Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
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| Term of Office: | October 12, 1868— October 12, 1874 |
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| Predecessor: | Bartolomé Mitre |
| Successor: | Nicolás Avellaneda |
| Vice-president: | Adolfo Alsina |
| Date of Birth: | February 15, 1811 |
| Place of Birth: | San Juan |
| Date of Death: | September 11, 1888 |
| Place of Death: | Asunción, Paraguay |
| Profession: | Journalist |
| Political Party: | Liberal |
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Albarracín (February 15, 1811 – September 11, 1888) was an Argentine statesman, educator, and author. He was president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874.
Sarmiento was born in San Juan, Argentina.
During the 1830s and 1840s, he lived in exile in Chile, where he wrote his best known work Facundo (1845), where he shows his point of view about caudillismo and personalism in politics. He became very interested in the Chilean public school system, and traveled to places such as the United States and Europe to improve his teaching ability. Sarmiento met the American educator Horace Mann and then maintained a prolonged letter exchange with his widow Mary Mann.
His university degree was an honorary one from the University of Michigan, where a bust of him still stands in the Modern Languages Building.
In Chile, he entered into an intense debate with the neoclassicist theorist Andrés Bello over the nature of literature, Sarmiento coming down firmly on the side of Romanticism. His Facundo is considered the first important Latin American essay, and regarded by some as an important precursor to the novel, which got off to a late start in his part of the world. Facundo is important for many reasons: narrative style, political philosophy, and the codification of heterogeneous cultures — gauchos, blacks, and indigenous peoples.
In 1868, Sarmiento was elected to become the new president in place of the liberal Bartolomé Mitre. During Sarmiento's presidency, student enrollment doubled, and about a hundred public libraries were built. Sarmiento was also able to increase the amount of immigration from Europe with an extensive international campaign. Besides the considerable build-up of the Argentine education system, Sarmiento's presidency was also characterized by an economic policy that - unlike that of his liberal-conservative predecessors (and successors) - rejected British-backed free trade ideas and supported the national industry with protectionist policies, tariffs and a rise of import tax rates. His presidency also witnessed the end of the War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay, and the 3 de Febrero Project, which led to the creation of the Buenos Aires Zoo.
In a letter to Mitre, Sarmiento wrote "Fertilizing the soil with their blood is the only thing gauchos are good for". Historian José María Rosa interprets this as proof of Sarmiento's harshness towards the lower non-educated classes in Argentina, especially the Gauchos.
He died in Asunción, (Paraguay) and was buried in La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.
Latin American Teacher's Day was established in Sarmiento's honor at the 1943 Interamerican Conference on Education, which was held in Panama.
There is a statue in honor of Sarmiento in Boston on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, between Gloucester and Hereford streets, erected in 1973.
[edit] Selected works
- Mi defensa
- Facundo - Civilización y Barbarie - Vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga
- Viajes, Argirópolis
- Recuerdos de Provincia (translated into English by Elizabeth Garrels and Asa Zatz as Recollections of a Provincial Past, Library of Latin America, Oxford University Press, 2005; ISBN 0-19-511369-1)
- Campaña del Ejército Grande
- Conflicto y armonías de las razas en América
- De la educación popular
- Travels in the United States in 1847 (edited and translated into English by Michael Aaron Rockland)
[edit] Sources
- "My dear sir: Mary Mann's letters to Sarmiento, 1865–1881", by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, ISBN 987-98659-0-1, 2001, Publisher: Instituto Cultural Argentino Norteamericano.
- Historia Argentina by José María Rosa
| Preceded by Bartolomé Mitre |
President of Argentina 1868–1874 |
Succeeded by Nicolás Avellaneda |
