SOURCE: Molloy, Sylvia. “The Unquiet Self: Mnemonic Strategies in Sarmiento's Autobiographies.” In Sarmiento, Author of a Nation, pp. 193-212. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

In the following essay, originally published in 1991, Molloy examines Sarmiento's biographies and autobiographies, arguing that these works include elements of both genres.

Toward the end of Recuerdos de provincia, speaking of the biographies he has written, Sarmiento declares that “biographies are the most original books South America has to offer in these times and the best material it can give to history.” He then adds that Facundo and “these Recuerdos de provincia belong to the same genre.”¹ Although debatable, both statements are revealing. Autobiography is taken here most literally: it is not necessarily an example of self-expression but a biography; a life, not of another, but of the self. As an example of a genre much valued at the time all over the world...