Africa under erasure: the North African travels of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Roberto Arlt

Abstract

Ninety years separate the African travels of Domingo F. Sarmiento and Roberto Arlt. Sarmiento visited Algeria at the end of the 1840s to examine political and educational systems away from Chile and in order to confirm the political and racial theories he had set out in Civilización y barbarie (1845); Arlt travelled to Spain and Morocco as a correspondent for El Mundo of Buenos Aires in the 1930s and wrote columns and stories. Their differing attitudes to race, politics and everyday life in North Africa offer revealing insights into political changes in Argentina between the two journeys.

Keywords:

• Domingo F. Sarmiento
• Roberto Arlt
• Argentina
• race
• politics

Acknowledgements

I have dealt before with one of Arlt's African tales, ‘La factoría de Farjalla Bill Ali’ (see Ben Bollig, ‘One or Several Betrayals? or, When is Betrayal Treason? Genet, Arlt and the Argentine Liberal Project’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 22, no. 4 (2003), 401–19). I am grateful to Thea Pitman for her comments on an earlier version of this essay.

Notes

1. Pratt also notes that Sarmiento's work is one of the first in which a Latin American writer produces a travelogue of his European travels (Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 189–193).

2. Ricardo Cicerchia, ‘The Arena of Memory: Travelers, Historians and Cultural Frontiers’, The Americas, 60, no. 1 (2003), 3.

3. Kelly Austin, ‘Missives and Messages: Epistolarity and Translation in Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's Viajes por Europa, África y América 1845–1847’, Mester, no. 32 (2003), 104.

4. There are three strands to negative criticism of Sarmiento's political and theoretical work. The first comes in the work of late nineteenth-century revisionist historians, beginning with Saldías, who attempt to revalidate the Rosas regime in nationalist terms (see, for example, Adolfo Saldías, Historia de la Confederació'n argentina, 2nd edition, 3 vols [Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1973 (1892)]). Secondly, more recent Right-wing nationalists such as Chávez have criticised Sarmiento's anti-Argentine, pro-European stance as inauthentic and a betrayal of traditional Catholic Argentine values, which they see personified in the figure of the gaucho (Fermín Chávez, Civilización y barbarie en la historia de la cultura argentina (Buenos Aires: Theoría, 1974)). Finally, Marxist critics such as Viñas and Fernández Retamar adopt an anti-colonial stance against Sarmiento's espousal of increased European influence and presence in Latin America (see David Viñas, Literatura argentina y realidad política: de Sarmiento a Cortázar (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 1971); and Roberto Fernández Retamar, ‘Algunos usos de Civilización y barbarie’, Revista mexicana de sociología, 51, no. 3 (1989), 291–325).Mignolo includes Sarmiento as an example of the ‘discourse of assimilation’ in Latin American post-colonial thought (Walter D. Mignolo, ‘Human Understanding and (Latin) American Interests: The Politics and Sensibilities of Geohistorical Locations’, in Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray, eds, A Companion to Postcolonial Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 190), or, as Katra puts it, Sarmiento's works are characterised by ‘the dogmatic support that he almost always demonstrated for ‘foreign’, European, international, and liberal interests’ (William H. Katra, ‘Rereading Viajes: Race, Identity, and National Destiny’, in Julio Halperín Donghi et al, eds, Sarmiento: Author of a Nation (London: University of California: 1994), 77).

5. Paul Verdevoye, ‘Viajes por Francia y Argelia’, in Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Viajes (Madrid: Archivos, 1993), 689 and 707 respectively. All translations from Spanish language texts are my own unless otherwise stated.

6. Paul Verdevoye, ‘Viajes por Francia y Argelia’, in Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Viajes (Madrid: Archivos, 1993), 689 and 707 respectively. All translations from Spanish language texts are my own unless otherwise stated., 691.

7. Gabriel E. Brizuela, Viajes por Europa, África y América: su significado en la evolución del pensamiento político de Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (San Juan, Arg.: Andrés Lara, 1998), 6.

8. Olga Fernández Latour de Botas, ‘La parabola africana como pre-texto de Sarmiento’, in Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Viajes, 1055.

9. Katra, ‘Rereading Viajes’, 76.

10. Fernández Latour de Botas, ‘La parabola africana’, 1071.

11. Sarmiento, Viajes, 170.

12. Sarmiento, Viajes, 171.

13. Sarmiento, Viajes, 172.

14. Sarmiento, Viajes, 187 and 190 respectively.

15. Sarmiento, Viajes, 173.

16. Sarmiento, Viajes, 174.

17. Sarmiento, Viajes, 174–175.

18. Sarmiento, Viajes, 175.

19. Sarmiento, Viajes, 202.

20. Idem.

21. Sarmiento performs several remarkable deductions in defence of his characterisation of the Europe/Africa distinction: the Gospels and the Koran are of the same ‘tronco’ [trunk], but whereas the former has prepared the way for all human progress and the continuation of ‘tradiciones puras’ [pure traditions], the latter has offered the cry of protest of the pastoral races and immobilised and fixed barbarous customs from the earliest ages of the earth (Sarmiento, Viajes, 177).

22. Verdevoye, ‘Viajes por Francia y Argelia’, 639–716.

23. Verdevoye, ‘Viajes por Francia y Argelia’, 710.

24. Austin, ‘Missives and Messages’, 103.

25. Idem.

26. Idem, 105 and 120 respectively.

27. Katra, ‘Rereading Viajes’, 73.

28. Diana S. Goodrich, ‘From Barbarism to Civilization: Travels of a Latin American Literary Text’, American Literary History, 4, no. 3 (1992), 451.

29. Diana S. Goodrich, ‘From Barbarism to Civilization: Travels of a Latin American Literary Text’, American Literary History, 4, no. 3 (1992), 452. Pratt, for example, sees Sarmiento following in the footsteps of, but going beyond and eventually rejecting, the work of Alexander von Humboldt, which he cites in French in Facundo (Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 186–187).

30. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo, o, Civilización y barbarie, ed. R. Yahni (Madrid: Cátedra 1990).

31. Sarmiento, Viajes, 179.

32. Verdevoye, ‘Viajes por Francia y Argelia’, 690.

33. Sarmiento, Viajes, 188.

34. Sarmiento, Viajes, 190.

35. Viñas, Literatura argentina, 174.

36. Sarmiento, Viajes, 183 and 198 respectively.

37. Sarmiento, Viajes, 184.

38. Sarmiento, Viajes, 185–186.

39. Sarmiento, Viajes, 198.

40. Cicerchia, ‘The Arena of Memory’, 4.

41. Verdevoye, ‘Viajes por Francia y Argelia’, 698 (added emphasis).

42. Pratt states it thus: ‘Here [in North Africa], and perhaps only here, does he get to be a European pure and simple, and a colonialist. In surprisingly schematic fashion, Sarmiento identifies completely with the French and their colonial project in Algeria’ (Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 192–193).

43. Viñas, Literatura argentina, 172.

44. Sarmiento, Viajes, 173.

45. Victoria Cox, ‘Viajes reales ficticios: Roberto Arlt y su descripción del Oriente’, Monographic review/Revista monográfica, no. 12 (1996), 368–369.

46. Roberto Arlt, Aguafuertes españolas (Buenos Aires: Fabril, 1971), 67.

47. Roberto Arlt, Aguafuertes españolas (Buenos Aires: Fabril, 1971), 70.

48. Roberto Arlt, Aguafuertes españolas (Buenos Aires: Fabril, 1971), 73.

49. Roberto Arlt, Aguafuertes españolas (Buenos Aires: Fabril, 1971), 74.

50. Gorica Majstorovic, ‘From Argentina to Spain and North Africa’, Iberoamericana, 6, no. 21 (2006), 109–114.

51. Arlt, Aguafuertes, 77–78.

52. Majstorovic, ‘From Argentina to Spain’, 112.

53. Majstorovic, ‘From Argentina to Spain’, 113.

54. Arlt, Aguafuertes, 96.

55. Arlt, Aguafuertes, 100.

56. Arlt, Aguafuertes, 107.

57. Majstorovic, ‘From Argentina to Spain’, 111.

58. Arlt, Aguafuertes, 87.

59. Arlt, Aguafuertes, 82.

60. Arlt, Aguafuertes, 82–83 and 99 respectively.

61. Arlt, Aguafuertes, 93–94.

62. Arlt, Aguafuertes, 95–96.

63. Roberto Arlt, El criador de gorilas (Buenos Aires: Fabril, 1969), 65.

64. Roberto Arlt, El criador de gorilas (Buenos Aires: Fabril, 1969), 66.

65. Arlt's play África was first staged in the Teatro del Pueblo on 17 March 1938 (see Roberto Arlt, ‘África’, in Teatro completo I (Buenos Aires: Schapire, 1968), 189–272). Much of the material is shared with his stories and columns. Perhaps the key difference to the Aguafuertes, a difference that África shares with the Criador tales, is the importance given to political background, in particular espionage and international intrigue, as well as local politics.

66. Arlt, El criador, 15.

67. Arlt, El criador, 17.

68. Arlt, El criador, 15.

69. Arlt, El criador, 21–22.

70. See Bollig, ‘One or Several Betrayals?’, 401–419.