The first five chapters of “Facundo” present a very interesting introduction to the book and the country of Argentina. He creates an introduction to the geography of Argentina, which is the first hint for me that his target audience is foreigners. He is does not seem to be directing this book towards Argentines who live there, and most definitely not to the gauchos who he criticizes and boxes into a category of horseback riding hooligans.
I cannot help but be struck by the binaries that he creates between urban and rural- city and country. On page 51 Sarmiento paints a vivid picture of a the native town as “the disgraceful reverse side of the coin,” with dirty children and this idea of filth everywhere, which is in stark contrast to the modern, clean ‘European’ urban world of Buenos Aires that he describes. Why is Sarmiento painting this picture of his country in stark difference? - Depicting the vast majority of his land as savage and just a small part as civilized. I think this is in great part to attract the ‘civilized’ reader, be it from France or any other part of Europe. He strives to create connections and perhaps erase some misconceptions that most have of the Americas as being purely barbaric and uncivilized, by creating this image of the urban city. By marking these stark differences between rural and urban, he complies that this barbaric nature exists, but only in the country and attempts to attract the foreign audience to his home.
Today, I think that many of these same preconceptions still hold for urban and rural peoples of all over the Americas. This idea of savage and cultured is very prominent. We can see the dichotomy existing in comparing the so-called ‘developed world’ to the ‘developing world’ as well as from urban to rural. I personally am from a really small town (less than 1000) and people are constantly asking me how I go shopping, how do I survive in the city, why I came all this way to go to school, and the list goes on. There are thousands of stereotypes about people from the country, and in fact that of always being on horseback (page 73) even still exists (to a certain degree).
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1 comment:
i never thought of that...comparing the developing countries to the underdeveloped countries, thats an interesting connection. it makes sense, and unfortunately it is still present, in a slightly different way as is barbarism and civilization in Sarmiento's book.
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