Tyranny in the Americas: Sarmiento’s Tocquevillian Science and the Argentine Civil Wars

Abstract

This paper investigates Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s application of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “new science of politics” to analyze the consequences of the great democratic revolution in Argentina. Unlike Tocqueville’s America, Sarmiento believes that Argentina’s inner convulsions reveal a “new way of being that has no well-marked or known precedent.” What is this new way of being? Which political phenomenon does Sarmiento’s account of the Argentinian civil war reveal to modern science? If Tocqueville found in the United States a “social state” that permitted the delicate balance between democracy and freedom, in Argentina, Sarmiento unveils a new lesson for science, a new modern form of tyranny. Thus, Sarmiento’s Facundo presents two distinct forms of tyranny: the cruel primitive personalism of Facundo Quiroga, representing ancient tyranny, and the cold bureaucratic impersonalism of Juan Manuel de Rosas, who creates modern tyranny based on a total state and total terror.