Facundo part two

This blog entry is very late. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to take notes as I read, but it’s a method that seems to make reading an incredibly slow and time consuming activity. So, what can I say about Facundo… I have lots of interpretation type ideas. But really, I don’t think you’d be that interested in hearing them. The cool literary kind of idea’s Sarmiento throws at us are given so directly and repetitively that it doesn’t even feel like I’ve done any work. People are shaped by their environment; The environment determines the destiny of a people; Facundo is a tiger, and as a tiger he can keep even the most savage men in their place(the tiger is the one thing which Facundo feared); People under Rosas are animals. A relationship that differs greatly from the idea’s coming out of “civilized” Europe. People aren’t animals but rational creatures which are capable of choosing their own path in life, and governments ought to respect these principles of human nature. Treating a human as an animal would seem contradictory. Something like that. But my point is just that, I think Sarmiento pretty much straight up tell us everything I’ve just said(and more…), so I think I have to come up with something better(or at least something which isn’t so obvious).

I don’t like Sarmiento Comparing Facundo to Robs Pierre. I know very little of the man, except he was responsible for mass execution following the French revolution. Do they both kill a little excessively? Yea I guess so. But Facundo murdered to make people fear him and to feel powerful ect. I think it was very arbitrary kind of motivation for his mass murder. Robs Pierre wanted to wipe out possible threats to the new order, he did it for the sake of rational government and progress. Maybe Facundo and Rosas also committed mass murder for the sake of progress and rational liberal government. Sarmiento actually makes this point rather clearly, so yes it was necessary murder like that of Robs Pierre. Murder for the sake of progress. So maybe I change my mind.

It was boring, overly detailed, but Sarmiento admits this. So I can’t even talk about without it being trivial.

At some point in the book it talks about how Rosas is able to get us to believe things by repeating them over and over again. “Death to the Unitarists” and that kind of thing. Is Sarmiento using the tricks of the dictator on the reader? Is he trying to trick me into believing everything he has to say? Or did he do this on purpose, so I’ll see on two levels how this repetition technique works. I see the technique overtly described as a practice of Rosas, and then I see the technique actually put to used in the work itself…