Domingo Sarmiento

Domingo Sarmiento (1811-1888), Argentine president (1868-1874) and man of letters, one of the most illustrious individuals of 19th-century South America. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was born in San Juan and was largely self-educated. In the civil war that raged in Argentina in the late 1820s, Sarmiento fought on the liberal side. When Juan Manuel de Rosas established his dictatorship in 1835, Sarmiento went into exile in Chile. There he engaged in journalism and education and published his “Facundo: Civilización o barbarie” (1845; translated 1868), an essay that discusses the conflict between barbarism and civilization as a perennial theme in Latin American literature. It has become a classic of Argentine literature. In 1842 he was appointed director of a new teacher-training institution in Santiago, Chile, and three years later the Chilean government sent him to Europe and the United States to study educational systems. After the fall of Rosas in 1852, Sarmiento returned to Argentina.

Sarmiento was Argentine minister to the United States from 1864 to 1868, and at the end of his tenure he was elected president of Argentina. His administration was vigorous and progressive—expanding trade, improving transportation, promoting immigration, and greatly enhancing education. In his post-presidential years he returned to his main interest, education. As director of schools in Buenos Aires, he reorganized the school system.