Gauchos and barbarians: the history of the formation of Argentine nationality from the reading of Jorge Luis Borges

Abstract

This article aims to show that Borges invites the reader to dive in some of his texts in a complex and compelling history about the birth of the nation in the Region of the Prata during the nineteenth century. In this history, we find the debate between two views that prevailed in Argentine literature in the second half of last century: the “interpretation of barbarism” of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in his Facundo or Civilización y Barbarie and the “denunciation of the exploration” of José Hernández in his poem El Gaucho Martin Fierro. In this debate, Borges tries to characterize the gaucho, who had been assimilated or disappeared in the process of consolidation of the city of Buenos Aires as political and economic center of the region. We also find a contradictory Borges. If from one point of view he defends civilization, from another he finds himself fascinated by the authentic, an inhabitant of this land that is not necessarily a civilized one. Would be Borges most concerned with showing his contradictions? This is perhaps a minor question. More important in his work is the method, that combines history and literature.