Post dos...

Finally finished the last half of Facundo. I still wish my Spanish was good enough to read the original text as undoubtedly a lot is lost in the translation, no matter how good of one it is. I wonder if the language was as stiff in the original Spanish?

 I can’t say that I was too sorry when the old tyrant Facundo was killed, as calling him a pretty brutal character would be a serious understatement. Brutality and violence are definitely recurring themes in the book. Facundo seems driven by power, fear, and violence for their own sakes, perhaps with a little money thrown in for good measure. In modern terms we might call him a sociopath; someone with an inability to feel normal human emotions such as pity, guilt, and remorse; we tend to think of these people as rarities, exceptions to the rule, but Sarmiento seems to advocate an extreme determinist stance regarding Facundo’s brutality, claiming that there is something inherent within the landscape of Argentina itself that breeds these animalistic individuals by the handful.

I am confounded by on the one hand Sarmiento’s optimism touting that he will bring the light of freedom over the Andes, and on the other, his view that the very landscape makes Argentina ripe for exploitation by these despots. How can Sarmiento succeed in bringing freedom if the very nature of Argentina stands in his way?

On another note I found the constant barrage of briefly mentioned characters, battles, etc. to be a little distracting. I find that disjointedness of the book distracts one from focusing on Sarmiento’s true intentions or goals. I am still not entirely sure what these are exactly. He does however do a very good job of showing the pervasiveness of the fear instilled masterfully by Facundo. In one vivid example, an officer after winning a fight for his life returns his lance “respectfully” to Facundo, only to later be killed anyway. The extent of Facundo’s power shown here is truly unbelievable.

The way other governments had to be involved with Funcundo’s “removal” parallels a more contemporary Latin America experience seems quite uncanny, or perhaps it is just proving Sarmiento’s original hypothesis regarding the nature of Argentina itself.