¶ … Independence What did Domingo Sarmiento think of Latin America in the 1800s?

As president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, Sarmiento had a very close-up vantage point from which to draw conclusions about Latin America, and he reported on what he had observed through the book Facundo. It is not rare that a country's president becomes a published author following his term in office -- although modern day presidents and prime ministers use ghost writers and editors -- but Sarmiento's work is unique, personal, and very descriptive albeit his biases are sharply noted.

Sarmiento believed that most of the "barbarism" occurred in the countryside, where the gauchos lived and worked, and he believed that the civilized people tended to live in the cities, not the countryside. "Everything that characterizes cultured peoples" can be found in the city, he wrote. He mentions "European" often as he is describing the "elegant manners" and the "conveniences of luxury" -- and clearly he is partial to the big cities...

That having been said, Sarmiento spent a great deal of his narrative on those living and working in the countryside. His narrative is very well written but his bias against the gauchos and the living styles in the country stands out as a direct assault on the way many if not most of the people in Argentina lived. "Two distinct societies," he said, caused people to be "strange to one another." He scoffs at the lack of education in the country, and paints a picture…