Dude went in a trip to research the European education systems and spent the goverment’s money in orgies like a boss.

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was an argentinian politician who would become president of Argentina in 1868, known as the “Father of the Classroom” here due to his policies to foment public education.

In the 1840s he was one of the fiercest oppositors to the goverment of Juan Manuel de Rosas in Buenos Aires, which lead him to be exiled to Chile. There, the chilean minister Manuel Montt decided to give Sarmiento goverment money to go on a 3 year trip to Europe and the US with the intention of researching the education systems there and looking for a ideas to be implemented in Chile.

During his trip, Sarmiento had with himself a diary where he wrote all the spendings he did during the trip, including normal stuff such as food, clothing and cigarettes, to the most interesting of all: Orgies. More than a dozen of times the word “orgy” appears in the documents. These documents were private, and became known only after Sarmiento’s death.

Now, some historians argue that the word “orgy” here meant just “masonic gathering”, which makes sense due to the fact that Sarmiento was a well known freemason. But he was well known as a womanizer and had several lovers so many historians still argue it referred to actual spendings in brothels and orgies.

Saw only the middle panel on mobile and thought this was going to be about Freud.