The President: First Half

The President is a phenomenally complex and ever changing narration. Asturias' style brings to mind Herman Hesse' Steppenwolfe as the focus moves back and forth between a realistic, gritty and detailed account of reality to a world of feelings and fantastic figurative language. In spite of such quick changes from the realistic to the fantastic, and from narrative to verse, the the novel makes two things clear very quickly: this is a world that has come unhinged and is also a place that has suffered from oppression for a long time.

The "specter of death" that hangs over the cradle of Fedina's son; the laughing of the children at the violence and tears of Don Benjamin's puppet; the public urinals that weep for the death of Zany; the secret police being "spotted" as the career of the future. All of these descriptions are to be found at the beginning of book, and though they are more subtle than the individual acts violence that occur, they speak of a society that is permeated with violence and underpinned by a kind of hopeless grief.

The President is a book about a dictator, but Asturias wants us to know immediately that this is not a world of military order, but of chaos; it is a world that has come unhinged. The very first page is an unforgettable description of the “confraternity of a dunghill” on the Cathedral porch. The beggars that are described are apparently only half human as they lack many human faculties and certainly have none of the camaraderie one might expect in a group of humans who know each other. The second chapter, The Flight of Zany, is an intimate introduction to the insane as the reader is led through back allies screaming "Mother!!". Only somewhat less out of control are the children that stream through the streets on the Holiday that occurs in following chapters, fighting, stealing and torturing insects as they go on. With such insanity around him, Angel’s transition from smooth protagonist to troubled and frenzied lover on pages 141/142 is somehow less of a shock. The fit of desperate and insane rage which finally results in his death is almost foretold through the interspersion of such episodes and details throughout the first part of the book.

Fecundo: Part II

What is incredible about the last half of Fecundo is the admiration and absolution Sarmiento finds for him in the midst of an expected indictment. Fecundo is a Caeser, a genius of sorts, in the eyes of author and for all his brutality he is not cruel. He is simply a barbarian, a gaucho who cannot control his rage. When he is not “seeing red” he is capable of great respect for people like Paz and kindness towards common citizens, such as the merchant turned beggar that bestows with ounces of gold; he is not immune to “noble inspiration” or a “spark of virtue”. Fecundo uses terror as a system of governance, because fear is the only way he knows how to govern. How is a perpetrator of such violence not a perpetrator of cruelty? Sarmiento does not see a choice for his protagonist, he is a product of the countryside, something to be admired, but ultimately vanquished in the name of civilization and progress. In Sarmiento’s often positive description of a bloody tyrant we see his admiration for the gaucho character, and perhaps a nostalgia as he perceives no room for such a character in the future of a modern Argentina.


Ultimately, Fecundo is a book about power, about a caudillo with no limits to his boldness and savagery. While Sarmiento is certainly not an advocate of absolute power – ostensibly the book is a call to action against it – he acknowledges and even celebrates the attraction of power. The author himself seems to feel this pull. Why did he not simply write a political pamphlet or a call to arms? As the incomprehensible power of the vast Argentinean countryside inspires its poets, perhaps Fecundo and Rosas inspire Sarmiento through their terrible power. The author is so acutely aware of the pull of terrible power that he comments “if the reader is bored by these thoughts I will tell him about some more frightful crimes” after spending a page or so on political rhetoric. Thus, we see the ultimate contradiction of Fecundo. It is simultaneously an indictment and a celebration of boldly inflicted terror. Only the stupid rule through terror and violence Sarmiento comments, but only the bold can rule with these implements.

Facundo: response to first 7 chapters

What is striking in the first half of Fecundo is the author’s equation of civilization with a subversiveness, a sole bastion of civilized resistance in the face of dictatorship and barbarism. The civilized Buenos Aires resident holds up a pen in the face of the Gaucho’s knife. Yet this distinction between men of violence and men of the pen, which is a rallying cry for the future President of the Republic of Argentina, is immediately blurred in Fecundo. It is blurred in the contrast between Cordoba and Argentina, both places of learning and literature, both cities, but somehow on opposite ends of the battle. Sarmiento attributes this to old styles of learning and old texts, Bentham versus the Bible, however he credits the introduction of math and physics as having a revolutionary effect on the young people of Cordoba. The line is further blurred by the “hero” of his novel, who is literate and the son of a well-educated man; Quiroga is no average Gaucho.

The Gaucho is seemingly the embodiment of barbarism with his refusal to bow before authority and his penchant for solving disputes with a knife, and enjoying it. The Gaucho is a man of the country and what the cities must contend with as the Republic tries to reorganize Argentina in the wake of the 1810 revolution. He is illiterate, idle, and anti-authoritarian to the point that he will acknowledge no civil justice and no public. Yet the Gaucho is also a survivor and a Restreador, and at his best a Baqueano. Sarmiento unequivocally admires these expert trackers who know every bush, every tree, where they are night or day. In fact they are essential to all who want to make war in Argentina, including the revolutionaries. Why does Sarmiento admire such bastions of barbarism? I think it is because they are so intimate with the land that Sarmiento holds so dear, close to it in a way he can never be. They are also part of a landscape that is a source of much inspiration for the Argentinean writers of his day, which holds an irony in and of itself. If civilization exists in literature and literacy in cities, why is it the country – a place of barbarism - that inspires people to write?

Testing

Testing