Like Bilbao, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811–1888) experienced political exile, in his case from his native Argentina. Unlike Bilbao, however, Sarmiento enjoyed the favor of the Chilean government, and he lived in Chile during his years in exile. While there, he was sent to the United States by the Chilean government to study American educational institutions and methods. What he saw impressed him, as is evident in this letter written to his friend and fellow exile Don Valentin Alsina. As you read the letter, think about how Sarmiento’s views compare to those of Bilbao. Why did Bilbao’s idea provoke a hostile reaction from the Chilean government while Sarmiento’s did not?

Don Valentín Alsina:

I am leaving the United States, my dear friend, in that state of excitement caused by viewing a new drama . . . I want to tell you that I am departing sad, thoughtful, pleased, and humbled, with half of my illusions damaged while others struggle against reason to reconstitute again that imagery with which we always clothe ideas not yet seen. . . . The United States is without precedent, a sort of extravaganza that at first sight shocks and disappoints one’s expectations because it runs counter to preconceived ideas. Yet this inconceivable extravaganza is grand and noble, occasionally sublime, and always follows its genius. It has, moreover, such an appearance of permanence and organic strength that ridicule would ricochet from its surface like a spent bullet off the scaly hide of an alligator. . . .

You and I, my friend, having been educated under the iron rod of the sublimest of tyrants . . . have prided ourselves and taken renewed courage from the aureola of light shining over the United States in the midst of the leaden night that broods over South America. At last we have said to each other in order to steel ourselves against present evils: “The Republic exists, strong and invincible, and its light will reach us when the South reflects the North.” It is true, the Republic exists! However, on studying it at close range, one finds that in many respects it does not correspond to the abstract idea which we had formed of it. . . .

Why did the Saxon race happen upon this part of the world, so admirably suited to its industrial instincts? And why did South America, where there were gold and silver mines and gentle, submissive Indians, fall to the lot of the Spanish race — a region made to order for its proud laziness, backwardness, and industrial ineptitude? Is there not order and premeditation in all these cases? Is there not a Providence? . . .

I do not propose to make Providence an accomplice in all American usurpations, nor in its bad example which, in a more or less remote period, may attract to it politically, or annex to it, as the Americans say, Canada, Mexico, etc. Then the union of free men will begin at the North Pole and, for lack of further territory, end at the Isthmus of Panama. . . .

The American village . . . is a small edition of the whole country, with its civil government, its press, schools, banks, municipal organization, census, spirit, and appearance. Out of the primitive forests, the stagecoaches or railroad cars emerge into small clearings in the midst of which stand ten or twelve houses of machine-made bricks held together by mortar laid in very fine, straight lines, which gives their walls the smoothness of geometrical figures. The houses are two stories high and have painted, wooden roofs. Doors and windows, painted white, are fastened by patent locks. Green shades brighten and vary the regularity of the facade. I pay much attention to these details because they alone are sufficient to characterize a people and to give rise to a whole train of reflections. . . .

Westward, where civilization declines and in the far west where it is almost nonexistent because of the sparseness of the population, the aspect, of course, changes. Comfort is reduced to a bare minimum and houses become mere log cabins built in twenty-four hours out of logs set one on top of the other and crossed and dove-tailed at the corners. But even in those remote settlements, there is an appearance of perfect equality among the people in dress, manner, and even intelligence. The merchant, the doctor, the sheriff, and the farmer all look alike. . . . Gradations of civilization and wealth are not expressed, as among us, by special types of clothing. Americans wear no jacket or poncho, but a common type of clothes, and they have even a common bluntness of manner that preserves the appearance of equality in education. . . .

They have no kings, nobles, privileged classes, men born to command, or human machines born to obey. Is not this result consonant with the ideas of justice and equality which Christianity accepts in theory? Well-being is more widely distributed among them than among any other people. . . . They say that this prosperity is all due to the ease of taking up new land. But why, in South America, where it is even easier to take up new land, are neither population nor wealth on the increase, and cities and even capitals so static that not a hundred new houses have been built in them during the past ten years? . . .

The American male is a man with a home or with the certainty of owning one, beyond the reach of hunger and despair, able to hope for any future that his imagination is capable of conjuring up, and endowed with political feelings and needs. In short, he is a man who is his own master, and possessed of a mind elevated by education and a sense of his own dignity. . . .

God has at last permitted the concentration in a single nation of enough virgin territory to permit society to expand indefinitely without fear of poverty. He has given it iron to supplement human strength, coal to turn its machines, forests to provide material for naval construction, popular education to develop the productive capacity of every one of its citizens, religious freedom to attract hundreds of thousands of foreigners to its shores, and political liberty which views despotism and special privilege with abhorrence. It is the republic, in short — strong and ascendant like a new star in the firmament. . . .

The approach to New Orleans is marked by visible changes in the type of cultivation and the architecture of the buildings. . . . Alas slavery, the deep, incurable sore that threatens gangrene to the robust body of the Union! . . . A racial war of extermination will come within a century, or else a mean, black, backward nation will be found alongside a white one — the most powerful and cultivated on earth!

Source: Allison Williams Bunkley, ed., and Stuart Edgar Grummon, trans., A Sarmiento Anthology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1948), pp. 193–266. © 1948, 1976 Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

Questions to Consider