¶ … Civilization and Barbarism and Cruelty
The works of Esteban Echeverria's El Matadero/The Slaughterhouse and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's Facundo two classic works Argentinean 19th century literature
How does one behave like a civilized human being when one is confronted with a brutal dictator and what causes a dictator to rise to power in a land such as Argentina? These are the central questions posed both by the literature of the poet Esteban Echeverria (1805 -- 51) in his work El Matadero/The Slaughterhouse and that of the educator and writer, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. The latter author was President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874, while the author Echeverria was an early proponent of romanticism in Latin America. Echeverria's earlier text suggested that Argentina's reversion to a dictatorship was simply the result of a brutal man's tyranny upon a pure and uncomplicated land, while Sarmiento suggests a more complicated cause at oppression's roots, pointing to the complexities of the region's sprawl. For Echeverria, barbarism is in dictatorship's attempts to impose a false construct of civilization, but for Sarmiento, a lack of education and civilization amongst the gaucho people of Argentina is also partly to blame and must be remedied.
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's Facundo thus functions as a study of the Argentine character, a prescription for the modernization of Latin America, and a protest against the tyranny of the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1835-1852). In contrast, Echeverria, although he also opposed tyrannical forms of governance, cried out for a return to old ways, rather than advancement into what he saw as a false form of progress. Reflecting his contrasting assumptions to Echeverria, Sarmiento (1811-1888) also subtitled his work Civilization and Barbarism, to contrast not only the barbarism of principal character, the nineteenth century caudillo or dictator Juan Facundo Quiroga with the fundamentally pure spirit of his people, but also the displays of barbarism and purity already extant in the Argentinean topography of the land of the pampas, and the variety of cultures and national characters encompassed within Argentinean borders.
As the caudillo is a dictator, and the matador is a killer, thus both author's texts use figures of blood and terror, such as the matador or brutal commander, to both culturally describe a particular contemporary moment of the Argentinean world in which they dwelled, and to critique the ruling authority. Neither author approved of the tyranny of de Rosas. But Echeverria extols the purity of pampas, while Sarmiento saw its lands and the land's lack of governance and education giving rise, not to purity, but the conditions that allowed Echeverria's slaughterhouse of a metaphor to become reality.
Thus Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's work presented an Argentina that was rich and cultured in its heritage, yet wild and ungoverned in a dangerous, rather than a romantic fashion as did Echeverria. In Chapters II and III of Sarmiento's text, respectively entitled "Argentine Originality" and "Characters and Association," the author painted a picture of a Latin American land that was both charming and cultured, and refined and social -- a world that was destroyed by the Revolution of 1810 and the subsequent dictatorship, but which had fundamentally barbaric elements that could not be fully extricated, thus giving rise to de Rosas' leadership.
This cultured spirit was not entirely destroyed, suggests Sarmiento, although it was indeed injured by the actions of the dictatorial protagonist of Facundo. Once upon a time, Sarmiento wrote, "music too" was found among our people," as a "national taste and recognized by all our neighbors. When an Argentine was first introduced to a Chilean family, the Chilean family at once invite him [the Argentine] to the piano, or hand him a guitar, and if he excuses himself on the ground he does not know how to play they express wonder and incredulity saying, "An Argentine who is not a musician? This general supposition bears witness to our natural habits and culture." This romantic view of the pastoral beauty and musical quantity at the hearts of the aristocracy, the aboriginal, and the rural populace, both Sarmiento and Echeverria extolled, and astounded even other Latin American peoples an already music-dominated Latin American continent. (Sarmiento, Chapter II)
In Argentina, because of its intense civility and culture, stated Sarmiento "it is a fact that the young city people of the better classes play the piano, flute, violin or guitar. And even the wild half-breed children of the streets devote themselves almost wholly to music, and many "skillful composers" have come from...
For most the idea was the anonymous nature of the village, and how easy it was for anyone to commit an atrocity against another, if given the official sanction to do so. Stanley Edgar Hyman believed that the nature and purpose of his wife's work were misunderstood because her "fierce visions of dissociation and madness, of alienation and withdrawal, of cruelty and terror" were interpreted as "personal, even neurotic, fantasies."
Similarly the Ayurvedic tradition of India emphasized rest and relaxation and nutritional well-being, along with various mentally stimulating exercises. Ayurvedic resorts are still popular in the East. Buddhism is also viewed as an avenue out of depression -- a mode to enlightenment. Nonetheless, as James C.-Y. Chou (2005) states, "The concept of psychological depression in Eastern cultures is not as well accepted as it is in Western cultures. In fact,
Post World War I era: Freud and Ortega y Gasset The outbreak of World War I was a traumatic and disillusioning event for many people in Europe, perhaps most of all for those who had committed themselves to a notion of progress and advancement in human affairs. The sheer scale of the destruction and death unleashed by the war, which "exceeded that of all other wars known to history," at the
The history of Indian and European scalping) Another factor that should be considered in the discussion of the origins of European scalping traditions is the evidence in etymology. There is evidence of the prior knowledge and use of scalping in the original usage and understanding of the word ' scalping'. The noun "scalp" (from a Scandinavian root) existed in English long before the seventeenth century. It had two meanings of different ages.
Coetzee and Defoe Coetzee's novels like Foe and Dusklands are an explicit rejection of the old cultural and literary canons, of which Robinson Crusoe has always been part. Indeed, his stories reverse the standard narrative of white male narrators, adventurers and colonizers, who explore and conquer the 'savage' regions of the world and mold them in the image of Western-Christian civilization. White men literally tell these stories, while blacks, Asians, American
Eurocentrism and History Of Amerindians Eurocentrism and the History of Amerindians When Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic and reached the Americas, he was convinced that he actually reached India. Because of his conviction, Columbus dubbed the peoples of the Americas "Indians." It was the beginning of European and later Euro-American myth-making in describing Native Amerindians and the shared histories of peoples who have lived in the American continent for the last
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now