Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Domingo F. Sarmiento
7th President of Argentina
In office October 12, 1868 – October 12, 1874
Vice President	Adolfo Alsina
Preceded by	Bartolomé Mitre
Succeeded by	Nicolás Avellaneda
Personal details
Born	February 15, 1811 San Juan
Died	September 11, 1888 Asunción, Paraguay
Nationality	Argentinean
Political party	Liberal
Profession	Journalist

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Albarracín (February 15 1811 – September 11 1888) was an Argentine political figure who is today considered "The Teacher" of Latin America. His fame is not only due to his political career, including a period as president, but his literary works, as well. One of his most well-known and influential pieces was titled Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism.

Youth and influences

Sarmiento was born in Carrascal, a poor suburb of San Juan, Argentina on February 15, 1811. His father was José Clemente (Quiroga) Sarmiento y Funes and had served in the military during the wars of independance, returning prisoners of war to the custody of San Juan. His mother, a very pious woman, was doña Paula Zoila de Albarracín e Irrázabal. Paula Albarracín lost her father at young age and was left with very little to support herself. As a result, she took to selling her weaving in order to afford building a house of her own. On September 21, 1801, José and Paula were married and had 15 children,9 of which died, and leaving Domingo as the only male to survive to adulthood. At the age of four, Sarmiento was taught to read by his father and his uncle, José Eufrasio Quiroga Sarmiento, a man who later became Bishop of Cuyo. Another uncle who influenced his youth was Domingo de Oro, a notable figure in the young Argentine Republic, and also influencial in bringing Don Juan Manuel Rosas into power. Though Sarmiento did not follow in de Oro's political leanings, he learned the value of intellectual integrity and honesty. He also developed scholarly and oratory skills, something which de Oro was famous for.

In 1816, at the age of five, Sarmiento began attending la Escuela de la Patria. He was a good student, and even earned the title of First Citizen (Primer Ciudadno) 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 with school, and became involved with a group of agressive children. Sarmiento's father, in 1821, took him to the Loreto Seminary, but it is unknown why they returned to San Juan without leaving Sarmiento there. In 1823, the Minister of State, Bernardino Rivadavia, announced that the 6 top pupils of each state would be selected to recieve higher education in Buenas Aires. Domingo Sarmiento was at the top if the list in San Juan, but it was then announced that only 10 of the total would be drawn and selected to recieve this scholarship, and unfortunately, Sarmiento was not one who was drawn.

Political background and exiles

The first time Sarmiento went into exile was with his Uncle, José de Oro, who was a priest and had fought in the Battle of Chacabuco under General San Martin. Together, Sarmiento and de Oro went to San Francisco del Monte. He spent much of his time with his uncle learning and even began to teach at a small school in the Andes. In 1827, his monther wrote to him and asked him to come home. Sarmiento refused, only to recieve of a response of his father coming to collect him. His father had persuaded the governor of San Juan to send Sarmiento to Buenos Aires to study at the Collece of Moral Sciences (Colegio de Ciencias Morales).

Upon Sarmiento's return, the province of San Juan broke out into civil war. Facundo Quiroga invaded his town and Sarmiento was unable to attend school in Buenos Aires, therefore began managing his aunt's store. Choosing to fight against Quiroga, Sarmiento joined the army of General Paz and fought in many battles, only to have San Juan taken over by Quiroga. Sarmiento was arrested and placed under house arrest.

He found himself in conflict with the governor of the province he was teaching in, as he had very innovative ideas about teaching, and founded his own school in Pocura. During this time, Sarmiento also fell in love and had an illegitimate daughter named Ana Faustina, who Sarmiento did not acknowledge until she was married to Julio Belín as an adult and had a child named Augusto Belín Sarmiento, who stayed with him until his death.

Not long after, Sarmiento returned back to San Juan and began working in his aunt's store. However, fighting and war again resumed, and Sarmiento found himself fleeing to exile in Chile for the second time, where he stayed for five years. At the time, Chile was noted for its good public administration, it's constitutional organization, and the rare freedom to criticize the regime. Sarmiento described Chile as such: "Seucrity 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."

Sarmiento went into Chile with certain ideas that he had developed from his extensive reading. In Chile he fine-tuned his personal phillosophy, and many of his political ideologies were manifested during his second time in exile. As his ideas became increasingly clarified, his writing began to have a clear message of enlightenment, and he began to prove himself as a great political force. Within four years time, he became known as one of Chile's outstanding journalists, he wrote what is considered today as to be one of the best pieces of South American literature, and he became a great pedagogue.

Sarmiento found himself, again with his father, crossing the Andes by the same route they had taken the first time in 1831. They meandered through Putaenda and stopped in Los Andes in the Aconcagua Valley. Here they discovered numerous Argentine exiles who were following the civil war across the border and fighting Rosas and his caudillos from where they were to the best of their abilities. They manufactured ammunition and arms and blocked the throughway for soliders who were on their way to battle with the federalists in the western Argentine provinces. They were also maintaining a thorough propaganda campaign to win the sympathy of influential Chileans for the unitarian cause

In 1836, Sarmiento returned to San Juan on account of serious typhoid fever. He had returned as he had thought he was about to die, yet instead recovered fully and established a periodical called El Zonda, an anti-federalist publication The government of San Juan did not like Sarmiento's criticisms and decided to censor the magazine by imposing an unaffordable tax on it when being purchased. Sarmiento was forced to close down the publishing of the magazine in 1840. It had been during this time in which he also founded a school for girls. Having been arrested once again, Sarmiento left Argentina to which would be his longest exile in Chile, where he wrote to counter Argentina's political regime by Juan Manuel de Rosas.

Having spent time in Chile, Sarmiento decided to return and become an educational advisor to governors. It was during this period that he met Benita Martínez Pastoriza, a widow, and adopted his son, Domingo Fidel, or Dominguito. It was also when he wrote his best known work, Facundo. Sarmiento also continued to exercise the idea of freedom of press and began two new periodicals entitled La Tribuna and La Crónica respectively, which strongly attacked Don Juan Manuel. Between the years of 1845 and 1847, Sarmiento travelled to Uruguay, Brazil, France, Spain, Algeria, Italy, Armenia, Switzerland, England, the USA, Canada, and Cuba on behalf of the Peruvian government 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.

At the end of 1845, Sarmiento met with General Esteban Echeverría in Montevideo, who was also in exile and against the government of Rosas. Once back in Chile, Sarmiento strengthened his efforts against Rosas. The Argentinian government tried to have Sarmiento extradited from Chile to Argentina, but the Chilean government refused to hand him over.

Sarmiento returned to San Juan and, in 1862, became the governor of the province. It was then that he passed a law entitled the Statutory Law of Public Education that made it mandatory for children to attend primary school. It also allowed for a number of institutions to be opened in order to ensure this including secondary schools, military schools and an all-girls school. While governor, he also developed roads and infrastructure, built public buildings and hospitals, encouraged agriculture and allowed for mineral mining. He also resumed his post as editor of La 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 for president of the Argentinian Republic in 1864 against General Mitre. He lost. 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 one at Brown University. While on this trip, he was asked to run for President again and won taking office on October 12, 1868.

President of Argentina

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was President of the republic of Argentina from 1868–1874. A long time opponent of the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas (who inspired the writing of Facundo), Sarmiento helped Justo Jose de Urquiza, an Argentine general and politician, overthrow Rosas' government in 1852. This was when he began to be active in politics, after years in exile as a political prisoner in Chile.

During his presidency, Argentina went to war with Paraguay where Domingo, Sarmiento's adopted son was killed. Sarmiento suffered from immense grief and was thought to never be the same again. Other accomplishments include establishing 800 educational and military institutions. By the end of his presidency there were over 100,000 children in school. He also had 5000 km of telegraph line installed across the country. He modernized the post and train systems, both he believed to be integral for interregional and national economies, and he also began 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 1331 km. In 1869, he also conducted Argentina's first national census. There was also a form of communication set up so the public could be informed about the on goings of the government.

On August 22, 1873, Sarmiento was the target of an unsuccessful bombing. In 1874, he completed his term as President and stepped down, but became the General Director of Schools for the Province of Buenos Aires in 1875. Soon after, he became the Senator for San Juan. In 1879, Sarmiento took the position of Interior Minister but had problems with the Governor of Buenas Aires, Carlos Tejedor, and resigned. 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 Argentinean 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 1888, Sarmiento left Argentina for the warmer climates of Paraguay. He was accompanied by his daughter, Ana, and his companion Aurelia Vélez . He died in Asunción on September 11, 1888 and was buried in La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Personal philosophy

Sarmiento considered himself to have been born at the same time as the Argentine Republic. He was most famous for modernization and for education. Over the centuries, his modern views have been continuously accepted, rejected, and revised in Latin America. He most firmly believed in democracy and European liberalism, but was most often seen as a romantic. His Eurocentric views are most notibly seen in his book Facundo. 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 of liberty and used the aftermath of the French Revolution, a period which he equated to the May Revolution in Argentina, as an example. 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 the economy and a laissez-fair approach, and religious liberty.

Sarmiento also believed in a social system. He 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 also placed a great value on education and learning. During his lifetime, he opened a number of schools including the first school in Latin America for teachers in Santiago in 1842. It was called 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. He also held the believe that education was the key to happiness and success, and a nation could not be democratic if it was not educated. "We must educate our rulers [...] an ignorant people will always choose Rosas."

Publications

Major works

• Facundo - Civilización y Barbarie - Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga, 1845. Written during a long exile in Chile. Originally published in Chile as a sequential work in a Chilean newspaper, Facundo is Sarmiento's most famous work. It has since been compiled into complete versions, also translated from its original Spanish into the most modern edition in English by Kathleen Ross. Facundo promotes further civilization and European influence to Argentine culture through the use of anecdotes and references to Don Juan Facundo Quiroga, Argentine caudillo general and dictator. As well as being a call to progress, Sarmiento discusses the nature of Argentine peoples as well as including his thoughts and objections to Juan Manuel de Rosas, succeeding dictator of Argentina after Facundo's death. Sarmiento claimed that this book persuaded European politicians to reasons for Argentine struggles, a call to civilization not only within Argentina, but to promote external pressure as well. Written with extensive assistance from others, Sarmiento adds to his own memory the quotes, accounts, and dossiers from other historians and companions of Facundo Quiroga. Facundo maintains its relevance in modern day as well, bringing attention to the contrast of lifestyles in Latin America, the conflict and struggle for progress while maintaining tradition, as well as the moral and ethical treatment of the public by government officials and regimes. (ref. Facundo book - in citations).

• Recuerdos de Provincia, 1850. In this second autobiography, Sarmiento displays a stronger effort to include familial links and ties to his past, in contrast to Mi defensa, choosing to relate himself to San Juan and his Argentine heritage. Sarmiento discusses growing up in rural Argentina with basic ideologies and simple livings. Recuerdos discusses his Similar to Facundo, Sarmiento uses previous dossiers filed against himself by enemies to assist in writing Recuerdos and therefore fabricating an autobiography based on these files and from his own memory. Sarmiento's persuasion in this book is substantial. The accounts, whether all true or false against him, are a source of information to write Recuerdos as he is then able to object and rectify into what he creates as a 'true account' of autobiography with a documentary style.

Other works

• Argirópolis 1850. A description of a future utopian city in the River Plate States. (ref. Crowley).
• Commentarios sobre la constitución 1852. This is Sarmiento's official account of his ideologies promoting civilization and the "Europeanization" and "Americanization" of Argentina. This account includes dossiers, articles, speeches and information regarding the pending constituition.
• Confictos y armonias de las razas en America 1883, deals with race issues in Latin America in the late 1800's. While situations in the book remain particular to the time period and location, dealings with race issues and conflicts of races are still prevalent and enable the book to be relevant in modern day.
• Educación popular 1849.
• Educar al soberano, a compilation of letters written from 1870 to 1886 on the topic of improved education, promoting and suggesting new reforms such as secondary schools, parks, sporting fields and specialty schools. This compilation was met with far greater success than Ortografía, Instrucción Publica and received greater public support.
• El camino de Lacio, which impacted Argentina by influencing many Italians to immigrate by relating Argentinas history to that of Latium of the Roman empire.
• Inmigración y colonización, a publication which led to mass immigrations of Europeans to mostly urban Argentina, which Sarmiento believed would assist in 'civilizing' the country over the more barbaric gauchos and rural provinces. This had a large impact on Argentine politics, especially as much of the civil tension in the country was divided between the rural provinces and the cities. In addition to increased urban population, these European immigrants also had a cultural effect upon Argentina, providing what Sarmiento believed to be more civilized culture similar to North America's.
• Informes sobre educación, 1856. The first official statistic report on education in Latin America. This report includes information on gender and location distribution of pupils, salaries and wages, and comparative achievement. Informes sobre educación also proposes new theories, plannings, and methods of education as well as quality controls on schools and learning systems.
• Las Escuelas, base de la prosperidad y de la republica en los Estados Unidos 1864. The latter three function as a promotion to Latin America and Argentines regarding the school systems, economies and politics in the United States, which Sarmiento supported.
• Mi defensa, 1843. Sarmiento's first autobiography of a pamphlet form, which substantially does not include any information or recognition to his illegitimate daughter Ana. This would have discredited Sarmiento as a respected father of Argentina, as Sarmiento portrays himself as a sole individual, disregarding or denouncing important ties to other people and groups in his life.
• On the Condition of Foreigners, which rhelped to assist policital changes for immigrants in 1860. (ref. Crowley).
• Ortografía, Instrucción Publica, which was based upon Sarmiento's passion fo improved education. Among this, Sarmiento focused on illiteracy of the youth, to which he suggested to simplify readings and spellings for the public education system, a method which was never implemented (ref. Crowley).
• Practica Consitucional, a three volume work, describing current political methods as well as propositions for new methodologies.
• Presidential Papers, a history of his presidency, formed of many personal and external documents.
• Travels in the United States in 1847 (edited and translated into English by Michael Aaron Rockland)
• Viajes por Europa, Africa, América 1849. A description and observations while travelling as a representative of the Peruvian government to learn more about educational systems around the world.
• Vida de Dominguito 1886. A memoir description of Dominguito, Sarmiento's adopted son who was the only child Sarmiento had always accepted. Many of the notes used to compile Vida de Dominguito had been written 20 years prior during one of Sarmiento's stays in Washington.

Legacy

Latin American Teacher's Day was established in Sarmiento's honor at the 1943 Interamerican Conference on Education, which was held in Panama. He is still considered to be Latin America's teacher.

There is a statue in honor of Sarmiento in Boston on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, between Gloucester and Hereford streets, erected in 1973.

A bust of Sarmiento stands outside of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection and the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas.

References

• Bunkley, Allison Williams (1969) [1952], The Life of Sarmiento, New York: Greenwood Press, ISBN 0837123925

• Halperin Donghi, Tulio. "Sarmiento's Place in Postrevolutionary Argentina." Sarmiento: Author of a Nation. Ed. Tulio Halperin Donghi, Ivan Jaksic, Gwen Kirkpatrick, and Francine Masiello. Place?: University of California Press, 1994. 19-30.
• Katra, William H. "Reading Viajes." Sarmiento: Author of a Nation. Ed. Tulio Halperin Donghi, Ivan Jaksic, Gwen Kirkpatrick, and Francine Masiello. Place?: University of California Press, 1994. 73-100.
• Kirkpatrick, Gwen, and Masiello, Francine. "Introduction: Sarmiento between History and Fiction." Sarmiento: Author of a Nation. Ed. Tulio Halperin Donghi, Ivan Jaksic, Gwen Kirkpatrick, and Francine Masiello. Place?: University of California Press, 1994. 1-18.
• Mann, Mary Tyler Peabody. "My dear sir: Mary Mann's letters to Sarmiento, 1865–1881". Place?: Instituto Cultural Argentino Norteamericano, 2001. ISBN 987-98659-0-1, 2001,
• Rosa, José María. Historia Argentina. Place?: Publisher?, Date?.
• Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino. "Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism". Trans. ?. Place?: University of California Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-520-23980-7, 2003.
• Crowly, Frances C. "Domingo Faustino Sarmiento". New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972.