On Civilization and Severed Heads: South American Sertões

• Thomas Genova ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Minnesota Morris

     University of Minnesota Morris

     City of Morris, Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana, ISSN 0145-8973, Vol. 49, Nº. 1, 2020, págs. 95-114
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The self-proclaimed "livro de ataque" tells the story of a group of mostly Afro-descended sugar workers who flee the coastal plantations of the Northeastern State of Bahia in the decade following the 1888 abolition of slavery for the region's interior desert, known as the sertao. Upon assuming the presidency in 1868, Sarmiento embarked upon a modernization program that would involve the development of the country through foreign investment, the opening of the Patagonia region to commercial agriculture, the elimination of the indigenous and Afro-descended populations, the courting of European immigrants in an effort to whiten the population, and the passing of compulsory education laws. The country would rival Brazil to be "el centro de la modernidad latinoamericana" (Garramuño 8n2)-a competition would move off of the purely symbolic plane as the two countries, along with Chile, began an arms race in an effort to assert military dominance in the region (Veber). Sarmiento's Influence Latin Americanists long have realized the parallels between Facundo and Os sertoes, both of which seek to define a white, capitalist, and republican coastal "civilization" against the precapitalist and semicolonial "barbarism" of the mixed-race peoples of the interior, which they present as simultaneously constitutive of and extraneous to the national project.