[In the following essay, Katra charts the gaucho style from its beginnings in the original gaucho poetic tradition to its evolution into eventual Gauchesque (imitation gaucho) form.]

No continent has a monopoly on cowboys and their art, for wherever a local beef industry has arisen to satisfy consumer demand a rural society and its poetic expression of life among horses and cattle will thrive. That is particularly true of the region of the Río de la Plata—the river separating Argentina and Uruguay. The area is endowed with some of the world's richest pasturelands and still preserves vast expanses of pampas, or open ranges, for its preponderant cattle industry. Accordingly, the region boasts a centuries-old tradition of gauchos (South American cowboys), gaucho verses, and an extensive repertoire of accompanying dances and music.¹

Indeed, the gaucho poetry of the Río de la Plata region presents a case perhaps without precedent in the history of the West. Since the late nineteenth century, the poetic expression of a marginal group of sometimes illiterate ranch hands and range riders has been elevated to the status of a national literature. Poetry and song about horses, guitars, and pampa life predominate on the airwaves and at local fairs in the country's interior cities and rural areas. Based on personal observations from several trips, I suggest that the dedication of gaucho devotees in Argentina far surpasses even that of country-western fans in rural regions of the United States. In Argentina's beautiful capital city, Buenos Aires (for good reason nicknamed “the Paris of South America”), however, many individuals who have a European cultural orientation are offended by the association of their national culture with the “bumpkin” verses of one of its least progressive social groups. Yet surprisingly enough, even the most sophisticated social circles, and even the most recently arrived groups of European immigrants, contain men and women who enthusiastically celebrate the inviting sounds and symbols of rural life.

It is necessary to make certain distinctions because conceptions of who a gaucho is and what constitutes gaucho poetry have changed considerably since the 1800s. An excursion into the past can help reduce the grounds of these confusions.

First, although the history of the Río de la Plata region's export-oriented cattle industry goes back only two hundred years, its rural society and accompanying cultural expressions trace their roots at least as far back as the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. The traditional poetry of these early settlers closely followed, although in fragmented and contaminated form, the lyrical songs and short ballads (called in Spanish romances) then popular throughout the mother country.² It is understandable, then, that much of this original repertoire found comparable forms—but always with local adaptations—in the folk traditions of Venezuela, Mexico, and other former Spanish colonies with ranges and a viable cattle industry. In the central regions of Argentina, some of these compositions treated universal experiences such as love and religious devotion while perhaps the majority were inspired by the rural setting. What follows is a typical stanza that had many variants throughout northern Argentina. Note the eight-syllable lines, with the second and fourth repeating an e-a vowel (assonant) rhyme:

Ningún pobre puede ser
hombre de bien aunque quiera.
En faltándole el poder
es embarcación sin vela.
[No poor man could be rich
even if he chose to be so.
Lacking the means for that change
is like leaving port without a sail.](3)

In contrast to the poetry and song that would come later, these traditional poems were characterized by grammatically correct language, anonymous authorship, and oral transmission.

It was only toward the middle of the eighteenth century that a new strain of cowboy poetry began to arise that correlated with the emergence of the gaucho as a social class. The etymology of the word gaucho, although much disputed, is likely the corrupted form of guacho, the Hispanic equivalent of wáhka (orphan) in Quechua, the main indigenous language of Bolivia and Peru. The area of the pampas inland from Buenos Aires, with plentiful cattle and wide expanses of open ranges, gave rise to a voluntarily marginalized group of men who took considerable pride in their orphan status. Gauchos hailed from a variety of cultures and nationalities and included people of pure European descent, mestizos, blacks, and Indians. Linking all of them was a shared set of customs and values developed in response to their unstructured, egalitarian society at the margin of the law and their daily contact with physical dangers.

In the two and a half centuries since the Europeans arrived, wild horses and cattle had multiplied profusely on the open plains. Bountiful herds of unbranded animals now provided the gaucho's preferred means of transportation, a free and abundant food supply, and the bare essentials of clothing and shelter. A “gaucho ethos” characterized their attitudes as well as their songs: They were independent, courageous, haughty, defiant, and intoxicatingly free. While the more organized and better-educated rural society of Argentina's north continued singing the religious, chivalresque, and burlesque ballads that had direct links with the oral tradition of the Spanish peninsula, the gaucho's expression featured narrative ballads that exaggerated the power and ferocity of brave and clever heroes.⁴

The first documented reference to the existence of a “gaucho” poetry was in the 1770s, but it was Domingo F. Sarmiento (1811-88), writing some eighty years later, who provided the most authoritative description of what by then had become a widely practiced art.⁵ According to Sarmiento, the gaucho poet was a kind of medieval bard or minstrel singer, endlessly traveling from region to region. In that primitive society his verses were almost always accompanied by dance and music, preferably of the guitar or its more primitive cousin, the vihüela. His arrival at a ranch was a special occasion for owner and hired hands alike, whom he would entertain in exchange for drinks or room and board. Two other sites for his performances were the postal stations and the pulperías, which were rural stores where menfolk gathered for socializing, drinking, and gambling at the end of the working day. Especially popular at this time was the cielito, which served the gaucho well as a poetic sharing of his miseries and anger over society's abuses. Note the intentionally archaic, deliberately mistaken language of the song:

Cuatro bacas hei juntado
A juerza de trabajar,
Y agora que están gordas
Ya me las quieren robar.
Cielito, cielo que sí,
Oye cielo mis razones:
Para amolar a los sonsos
Son estas regoluciones.
[I wuz able to get four cows
After much hard work,
And now that they're good'n’ fat
Someone'll rob me of 'em.
Heavenly heaven, that's right
Listen to what I say:
To do away with such abuses
We have these rebolutions.]

The gaucho singer offered to his largely illiterate public renditions of the region's anonymous poetic creations, but he was also a creator of verses in his own right. According to Sarmiento, the singer imitated medieval troubadour predecessors in reciting or singing long, balladlike compositions that chronicled “customs, history, and biography.” He also possessed a repertoire of lyrical “popular poems in octosyllabic lines variously combined into stanzas of five lines, of ten, or of eight. Among them are many compositions of merit which show some inspiration and feeling.” Most original of the gaucho poet's repertoire were his improvisations of “heavy, monotonous, and irregular” verse. This poetry favors the narration of adventures over “the expression of feeling” and is “replete with imagery relating to the open country, to the horse, and to the scenes of the wilderness, which makes it metaphorical and grandiose.” The themes of these verses were equally original: “The Cantor [singer] intersperses his heroic songs with the tale of his own exploits. Unluckily his profession of Argentine bard does not shield him from the law. He can tell of a couple of stabs he has dealt, of one or two misfortunes (homicides!) of his, and of some horse or girl he has carried off.”⁶ Sarmiento recognized the uniqueness of the gaucho poet as a character type; other observers would praise gaucho compositions as the most original in the country's literature.

Not emphasized by Sarmiento was another aspect of the gaucho poet's craft, the payada (an improvised duel in verse). This form of lyrical challenge, according to wildly romanticized descriptions, was often concluded by combat with knives. A payada could be a monologue, but it was best when two versatile singers, pitted against each another, would improvise verses in the cifra or milonga forms in counterpoint fashion.⁷ Although some researchers have traced the payada to remote origins in medieval Europe, others point to resemblances in the Indian traditions of Alaska, Mexico, and Argentina.⁸ What is indisputable is the geographical limitation of the term and its derivatives to Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. Also beyond argument is the relatively late popularization of the word payada, which was not even registered by Sarmiento in 1845. Three decades later, José Hernández (1834-86) used the verb payamos only once during the course of his long narrative poem El Gaucho Martín Fierro and avoided using the noun payador (improviser) as a substitute for his preferred noun: cantor.

Although both Sarmiento and Hernández were authoritative witnesses of the oral poetry recited on the Argentine pampas in the nineteenth century, they were also participants in the emergence of a new form of expression treating character types and topics relevant to the countryside but composed by society's educated elite. Now, scant written traces survive of the orally transmitted poetry of centuries past. The greater part of that known to the world as Argentina's and Uruguay's excellent “cowboy” poetry is actually works written in the gauchesque (imitation gaucho) style.

The emergence of the gauchesque literary tradition in the nineteenth century occurred against a backdrop of significant political, social, and economic transformations, especially the spreading hegemony of urban elites, with their mission of establishing a centralized state. In the eyes of the urban population, the customs and traditions of the rural folk, especially the gaucho, were generally the object of derision and scorn. But nationalistic politics combined with an interest in folk culture and the past derived from popular romanticism to bring other contending voices to the fore.

In the century's first few decades, Bartolomé Hidalgo (1788-1822), a soldier-poet serving the populist revolutionary movement originating in the Banda Oriental (literally the “East Bank,” or today's Uruguay), composed and distributed one-page patriotic verses using the gaucho idiom. Certainly, one of his motivations was to have his poems circulate orally to “teach by entertaining” and therefore win over the illiterate classes to the emancipation cause against Spain by instilling within them a sense of patriotism. But his well-crafted, witty verses also attracted an urban readership entertained by exotic gaucho protagonists with a heavy rural dialect. Hidalgo was the first to popularize rhymed dialogue between two rural protagonists, and his representation of a perplexed gaucho's first contact with the modern city was to have many imitators. One of these poems begins:

—Y usté, ¿no jué a la ciudá
a ver las fiestas este año?
—¡No me lo recuerde, amigo!
Si supiera, ¡voto al diablo!,
lo que me pasa, ¡por Cristo!
[—An' din'cha go to the city
ta see the festivals thiz year?
—Don' remin' me of it, friend!
The Devil wuz in on that one!
If ya knew what I went through. Kee-ryst!]

Although there was a long precedent in the Spanish-speaking world of learned poets imitating rural or lower-class language and forms, Hidalgo's verses constitute the earliest printed body of gauchesque poetry in the Río de la Plata region.

Most gauchesque poets following Hidalgo continued with the practice of placing their art at the service of politics. After 1829, Juan Gualberto Godoy (1793-1864) circulated his compositions of “poesía gauchipolítica” that were flavored by his militant opposition to Argentina's dictator, Juan Manuel de Rosas. For the next thirty years the inspired poetry of Hilario Ascasubi (1807-71) dominated the literary scene. His most famous gauchesque poems, Paulino Lucero and Aniceto el Gallo, are literary masterpieces in their own right and also served the poet's objective of promoting progressive values among the rural masses and discrediting the principles of federalism, which in Argentina continued to isolate the provinces and maintain a political system based on powerful personalities. Also worthy of mention is Estanislao del Campo (1834-80), whose Fausto (1866), a famous gaucho rendition of the Faust legend, further popularized the genre among urban readers. Finally, José Hernández's long narrative poem The Gaucho Martín Fierro, published in two parts in 1871 and 1879, was not only the high point of politically inspired gauchesque verse but has also been universally acclaimed as one of the literary masterpieces of Argentina and the West.

Martín Fierro was political writing at its best. Hernández's cause was the defense of traditional rural society and its gaucho population that was threatened by encroaching modernity. His protagonist, the poor, illiterate Fierro, is a victim of such forces. During the course of the poetic narrative he becomes a gaucho malo after his forced recruitment and cruel treatment in the corrupt frontier army, the expropriation of his squatter ranchhouse by a justice of the peace, the dispersion of his family, and a duel in guitars and knives from which he escapes with only his life.

Hernández, like his protagonist, had heroic traits. Both struggled nobly for a cause that was destined to fail. If the poem paid tribute to the vanquished gaucho on the vanishing frontier, it also signaled this figure's ascension to major protagonist in the country's emerging national literature. The poem's first stanza majestically captures the anguish of the gaucho singer:

Aquí me pongo a cantar
al compás de la vihüela
que el hombre que lo desvela
una pena estrordinaria,
como la ave solitaria
con el cantar se consuela.
[Here I come to sing
to the beat of my guitar:
because a man who is kept from sleep
by an uncommon sorrow
comforts himself with singing
like a solitary bird.](9)

The poem's success resulted from its ability to straddle both the traditional and cultured literary traditions and from its appeal both to the unschooled or semi-literate rural society and to an educated, urban reading public. The poem masterfully reproduces the archaic variant of Spanish spoken in the countryside several decades earlier but without exaggerating that dialect's deformative characteristics. Its superb verses build upon the themes and forms of the region's fertile oral tradition and steer clear of theatricalized, picturesque descriptions that mar most other literary incursions by educated poets into the gaucho world. Understandably, the poem had an instant and lasting appeal. One important commentator early in the twentieth century said, “[T]here does not exist a household in the Argentine countryside that lacks a guitar and a copy of Martín Fierro. Those who don't know how to read learn it by ear; those who can only haltingly sound out syllables use the poem as their first reading text.”¹⁰

The poem's reception by the region's rural population was instantaneous and fervid, and its popularity continues unchallenged even now. But three decades would have to pass after its publication before the educated groups of the region's cities would—at first belatedly, later more enthusiastically—embrace the work as the highest expression of Argentine—and, more broadly, Río de la Plata—society. Such sudden and dramatic changes in literary taste are usually responses to extraliterary factors, so to explain this gauchesque poem's definitive and universal acceptance is also to explain in large part the continuing appeal of the gaucho as a subject and symbol of Argentina's and Uruguay's national cultural expression.

In the thirty-odd years that separated the diffusion of Hernández's pace-setting verses and the canonization of Martín Fierro, the humid pampas that stretch three hundred miles inland from the region's great coastal cities had been definitively transformed. Modernity had arrived, with its railroads and barbed wire; sheep for the production of wool quickly displaced cattle in many areas. Changing world markets caused landowners to devote as much as a third of the region's total acreage to wheat production by 1910. In short, the proud gauchos who once rode the ranges were increasingly forced to find employment as peons or farm hands. In addition, droves of European—predominantly Italian—immigrants first crowded the cities, then displaced the old-time criollo population, that is the blacks, Indians, mestizos, and those of European descent who were the predominant social and ethnic groups in the countryside. These changes were especially important because the region of the humid pampas had been the principal setting for gaucho myth and history during the preceding two centuries. In this region the majority of historical figures upon whom the country's great cowboy literature and poetry had been modeled had lived, worked, and struggled.

Paradoxically, while the gaucho was being transformed from a free, itinerant range rider into a domesticated farm or ranch hand, a literature celebrating a romanticized version of the gaucho was thriving. Between 1890 and 1920, this criollo literature and its accompanying symbols were fervently embraced not only by the region's remaining rural population, now with rudimentary reading skills, but also by readers from the burgeoning cities, whose personal lives were totally unconnected to the world of the countryside. The reasons for the seductiveness of that criollo culture can only be speculated upon. First, the cities' conservative oligarchy, out of fear of losing its political monopoly, denounced previous policies that had sought the extermination of the gaucho as a social class and reevaluated its previous condemnation of any non-European forms of expression.¹¹ A wholly different set of circumstances affected a second urban grouping, the swollen ranks of immigrants and their recent descendants. One researcher points to their subliminal need to embrace the symbols of a new cultural identity in the light of their own geographical and ethnic displacement.¹² The popularity of a romanticized literature built upon the anachronistic gaucho is also linked to the reading public's search for cultural roots in the face of the terrible world depression of the 1890s and the disillusionment with modernity throughout the West that both preceded and followed World War I, the “war to end all wars.”

Regardless of the reasons, the enthusiasm for poetry treating the gaucho was genuine and near-universal in the Río de la Plata region. New forms of diffusion arose: dime-store novels, the phonograph, the circus, and the theater. The cities also witnessed a curious new cultural phenomenon, the rapid spread of centros criollos (criollo centers)—there were as many as 268 in Buenos Aires alone at the turn of the century—where primarily young people of modest means gathered to celebrate the culture of the pampas and to propagate through their dress, writing, and activities a positive attitude toward the region's old traditions. At last, gaucho poetry had arrived—or rather poetry about gauchos now figured among the predominant strains of the region's mass media discourse.

By the 1890s the term gauchesco (“gauchesque”) was generally accepted to distinguish this new literary and cultural phenomenon from the earlier popular, often anonymous verses sung by and for gauchos. A similar distinction began to be made between folk poetry and a nostalgic and nationalistic nativista (“nativist”) literature written in standard Spanish, like Rafael Obligado's Santos Vega. But there has always been disagreement in the application of these terms. For example, some critics now use the term classic gauchesque to give priority of date and artistry to those works written up to the time of Martín Fierro, whose contents supposedly reflect the linguistic, cultural, and social world actually existing at the time of composition. That distinction also assigns lower prestige to subsequent gauchesque works, described as the products of impoverished imaginations or of the will to deform and sensationalize.¹³

During the twentieth century the transformation of the Argentine countryside has been dramatic, as have been the resulting changes in the art and practice of gaucho poetry. Cattle-raising still remains the principal economic activity in the region of the humid pampas, with up to 80 percent of the land in some districts dedicated exclusively to this activity. Productive methods are largely mechanized, however, and wheat and wool production rival cattle for predominance.¹⁴ For these reasons, it is apparent that other regions now offer an even greater claim as spiritual centers for the country's traditional cattle culture and gaucho life: the entire northwest of Argentina, which includes parts or all of the provinces of Córdoba, Santiago del Estero, Salta, and Tucumán; the vast humid plains of Entre Ríos and Corrientes; and the northern half of Uruguay. In these regions, large landholdings abound, the central role of cattle-raising in the local economy is unchallenged, and the gaucho still constitutes a distinct social grouping if not class. Not to be forgotten is the special case of Patagonia, with its vast plains in the southernmost part of Argentina, where marginal soil and cold, arid climatic conditions make grazing sheep the only feasible economic activity and where rural society and corresponding cultural expressions still prevail.

These regions still boast of large, unfenced ranges that depend upon the labor of horse-mounted gauchos; rural society thrives, although in altered forms. First, many cattle producers or ranch hands now spend as much time working on agricultural tasks—repairing farm machinery, planting, and harvesting corn or alfalfa crops—as they do with traditional tasks having to do with the care and marketing of range animals. Second, for many tasks the role of the horse has been deemphasized. Trucks and motorcycles transport hands to distant pastures, and trained dogs and movable electric fences position herds on desirable grazing. Third, readily available transportation, added to the imperatives and attractions of city living, have accelerated the march to the city and the corresponding depopulation of the countryside. Wherever possible, owners and ranch hands usually prefer to raise their families in the nearby cities and commute daily or weekly to rural worksites.

The dramatic decrease in the population of the countryside has resulted in a decreased visibility of rural culture and less artistic expression in rural society. Especially relevant is the now-marginal importance of the late fall or early winter “roundup,” which usually takes place in June and July. Historically, the roundup was the most important event of the rural calendar, not only for the purposes of apartes y marcaciones (separating, branding, and castrating the male calves) but also for recreation and celebration of gaucho song and poetry. Accounts exist of how, a century or more ago, ranchers and ranch hands joined by itinerant gauchos would gather near a pulpería or on a very large estancia for eight to ten days to complete the work at hand and in their spare moments drink, race horses, throw the taba (a marked cow vertebra used for gambling), dance, play guitars, and recite poetry.¹⁵ Today, fences, earmarking devices, vaccination guns, and the like reduce the complexity of the same work tasks, which are now easily accomplished in a couple of days by the owners themselves or with the assistance of a few permanent employees. The traditional occasion that served best in the past to celebrate gaucho song and poetry has all but ceased to exist.

However, this loss has been partly compensated for by the rise of new events and institutions that provide rural society with opportunities to congregate and celebrate its culture. First, each rural school throughout the region sponsors fund-raising activities on a regular basis in order to pay for building upkeep, purchase of new materials, and funding of the student lunch program. Local musicians and poets perform during the slack moments of these dances, horse races, and soccer competitions. Second, in the late summer or early fall (Holy Week is most popular in Uruguay), each city, district, or province sponsors its yearly criollo (rodeo), which features competition in bull riding and calf roping. Meanwhile, the public roams freely under the shade of the trees, indulging in savory barbequed beef and sausages and listening to the music and verses of the local performers. Third, the ever-present pulpería of yesteryear has been replaced by the dispensa (store), which by late afternoon and evening doubles as a bar and social gathering place for the adult male population. Here, the billiards table, truco (a vigorous criollo gambling game played with cards), and, in recent years, the television set are the main attractions, but on occasion a transient guitarist or a local musician will entertain the small group that enthusiastically welcomes any novelty in its otherwise routine existence. Finally, every birthday, graduation, first communion, or national holiday provides the pretext for celebration among family and friends, with extended families coming together from distant parts at least once a year.

On such occasions many rural folk still enthusiastically don the traditional garb of the gaucho of old, with the broad-brimmed hat, the bandanna, the wide leather belt with as many as two hundred inlaid silver coins, the baggy riding pants (bombachas), and the black leather knee-high riding boots. Lodged inside the belt at the back, they carry a silver-handled knife with a blade varying from six to fourteen inches in length, still useful for many ranch tasks and indispensable for consuming one's share of asado (barbequed beef). The deliberate anachronism of these gaucho admirers and imitators has limits, however. Except for planned historical representations, one rarely sees a gaucho dressed in the primitive, diaperlike chiripá. And only in museums and special collections have I admired the legendary boleadoras, the leather rope with three strands tied to round stones that was whirled and then thrown by the mounted rider. Before the advent of firearms, it was used most effectively to trip or disable the legs of a horse, steer, or ñandú (a small pampa ostrich).

In the great majority of rural areas dedicated to the cattle industry, in addition to the small urban centers in near proximity, gaucho and gauchesque poetry have continued to thrive. Each generation continues to produce new singers and performers who proudly reinterpret the traditional repertoire learned from their elders and attempt to incorporate the tones and themes of that tradition into their own original poetry. As might be expected, not all of the gaucho poets of today are involved in the day-to-day activity of raising cattle or riding the ranges. Indeed, it is understandable that many of the important poetic and musical interpreters of the country's rural heritage now live in urban areas where they find a means of living by their musical craft, a situation comparable to that of some American cowboy poets. Although not technically “gauchos” in their own lives, many have experienced at first hand the ways of the countryside in their youth; others are a mere generation removed from the life of horses, cattle, and the range and are active participants in gaucho culture by virtue of a close relative.

In spite of ever-encroaching urban culture and the acoustic bombardment of imported music, the allure of the gaucho, past and present, in these settings continues to dominate the collective imagination. One payador of Italian heritage, who grew up in the horse-and-cattle environment of a small town in the province of Entre Ríos, indicates that the discovery of Martín Fierro in the early 1950s triggered his conversion: “I felt that I was speaking through Martín Fierro. … it imaginatively transported me to rural life and its diverse circumstances, which are hardly ever happy.”¹⁶ From this experience came the purchase of a guitar, the tuning of its strings, and experimentation with gaucho-style verses. The payador spent many youthful hours in the company of cowhands and traveling minstrels while he honed his skills in the difficult craft of verse improvisation. In his case, a wealth of enrapturing childhood memories was ignited by his appreciation for gaucho literature in addition to the allure of the local song forms, the zambas and cuecas endlessly broadcast on the local radio station. All of these led to his decision to devote his creative energies toward the preservation and re-creation of traditional gaucho poetry.

Present-day payadores are masters of a dying form of poetic art. They take pride in their loyalty to traditions, although many have long since forsaken the traditional rural garb when they perform. The classic literature leaves the impression of a sense of rivalry existing among gaucho improvisers of old, but that is not now the case. More common is their sense of brotherhood and accomplishment when they have the opportunity to perform, especially when they “confront” one another in the fashion of the old dueling counterpoint.

Modernity has left a mark on many of these poetic duels in the form of judges and a specific rating system (normal criteria: stage presence, eloquence, knowledge and development of theme, meter and rhyme, musical accompaniment, and creative spontaneity). What remains is the payador's enthusiasm for impressing his public with the philosophical and poetic beauty of his improvised verses and the music and rhythm of the milonga, the most typical musical form, which has octosyllabic lines with a consonant rhyme scheme grouped in stanzas of six, eight, ten, or twelve lines. Being a spontaneous poetry, it generally lacks the polish of that created for a reading public. Nevertheless, some of these verses have found their way to the printed page:

          Voy a cantar por decir,
en unión de tierra y gente;
porque el verso es la vertiente
de cuanto traigo conmigo:
Yo no soy más que un amigo
que habla lo que piensa y siente.
          El sentir es del pensar;
y, en distintas ocasiones,
se piensan las situaciones
según sea conveniencia:
Aunque también la conciencia
toma parte en las razones.
          [Singing is my means for speaking out,
in front of a land and a people;
because poetry is like a spring
gushing forth all I have within:
I'm nothing more than a friend
who talks of what he thinks and feels.
          One has to feel one's thoughts;
and, on different occasions,
depending on its appropriateness
one has to think of a situation:
Although the conscience also
plays a part in one's reasoning.](17)

Whereas relatively few individuals continue the demanding art of the payada, every town or rural zone seems to have its handful of local artists. Townfolk and countryside residents continue to celebrate the ever-flowing stream of gauchesque verses about mounted protagonists and romanticized rural events of a century ago, even though a more rigorous criticism would react against the exaggerated language and stylized themes. Regardless, this type of poetry lives on, and it is the obvious choice of a large segment of the population. One contemporary poet humorously depicts a gaucho protagonist enmeshed in an unpleasant love affair:

¡La pucha que da calor
esa china sinvergüensa!
Le van a dejar la trensa
como fleco di arriador.
Me parese qu'es mejor
que rumbé ya pa otro pago,
sinó v'haser estrago
d'esa Peloche, y al hoyo
la v'a mandar algún crioyo
que s'encuentre con un trago.
[That gol-darned hussy
has really done it again!
She deserves a whipping
like you'd give to 'n ornery mule.
I reckon 'twas wise to get out o' town
an' stay put for a bit,
if not I'd raise a ruckus
about that Peloche,
I'd send some dude to the grave
if I'd caught 'im offerin' her a drink.](18)

Coexisting with the gauchesque tradition in the range areas and small towns of the interior are lyrical verses of nativista (local) intention. Let there be no doubt that the sentiment of present-day poets for the sights and symbols of the countryside is as sincere as it is passionate. Thousands upon thousands of poems—some good, most enjoyable, all authentic in their sentiment—have been written on a limited number of traditional themes: to honor the local town, one's favorite mount, a patriotic figure, one's mother, or a beloved schoolteacher; to celebrate youth, springtime, and love; to remember an enraptured gallop across the wild countryside; to sweetly moan the departure or absence of a loved one; and to recall aesthetically the solitude of the ranges or a favorite haunt. The best of this expression avoids sentimentality in its imaginative images. The following verses lyrically re-create the emergence of a poetic voice:

          Llevo un tiempo de chicharras
sobre la piel
agobiada de silencios.
          Aguardo la primavera
al amparo del vientre de la tierra
para madurar en vuelo.
          [I carry hours of crickets
on my bare arm
fatigued by silences.
          I await springtime
protected by the womb of the earth
my forces maturing for flight.](19)

Characteristic of almost all payada, gauchesque, and nativista poetry is its relatively small radius of diffusion; it belongs to a decentralized tradition with thousands of rural and small-town practitioners. Its themes are local, and few if any of its creators would ever aspire to more than a provincial distribution. In contrast to this is the relatively new form of gaucho poetry called folklore (foke-low'ray), which is intimately tied to the rise of the radio and television industries and whose performers mesmerize national and even international audiences. A cult has grown up around this commercial celebration of horse and cattle culture and its records, radio programs, and rural festivals, with famous conjuntos (singing groups) like the Fronterizos and Los de Salta and especially solo performers such as Atahualpa Yupanqui, Jorge Cafrune, Mercedes Sosa, and scores of others.

Yupanqui is one of the most celebrated of folklore poets; his poetry and songs reflect the rural culture of Argentina's northwestern regions. The fact that in recent years he has enjoyed striking success on the concert circuit and in record and cassette sales does not diminish the authenticity of his craft. He is perhaps the region's best example of a genuine gaucho who used his musical talent and experience to become a successful popular entertainer. As he explains the magnetizing effect of the primitive countryside and its cowboy culture upon his sensitivities, “The days of my infancy passed … from astonishment to … revelation. I was born in the countryside, and I grew up before a horizon of neighs and whinnies. … All that world, the peace and combat in my veins between Indians, Basques, and gauchos, determined my moments of happiness and surprise, stimulated my instincts of youthful freedom, and guided me in creating a language for dialoguing with the marsh grasses and streams.” Possessed with this spirit, he avidly absorbed the songs and poems of the country folk: “[W]ith the last light of the afternoon … the guitars of the pampas began their ancient witchcraft, knitting a web of emotions and memories with unforgettable themes.”²⁰

Many of Yupanqui's poems, generally accompanied by the music of his own guitar, depict the Northwest's arid, wild expanses:

Pasamos la noche
rodeándolo al fuego
Luces de esperanza …
sombras de recuerdos …
          La aurora, sangrando
          como un corazón …
          A ensillar de nuevo
          que falta un tirón … !
Canta que te canta,
camino a los valles …
que esta pena mía
no la sabe nadie!
[We passed the night
around the campfire
Sparks of hope …
shadows of memories …
          The bleeding dawn
          like my own heart …
          Saddle up once again
          only a short stretch to go … !
The trail into the valley
sings, it sings to you …
this suffering I feel
nobody else knows!](21)

The relatively crude verses of another Yupanqui poem would never find their way into the literary anthologies of a cultured urban readership. Nevertheless, the poet succeeds in communicating an authentic affection for his horses and the region of his childhood:

Tuve una majadita
de hocicos negros,
la cuidé varios años
por esos cerros
allá en San Juan.
                    Y por senderos criollos
con mi majada,
pastoriaba mis cuecas
y mis tonadas
allá en San Juan.
                    Sanjuanina—mi majada—
tu recuerdo ¡ay señora!
vivirá entre los cerros
y las quebradas
allá en San Juan.
                    [I had a small horse herd
all with black snouts
I raised them for several years
among those rolling hills
far away in San Juan.
                    And along country trails
with my small herd,
I led my cueca songs to pasture
along with my verses
far away in San Juan.
                    This memory—so long ago—
of my San Juan herd
will live among the rolling hills
and deep valleys
far away in San Juan.]

In contrast to the payadoresque, nativista, and gauchesque verses, the commercial medium demands a poetry of relatively accessible themes that lend themselves to a brief, memorable elaboration. Traditional themes predominate: the injustice of poverty, the beautiful solitude of a pampa setting, or the gaucho's faithful mount. Also prevalent is the age-old theme of anguished love, as communicated in a zamba written and interpreted by Horacio Guaraní:

Porque me has visto llorar
no creas que he de callar
mi guitarra también llora
y nadie pudo callar.
          Porque me has visto llorar
          dirás que soy un cobarde
          ayer lloré por mi madre
          y hoy por ti vuelvo a llorar.
[Because you have seen me cry
don't think that I wouldn't start again
my guitar is also crying
and nobody can make it stop.
          Because you have seen me cry
          you might say that I'm a coward
          yesterday I cried on account of my mother
          and today I cry again, but because of you.](22)

Over the past several decades, the cowboy poetry of South America has extended its range and broadened its practice. The gaucho of yesteryear, riding the open ranges and battling corrupt justices of the peace and marauding bands of Indians, has passed into history. But a sizable rural population still exists. They embrace the ethos of the historical gaucho with their own love of rural life and a comparable aspiration for freedom and economic justice. In moments of festivity or leisure, the singers and poets among them continue to renovate, recite, read, and celebrate the traditional forms of their region's gaucho poetry. This “popular poetry,” in its nativist, payadoresque, and gauchesque variants, still thrives with the fervor of the past.

Notes

1. Studies available in English that treat the South American—but more specifically Argentine—gaucho are William Henry Hudson, Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1918); Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism, trans. Mrs. Horace Mann (Spanish ed., 1845; English ed., 1868), (New York: Hafner, 1971); Richard Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983); and Edward Larocque Tinker, The Horsemen of the Americas and the Literature They Inspired, 2d rev. ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967). An excellent bibliography of the best studies (principally in Spanish) about the gaucho and his poetry has been prepared by Rodolfo A. Borello in Trayectoria de la poesía gauchesca, ed. Horacio J. Becco et al. (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra, 1977), 149-64. For a summary of gaucho literature, see also Arturo Torres-Rióseco, The Epic of Latin-American Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942), 133-67.

2. The Iberian medieval roots of Argentina's popular tradition have been thoroughly investigated by Argentina's great collectors of traditional poetry, Juan Alfonso Carrizo, Juan Draghi Lucero, and the musicologist Carlos Vega.

3. This translation, and the rest in the chapter, are by the author.

4. Juan Alfonso Carrizo, “Nuestra poesía popular,” Humanidades 15 (La Plata: 1927): 241-342.

5. Sarmiento, Argentina's famous writer-editor-statesman, would serve as the country's president from 1866 to 1872. His Life in the Argentine Republic (1845) is a Latin American literary classic, not only on account of its unsurpassed romantic descriptions of gauchos and rural life but also for its impassioned attack against the Argentine tyrant Juan Manuel de Rosas.

6. Sarmiento, Life in the Argentine Republic, 51-52.

7. According to Ventura R. Lynch, Folklore bonaerense (Buenos Aires: Lajouane, 1953), 49, the cifra was typical of the gaucho payador who emphasized serious recitations, whereas the milonga offered greater rhythmic and musical possibilities to the more educated singer. In both, the eight-syllable line predominated. But while the cifra had no determined stanza length or rhyme, the milonga featured a variety of strophes (six, eight, four, and ten lines were the most frequent) in which assonance (vowel rhyme) predominated, with consonance on occasion.

8. Respectively, Ismael Moya, El arte de los payadores (Buenos Aires: Berruti, 1959), and Marcelino M. Román, Itinerario del payador (Buenos Aires: Lautaro, 1957).

9. José Hernández, The Gaucho Martín Fierro, bilingual edition, trans. C. E. Ward (New York: State University of New York Press, 1967), 2-3. English translations also exist by Henry Alfred Holmes (New York: Hispanic Institute in the United States, 1948) and Walter Owen (London: Blackwell, 1933).

10. Leopoldo Lugones, El payador (1916), (Buenos Aires: Huemul, 1972), 185.

11. Rodolfo Borello, “Introducción a la poesía gauchesca,” in Trayectoria de la poesía gauchesca, 68. The essays in this volume by Becco, Borello, Adolfo Prieto, and Félix Weinberg provide perhaps the most concise and comprehensive overview of the topic.

12. Adolfo Prieto, El discurso criollista en la formación de la Argentina moderna (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1988), 98, 131.

13. Carlos Alberto Leumann, La literatura gauchesca y la poesía gaucha (Buenos Aires: Raigal, 1953), 7, 29; Emilio A. Coni, El gaucho: Argentina, Brasil, Uruguay (Buenos Aires: Solar, 1986).

14. Preston E. James, [Geography of] Latin America, 3d ed. (New York: Odyssey Press, 1959), 341-45. This source reveals that at least fifty mid-century families in the Province of Buenos Aires—which coincides more or less with the area of the humid pampas—owned more than seventy-five thousand acres each.

15. Juan Carlos Vedoya, Fierro y las expoliación del gaucho (Tandil: Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, 1986), describes one such gathering as remembered by an eighty-four-year-old man in an interview in 1916 (43).

16. Adolfo F. Cosso, Camino del payador (memorias y versos) (Gualeguay: n.p., [1983]), 10.

17. Cosso, Camino del payador, 99.

18. Guillermo Cuadri, Entre volcano y las musas (Minas: Waldemar M. Cuadri, n.d.), 218.

19. Roberto A. Romani, Aurora del canto (poemas) (Santa Fe: Colmegna, 1985), 13.

20. Atahualpa Yupanqui, El canto del viento (Buenos Aires: Honegger, 1965), 13, 15.

21. This and the following poem, entitled “Camino a los valles” and “La majadita,” are from the pamphlet Ritmos del Ande: Cancionero Popular (Buenos Aires: Bona, 1975), 24, 46.

22. Horacio Guaraní, “Porque me has visto llorar,” in the pamphlet Grandes canciones folklóricas, no. 4 (Buenos Aires: Continental, 1986), 16.