The Gaucho and Argentine Identity

Gauchos a caballo. Angel Della Valle. Late 19 th C.
Astride his steed, with all his needs,
Aware of place and power;
Neither shunning’s sting, nor modernity’s hostile ring,
Dislodge him from this tower.
Constructed so, by Frontier’s throw
Of dice and machination,
The Gaucho’s pride did quickly die
For others’ elevation.
Mestizo blood- the stain, the smudge, the outcast’s demarcation-
In him does pound; it does abound, an honor in perpetuation.
Porteño fools, caudillo rules, wars, immigration;
Their work had hushed the Gaucho down
And the State, it found, in the absent sound,
A hero for the Nation.
The Gaucho’s Pride did quickly die,
And so resides in our imagination.

Liam McGinty
HIST 388
03/11/12
Prof. Walker
THE GAUCHO AND ARGENTINE IDENTITY
Few images are as iconic as this: the emboldened, mounted rider galloping across
endless terrain, unbounded by geography, authority, worry; it is an image of a truly
independent, uncomplicated life. From the tip of Chile to the Canadian Plains one can
find him: the cowboy, vaquero, huaso, llanero. Yet nowhere has he become so powerful,
so essential to national identity, than in Argentina’s gaucho. In culture high and low, in
rural tavern and urban literary club, the gaucho has come to form a core part of
Argentidad or ‘Argentine-ness’, being at once both the most authentic and most ethereal
of national icons.
This essay is an survey of that status, examining gauchos in three specific, semi-
chronological ways. First, the gauchos’ origins, formation, and customs will be
elucidated, focusing on an intense equestrianism and animal- oriented identity. Second,
their role as distinct political actors in 19 th Century Argentine history will be presented,
showing a declining economic relevance amongst increasing societal change. Finally,
literary representations by both Argentines and European immigrants will demonstrate
how, through a nationalistic historical appropriation, the contemptible gaucho became a
coveted part of Argentine identity.
For most of its history as a colony of Spain, the region that is now Argentina was
of little importance. The opulence at hand in Peru and Mexico cast a shadow on the rest
of Spain’s possessions, diverting men and money to more prosperous regions. This
neglect was important, for it allowed, uninterrupted, a natural increase of semi-wild cattle

and horses to occur atop an immense, 620 mile wide, flat, grassy plain; the pampas 1 .It
was only in the late 1776, with a growing Portuguese threat from the north, that Buenos
Aires received a Vice Royal 2 . Thus marks the beginning of a roughly 100- year span of
time from which gaucho culture and legend emerged 3 .
The base of this culture was the horse; its economic basis, the cow. The sheer
vastness of the treeless pampas made horses the primary form of transportation; walking
would get one nowhere, and so “man became equestrian” 4 . The ubiquity of cattle meant
an abundant food supply, such that it became “possible to survive on the pampa without
work and with relative comfort” 5 , leading to an feeling of independence and self-reliance.
And though cattle would soon come to play a growing economic role, it was the horse
that truly makes gaucho culture.
Usually with the “hardy compact creole horse 6 ” as partner, together they formed
a “half man half horse” 7 . It is impossible to imagine the gaucho horseless; without it, he
simply doesn’t exist. Cattle may have been the fuel for the gaucho, but the horse was the
engine, the vehicle that granted freedom and dignity. Gauchos were notorious for their
“determination to prefer all tasks on horseback” 8 , including making butter, fishing,
bathing and drawing water from a well 9 . Developing and maintaining horse- riding skills
1
Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska, 1983). Pg. 17.
2
Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela Montaldo, The Argentine Reader: History, Culture,
Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). Pg. 38.
3
Madaline Willis Nichols, The Gaucho (Durham: Duke University Press, 1942). Pg. 3
4 Ibid, Pg.3.
5 Ibid, Pg.17.
6 Slatta- Pg 28.
7 Ibid, Pg.9.
8 Ibid, Pg.26.
9 Nichols- Pg. 19.

was of paramount importance, with games such as pialar even practicing falling off,
teaching how to land correctly 10 . It was said they “ranked their horses above women” 11 ,
whose experiences have been, unfortunately, marginalized in such a masculine mythos.
As the horse meant mobility, thus did the accoutrements of the gaucho lifestyle
develop; the gaucho carried everything he needed with him. His recado saddle was soft,
and used for sleeping, his facon (knife) could kill and skin, along with the more primitive
bola thrown at wild rheas. Almost everything he owned was obtained from horses and
cattle, and there was plenty to obtain 12 . Simply cooked meat on an open fire, asado, was
his food, the yerba maté his drink. Being neither Spanish nor Indian, the gaucho
presented an autochthonous development 13 , though many argue for an essentially Iberian
origin 14 . Gauchos are most accurately viewed as a cultural group with a mixed-race
mestizo core.
At any rate, these horsemen, so clearly well adapted to their environment, bursts
into history as the gaucho because of the peculiar political economy of late 18 th Century
Latin America. The region being so poor, cattle hides were the only valuable commodity,
yet colonial Spanish regulations prevented their direct export, leading to a cross-national
contraband culture in which, along with cattle hunting in the unpropertied pampas, “the
gaucho was the means whereby the community received the goods it needed” 15 . Thus,
10
Slatta- Pg. 81.
11
E. Tinker, "The Horsemen of the Americas," Hispanic American Historical Review,
1962: 191-198. Pg. 192.
12
Slatta- Pg. 72.
13
Slatta- Pg.9.
14
Charles Julian Bishko, "The Peninsular Background of Latin American Cattle
Ranching," Hispanic American Historical Review 32, no. 4 (Nov 1952): 491-515.
15
Nichols- Pg. 37.

gauchos were a necessary part of the economy, but they also had an outlaw’s taint about
them.
This status changed when frustration at continued economic stagnancy helped
mobilize support for independence; a tenuous Argentine identity was forming, and for it
to survive it needed a skill-set only gauchos could provide. The resulting wars of
independence during the 1810s expelled the Spanish, but they opened a long, brutal
process of intra-American struggle over borders, ideology, and the future; what kind of
nation was Argentina going to be? Gauchos had sprung form a specific place and time,
and both were changing rapidly. A roving, battle- hardened banditti untethered from the
formal economy did not bode well for future stability.
In a short time, the political differences within Argentina found expression in two
distinct groupings, the Federalists and the Unitarians. Federalists believed in a federal
system with strong state governments. Their base was rural, with a traditional patron-
client paternalism not wholly in tune with the republican spirit of the times. Opposing
them were the urban- based Unitarians, who sought a strong centralizing government
bent on modernization and development.
At first, the Federalists were dominant, with Juan Manuel de Rosas acting as
dictator from 1835, partly by disciplining the “rootless and marginal lower classes,
thereby transforming…peons into political followers” 16 - gauchos. As modernity
encroached upon the pampa, and the hunting, hide and contraband economy gave way, a
core aspect of gaucho identity began to suffer, that of unlimited mobility. The freedom of
16 Ariel de la Fuente, Children of Facundo: Caudillo and Gaucho Insurgency During the
Argentine State Formation Process (La Rioja 1853-1870) (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2000). Pg. 3.

the pampas was disappearing, and it is a core paradox of Argentine history that the very
forces of reaction that abetted this process, the rural caudillo oligarchy as personifies by
Rosas, were the same forces to which the gaucho class gave its loyalty. Increasing
“political, military, and legal restrictions” 17 , such as forced conscription and harsh
vagrancy laws, combined with economic competition from increased sheep farming 18 ,
had a devastating impact on gaucho culture. Rarely has the gap between romantic ideal
and harsh reality been so great.
So why did gauchos behave they way they did, eagerly following charismatic
caudillos to war? Defining caudillismo as a “social system in which groups of patrons
and clients use violence to compete for power and wealth” 19 , such relations actually
provided many gauchos with material goods otherwise unobtainable in the shrinking hide
economy of old 20 . Further, caudillos, numerous provincialists that they were, shared
bonds of identity with gauchos far closer than that of a distant, cold state, a state whose
policies would not have treated gauchos any better. Unitarians had a far less nuanced
explanation.
Writing in Chilean exile, Domingo Sarmiento published a work that vaulted the
gaucho to the forefront of Argentine identity. Entitled Facundo: Civilization and
Barbarism (1845), the work is dividing line in Argentine history and historiography.
Sarmiento envisioned “two distinct civilizations…on Argentine soil: one… reproducing
the naïve popular effects of the Middle Ages; the other, ignoring what lies at its feet, is
17 Slatta- Pg. 111.
18 Ibid. Pg. 141.
19 Fuente- Pg.3.
20 Ibid. Pg. 189.

attempting to duplicate the latest achievements of European civilization.” 21 For
Sarmiento, the root cause of this distinction was the gaucho, “who has developed
physical qualities…without any corresponding intellectual ones” 22 . The gaucho was the
result of a “physical environment, Spanish tradition, and mixed blood” 23 retarding
Argentine development. Only the “transforming value of trade, immigration, education,
and democratic institutions” 24 could guaranteed Argentina’s future, and so the gaucho
had to go.
Sarmiento’s vision won out; the Rosas dictatorship fell in 1852, and Sarmiento
himself became President in 1868. The rush to develop Argentina began with vigor.
Immigrants from Europe, especially Spain and Italy, flooded in. The resulting population
boom lowered labor costs. Sheep rearing for wool crowded out cattle, while fencing
“facilitated land consolidation….and farming” 25 . Railroads were built, refrigeration was
made industrially viable; new breeds of cattle, sheep, and horses crowded out the old
criollos. 26 All of these changes made gaucho culture obsolete.
And then, a poem was written. Book length, with a structured rhyming scheme,
the two- part Gaucho Martin Fierro (1872) tells a bitter story of injustice at the hands of
“arbitrary and cruel state officials” 27 . In a rich, genuine gaucho prose, the author Jose
21
Domingo Sarmiento, A Sarmiento Anthology (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1948). Pg. 131.
22
Ibid. Pg. 117.
23
Joseph T. Criscenti, Sarmiento and His Argentina (Boulder: Lynne Rienne Publishers,
1993). Nicholas Shumway: Sarmiento and the Narrative of Failure. Pg. 52.
24
Joseph T. Criscenti, Sarmiento and His Argentina (Boulder: Lynne Rienne Publishers,
1993). Pg. 3.
25
Slatta- Pg. 141.
26
Ibid. Pg. 143.
27
Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela Montaldo, The Argentine Reader: History, Culture,
Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002). Pg. 133.

Hernandez idealizes the old life of gaucho freedom, ringing out as an indictment against
its cultural defenestration. Several excerpts demonstrate its power…
I am a gaucho, and take this from me
As my tongue explains to you:
For me the earth is a small place
And it could well be bigger-
The snake does not bite me
Nor the sun burn my brow. 28
…..
It is my glory to live as free
As a bird in the sky:
I make no nest on this ground
Where there’s so much to be suffered,
And no one will follow me
When I take to flight again. 29
…..
And listen to the story told
By a gaucho who’s hunted by the law;
Who’s been a father and husband
Hard- working and willing-
And in spite of that, people take him
To be a criminal. 30
…..
And sitting beside the fire
Waiting for day to come,
He’d suck at the bitter mate
Till he was glowing warm,
While his girl was sleeping
Tucked up in his poncho. 31
The descriptions of being part of one’s surroundings, of free movement, injustice,
and simple physical pleasure create a palpable sense of nostalgia. It was effective. The
gaucho’s denouement had gone too far; his resurrection in literary form had begun. The
causes for the poem’s popularity are many, but one stands out above all others,
immigration. The rush to Europeanize, to jettison all that was American, created an
28 Jose Hernandez, The Gaucho Martin Fierro, trans. C.E. Ward (New York: State
University of New York Press, 1967). Pg. 9
29 Ibid. Pg.9
30 Ibid. Pg. 11.
31 Ibid. Pg. 13.

existential crisis for many. Europeans without a strong Argentine identity to assimilate to
might not grow into the nation. A nationalist impulse was about the place, connected to
the soil and tradition, celebrating the spurned, populist in sentiment, and weary of
unceasing change. As one author states, the gaucho “was coming to signify a proud
cultural identity applicable to anything native to the Argentine, Uruguayan, or Rio
Grandense countryside, an identity particularly defined by clothing, speech, and the
habits and skills of rural life” 32 . Another, Tavia Quaid, states “the monomania for
imitation” 33 of Europe had stirred something in Argentine souls, a search for who they
were, and that in the gaucho Hernandez had found “those character traits that establish a
national personification” 34 . At the same time, the work is a “lamentation of ultimate
submission” 35 , perhaps echoing a now cliché Latin American fatalism.
Though the dark side to such nationalist rhetoric is often a demonization of the
foreigner, and a concomitant glorification of anti-democratic, reactionary traditions, two
immigrant authors of nationalist bent provide an interesting way to explore how a
traditionalist iconography was adopted to propagate universal notions of freedom,
allowing a “close interaction and mutual cultural modification between immigrants and
gauchos” 36 .
First, Alberto Gerchunoff’s Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas (1910), a series of
fictionalized accounts of Jewish-Gaucho interactions, shows an acceptance of the gaucho
32
John Charles Chasteen, Heroes on Horseback: A Life and Times of the Last Gauchos
Caudillos (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Pg. 120.
33
Tavia Quaid, American Frontiers: Historical and Literary Representations of Gauchos
and Cowboys (Reed College, 2006). Pg. 17
34
Ibid. Pg. 19.
35
Ibid. Pg. 3.
36
Ariana Huberman, Gauchos and Foreigners: Glossing Culture and Identity in the
Argentine Countryside (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011). Pg.4.

as authentically Argentine; “the native gaucho represents Argentine nationality for the
newly arrived population” 37 . Gauchos are not seen as menacing civilization, but rather a
“conquered people” who are “full of vigor, instinctual freedom, and generosity” 38 . One
story, The Herdsman, tells of gaucho who kills his own for retreating from a fight,
representative of “a people who had worked so hard on these plains and who forgave all
sins but cowardice” 39 . Of note here is Gerchunoff’s own nationalism, Zionism, looking
admirably at a distant identity, aiding its definition of the authentic Argentine as gaucho.
Second, Edmundo Murray examines several works by Irish immigrants in turn of
the century Argentina. Most are desirous to look down on swarthy Argentines of
uncertain race, eager to exploit their assigned British identities for social acceptance and
financial gain. Yet one sticks out from the rest, William Bulfin. Author of Tales of the
Pampas (1900), Bulfin’s collection of short stories portrays the gaucho positively, and
“with an insight that few gringos have equaled” 40 and a “profound knowledge of the lives
of Argentine gauchos” 41 . Based on his experiences as a ranch hand, Bulfin leans “toward
admiration of the gauchos, and dislike of the English” 42 , seeing himself in the former and
urban, European Argentine elites in the later. Also unlike most Irish immigrants in
Argentina, Bulfin had embraced the emerging separatist Irish nationalism of the era.
These two admiring representations of the gaucho by nationalist, European authors
37 Ibid. Pg. 112.
38 Ibid. Pg. 113.
39 Alberto Gerchunoff, The Jewish Gaucho of the Pampas, trans. Prudencio de Pereda
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998). Pg. 70.
40 Edmundo Murray, Becoming Gaucho Ingleses: Diasporic Models in Irish-Argentine
Literature (Palo Alto: Academica Press, Maunsel and Company, 2009). Pg. 85
41 Graciela Obert, Una vision irlandesa de las pampas argentinas en Tales of the
Pampas, - -, 2009, www.biblioteca.unlpam.edu.ar/pubpdf/anuario_fch/n09a19obert.pdf
(accessed Feb 20, 2012). Pg. 275. Author’s translation.
42 Murray- Pg. 98.

indicate an acceptance of and respect for a uniquely Argentine gaucho identity, bolstering
its idealization to the world at large, and continuing its
Murray wrote that “the invention of history is a process intimately related with the
construction of popular narratives” 43 , and in this vein the gaucho is surely an invention,
yet one grounded in historical truth. The external symbols of gauchos are everywhere, in
urban maté drinkers, asado lovers, but also in the deep sentiment that from the vast
pampas came forth not a mere construct but a real, new person, and a new culture,
something distinct. The half man half horse still rides out.
To conclude, a return to the cover painting is needed. Located in the Museo
Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Gauchos a caballo demonstrates several
Gaucho traits discussed above. Painted by the Italian-Argentine Angel Della Valle, the
work displays a nobility in the Gauchos’ posture, along with a fluidity between
themselves and their horses. The tone and color, however, is foreboding, conspiratorial,
infused with a cautionary romanticism. It is hard to determine if it is sunrise or sunset, or
for what purpose they have gathered. A sense of unease, of threat, permeates the painting,
yet dignity too. Indeed, so strong is the gauchos’ presence, it is as if, had they not been
real, someone would have invented them. And, in a way, they did.
43 Ibid. Pg. 110.