3 Page Essay based on 3 short stories

Life of Juan Facundo Quiroga

Moreover these traits belong to the original character of the human race.

The man of nature who has not yet learned to restrain or disguise his

passions, displays them in all their energy, and gives himself up to their

impetuosity.

ALEX. History of the Ottoman-Empire

HIS INFANCY AND YOUTH

Between the cities of San Luis and San Juan, lies an extensive

desert, called the Travesia a word which signifies want of water.

The aspect of that waste is mostly gloomy and unpromising,

and the traveller coming from the east does not fail to provide

his chifles with a sufficient quantity of water at the last cistern

which he passes as he approaches it. This Travesia once wit-

nessed the following strange scene. The consequences of some

of the encounters with knives so common among our gauchos

had driven one of them in haste from the city of San Luis and

forced him to escape to the Travesia on foot, and with his

riding gear on his shoulder. in order to avoid the pursuit of the

law. Two comrades were to join him as soon as they could

steal horses for all three. Hunger and thirst were not the only

dangers which at that time awaited him in the desert; a tiger

that had already tasted human flesh had been following the

track of those who crossed it for a year, and more than eight

persons had already been the victims of this preference. In these

regions. where man must contend with this animal for domin-

ion over nature, the former sometimes falls a victim, upon

which the tiger begins to acquire a: preference for the taste of

human flesh. and when it has; once. devoted itself to this novel

form of chase, the pursuit of mankind, it gets the name of man-

eater. The provincial justice nearest the scene of his depredations

calls out the huntsmen of his district, who join, under his au-

thority and guidance, in the pursuit of the beast, which seldom

escapes the consequences of its outlawry.

When our fugitive had proceeded some six leagues, he

thought he heard the distant roar of the animal, and a shudder

ran through him. The roar of the tiger resembles the screech

of the hog, but is prolonged, sharp, and piercing, and even

when there is no occasion for fear, causes an involuntary tremor

of the nerves as if the flesh shuddered consciously at the menace

of death. The roaring was heard clearer and nearer. The tiger

was already upon the trail of the man, who saw no refuge but

a small carob-tree at a great distance. He had to quicken his

pace, and finally to run, for the roars behind him began to

follow each other more rapidly, and each was clearer and more

ringing than the last. At length, flinging his riding gear to one

side of the path, the gaucho turned to the tree which he had

noticed, and in spite of the weakness of its trunk, happily quite

a tall one, he succeeded in clambering to its top, and keeping

himself half concealed among its boughs which oscillated vio-

lently. Thence he could see the swift approach of the tiger,

sniffing the soil and roaring more frequently in proportion to

its increasing perception of the nearness of its prey. Passing

beyond the spot where our traveller had left the path, it lost

the track, and becoming enraged, rapidly circled about until it

discovered the riding gear, which it dashed to fragments by a

single blow. Still more furious from this failure, it resumed its

search for the trail, and at last found out the direction in which

it led. It soon discerned its prey, under whose weight the slight

tree was swaying like a reed upon the summit of which a bird

has alighted. The tiger now sprang forward, and in the twin-

kling of an eye, its monstrous fore-paws were resting on the

slender trunk two yards from the ground, and were imparting

to the tree a convulsive trembling calculated to act upon the

nerves of the gaucho, whose position was far from secure. The

beast exerted its strength in an ineffectual leap; it circled around

the tree, measuring the elevation with eyes reddened by the

thirst for blood, and at length, roaring with rage, it crouched

down, beating the ground frantically with its tail, its eyes fixed

on its prey, its parched mouth half open. This horrible scene

had lasted for nearly two mortal hours; the gaucho's constrained

attitude, and the fearful fascination exercised over him by the

fixed and bloodthirsty stare of the tiger, which irresistibly at-

tracted and retained his own glances, had begun to diminish

his strength, and he already perceived that the moment was at

hand when his exhausted body would fall into the capacious

mouth of his pursuer. But at this moment the distant sound of

the feet of horses on a rapid gallop gave him hope of rescue.

His friends had indeed seen the tiger's foot-prints, and were

hastening on, though without hope of saving him. The scat-

tered fragments of the saddle directed them to the scene of

action, and it was the work of a moment for them to reach it,

to uncoil their lassoes, and to fling them over the tiger, now

blinded by rage. The beast, drawn in opposite directions by the

two lassos, could not evade the swift stabs by which its destined

victim took his revenge for his prolonged torments. "On that

occasion I knew what it was to be afraid," was the expression

of Don Juan Facundo Quiroga, as he related this incident to a

group of officers.

He too was called "the tiger of the Llanos," a title which

did not ill befit him. There are, in fact, as is proved by phre-

nology and comparative anatomy, relations between external

forms and moral qualities, between the countenance of a man

and that of some animal whose disposition resembles his own.

Facundo, as he was long called in the interior, - or, General

Don Facundo Quiroga, as he afterwards became, when society

had received him into its bosom and victory had crowned him

with laurels,-was a stoutly built man of low stature, whose

short neck and broad shoulders supported a well-shaped head,

covered with a profusion1of black and closely curling hair. His

somewhat oval face was half buried in this mass of hair and an

equailly thick black, curly beard, rising to his cheek-bones,

which by their prominence evinced a firm and tenacious will.

His black and fiery eyes, shadowed by thick eyebrows, occa-

sioned an involuntary sense of terror in those on whom they

chanced to fall, for Facundo's glance was never direct, whether

from habit or intention. With the design of making himself

always formidable, he always kept his head bent down, to look

at one from under his eyebrows, like the Ali Pacha of Mono-

voisin. The image of Quiroga is recalled to me by the Cain

represented by the famous Ravel troupe, setting aside the ar-

tistic and statuesque attitudes, which do not correspond to his.

To conclude, his features were regular, and the pale olive of

his complexion harmonized well with the dense shadows which

surrounded it.

The formation of his head showed, notwithstanding this

shaggy covering, the peculiar organization of a man born to

rule. Quiroga possessed those natural qualities which converted

the student or Brienne into the genius or France and the ob-

scure Mameluke who fought with the French at the Pyramids,

into the Viceroy of Egypt. Such natures develop according to

the society in which they originate, and are either noble leaders

who hold the highest place in history, ever forwarding the pro-

gress of civilization, or the cruel and vicious tyrants who be-

come the scourges of their race and time.

Facundo Quiroga was the son of an inhabitant of San Juan,

who had settled in the Llanos of La Rioja, and there had ac-

quired a fortune in pastora1 pursuits. In 1779, Facundo was sent

to his father's native province to receive the limited education,

consisting only of the arts of reading and writing, which he

could acquire in its schools. After a man has come to employ

the hundred trumpets of fame with the noise of his deeds, cu-

riosity or the spirit of investigation is carried to such an extern

as to scent out the insignificant history of the child, in order

to connect it with the biography of the hero; and it is not

seldom that the rudiments of the traits characteristic of the his-

torical personage are met amid fables invented by flattery. The

young Alcibiades is said to have lain down at full length upon

the pavement of the street where he was playing, in order to

insist that the driver of an approaching vehicle should yield the

way to avoid running over him. Napoleon is reported to have

ruled over his fellow-students, and to have entrenched himself

in his study to resist an apprehended insult. Many anecdotes

are now in circulation relating to Facundo, many of which

reveal his true nature. In the house where he lodged, he could

never be induced to take his seat at the family table; in school

he was haughty, reserved, and unsocial; he never joined the

other boys except to head their rebellious proceedings or to

beat them. The master, tired of contending with so untamable

a disposition, on one occasion provided himself with a new and

stiff strap, and said to the frightened boys, as he showed it to

,them. “This is to be made supple upon Facundo.” Facundo,

then eleven years old, heard this threat, and the next day he

tested its value. Without having learned his lesson, he asked

the head-master to hear it himself because, as he said, the as-

sistant was unfriendly to him. The master complied with the

request. Facundo made one mistake, then two, three, and four;

upon which the master used his strap upon him. Facundo,

who had calculated everything, down to the weakness of the

chair in which the master was seated, gave him a buffet, upset

him on his back, and, taking to the street in the confusion

created by this scene, hid himself among some wild vines where

they could not get him out for three days. Was not such a boy

the embryo chieftain who would afterwards defy society at

large?

In early manhood his character took a more decided cast,

constantly becoming more gloomy imperious, and wild. From

the age of fifteen years he was irresistibly controlled by the

passion for gambling, as is often the case with such natures,

which need strong excitement to awaken their dorn1ant ener-

gies. This made him notorious in the city, and intolerable in

the house which afforded him its hospitality; and finally under

this influence, by a shot fired at one George Pena, he shed the

first rill of blood which went to make up the wide torrent that

marked his way through life.

On his becoming an adult, the thread of his life disappears

in an intricate labyrinth of bouts and broils among the people

of the surrounding region. Sometimes lying, hid, always pur-

sued, he passed his time in gambling, working as a common

laborer, domineering over everybody around him, and distrib-

uting his stabs among them.

On the Godoy farm in San Juan are shown to this day mud-

walls of Quiroga's treading; there are others in Fiambola, in La

Rioja, made by him. He himself pointed out others in Men-

Doza, in the very place where one afternoon he had twenty-

six of the offices who surrendered al Chacon dragged from

their houses and shot to avenge Villifane. He also showed some

monuments of his wandering life of labor in the country dis-

tricts of Buenos Ayes. What motives induced this man, brought

up in a respectable family, son of a man of means and creditable

life, to descend to a hireling's position, and moreover to select

the dullest and most brutish kind of work, needing only bodily

strength and endurance? Was it because the labor of building

these mud-walls is recompensed with double wages, and that

he was in haste to get together a little money?

The most connected account of this obscure and roaming

part of his life that I can procure is as follows:

Towards 1806, he went to Chili with a consignment of grain

on his parent's account. This he gambled away, as well as the

animals, which had brought it, and the family slaves who had

accompanied him.

He often took to San Juan and Mendoza droves of the stock

on his father's estate, and these always shared the same fate; for

with Facundo, gambling was a fierce and burning passion

which aroused the deepest instincts of his nature. These suc-

cessive gains and losses of his must have worn out his father's

generosity, for at last he broke off all amicable relations with

his family.

When he had become the terror of the Republic, he was

once asked by one of his parasites, "What was the largest bet

you ever made in your life, General?" "Seventy dollars," re-

plied Quiroga, carelessly, and yet he had just won two hundred

dollars at one stake. He afterwards explained that once when a

young man, having only seventy dollars, he had lost them all

at one throw. But this fact has its characteristic history. Facundo

had been at work for a year as a laborer upon the farm of a

lady, situated in the Plumerillo, and had made himself conspic-

uous by his punctuality in going to work, and by the influence

and authority which he exercised over the other laborers.

When they wanted a holiday to get drunk in, they used to

apply to Facundo, who informed the lady, and gave her his

word, which was always fulfilled, to have all the men at work

the next day. On this account the laborers called him the father.

At the end of a year of steady work, Facundo asked for his

wages, which amounted to seventy dollars, and mounted his

horse without knowing where he was bound, but seeing a col-

lection of people at a grocery store, he alighted, and reaching

over the group around the card-dealer, bet his seventy dollars

on one card. He lost them, and remounting, went on his way,

careless in what direction, until after a little time a justice, To-

ledo by name, who happened to be passing, stopped him to

ask for his passport. Facundo rode up as if about to give it to

him, pretended to be feeling for something in his pocket, and

stretched the justice on the ground with a stab. Was he taking

his revenge upon the judge for his recent loss at play? Or was

it his purpose to satisfy the irritation against, civil authority nat-

ural to a gaucho outlaw, and increase, by this new deed, the

splendor of his rising fame? Both are true explanations. This

mode of revenging himself for misfortunes upon whatever first

offered itself, had many examples in his life. When he was

addressed as General, and had colonels at his orders, he had two

hundred lashes given one of them in his house at San Juan, for

having, as he said, cheated at play. He ordered two hundred

lashes to be given to a young man for having allowed himself

a jest a time when jests were not to his taste; and two hun-

dred lashes was the penalty inflicted on a woman in Mendoza,

for having said to him as he passed, "Farewell, General," when

he was going off in a rage at not having succeeded in intimi-

dating a neighbor of his, who was as peaceable and judicious

as Facundo was rash and gaucho-like.

Facundo reappears later in Buenos Aires, where he was en-

rolled in 1810 as a recruit in the regiment of Arribenos, wich

was commanded by General Ocampo, a native of his own

province, and afterwards president of Charcas. The glorius

career of arms opened before him with the first rays of the sun

of May; and doubtless, endowed with such capacity as his, and

with his destructive and sanguinary instincts, Facundo, could

he have been disciplined to submit to civil authority and en-

nobled in the sublimity of the object of the strife, might some

day have returned from Peru, Chili, or Bolivia, as a General of

the Argentine Republic, like so many other brave gauchos who

began their careers in the humble position of a private soldier.

But Quiroga's rebellious spirit could not endure the yoke of

discipline, the order of the barrack,. or the delay of promotion.

He felt his destiny to be to rule, to rise at a single leap, to create

for himself: without assistance, and in spite of a hostile and

civilized society, a career of his own, combining bravery and

crime, government and disorganization. He was subsequently

recruited into the army of the Andes, and enrolled in the

Mounted Grenadiers. A lieutenant named Garcia took him for

an assistant, and very soon desertion left a vacant place in those

glorious files. Quiroga, like Rosas, like all the vipers that have

thriven under the shade of their country's laurels, made himself

notorious in alter-life by his hatred fur the soldiers of Indepen-

dence, among whom both the men above named made hor-

rible slaughter.

Facundo, after deserting from Buenos Aires, set out for the

interior with three comrades. A squad of soldiery overtook

him; he faced the pursuers and engaged in a real battle with

them, which remained undecided for awhile, until, after having

killed four or five men, he was at liberty to continue his jour-

ney, constantly cutting his way through detachments of troops

which here and there opposed his progress, until he arrived at

San Luis. He was, at a later day, to traverse the same route with

a handful of men, to disperse armies instead of detachments,

and proceed to the famous citadel of Tucuman to blot out the

last remains of Republicanism and civil order.

Facundo now reappears in the Llanos, at his father's house.

At this period occurred an event which is well attested. Yet

one of the writers whose manuscripts I am using, replies to an

inquiry about the matter, “that to the extent of his knowledge

Quiroga never attempted forcibly to deprive his parents of

money,” and I could wish to adopt this statement, irreconcil-

able as it is with unvarying tradition and general consent. The

contrary is shocking to relate. It is said that on his father's refusal

to give him a sum of money which he had demanded, he

watched for the time when both parents were taking an after-

noon nap to fasten the door of the room they occupied, and

to set fire to the straw roof, which was the usual covering of

the buildings of the Llanos!

But what is certain in the matter is that his father once re-

quested the governor of La Rioja to arrest him in order to

check his excesses, and that Facundo, before taking flight from

the Llanos, went to the city of La Rioja, where that official

was to be found at the time, and coming upon him by surprise,

gave him a blow, saying as he did so, "You have sent, sir, to

have me arrested. There, have me arrested now!" On which

he mounted his horse and set off for the open country at a

gallop. At the end of a year he again showed himself at his

father’s house, threw himself at the feet of the old man whom

he had used so ill, and succeeded amid the sobs of both, and

the son's assurances of his reform in reply to the father's

recriminations, in reestablishing peace, although on a very un-

certain basis.

But no change occurred in his character and disorderly hab-

its; races, gambling parties, and expeditions into the country

were the occasions of new acts of violence, stabbings, and as

saults on his part, until he at length made himself intolerable

to all, and rendered his own position very unsafe. Then a great

trought which he announced without shame, got hold of his

mind. The deserter from the Arribenos regiment, the mounted

grenadier who refused to make himself immortal at Chacabuco

or Maipu, determined to join the montonera of Ramirez, the

offshoot from that led by Artigas, whose renown for crime and

hatred for the cities on which it was making war, had reached

the Llanos, and held the provincial government in dread. Fa-

cundo set forth to join 'those buccaneers of the pampa. But

perhaps the knowledge of his character, and of tile importance

of aid which he would give to the destroyers, alarmed his

fellow provincials, for they inforn1ed the authorities of San Luis,

through which he was to pass, of his infernal design. Dupuis,

then (1818) governor, arrested him, and for sometime he re-

mained unnoticed among the criminals confined in the prison.

The prison of San Luis, however, was to be the first step in

His ascent to the elevation which he subsequently attained. San

Martin had sent to San Luis a great number of Spanish officers

of all ranks from among tl1e prisoners taken in Chili. Irritated

by their humiliations and sufferings, or thinking it possible that

the Spanish forces might be assembled again, this party of pris-

oners rose one day and opened tile doors of the cells of the

common criminals, to obtain their aid in a general escape. Fa-

cundo was one of these criminals, and as soon as he found

himself free from prison, he seized an iron bar of his fetters,

split the skull of the very Spaniard who had released him, and

passing through the group of insurgents, left a wide path strewn

with the dead. Some say that the weapon he employed was a

bayonet, and that only three men were killed by it. Quiroga,

however, always talked of the iron bar of the fetters, and of

fourteen dead men. This may be one of the fictions with which

the poetic imagination of the people adorns the types of brute

force they so much admire; perhaps the tale of the iron bar is

an Argentine version of the jaw-bone of San1Son, the Hebrew

Hercules. But Facundo looked upon it as crown of glory, in

accordance with his idea of excellence, and whether by bar or

bayonet, he succeeded, aided by other soldiers and prisoners

whom his example encouraged, in suppressing the insurrection

and reconciling society to himself by this act of bravery, and

placing himself under his country's protection. Thus his name

spread everywhere, ennobled and cleansed, though with blood,

from the stains which had tarnished it.

Facundo returned to La Rioja covered witl1 glory, his coun-

try’s creditor; and with testimonials of his conduct, to show in

the Llanos, among gauchos, the new titles which justified the

terror his name began to inspire; for there is something im-

posing, something which subjugates and controls others in the

man who is rewarded for the assassination of fourteen men at

one time.

Something still remains to be noticed of the previous char-

acter and temper of this pillar of the Confederation. An illiterate

man, one of Quiroga's companions in childhood and youth,

who has supplied me with many of the above facts, sends me

the following curious statements in a manuscript describing

Quiroga's early years: "His public career was not preceded by

the practice of theft; he never committed robbery even in his

most pressing necessities. He was not only fond of fighting, but

would pay for an opportunity, or for a chance to insult the

most renowned champion in any company. He had a great

aversion to respectable men. He never drank. He was very

reserved from his youth, and desired to inspire others with awe

as well as with fear, for which purpose he gave his confidants

to understand that he had the gift of prophecy, in short was a

soothsayer. He treated all connected with him as slaves. He never

went to confession, prayed, or heard mass; I saw him once at mass

after he became a general. He said of himself that he believed

in nothing." The frankness with which these words are written,

prove their truth.

And here ends the private life of Quiroga, in which I have

omitted a long series of deeds which only show his evil nature,

his bad education, and his fierce and bloody instincts. The facts

stated appear to me to sum up the whole public life of Quiroga.

I see in them the great man, the man of genius, in spite of

himself and unknown to himself; a Caesar, Tamerlane, or Mo-

hammed. The fault is not his that thus he was born. In order

to contend with, rule, and control the power of the city, and

the judicial authority, he is willing to descend to anything. If

he is offered a place in the army, he disdains it, because his

impatience cannot wait for promotion. Such a position de-

mands submission, and places fetters upon individual indepen-

dence; the soldier's coat oppresses his body, and military tactics

control his steps, all of which are insufferable! His equestrian

life, a life of danger and of strong excitements, has steeled his

spirit and hardened his heart. He feels an unconquerable and

instinctive hatred for the laws which have pursued him, for the

judges who have condemned him, and for the whole society

and organism from which he has felt himself withdrawn from

his childhood, and which regards him with suspicion and con-

tempt. With these remarks is connected by imperceptible links

the motto of this chapter, "He is the natural man, as yet unused

either to repress or disguise his passions; he does not restrain

their energy, but gives free rein to their impetuosity. This is

the character of the human race." And thus it appears in the

rural districts of the Argentine Republic. Facundo is a type of

primitive barbarism. He recognized no form of subjection. His

rage was that of a wild beast. The locks of his crisp black hair,

which fell in meshes over his brow and eyes, resembled the

snakes of Medusa's head. Anger made his voice hoarse, and

turned his glances into dragons. In a fit of passion he kicked

out the brains of a man with whom he had quarreled at play.

He tore off both the ears of a woman he had lived with, and

had promised to marry, upon her asking him for thirty dollars

for the celebration of the wedding; and 1aid open his son John's

head with an axe, because he could not make him hold his

tongue. He violently beat a beautiful young lady at Tucuman,

whom he had failed either to seduce or to subdue, and exhib-

ited in all his actions a low and brutal yet not a stupid nature,

or one wholly without lofty aims. Incapable of commanding

noble admiration, he delighted in exciting fear; and this plea-

sure was exclusive and dominant with him to the arranging all

his actions so as to produce terror in those around him, whether

it was society in general, the victim on his way to execution,

or his own wife and children. Wanting ability to manage the

machinery of civil government, he substituted terror for patri-

otism and self-sacrifice. Destitute of learning, he surrounded

himself with mysteries, and pretended to a foreknowledge of

events which gave him prestige and reputation among the com-

monalty supporting his claims by an air of impenetrability, by

natural sagacity, an uncommon power of observation, and the

advantage he derived from vulgar credulity.

The repertory of anecdotes relating to Quiroga, and with

which the popular memory is replete, is inexhaustible; his say-

ings, his expedients, bear the stamp of an originality which gives

them a certain Eastern aspect, a certain tint of Solomonic wis-

dom in the conception of the vulgar. Indeed, how does Sol-

omon’s advice for discovering the true mother of the disputed

child differ from Facundo’s method of detecting a thief in the

following instances:-

An article had been stolen from a band, and all endeavors

to discover the thief had proved fruitless. Quiroga drew up the

troops and gave orders for the cutting of as many small wands

of equal length as there were soldiers; then, having had these

wands disturbed one to each man, he said in a confident voice

“The man whose wand will be longer than the others tomorrow

morning is the thief” Next day the troops was again paraded,

and Quiroga proceeded to inspect the wands.

There was one whose wand was, not longer but shorter than the

others. “Wretch! Cried Facundo, in a voice which overpowered

the man with dismay, "it is thou!" And so it was; the

culprit’s confusion was proof of the fact. The expedient was a

simple one; the credulous gaucho, fearing that his wand would:

really grow, had' cut off a piece of it. But to avail one's self of

such means, a man must be superior in intellect to those about

him, and must at least have some knowledge of human nature.

Some portions of a soldier's accoutrements having been stolen

and an inquires having failed to detect the thief, Quiroga

had the troops paraded and marched past him as he stood with

arms and a fixed, piercing, and terrible gaze. He had

previously said, "I know the man," with an air of assurance

not to be questioned. The review began; many men had passed,

and Quiroga still remained motionless, like the statue of Jupiter

Tonans or the God of the Last Judgment. All at once he descended

upon one man, and said in a curt and dry voice, “Where

is the saddle?" "Yonder, sir," replied the other, pointing

to a thicket. "Ho! four fusileers!" cried Quiroga. What revelation

was this? that of terror and guilt made to a man of sagacity.

On another occasion, when a gaucho was answering to charges

of theft which had been brought against him, Facundo interrupted

him with the words, "This rogue has begun to lie. Ho, there!

a hundred lashes!" When the criminal had been taken

away, Quiroga said to some one present, "Look you, my

master, when a gaucho moves his foot while talking, it is a sign

he is telling lies." The lashes extorted from the gaucho the

confession that he had stolen a yoke of oxen.

At another time he was in need of a man of resolution and boldness

To whom he could intrust a dangerous mission. When a man was

brought to him for this purpose, Quiroga was writing; he

raised his head after the man's presence had been repeatedly

announced, looked at him and returned to his writing with the

remark, "Pooh! that is a wretched creature. I want a brave

man and a venturesome one!" It turned out to be true that

the fellow was actually good for nothing.

Hundreds of such stories of Facundo's life, which show the man

of superior ability, served effectually to give him a mysterious

fame among the vulgar, who even attribute superior powers to him.

� The author afterwards learned that Facundo related this story to a company of ladies, and one of his own early acquaintances testified to his having given his father a blow on one occasion.