Resumen
Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie is a groundbreaking work by Argentine intellectual and statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, written during his exile. It is both a biography of the Argentine outlaw Juan Facundo Quiroga and a sweeping political manifesto that contrasts two competing forces shaping Argentina:
Civilización (Civilization): represented by European values, education, urban development, and institutional order.
Barbarie (Barbarism): symbolized by the rural caudillos (warlords), gauchos, and indigenous groups—especially embodied in Facundo and the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas.
Sarmiento argues that Argentina’s progress is held back by its reliance on strongmen and violence, and that only through education, Europeanization, and liberal governance can the nation achieve true modernization.