Argirópolis and the changes in the historical conception of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Abstract

The beginning of the 1850´s marks the moment when several intellectuals of the 1837 Generation disputed, on the Plata region context, which project was the best to civilize and organize the emerging Argentine nation. This article intends to explore the conceptual redefinitions which occurred at that moment in Sarmiento´s political discourse, through the analysis of Facundo and Argirópolis – two of his most important works. The main hypothesis is that the changes in his way of dealing with history were related to an expansion of the role of human actions in his project to civilize the Plata region. Thus, Argirópolis expresses the utopia of turning what he describes in Facundo as a desert of nonexistent sociability, into a civilization.