Interior Minister, Florencio Randazzo kicks off a two year rail investment project tomorrow starting with improvements to the Sarmiento railway tunnel. The work in the ‘biggest tunnel in Latin America’ marks the first project from a new transport investment scheme, the details of which are being decided this week. More than $1 billion will be put into improving the network across a period of two years.

The exact details of the new transport plan are being determined over the next 15 days. However, the short term focus will be on the Sarmiento and Mitre branches, previously managed by the Buenos Aires Trenes company (TBA).

TBA were stripped of their contract a month ago due to investigations into the Once train crash in February in which 51 people died. The cause of the devastating crash on the 22^nd February is still under investigation, however the consistent lack of investment in the city’s transport infrastructure is not under debate.

The new investment scheme is divided into three parts and will improve signalling, tracks, and rolling stock. The project is being headed by the Interior Ministry. It was taken out of the hands of the Ministry of Federal Planning on the 7^th June and will be led by interior minister Florencio Randazzo instead of planning minister Julio de Vido.

The change comes after President Fernández replaced head of Transport Juan Pablo Schiavi with Alejandro Ramos in March.

Tomorrow, work will begin to renew 60 km of track. Fourty three changes will be made to the Sarmiento line which connects the Once station with the area of Moreno. The line has been handed over to the privately-owned Metrovías and Ferrovías companies.

“We’ve taken a political decision to make these changes” said Florencio Randazzo during a visit to José León Suárez station on the Mitre branch last Friday. “These works are finally being carried out after years of a lack in investment and maintenance by private companies.”

Randazzo and Ramos met with Benito Roggio from Metrovías and Gabriel Romero from Ferrovias last week to continue discussions about the new contracts.

The final plan is due to be announced on the 13th July.

Once a matter of national pride, the Argentine educational system today has become a microcosm of the challenges confronting the rest of the world, and as such is an unwitting heir to the West’s unresolved ideological legacy in education, the origins of which have been blurred by time and distance.

Teachers protest the closure of certain levels at an elementary school in San Telmo which would result in larger class sizes. (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Despite the fact that Argentina has the 3rd highest literacy rate in Latin America (99.2% after Cuba and Uruguay), and spent 7.1% of GDP on education in 2010 (approximately US$21bn) the nation is experiencing “an educational tragedy” in the words of the former rector of the University of Buenos Aires, Guillermo Jaim Etcheverry.

There can be no doubt that the system faces problems. Teacher union strikes are common for a variety of reasons, including salary disputes, violence in the classroom, and a lack of respect in society. Schools are also crowded, despite an official average 13:1 student/teacher ratio, with morning and afternoon shifts, while the poor state of maintenance of many buildings is obvious.

In the year 2008, only 48% of Argentine teenagers would finish secondary school (UNICEF). And although registration for universities grew 33% over a ten-year period, out of every 100 new university students, only 10-12 will eventually receive their degree, a statistic that has remained stagnant since the turn of the century (CEPP). Employers express discontent at the level of preparation of the incoming workforce and according to a recent IBD report, 80% of businesses in all sectors believe that secondary education is key to changing this trend.

From these declarations and statistics, it is clear that something must be done, but there is no social consensus as to what. Education itself— what is education? Why do we educate? – has become the subject of discussion, and the conceptual framework on which this society bases the criteria for an ‘educated’ population.

The ‘Discovery’ of Childhood

Education, as we know it, is basically a derivative of the ‘discovery’ of childhood. The idea of a period set aside for the development of the immature human, evolved in Europe over a 200-year period starting near the end of the Middle Ages and culminating in the Enlightenment. Before that, children would learn through first-hand observation of the tasks, habits and responsibilities of adults.

Family working together at home.

But for the mechanistic world view developed and propagated between the 17th and 19th centuries by Descartes, Locke, and Newton, children suddenly became the focus of attention, and childhood was understood as “a function of adult expectations”. In response to this new awareness, the social concept of family took root, although the reality of the family, like that of childhood of course, had always existed. Families now took on greater social significance as the unit charged with child welfare, health and survival. Indeed, our modern concept of what a family should be is derived from this period.

According to historian Colin Heywood, society at this time typically promoted a utilitarian view of the child—taking the “economically useless but emotionally priceless” child and making something of him/her. There also was an economic incentive for taking especial notice of the child, as parents wanted to ensure their “capital”—home, business, savings—was safe. This shift in the way society viewed childhood and the family took place on many levels. As Norman Davies, Oxford historian, writes “It can be traced in the dress and iconography of the times, in the invention of toys, games, and pastimes specifically for children, in changing morals and manners; above all, in a radical new approach to education.”

Schools vs. Education

Though schools have existed since ancient Greece in one form or another, they were conceived as places to spend free time; the word ‘school’ originally meant ‘leisure’. The subject matter studied in medieval schools linked to the cathedrals was limited to such empirical knowledge fitting to the student’s station in life, such as monk or knight, and did not always include reading, writing, or arithmetic. What was novel during the period of the discovery of childhood was the systematic application of schools as instruments for ‘education’ or the ‘forming’ of the child, and the implications this had in the development of class hierarchies in the West.

Children at school.

Although those children who did not attend school could not be considered ignorant nor even illiterate, the relationship between literacy, wealth, and occupation that marks the economic emergence of a ruling elite in Western civilisation and the social inequalities which accompany that phenomena run “like a red thread” through the history of education. In other words, those who went to school belonged to the ruling class; those who didn’t, were ruled. Only when the economic realities of the Industrial Revolution transformed Western society was ‘education’ thought of as a possibility for the masses. Little by little, the lower classes were able to improve their social position and ensure that their children, in turn, would be educated.

Public education for the masses was originally financed by rich industrialists, as Heywood describes: “[the manufacturers] risked compromising the future quality of the industrial workforce…however reluctant the rich might have been to subsidise the children of the poor, they could hardly ignore the fact that the young embodied the future of their society. They would therefore have to devote some resources to what would now be called investment in human capital [emphasis added] to produce the next generation of workers and soldiers.”

Education became the principal activity of childhood, an activity taken for granted nowadays: “The ideals of the Enlightenment made huge claims for their policy of investing in schools. It would, they believed, reduce crime and disorder, make workers more productive, and…instil moral values in the ‘great unwashed’…even today most people admit to some residual faith in the more modern notion of education as an emancipatory force.”

Most thinkers or educators during this period were content “with the notion that schools should reinforce existing social hierarchies” rather than undermine them. In other words, children who attended school would be constantly reminded what their ‘estate’ was, the duties of said estate, and the “labour and craft appropriate for that estate”. Lawmakers ‘knew’ what was best for the masses, and although the working classes might let themselves be educated, it was thought that schools and teachers would have to help parents raise their children “in a responsible manner”, and avoid transmitting the idea of an “artificial equality”. In other words, schools were harnessed into helping lower and middle class families raise their children in a way that would perpetuate the awareness of their socio-economic reality.

It was at this moment in the evolution in education that Argentina as a nation came into being.

The Argentine Educational Crisis

After the yoke of Spanish colonialism had been thrown off, Argentina strove to define its constitutional mission and national identity, a process which was made more difficult by economic pressures created by the Industrial Revolution in the rest of the world. In short, Argentina struggled to invent itself while competing with existing world economic structures.

As a result, many social programmes that were part of the colonial Spanish regime carried over into the new national policies of different Latin American states. Education was no exception. The organisation was based on the cathedral schools developed during the Middle Ages—largely developed for forming the ruling class, clergy and lawyers, heavily steeped in the Roman Catholic world vision, and propagating a mainly Euro-centric version of history. Indeed, Argentine history was not included in the syllabus of schools until the turn of the 20th century.

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia)

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (that mean mug on the $50 note), the main proponent for public schooling in Argentina, was heavily influenced by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, especially Benjamin Franklin, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Horace Mann. Seeking to impose their ideas in Argentina (but without regard to Argentine reality), he opened public schools for basic education, made education available to women, and removed religious education from the public curriculum, declaring: “We need to make a school out of all the Republic.”

Although born and bred in Argentina, ‘the son of the Revolution’, Sarmiento could not overcome his horror of the country’s indigenous peoples. His legacy as the ‘Father of the classroom’ loses moral stature when his achievements in favour of Argentine ‘progress’ are considered alongside his lesser-known elitist and racist policies: “If you don’t want to educate them out of mercy, educate them out of fear.” Although he was willing to educate the masses regardless of race or class, he nonetheless was concerned about the possibility that Argentina, once inserted in the capitalist world, would fall into decay due to the influence of these ‘barbarians’: “Not only the Indians, but the gauchos and the immigrant population could all be carriers of this contagion.”

Eventually Sarmiento came to the conclusion that “an education directed towards those values compatible with work, production, and the order which guarantees them” would overcome the negative effects of these peoples. He erroneously envied Anglo-Saxon America, asking: “Why was it the Anglo-Saxon race that hit upon that bit of the world which fit its industrial instincts so well, and why did the Spanish have the misfortune to land in South America where…they found abject and meek Indians that perfectly matched their lazy masters in their backwardness and ineptitude. Where is Divine Providence in this?” There is no mention of the massacres of indigenous peoples carried out by the colonising forces of different nationalities in North America.

After Bartolome Mitre’s (the mug on the $2 note) presidency (1862-68), the social character of education had been determined, with schools for different groups reinforcing the duties and function of their respective social stratum just like the European model. Mitre founded the Colegios Nacionales, elitist secondary schools with a humanistic orientation, where graduates would eventually seek a university degree or political activity.

But by the beginning of the 20th century, the unidirectional purpose of the Colegios was deemed insufficient and reforms were enacted to allow for the creation of industrial schools, where the education of a burgeoning urban population, the result of increasing immigration and rural abandonment, could occur. An initiative to close these schools was made on the parliamentary floor, alerting representatives to “the dangers of an education that will create more expectations in all social sectors than what is recommendable for the oligarchical conservative order.” This initiative was called down as ‘anti-democratic’, but other similar acts were made and enforced; schools eventually incorporated vocational training, but those who undertook it would be directed away from pursuing university studies.

The Second World War reinforced Argentina’s role as an industrial nation and the boom in production of local products and the elaboration of raw materials gave the country the boost it needed to incorporate education at all levels and for all citizens. But it wasn’t until Juan Domingo Perón’s first term in power that education began to occupy a place in the Argentine identity. He wanted to create a specific type of man, a specific type of Argentine, where “social justice functioned as a condition for all educational intervention”.

According to Perón, the enemies of this intervention were obvious: “The oligarchy, the great adversary of the Argentine people, those who live off the efforts of the working population.” Though his educational programmes were more political than lasting, due to the social and political upheaval that followed his presidencies, nonetheless, his legacy can be felt today in the three tenets defining the national identity—literacy, citizenship, and job security.

War on Thinking

Argentina’s modern history is dominated by the military dictatorship of 1976-83, and nowhere can the devastating impact of this era more evident than the area of education. From the point of view of the fascist de facto government, a system of education should “serve the needs of the nation and consolidate the values and aspirations of the Argentine being.”

This basically meant that any previous educational order was suspect as a potential factor for subversion; in the words of then Minister of Education, Ricardo Bruera: “There is a public subversion known to all, which has penetrated very deeply in the educational system and we call it ‘institutional subversion’. Argentina has suffered from the institutionalisation of the perverting of our values, which is reflected in the mental make-up of our students.” (Clarín, 1976)

A schoolgirl in a gun-sight at Parque de la Memoria (Photo: Patricia Di Filippo)

The proposed values were “western, Christian, and capitalist”, a clear return to the oligarchical principles that traditionally marked Argentine education prior to WW2 and the Peronist reforms. The ‘Noche de los Lapices Rotos’ (The Night of the Broken Pencils), when military personnel kidnapped, tortured, and murdered ten secondary schoolchildren in 1976 at the outset of the dictatorship, can only be understood as an enforcement of official government education policy during this period. The imminent threat perceived by the military junta was not only a literate population, but a well-educated, thinking population, the result of generations of workers enjoying social mobility through different government programmes. Therefore, education, as the tool to socio-economic improvement for the masses had to be weakened because, as one monument in the Parque de la Memoria attests: “Thinking is revolutionary.”

If any broad educational opportunities were left after the military dictatorship was routed, the subsequent neo-liberal governments took care to destroy them, dismantling vocational and technological schools, switching funds earmarked for public projects and education to ‘private’ endeavours, privatising state industries, and in general leaving the lower and middle classes bereft of one of the best ways to improve their situation, while favouring the classes that could already afford to pay for education, a trend still in place today.

This tendency was reflected worldwide as state policies stripped societies of educational, health, and diverse welfare programmes, all in the name of the ‘free market’. There are few nations in the world that, having embraced neoliberalism, are not undergoing some degree of financial or social decay, including educational programs that are defunct, but which reinforce social and financial hierarchies.

Yet in Argentina there is still a great awareness of recent history; only one generation ago, ‘literacy’ and ‘job security’ had been considered practically a right to which all Argentines had access. The intensity with which the reforms were received from the mid-twentieth century and the ferocity with which they were subsequently overthrown is alive in the Argentine memory today. The current educational situation reflects the struggle to re-socialise schools; that is, to reinsert schools in the reality of Argentine society at all economic levels.

However, increasing investments in education and technology (government financed netbooks, for example), or social programmes (such as food allowances per child and salary hikes for teachers), while helpful, do not address the problem at its source. The present educational model is still based on obsolete ideologies dating from a period in Argentine history when the social and economic needs of the country had not yet been defined, and were established to favour the oligarchy. The foundations of the system are built on an ‘imported’ reality which has little to do with the national concerns, and embraces derogatory racist attitudes, little adapted to the plural nature of modern Argentine society.

The elitist, exclusive context in which the educational system in Argentina is played out is a reflection of a world where learning is still the province of the leisurely and privileged, a tool with which to distinguish the rich from the poor. The current educational crisis represents a world-wide paradox: on the one hand, the ever-increasing difficulties which the lower classes face in order to receive what society for more than 200 years has taught them to believe is necessary for their personal and professional growth; and on the other hand the factions in society which create those obstacles in order to maintain the lower classes in their place.

The relative brevity with which Argentina has experienced this paradox in recent years offers a unique opportunity to the rest of the world to recognise those tendencies which have led our educational system to falter, and fail our children—an opportunity to return to the classroom, as it were, and to learn from our common past, regardless of how distant and despicable.

An old style bar is set up in the basement of Ávila bookstore. (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Priding itself on being the first ever bookstore to have opened in Buenos Aires, La Librería de Ávila bookstore should be a stop on any literary itinerary of city centre attractions.

Specialising in antique books and old magazines, as well as underground literary works, it was honoured by the government earlier this year as a cultural heritage site and is considered the place for digging up the archives.

Inside, mahogany shelves line the walls and an antique staircase leads to a basement that comes filled with the smell of musky old books and steeped in history.

In the 18th century, this basement was once home to a gaucho bar where both alcohol and literary goods were sold, but slowly, and “as always with books”, the volume of literary items expanded until all the shelves were filled and more were needed. It was at this time, explains the bookstore’s current owner Miguel Ávila, that official records date the opening of a bookstore named Librería del Colegio to 1785.

“The bookstore was called the Librería del Colegio because it was on the same street as the renowned Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires,” explains Ávila. “Anything on this street at the time was labelled after the college, if there was a hairdressers, it would be called the Peluquería del Colegio.”

The central location of Ávila bookstore, only one block from the famous Plaza de Mayo, as well as the treasure chest of content it housed, resulted in the store becoming a hangout for some of the most respected intellectuals in town.

From the 1900s onwards, its clientele included literary legend Jorge Luis Borges and Victoria Ocampo, as well as Presidents Bartolomé Mitre, Domingo Sarmiento and Nicolás Avellaneda.

There’s even photographic evidence, proudly displayed inside the store, of a visit by the iconic Eva Perón. “It was a time when presidents actually read,” jokes Ávila.

Joking aside, Avila is responsible for having saved the bookstore from an inevitable fate some twenty years earlier, when multinational burger company McDonald’s had plans to link the abandoned store into their chain.

“I didn’t want it to become a burger house when it was so important for our history, so I reconstructed it to become a centre for cultural history,” he explained with a sudden seriousness.

Ávila bookstore sits at the corner of Alsina and Belgrano, just steps away from the 'Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires'. (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

Though none of the interior you see today is original, care has been taken to construct it to appear authentic, using wood from the 18th century to replicate the early design of the store.

Describing its service as one of “a humanities centre rather than a trade”, Ávila’s aspirations continue to be about reflecting history and expanding knowledge.

Serving as a reminder of the rapid urbanisation of Buenos Aires, the bookstore prides itself on being the only commercial vendor of that period to have remained in its original location and is considered by many to be a cornerstone of cultural development in Argentina.

“You have to see it,” says Ávila excitedly. “It’s the oldest bookstore in Latin America, spanning all the way back to the era of the Spanish.”

Head of the Railway Union (UF), Rubén “Pollo” Sobrero, was arrested this morning in connection to fires and attacks of railway cars that occurred earlier this year. In response, the Sarmiento line is closed today due to a railway strike by workers opposing Sobrero’s arrest.

Sobrero is being accused of conspiracy and is assumed responsible for the fires and attacks of railcars of the stations Haedo, Ramos Mejía and Ciudadela, incidents that happened in May.

According to federal judge of San Martín, Juan Manuel Yalj, many others are suspected to be involved and have also been arrested. Leonardo Portorreal, UF spokesman, has had an arrest warrant issued against him under the same accusations as the union leader.

The Argentine authorities have stated that Sobrero will be questioned in the next few hours.

Continuing our ‘Beyond Borges’ series is an author who if you don’t know for his contribution to Argentine literature, you may well know for being Argentina’s seventh president, the subject of one of Rodin’s final sculptures, or the face of the fifty pesos note.

Sarmiento's writing on the fifty peso note (Photo: Julián Rodriguez Urihuela)

Aside from his achievements in areas of education and modernisation, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was also an intellectual, an activist, and a prolific writer whose historical essay ‘Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie’ has been elevated to classical status among works of Latin American literature.

Life and Early Exiles

Born in the landlocked Argentine province of San Juan in 1811, Sarmiento grew to be an unlikely intellectual. By 15 years of age he had already identified himself as a supporter of the Rivadavia government that was dividing unitarian and federalist ideologies.

Prevented from attending school in Buenos Aires by the outbreak of a civil war in the province, he joined the unitarian army to fight against the invasion of Juan ‘Facundo’ Quiroga – the gaucho who would become his obsession and subject.

With Argentina under the rule of federalist dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, Sarmiento fled to Chile in 1831 where he lived the first of three periods of exile, and began exploring an environment of free expression by writing political commentaries.

In an effort to recreate this same environment inside Argentina, he directed his energies into the foundation of an anti-federalist review, ‘El zonda’, but was forced into exile a second time in 1840. It was during this passage to Chile that he wrote out the misquoted French “On ne tue point les idées” – an incident that would become the preface to ‘Facundo’, his most famous work.

The phrase “ideas cannot be killed” translated as a warning to Rosas, but also served to further emphasise the difference Sarmiento perceived between the civilised intellectual who understood French and the uneducated barbarian who could not.

Back in Chile, and bearing a larger than life chip on his shoulder, Sarmiento resumed an extremely active literary career. Through regular contributions to ‘El mercurio’ and articles in his own newspaper ‘El progreso’, he strove to defeat the political ideologies of Rosas from across the Andes.

Facundo

‘Facundo’ itself was written during this second period of exile, and first appeared in serial form inside ‘El progreso’ in May 1845. Through the impassioned study of real-life figure Juan ‘Facundo’ Quiroga, it launched a strong protest against the federalist dictatorship, painting Facundo’s barbarism as a product of his environment and of the Rosas regime.

Presenting an Argentine national character torn between the dichotomy of civilisation and barbarism, it can be seen as both a critique and a symptom of Argentina’s internal cultural conflicts at the time. In it Sarmiento delivers a written prescription for the modernisation of Latin America, in accordance with his own vision for Argentina’s future under a democratic unitarian government.

The interior of Sarmiento's home (Photo: Axel Rosito)

Often cited an exemplary precursor to the genre of the Latin American dictator novel, ‘Facundo’ set the bar high. Many consider it crucial reading in understanding not only Argentine history but also Latin American history in general.

What began as a biogaphy of the barbaric gaucho nicknamed “the tiger of the plains”, ended as a combination of biography, autobiography, creative non-fiction, essay and political diatribe which fuelled by Sarmiento’s own fascination with his subject, read as easily as fiction.

Political Writing

As an author Sarmiento wrote diversely and extensively, publishing several autobiographical works including ‘Recuerdos de Provinca’ and ‘Campaña del ejército grande’ – describing his own part in  the tri-nation army which finally defeated Rosas in the 1852 ‘Battle of Caseros’.

With Rosas in exile and a programme of national organisation underway, Sarmiento remained in Argentina where he forged a promising political career alongside an ongoing literary one.

Although the majority Latin American literature from the time can be earmarked political in some respect, politics ran as a common thread through almost all of Sarmiento’s work. The appearance of a new edition of ‘Facundo’ at the end of his presidency was considered by some to be a form of political gesturing. The 1874 edition spanned 15 chapters broadly divided in to three sections: the history and geography of Argentina, the barbaric life of the gaucho Juan ‘Facundo’ Quiroga, and several chapters originally left out of the 1845 edition in which Sarmiento outlined his own political visions.

In addition, the much talked about ‘Conflictos y armonias de las razas en América’ is an example of post-presidency writing in which Sarmiento put forward controversial ideas about the effects of racial mixing in Latin America, while continuing to offer the existence of the rural pampas as a reason why Argentina had failed to achieve civilisation.

Ironically, whilst denouncing the barbarism of the Argentine gaucho, Sarmiento simultaneously romanticised him, transforming him into a symbol of national mythology that would soon be at the head Argentine literature. Despite his sometimes controversial opinions, his bold ambition and his renowned egotism, Sarmiento is nowadays reflected upon favourably as a public figure and heralded as the best Argentine writer of the 19th century.

President Sarmiento in 1873 (from Wikipedia)

This year is a special one for Argentina with the upcoming October elections in mind. What many people don’t know is that 2011 is also special for another reason; the bicentenary of a the birth of a big name in Argentina; Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-88).

To better know him – and an important part of Argentine history – you should definitely visit the  Sarmiento Historical Museum, where you can find all the information, objects, books and photos about this Argentine legend. There are more than enough reasons to devote a museum to this jack of all trades: he was both the seventh president of Argentina, an activist, intellectual, world traveller and writer.

His writings had an important influence on the region’s literature and spanned a wide range of genres and topics; from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. His most famous work is the polemic ‘Facundo’ about civilisation and barbarism. Sarmiento was also a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the ‘Generation of 1837′, which had a great influence on 19th century Argentina.

He was president of the Republic of Argentina from 1868 till 1874; when the age of the gaucho was ending, and the age of the merchant and cattleman beginning. Sarmiento sought to create basic freedoms, and wanted to ensure civil safety and progress for everyone. He was well known for his modernisation of the country and he firmly believed in democracy and European liberalism, but was most often seen as a romantic.

Coming from a family of writers, orators and clerics, Sarmiento placed a great value on education and learning. He opened a number of schools including the first school in Latin America for teachers in Santiago in 1842 and proceeded to open 18 more schools. Sarmiento’s belief was that education was the key to happiness and success, and that a nation could not be democratic if it was not educated and therefore: “We must educate our rulers ”

Despite Sarmiento being well known historically, he was not a popular president. During his presidency, Argentina conducted the unpopular War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay and by the arrival of a large influx of European immigrants, which resulted in the outbreak of Yellow Fever in Buenos Aires and the risk of civil war, his popularity became only worse. Sarmiento’s presidency was marked by ongoing rivalry between Buenos Aires and the provinces. In the war against Paraguay, Sarmiento’s adopted son was killed, and Sarmiento suffered from immense grief and was thought to never have been the same again.

In August 1873, Sarmiento was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt and a year later he completed his term as president and stepped down, handing his presidency over to Nicolás Avellaneda, his former Minister of Education. In May 1888, Sarmiento left Argentina for Paraguay, accompanied by his daughter, Ana, and his companion Aurelia Vélez. He died in Asunción on 11th September 1888 from a heart attack and was buried in Buneos Aires at Recoleta Cemetery.

Museo Historio Sarmient (Photo: Gabriela Sellart)

Not only the man, but also the building of the historical museum of Sarmiento is a history on its own. In 1880, during the presidency of Nicolas Avellaneda, it was the headquarters of the national government, during the struggles between the national and provincial authorities. The Belgrano Congress held it sessions in this building, during which it passed the Law of Federalisation of Buenos Aires in its main hall. The building is a prime example of the style of an era, which began in 1850 when the Italian ‘Neo-Renaissance’ has its influences on Argentine architecture. It has been declared a national historical monument and since 11th September 1938 the building was officially inaugurated as the Sarmiento historical museum. Almost all the material you can find in the museum has been donated to the nation by Sarmiento’s family.

The museum’s collection includes objects that belonged to Sarmiento and his family. By making your way through the 11 rooms of the museum, you will encounter the entire life story of Sarmiento, which is explained very clearly and illustrated with photos and images. Next to many objects and documents of the founding father, you can find a big part of the heritage of the man; rooms where his former kitchen, dining room, salon and sleeping room are rebuild in wonderful state; decorated and showed with many details. Everything is provided with extensive information (in Spanish), next to a little brochure with information (English and Spanish).

The present exhibition ‘Dialogues about May – Sarmiento and the romantic thinkers of 1810-1850’ pays special attention to four famous young intellectuals of this time. Its about their ideals, in which way they are the same and in which way they differ, about their travels, banishments and their literary works.

This entire year the museum organises activities as conferences, reading session and music activities among others, with this month an Italian Film Festival.