HIS SUMMIT WORK

Facundo; Civilización i Barbarie en las pampas arjentinas. Por (...) Cuarta edición en castellano. Nueva York: D. Appleton y Compañía. 1868.

Quarto (21.6 x 13.6 cm), xv (includes Title page with an old handwritten text: “A finished book of the objects left by my friend Manuel Lahite, as a souvenir. (...) (18)92”. With signatures and seal as an ex libris of Arturo Richieri), 318 pp. Bound with leather spine and gilt titles. Good copy.

Between 1840 and 1851, Sarmiento was in Chile, where he edited two newspapers and published his most important work: Facundo, Civilización, and Barbarie. The essay appeared for the first time in 1845, presented as a serial in "El Progreso". In the same year, the printing press El Mercurio launched the book in its complete version, entitled: “Civilización i Barbarie. Life of Facundo Quiroga and physical appearance, customs and habits of the Argentine Republic”.

The work focuses on Facundo Quiroga, observed by Sarmiento in the desire to understand Juan Manuel de Rosas. With a militant voice, who was later President of the Argentines deals in this title —we express it, the crowning piece of his literary production—, of the genesis and exercise of political power in his country.

«Sarmiento proceeds to describe in memorable pages -says the researcher Beatriz Curia- the different classes of gauchos: the payador, the tracker, the baqueano and the bad gaucho. When the gaucho stands out, says Sarmiento, he becomes a malefactor or a caudillo. The campaign judge (quotes the author) "makes himself obeyed by his reputation for fearsome audacity, his authority, his judgment without forms, his sentence, his sentence, and his punishments invented by himself." Hence, the caudillo "has the wide and terrible power that is only found today [then] in the Asian peoples." The campaign commander, whose title is conferred by the city government, attains a higher degree of power, and all the caudillos of the Argentine revolution have previously been campaign commanders. Sarmiento underlines that the gaucho is characterized by his rebelliousness to all norms and therefore, he is often outside the law.»

S.O.XVII-DGL