerable as the sands on the shore? Are we to leave aside, illusory and vain, the dreams of development, power, and glory with which we have been lulled since childhood, the forecasts that are enviously directed at us by those in Europe who study the needs of humanity? After Europe, is there any uninhabited Christian world that can be civilized other than America? Are there in America many peoples who are, like the Argentine people, called on to receive the European population that overflows like liquid in a glass? Do you not ultimately want us to invoke science and industry to our assistance, to call to them with all our might to come and sit in our midst, the one free from any obstacle to thought, the other safe from all violence and all coercion? Oh! This future is not so easily relinquished! It is not relinquished because an army of twenty thousand men guards the gateway to the fatherland: soldiers die in combat, desert, or switch flags. It is not relinquished because fortune has favored a tyrant for long and heavy years: fortune is blind, and the day she does not happen to find her favorite amid the dense smoke and suffocating dust of combat, farewell tyrant! farewell tyranny! It is not relinquished because all the brutal and ignorant colonial traditions have accomplished more, in a time of irrationality, in the mind of the unskilled masses: political upheavals also bring experience and light, and it is a law of humanity that new interests, fertile ideas, and progress will ultimately triumph over antiquated

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traditions, ignorant habits, and stagnant concerns. It is not relinquished because there are thousands of guileless men in a people, who take good for evil, selfish men who profit from it, indifferent men who see it but take no interest, timid men who do not dare to fight it, corrupt men, in short, who unknowingly deliver themselves to it out of an inclination to evil, out of depravity: there has always been all this in every people, and never has evil definitively triumphed. It is not relinquished because the other American peoples cannot lend us their aid, because governments see from afar only the glint of organized power and cannot distinguish in the humble and desolate darkness of revolutions the great elements that are struggling to develop; because the so-called liberal opposition abjures its principles, imposes silence on its conscience, and, to squash an importunate insect underfoot, stamps the noble sole the insect was attached to. It is not relinquished because the peoples en masse turn their backs on us on account of our miseries and our greatnesses being too far away from their sight to affect them. No! a future so immense, a mission so lofty, is not relinquished because of such a series of contradictions and difficulties: difficulties are vanquished, contradictions end by dint of contradiction!

From Chile, we cannot give anything to those who persevere in the struggle under all the hardships of privations and with the exterminating blade, which, like the sword of Damocles, hangs above their heads at all times. Nothing! save ideas, consolations, encouragement; no weapon is allowed the combatants save the one that the free press of Chile supplies to all free men. The press! The press! Here then, tyrant, is the enemy you suffocated among us. Here then is the golden fleece we try to conquer. Here then is how the press of France, England, Brazil, Montevideo, Chile, and Corrientes will disturb your sleep amid your victims’ sepulchral silence; here then is the fact that you have felt compelled to steal the gift of tongues in order to palliate evil, a gift given only to preach goodness. Here then is the fact that you stoop to justify yourself and go among all the European and American peoples begging a venal, fratricidal pen, so that, by means of the press, it will defend him who has put it in chains! Why do you not allow in your homeland the discussion you keep up in all other peoples? For what, then, so many thousands of victims sacrificed by the dagger; for what so many battles, if, after all, you were to end up in the peaceful discussion of the press?

He who has read the foregoing pages may think it is my intention to

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paint an impassioned picture of the acts of barbarism that have dishonored the name of Don Juan Manuel de Rosas. Let them be reassured, those who nurture any such fear. The last page of this immoral biography has not yet been written; the measure is not yet full; the days of its hero have not yet been counted. Moreover, the passions he arouses in his enemies are still too rancorous for themselves to put faith in their impartiality or their justice. It is with another character that I must occupy myself: Facundo Quiroga is the caudillo whose deeds I wish to record on paper.

For ten years now the Earth has covered his ashes, and very cruel and poisoned would seem the calumny that went to dig the graves in search of victims. Who fired the official bullet that halted his career? Did it come from Buenos Aires or Córdoba? History will explain this mystery. Yet Facundo Quiroga is the most naïve type of character from the Argentine Republic’s civil war; he is the most American figure presented by the revolution. Facundo Quiroga links and connects together all the elements of disorder that, even before his appearance, were stirring separately in each province; he transforms a local war into a national, Argentine war, and triumphantly presents, after ten years’ work, devastation, and fighting, the result that only he who assassinated him was able to exploit.

I believe I will explain the Argentine revolution through the biography of Juan Facundo Quiroga, for I believe that he adequately explains one of the tendencies, one of the two different sides that vie within that unique society.

I have therefore evoked my memories and completed them by searching for details provided by men who knew him in his childhood, who were his supporters or his enemies, who have witnessed with their own eyes some events, heard about others, and had exact knowledge of a particular period or situation. I still hope for more details than I have, which are already plentiful. If a few inaccuracies have escaped me, I beg those who spot them to inform me of them; for in Facundo Quiroga I do not see simply a caudillo, but an expression of Argentine life, as colonization and the special characteristics of the land have made it, to which I feel the need to devote some serious attention, for without this, the life and deeds of Facundo Quiroga are vulgarities that did not deserve to enter the domain of history, save episodically. But Facundo, in relation to the physiognomy of the grandly savage nature that prevails in the vast

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extent of the Argentine Republic; Facundo, the faithful expression of the way of being of a people, of their concerns and instincts; Facundo, in short, being what he was not by an accident of character but by inescapable precedents beyond his will, is the most singular, most notable historical character that can be presented to the contemplation of men who understand that a caudillo at the head of a large social movement is no more than the mirror in which the beliefs, needs, concerns, and habits of a nation are reflected, in colossal dimensions, at a given time in its history. Alexander is the image, the reflection of warlike, literary, political, and artistic Greece; of skeptical, philosophical, and enterprising Greece, pouring across Asia to extend the sphere of its civilizing action.

That is why we need to pause over the details of the inner life of the Argentine people, to understand its ideal, its personification.

Without these precedents, nobody will understand Facundo Quiroga, as no one, in my view, has yet understood the immortal Bolívar⁹ on account of the incompetence of the biographers who have traced the picture of his life. In the Enciclopedia nueva I have read a brilliant work on General Bolívar that does that American caudillo all the justice he deserves for his talents and his genius; but in that biography, as in all the others that have been written about him, I saw the European general, the marshals of the empire, a less colossal Napoleon; but I did not see the American caudillo, the head of an uprising of the masses; I see a pale imitation of Europe, and nothing that reveals America to me.

Colombia has plains, pastoral life, pure, barbarous, American life, and from there the great Bolívar set out; from that mud he built his glorious edifice. How is it, then, that his biography likens him to any European general in his illustrious garb? It is because the classic European concerns of the writer distort the hero, removing his poncho in order to present him from day one in tails, exactly as the lithographers of Buenos Aires have painted Facundo in a frock coat, believing his jacket, which he never took off, inappropriate. Well: they have made a general, but Facundo disappears. They can study Bolívar’s war in France in that of the Chouans: Bolívar is a Charette¹⁰ of broader dimensions. Had the

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Spaniards penetrated into the Argentine Republic in 1811, our Bolívar would perhaps have been Artigas,¹¹ had this caudillo been so lavishly endowed by nature and education.

The treatment of the history of Bolívar by the European and American writers is more suitable for San Martín¹² and others of his kind. San Martín was not a popular caudillo; he was really a general. He had been educated in Europe and came to America, where the government was a revolutionary one, and he could easily form the European army, discipline it, and wage regular battles according to the rules of science. His expedition on Chile is truly a conquest, like that of Italy by Napoleon. But had San Martín been obliged to be at the head of Montoneras,¹³ to be defeated here, to go then and muster a group of plainsmen from somewhere, they would have hanged him at his second try.

Bolívar’s drama consists, then, of other elements besides those we know about today: it is necessary to place the American scenery and costumes first in order to subsequently show the character. Bolívar is, still today, a tale wrought on true information: Bolívar, the real Bolívar, is not yet known to the world, and it is very likely that, when they translate him into his native language, he shall appear more surprising and greater still.

Reasons of this sort have moved me to divide this hastily written work into two parts: one in which I map out the terrain, the landscape, the theater on which the scene is to be performed; the other in which the character appears, with his costume, his ideas, his system of action; in such a way that the former will be already revealing the latter, without need for comment or explanation.