sarmiento's book is a critique and also a symptom of argentina's cultural conflicts. in 1810, the country had gained independence from the spanish empire, but sarmiento complains that argentina had yet to cohere as a unified entity. 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. this division was in part a split between the city and the countryside. then as now, buenos aires was the country's largest and wealthiest city as a result of its access to river trade routes and the south atlantic. buenos aires was exposed not only to trade but to fresh ideas and european culture. these economic and cultural differences caused tension between buenos aires and the land-locked regions of the country. despite his unitarian sympathies, sarmiento himself came from the provinces, a native of the western town of san juan.