The 19th century was a period of "foundational fictions" (in critic Doris Sommer's words), novels in the Romantic or Naturalist traditions that attempted to establish a sense of national identity, and which often focused on the role and rights of the indigenous or the dichotomy of "civilization or barbarism", pioneered in Latin America by Esteban Echeverría who was influenced by the Parisian romantics while he lived there from 1825-1930. Romanticism was then taken up by other prominent literary figures, for which see, the Argentine Domingo Sarmiento's "Facundo" (1845). Likewise, Alberto Blest Gana's Martin Rivas (1862), widely acknowledged as the first Chilean novel, was at once a passionate love story and a national epic about revolution. Other foundation fictions include the Colombian Jorge Isaacs's "María" (1867), Ecuadorian Juan León Mera's "Cumandá" (1879), or the Brazilian Euclides da Cunha's "Os Sertões" (1902). Such works are still the bedrocks of national canons, and usually mandatory elements of high school curricula.