Cuyano Alborotador book review

In the book Cuyano Alborotador García Hamilton (1999) portrays Domigo Sarmiento with the humanity that history had denied him. Through a truthful and exciting narration, he accounts for unknown details of Sarmiento’s biography, namely the resented child subject to the difficulties in having access to education as well as the young soldier. He depicts the teacher who becomes father in Los Andes as well as the gifted journalist who falls in love with a married woman. 

It is also possible to get to know the personality traits of a man who was hard but at the same time emotional. In fact, García Hamilton (1999) describes Sarmiento’s aggressiveness and irascibility and turns him into an attractive personage who is most often seen as a true romantic. Besides, the author succeeds in depicting a vehement politician who believed in eliminating caudillos or the largest landholdings to establish agricultural colonies and civilize the Argentinian society making it equal to that of the United States. The educator, the statesman, the writer as well as the president of Argentina, all are included in this remarkable work.

His relationship with the English speaking world is one of the most outstanding aspects of Sarmiento’s life which is colorfully described in this book. In fact, García Hamilton (1999) shows Sarmiento ’s contemporaneity with Dickens (1836) and  states “there came a succession of rainy days so they (Ida and Sarmiento, teacher and pupil) gathered in the living room to read the Pickwick Papers,” (as cited by García Hamilton, 1999, p. 281).  Thus the author has provided the biography of a national figure in such a way that he has turned the historic data into a novel with renewed success. This new kind of novel undertakes historical events and national outstanding men from the point of view of the common men and turns them into human beings far from the monuments erected in their honor.

García Hamilton (1999) relies on adequate sources which are mostly primary ones. Cuyano Alborotador is a well-written book, accessible not only to specialists but also to intelligent readers. It includes many quotations from Sarmiento’s literary works, letters he exchanged with other contemporary figures and quotations from newspapers in which he was either bitterly criticized or greatly admired. All of them add to the vividness of the narration as well as aid understanding. Indeed, when making reference to the publication of   Samiento’s critical book Facundo: Civilización o Barbarie, García Hamilton asserts “El Mercurio de Valparaíso and other Chilean newspapers praised the book but this fact did not mitigate the attacks launched by the men from El Siglo” (p. 129). Therefore, by means of highly detailed descriptions the author also leads readers to feel they are part of the setting so that  they can picture the book background just by closing their eyes.

All in all, the author succeeds in depicting Doming Sarmiento as a man who took the challenge of changing the Argentinian culture with courage and through education. Hence he narrates a story that deeply moves readers from the beginning to the end. If this well-documented biography had not been written, both specialists and intelligent readers would not have had the possibility of getting to know an author’s style which is excellently suited to biographies and memoirs studies. García Hamilton (1999) once stated “I wanted to show Sarmiento as a human being with his own personal dramas, miseries and vehemence in struggling for progress and civilization.”

References

Dickens, C. (1836). The Pickwick Papers. London: Chapman and Hall.

García Hamilton, I. (1999). Cuyano Alborotador. Barcelona: Editorial Sudamericana.