It is a cornerstone of Latin American literature: a work of creative non-fiction that helped to define the parameters for thinking about the region's development, modernization, power, and culture.

Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría calls the work "the most important book written by a Latin American in any discipline or genre".

In the words of González Echevarría: "in proposing the dialectic between civilization and barbarism as the central conflict in Latin American culture Facundo gave shape to a polemic that began in the colonial period and continues to the present day".

The book was a critical analysis of Argentine culture as he saw it, represented in men such as Rosas and the regional leader Juan Facundo Quiroga, a warlord from La Rioja.

The country's chief political division saw the Unitarists (or Unitarians, with whom Sarmiento sided), who favored centralization, counterposed against the Federalists, who believed that the regions should maintain a good measure of autonomy.

However, under Rivadavia's rule, the salaries of common laborers were subjected to government wage ceilings,[11] and the gauchos ("cattle-wrangling horsemen of the pampas")[12] were either imprisoned or forced to work without pay.

[16] According to Latin American historian John Lynch, Juan Manuel de Rosas was "a landowner, a rural caudillo, and the dictator of Buenos Aires from 1829 to 1852".

His rule, assisted by Juan Facundo Quiroga and Estanislao López, was respected and he was praised for his ability to maintain harmony between Buenos Aires and the rural areas.

Through his discussion of Argentina's geography, Sarmiento demonstrates Buenos Aires' advantages; the river systems were communications arteries which, by enabling trade, helped the city to achieve civilization.

[37] His killing of two royalist prisoners after a jailbreak saw him acclaimed as a hero among the gauchos, and on relocating to La Rioja, Facundo was appointed to a leadership position in the Llanos Militia.

Sarmiento contends that Dorrego, a Federalist, was interested neither in social progress nor in ending barbaric behaviour in Argentina by improving the level of civilization and education of its rural inhabitants.

Sarmiento writes, "The red ribbon is a materialization of the terror that accompanies you everywhere, in the streets, in the bosom of the family; it must be thought about when dressing, when undressing, and ideas are always engraved upon us by association".

The social results of the French blockade, however, had been fruitful for the Argentine Republic, and served to demonstrate in all their nakedness the current state of mind and the new elements of struggle, which were to ignite a fierce war that can end only with the fall of that monstrous government.

[47]Spanish critic and philosopher Miguel de Unamuno comments of the book, "I never took Facundo by Sarmiento as a historical work, nor do I think it can be very valued in that regard.

According to González Echevarría, the book is at once an "essay, biography, autobiography, novel, epic, memoir, confession, political pamphlet, diatribe, scientific treatise, [and] travelogue".

[51] The dichotomy between civilization and barbarism is the book's central idea; Facundo Quiroga is portrayed as wild, untamed, and standing opposed to true progress through his rejection of European cultural ideals—found at that time in the metropolitan society of Buenos Aires.

Literary critic Sorensen Goodrich argues that although Sarmiento was not the first to articulate this dichotomy, he forged it into a powerful and prominent theme that would impact Latin American literature.

Caudillos like Facundo Quiroga are seen, at the beginning of the book, as the antithesis of education, high culture, and civil stability; barbarism was like a never ending litany of social ills.

[57] Using the wilderness of the pampas to reinforce his social analysis, he characterizes those who were isolated and opposed to political dialogue as ignorant and anarchic—symbolized by Argentina's desolate physical geography.

[58] Conversely, Latin America was connected to barbarism, which Sarmiento used mainly to illustrate the way in which Argentina was disconnected from the numerous resources surrounding it, limiting the growth of the country.

[59] In the history of post-independence Latin America, dictatorships have been relatively common—examples range from Paraguay's José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia in the 19th century to Chile's Augusto Pinochet in the 20th.

Writers such as Sarmiento used the power of the written word in order to criticize government, using literature as a tool, an instance of resistance and as a weapon against repression.

[60] Sarmiento was writing not only for Argentina but for a wider audience too, especially the United States and Europe; in his view, these regions were close to civilization; his purpose was to seduce his readers toward his own political viewpoint.

[70] According to Sorensen, "early readers of Facundo were deeply influenced by the struggles that preceded and followed Rosas's dictatorship, and their views sprang from their relationship to the strife for interpretive and political hegemony".

[5] Subsequent dictator novels, such as El Señor Presidente by Miguel Ángel Asturias or The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa, drew upon its ideas,[5] and a knowledge of Facundo enhances the reader's understanding of these later books.

[72] One irony of the impact of Sarmiento's essay genre and fictional literature is that, according to González Echevarría, the gaucho has become "an object of nostalgia, a lost origin around which to build a national mythology".

[72] González Echevarría further argues that Juan Facundo Quiroga also continues to exist, since he represents "our unresolved struggle between good and evil, and our lives' inexorable drive toward death".

[72] According to translator Kathleen Ross, "Facundo continues to inspire controversy and debate because it contributes to national myths of modernization, anti-populism, and racist ideology".

The second edition, also published in Chile (in 1851), contained significant alterations—Sarmiento removed the last two chapters on the advice of Valentín Alsina, an exiled Argentinian lawyer and politician.

[74] Facundo was first translated in 1868, by Mary Mann, a friend of Sarmiento, with the title Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism.