The Facundo begins with a scene in which Sarmiento places himself as the main character. There, he narrates his first-person experience of federal violence, which he suffers while escaping his country to Chile. In response to the "cardinals, punches and blows received" (p.5), Sarmiento leaves a message in French that the federals cannot decipher, which for the writer is a manifestation of his lack of culture. Such is the misunderstanding generated by these words in another language – and not just any language, but that of the Europe that Sarmiento wants to take as a model for America – that the feds believe that it is a "hieroglyph". This first story depicts for the first time in the text the theme of the struggle between civilization and barbarism, a struggle in which Sarmiento chooses writing as his weapon of combat, while his enemy – the cob, the federal, the barbarian – chooses physical aggression.
Sarmiento provides us with a translation of the words in French – "men are disgorged: ideas, no" – but it is a free translation, which particularizes in an act of violence, the disgorgement, which for the anti-Rosistas is typical of the system of government of Rosas. However, literal translation – ideas are not killed – has been installed in the Argentine imaginary as a phrase of Sarmiento's own. It may be ironic that Sarmiento denounces the barbarity of the other and that, in the act of translating and quoting, he commits a barbarity, not only because he offers us an inaccurate translation, but also because the reference to the source, Fortoul, is erroneous: as Paul Grossac has pointed out, the phrase in French – whose complete form is on ne tire pas de coups de fusil aux idées – is actually by Diderot. In the Facundo, there is more than one equivocal or reappropriated reference, which is part of the way in which the text is composed, through the various readings and discourses that the writer puts to work in his writing. Sarmiento's quotes are a manifestation of his confidence in the power of reading to understand reality.
