Sarmiento and Martinez Estrada

Civilizacidn y Barbarie.1 In 1933, in his Radiografia de la pampa,2 Martinez Estrada concluded that the basic system of life and government described by Sarmiento in Facundo had returned to haunt Argentine history. In a comparison of the events in which led to the rise of the Rosas government and those of 1930 at the time of the fall of President Yrigoyen, Martinez Estrada noted subtle similarities: 1830 es un momento la disoluci6n de un orden imperante por inercia y la exhumaci6n de un cuerpo y un alma inmortales: 1930 tambien (Radiografia, p. 171). In 1955, with 2Qud es esto?,3 Martinez Estrada continued the analysis begun in Radiografia. Just as Sarmiento had written in 1845 that en Facundo Quiroga no veo un caudillo simplemente, sino una manifestaci6n de la vida argentina (Facundo, p. 239), Martinez wrote in 1955 that en la figura de Per6n y lo que el represent6 y sigue representando, he creido ver personalizados si no todos, la mayoria de los males difusos y proteicos que aquejan a mi pais desde antes de su nacimiento (Qued es esto?, p. 12). In the 1960's, when Martinez Estrada had turned to a more

Art · Humanities · Argentine historical studies · Borges, Kipling, and Jewish Identity · Literary and Cultural Studies