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University of California Press

About the Book

A classic work of Latin American literature, Domingo Sarmientos Facundo has become an integral part of the history, politics, and culture of Latin America since its first publication in 1845. Partially translated into English when it was first published, this foundational text appears here for the first time in its entirety.

An educator and writer, Sarmiento was President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874. His Facundo is 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 (18351852). The book brings nineteenth-century Latin American history to life even as it raises questions still being debated todayquestions regarding the "civilized" city versus the "barbaric" countryside, the treatment of indigenous and African populations, and the classically liberal plan of modernization. Facundos celebrated and frequently anthologized portraits of the caudillo Juan Facundo Quiroga and other colorful characters give readers an exhilarating sense of Argentine culture in the making.

Kathleen Rosss translation renders Sarmientos passionate prose into English with all its richness intact, allowing the English-language reader the full experience of Facundos intensity and historical reach.

About the Author

Kathleen Ross, Associate Professor of Spanish at New York University, is the author of The Baroque Narrative of Carlos de Signza y Ggora (1994), co-editor of Scents of Wood and Silence: Short Stories by Latin American Women Writers(1991), and the translator of works by Car Vallejo, Roque Dalton, Julieta Campos and others. Roberto Gonzez Echevarr is Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literatures at Yale University

Table of Contents

Facundo: An Introduction
by Roberto Gonzez Echevarr
Translators Introduction

FACUNDO: CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM
Authors Note
Introduction
Chapter I. Physical Aspect of the Argentine Republic
Chapter II. Argentine Originality and Characters
Chapter III. Association
Chapter IV. The Revolution of 1810
Chapter V. Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga
Chapter VI. La Rioja
Chapter VII. Social Life (1825)
Chapter VIII. Tests of Strength
Chapter IX. Society at War
Chapter X. Society at War
Chapter XI. Society at War
Chapter XII. Society at War
Chapter XIII. Barranca-Yaco!!!
Chapter XIV. Unitarist Government
Chapter XV. Present and Future

Glossary of Historical Names
Translators Notes
Index

Reviews

"Sarmiento's Facundo remains a foundational work for the traditions of Latin American fiction and historiography, and so an essential book for English language North Americans also, at least for those not content to abide in ignorance of an ongoing common destiny. Roberto Gonzez Echevarr, the leading critic of Hispanic literature, powerfully introduces the sensitive translation by Kathleen Ross. Sarmiento's High Romantic vision created the myth of the gaucho and his death drive, fascinatingly at some variance with Sarmiento's own vitalistic nuancing of his saga."Harold Bloom, author of The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and Genius: A Mosaic of On Hundred Exemplary Minds

"Publishing this book in a new translation is a historic event in itself. Sarmiento's epic Facundo is more than one of the Western Hemisphere's most important literary works; it epitomizes the meaning of 'classic.' The translator, Kathleen Ross, has captured the epic majesty and metaphoric power of Sarmiento's prose."Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University