Books about Quiroga from Amazon.com

A classic work of Latin American literature, Domingo Sarmiento's Facundo has become an integral part of the history, politics, and culture of Latin America since its first publication in 1845. Partially translated into English when it was first published, this foundational text appears here for the first time in its entirety.

An educator and writer, Sarmiento was President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874. His Facundo is a study of the Argentine character, a prescription for the modernization of Latin America, and a protest against the tyranny of the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1835-1852). The book brings nineteenth-century Latin American history to life even as it raises questions still being debated today--questions regarding the "civilized" city versus the "barbaric" countryside, the treatment of indigenous and African populations, and the classically liberal plan of modernization. Facundo's celebrated and frequently anthologized portraits of the caudillo Juan Facundo Quiroga and other colorful characters give readers an exhilarating sense of Argentine culture in the making.

Kathleen Ross's translation renders Sarmiento's passionate prose into English with all its richness intact, allowing the English-language reader the full experience of Facundo's intensity and historical reach..
Price: $2.80 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Written in political exile by one of Argentina's greatest statesmen and intellectuals, this work is ostensibly a biography of the gaucho "barbarian" Juan Facundo Quiroga. It is also a complex and passionate investigation of the dialectic of civilization and barbarism. Sarmiento explores the impact of Argentinian geography on the life of the gaucho, chronicles the upbringing and the often bloody political and military adventures of Facundo, and examines the reign of Juan Manuel de Rosas, the tyrannical ruler of Argentina at the time of Sarmiento's writing..
Price: $6.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From the works of an acclaimed Latin American short story writer, this collection offers an array of stories about love, loss, family tragedy, geographical exile, human endurance, and personal struggle. Reprint.".
Price: $8.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In Spanish

Right from his first book, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento shows his immense literary quality as well as an enormous statesman foresight.

Facundo is a text about geography, sociology, politics, and history –all blended together– as well as the clear preview of the government program of who was to become the president of Argentina 15 years later.

Sarmiento wrote Facundo in 1845. The Argentine republic at that time was just 35 years old (since its emancipation, in 1810), of which the last 12 had been under the rule of Juan Manuel de Rosas, the Buenos Aires governor self appointed "Restorer of the law", title that barely concealed the autocratic essence of his government.

The confrontation of two opposed conceptions about political power: uneducated autocratic rule versus cultivated institutionalized government, is the basis of this work, first conceived as a political pamphlet and finally grown into masterpiece heights due to the overflowing Sarmiento talent.

The statesman sets the tone, with no concessions to romanticise what he considers faults in a society with aspirations to reach civilized status. Thus, in opposition to Charles Darwin and many British subjects who traversed the pampas at the time, Sarmiento finds no positive aspects in the "gauchos". His sharp descriptions of the tracker, the horse tamer, the maverick, etc., show more precision than sympathy.

Against that background, Sarmiento unwinds the Facundo Quiroga biography. In his writing Facundo becomes the archetype of the mean, brave, cruel, uneducated, dominant, outstanding horseman, regarded with high esteem by and among the rural masses, but with little or null positive use to a civilized conception.

The list of savage deeds by Quiroga and his "Montoneros" hordes: bullying, threats, and sacking of whole cities in La Rioja, San Luis, San Juan, Mendoza, Córdoba and Tucumán is endless as the "caudillo" sets forth towards Buenos Aires.

The quarrel between "Unitary" and "Federals" had destroyed any trace of governmental authority. Rosas was the sole figure of command, though just in rural areas, so the city dwellers –"Porteños"– regarded him as a solution to the lack of control. The astute Rosas accepted the challenge, though under the condition of being granted the sum of public power. In spite of the objections by some citizens Rosas got appointed "Restaurador de las leyes", and soon showed a cruel side through the actions of the "Mazorca" (corn cobb society) which terrified the oposition by assasination, rape and sacking. Strangely enough no expropiations were performed at that time: Rosas was a firm believer in private property!

Defeated Quiroga, and later on assasinated in a place in Cordoba called Barranca Yaco, Rosas inherits the "caudillo" interior fiefdom exerting in fact real power over the 14 provinces that composed the Argentine Republic at that time until 1852 when he was defeated and toppled by General Justo J. de Urquiza in the Caseros battle.

"For Sarmiento, barbarism was the native tribes and gaucho plains; and cities, the civilization. The gaucho has been replaced by colonial farmers and blue collar workers, barbarism now is not just in the fields but also in the big city mobs, and the demagogue plays the role of the ancient caudillo, who also was a demagogue. The disjunctive has not changed. Sub especie aeternatitis, Facundo is still the best argentine story", wrote José Luis Borges in his preface to the 1975 edition.

Today, 158 years after Facundo was written, and almost 30 years since the Borges reflections, Argentina still fights entangled between the forces that sustain intitutional power versus those who privilege the personal rule of the powerful.

Civilization or barbarism is for Argentina still a pending issue, whose roots cannot be fully understood without the enlightening words of Sarmiento..
Price: $12.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Este es un libro de relatos infantiles protagonizados por animales y ambientados en la selva de Misiones Quiroga dedicó este libro a sus hijos, con quienes vivió un período de pobreza en un húmedo y pequeño sótano..
Price: $6.30 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From its sweaty beats to the pulsating music on the streets, Latin/o America is perceived in the United States as the land of heat, the toy store for Western sex. It is the territory of magical fantasy and of revolutionary threat, where topography is the travel guide of desire, directing imperial voyeurs to the exhibition of the flesh.

Jose Quiroga flips the stereotype upside down: he shows how Latin/o American lesbians and gay men have consistently eschewed notions of sexual identity for a politics of intervention. In Tropics of Desire, Quiroga reads hesitant Mexican poets as sex-positive voices, he questions how outing and identity politics can fall prey to the manipulations of the state, and explores how invisibility has been used as a tactical tool in opposition to the universal imperative to come out.

Drawing on diverse cultural examples such as the performance of bolero and salsa, film, literature, and correspondence, and influenced by masters like Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and a rich tradition of Latin American stylists, Quiroga argues for a politics that denies biological determinism and cannibalizes cultural stereotypes for the sake of political action..
Price: $22.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The war between Mexico and the United States (1846-1848) is consider one of the most painful episodes in this nation's history, both by the defeat suffered and the loss of half of the territory As a historical fact that has shaped the consciousness and national identity, around this event have been written numerous works, some in the heat of the war itself and others with the serenity afforded by distance and time. The American historiography on the matter has been much more prolific, but since 1997 the 150 anniversary of the war renewed the Mexican interest in this event and the overall analysis of the context, military and political aspects of it. Understanding the war and its motives involves going back in the past. The internal context of Mexico, characterized by political instability, the struggle between federalism and centralism, the independence of Texas in 1836 and the war with France in 1838 put the country in a position of weakness that is observed in this text. Here we can analyze, from the nineteenth century, the details of a region divided into and between two countries that became a meeting place. Now that s becoming dominant is urgent the need to reconcile interests and value the richness that migration has generated..
Price: $15.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]