Sarmiento´s Girls

It´s hard to say enough about Domingo F. Sarmiento, Argentina´s 7th president ...nor where to start or stop.  Born in poverty in San Juan, his mother wove ponchos, his father drove a mule train to feed a family of nine.

He went on to become the first true pan-American, practically founded the famed Argentine middle class, was offered "anything but the presidency" by Chile if he would only switch his citizenship, and is remembered best for being "Argentina´s education president."

The following story might leave you with the impression that he was sort of schoolmarmish ...but that would be wrong; he was a bit of a delinquent as a kid and as a young man was never afraid to get his sword bloody in the battles against the provincial warlords.

This week, the Winona Daily News is exploring one of Sarmiento´s US connections and, more importantly, the lives of the Minnesota women that he convinced to come to the then wild and wooly Argentine outback!

The occasion is the arrival of students and faculty from Winona State University to retrace the footsteps of the 65 US women who answered Sarmiento´s call ...17 of whom were teachers from Winona, Minnesota.

Sarmiento firmly believed that education was the solution for anything and everything.  For a man of that opinion, the daunting illiteracy rate in 1870's Argentina called for one thing: a national educational system.

While traveling in Europe, he had learned of the ambitious US program of free public education.  Later as ambassador to the US, he travelled from Boston to Chicago and points South investigating the educational system before deciding on the Chicago Public Schools as his model.  He wrote a few books, founded a magazine, ran for president entirely from New York City, and got elected before he even got back home!

He got back just in time for the yellow fever epidemic to kill 13,000 people ...and a drought that killed 2,000,000 cattle, the country's biggest source of export income.

What to do?  Education and public libraries.

And teachers!  Women teachers.  Women teachers from the US.  That was a radical idea for it´s time.  Not only were the women Protestants, Argentine boys having female school masters was virtually unknown.

To make matters seem even more unlikely, it appears that none of the women spoke Spanish ...but that was nothing a little education wouldn´t cure.  After 75 days at sea, the women were given a 4 month crash course in castellano and drew upon their Latin and French.

Sarmiento did his best to take good care of his recruits; their passage was paid, their salaries were 50% higher than back home, and he defended them from the prejudices that he hated, himself.

The Minnesota women must have been particularly to his liking.  Some of the first US teachers to arrive in Argentina decided to stay in Buenos Aires; Sarmiento wanted teachers for the interior where some places were considered more Catholic than the Vatican.

All of the Minnesota women did their hitch away from comfortable Capital.

One can imagine these good Lutheran Minnesotans chafing under the religious hatred and sexism.  Sarmiento went so far as to dismiss a Papal Nuncio who was causing trouble for a recruit in Córdoba ...but couldn´t help poor Julia Stearns who died of typhoid in Paraná.

The locals, having never encountered a Protestant corpse, didn´t know what to do with her body.  She was buried outside the cemetary walls.

Many of the women eventually went back to the US ...some to other countries ...and some lived the rest of their lives in Argentina.

The Winona Daily News series is a great read!  I´d love to meet their 2011 colleagues when they arrive!

WSU Teachers in 1800s Lead Country to Literacy
WSU Teachers Played Major Role in 1800s 
Winona Women Educators of Argentina
WSU Delegation to Argentina to Rebuild Ties