Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (15 February 1811-11 September 1888) was President of Argentina from 12 October 1868 to 11 October 1874, succeeding Bartolome Mitre and preceding Nicolas Avellaneda.
Biography[]
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was born in San Juan, Argentina on 15 February 1811, and he grew up in an impoverished family of political activists. He spent much of his early life in exile due to the Argentine Civil War, during which he sided with the Unitarios. In 1831, he fled to Chile as the Federales' leader Facundo Quiroga gained the upper hand in the civil war, and he was frequently in exile from 1843 to 1850, during which time he wrote for the Chilean newspaper El Progreso and published Facundo, a critique of the Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas and the South American world of gauchos and caudillos. He returned to San Juan in 1861 and was elected Governor, and he went on to serve as President of Argentina from 1868 to 1874 as a member of the Liberal Party of Argentina. He championed education for children and women and democracy for Latin America, and he modernized and developed train systems, a postal system, and a comprehensive educational system. He died in Asuncion, Paraguay in 1888 at the age of 77, and he was hailed as one of the greatest writers of Castilian prose.