When the feather of Sarmiento saved San Martín from an unjust oblivion

At the dawn of a new anniversary of the Battle of Chacabuco (February 12, 1817), the illustrious San Juan published in the newspaper Mercury, from Valparaíso (Chile), a remarkable article evoking this memorable day and its main protagonist, General Don José de San Martín. The note in question appeared in the edition of February 11, 1841, under the title "February 12, 1817", signed by "A Lieutenant of Artillery".

At that time, San Martin spent the days of his voluntary ostracism at home in Grand Bourg (France). He had spent 17 long years in the old continent., during which he was the subject of multiple slander, mainly from the press addicted to the government of Rivadavia in Buenos Aires, which reached unsuspected limits when in 1829, in the context of his frustrated return in the country, it was cured coward The diatribes and slander occurred beyond the Andes, since they occurred in Chile and, to a lesser extent, in Peru, all the republics released under the influence of their genius and their redemptive sword.

Bartolomé Miter will say in the inaugural address of the Equestrian Statue of the Liberator (July 13, 1862) in the Plaza de Marte, today Plaza San Martín: "Traveling alone the way that he had traveled shortly before , followed by courageous legions, where his genius was the soul, he could scarcely deserve from Chile a precarious and temporary hospitality, soured by behavior, and since then, Chile has been stricken from its history for twenty years years the name of the founder of his independence, in the great national holidays that reminded him of the anniversaries of the battles of Chacabuco and Maipú who badured them, in the same flags that floated in the wind of freedom conquered by the genius and the sword of San Martin, at the head of the Argentine and Chilean legions, the name of San Martin shone only by its absence!

This is the context in which Don Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who was in the prime of his life, was about to serve his thirty – year – old exiled in Chile, from where he went to work. is constantly beaten before the governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas. .

Faced with the neglect that prevails in Chile, Sarmiento maintained in his masterful article: "The stranger who observes us believe we believe the children of the Spanish defeated on this great day, annoyed to see repeating a humiliating and hateful memory. Twenty-four years have barely pbaded since this memorable day gave birth to Chacabuco to life or death for American independence, and no longer mentions the illustrious names that immortalized him. . ".

After an interesting description of the battle, he wondered: "What have we in the meantime of so much glory? (…) Listen to the judgments of this ungrateful generation that has come to us and has missed out. instruments as worn and useless (…) See him become forgetful of our long efforts and our efforts to make him independent and powerful! (…) One day, the story will eagerly gather the names of all those who fought in Chacabuco and other places as glorious as this one. ". He concluded: "While the press keeps a criminal silence on our historical events and that this generation goes up without understanding what is important for Chile, these salvos and flags that adorn February 12, we every time we go through the sun's head this August, we will greet him with religious veneration ".

The repercussion that caused the publication of this article was excellent, so much so that the boundaries were extended. Andrés Bello de Caracas, an intimate friend of Simón Bolívar, congratulated him.

The young publicist, dissatisfied, writes again to evoke the glorious era of independence. So much so that on April 4, 1841, he also published in Mercury"The eighteen days of Chile", clearly referring to the time elapsed between the defeat of Cancha Rayada (March 19, 1818) and the decisive battle of Maipú (April 5, 1818).

The illustrious sanjuanino shook the Chilean society and fanned the conscience of its leaders who took up the criticism of the sarmientina. It's so much Don Manuel Bulnes, then President of Chile, wrote and sent to the Honorable Chilean Congress a bill in which he ordered that General San Martin be at the service of the Chilean army throughout his life and that he be paid the wages that corresponded to his clbad, authorizing him to reside abroad. The aforementioned project became law on October 6, 1842.

What was San Martin's reaction to this recognition, albeit late? In a letter to his friend William Miller, he tells us: "Ten days after my departure from Chile, the first Congress of Peru has not only granted a pension for life, but has also filled me in." Honors that I did not think deserve … (…) Two legislative bademblies of the Argentine Republic, after the actions of Chacabuco and Maipú, have honored me with their approval and other distinctions, and even those of Colombia and Mexico have proclaimed me a citizen of these states.Only the legislative bademblies of Chile have never made the slightest mention of General San Martin, I forget that I you confess, I was so much more sensitive than having had any intervention in his internal government, I only wanted the approval of my military conduct in this republic. "

From there, a revision movement began in Chile in the study of the history of its independence, indispensable to the figure of San Martín, who was among his greatest exponents Don Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, who will ultimately be the impeller. so that a statue is erected in Chile, immortalizing the figure of General San Martín, which finally materialized on April 5, 1863.

Sarmiento's ever sharp and controversial pen has come to serve as a masterpiece of Chilean society, to veil the veil of forgetfulness and give way to the apotheosis of the Liberatorand with it the glorious Andean army, protagonist of the famous day of Chacabuco and the freedom of the "Citadel of America".

Shortly after these publications, the Chilean government sent Sarmiento to Europe and the United States to join the various educational systems that governed the world. In this setting, and letter of recommendation from another independence warrior, hero at Cancha Rayada, as Juan Gregorio de Las Heras, Don Domingo Faustino had the privilege of experiencing San Martin in the epilogue of the life of the great captain, more precisely at Grand Bourg, May 24, 1846.

On this occasion, Sarmiento tried to obtain information from the mouth of the Liberator on the details of the famous interview of Guayaquil, which surely served as a basis for Sarmiento's thesis on San Martin and Bolivar at the time of his death. opportunity for his appointment as a senior member. of the Institute of History of France (July 22, 1847).

During his meeting with the captain of the Andes, Sarmiento said: "There was a deep wound in the heart of this man who hid strange looks, but it did not escape those who scrutinized … So much glory and so much forgetfulness, such great acts and deep silence, he waited without murmuring for nearly thirty years the justice of this posterity to which he appealed in his last moments. "

San Martin has laid his faith in future generations, he understood that those who would be deprived of the clamor of the political dissensions of his time would appreciate and value his legacy. It is to Sarmiento to deserve the noble merit of having evoked St. Martin at a very peculiar moment, when his celebrated figure has been inexplicably eclipsed by the cruelty of forgetfulness and ingratitude..

When, on September 20, 1822, San Martín ceased to be a public man, he struck the tranquility of the righteous and the vision of a statesman, one of his best "As for my public conduct, my compatriots, as generally things will divide their opinion, the children of these will give the real failure."

In this regard, as the historian Carlos Alberto Guzmán points out: "The children of the children of his contemporaries made the final decision and another riddle of the story was realized: the soldier who abandons a brilliant military career, the leader who resigns For all the powers, the citizen vilified by his contemporaries, the voluntary excluded, the forgotten dead, is today, in the equitable judgment of his fellow citizens, the model to follow for the Argentines who want a new and glorious nation ".