Facundo is an 1845 book written by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento who became the Argentine

President around 30 years after the publication and was a political activist before this. The book was
a critical examination of Juan Manuel de Rosas, an Argentine caudillo at the time. The style of the
book is also very idiosyncratic mixing fiction and non-fiction. The book can be seen as an blueprint of
Sarmiento’s political philosophy by portraying the fictional figure of Facundo as a barbaric and
uneducated caudillo as an antithesis to Sarmiento’s aim of promoting honest and educated officials
who hold up and promote the ideas of the Enlightenment.

It first examines Argentine geography and society and how these elements led to the Revolution and
the rise of Rosas. The book then deals with the story of the eponymous character, Juan Facundo
Quiroga. Facundo never earns an education and leaves his family following disagreements with them
to become a gaucho (defined as a native South American cowboy, usually of mixed Spanish and
Indian ancestry). Facundo grows his reputation earning a leadership position in the Llanos Militia.
Facundo later rules La Rioja as a strongman leader whilst pursuing women, gambling incessantly, and
cruelly executing his enemies. Facundo also took control of Mendoza and San Juan using terror to
control them and thus prohibiting productivity. He is eventually assassinated by a gaucho outlaw,
Santos Perez, which many since have construed as being planned by Rosas the caudillo from the line
“an impartial history still awaits facts and revelations, in order to point its finger at the instigator of
the assassins”.