SOURCE: Goodrich, Diana Sorensen. “The Wars of Persuasion: Conflict, Interpretation and Power in the Early Years of Facundo's Reception.” In Facundo and the Construction of Argentine Culture, pp. 23-40. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Goodrich studies Facundo's reception and impact upon its initial publication.

In Mi defensa, Sarmiento proclaims: “My love of learning has had no other origin than having learned to read very well.” [En mí no ha tenido otro origen mi afición a instruirme que el haber aprendido a leer muy bien.]¹ One of the tricks his orphaned texts play upon him is that they call into question the very possibility of reading well. This is epitomized by Facundo: though unquestionably an honored member of the Latin American canon, Facundo has been read in such divergent ways that it challenges the possibility of interpretive validity. The deferral of...