Frontier Partisans

The Adventurers, Rangers and Scouts Who Fought the Battles of Empire

Going Gaucho

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A number of things keep pointing in the direction of South America as a new field of study for Frontier Partisans. Paul McNamee sent me a novel set in the Brazilian outback that I want to dive into, and also a link to a series of pulp adventure tales. Then there is Sasha Siemel, whom I wrote about a few weeks back.

There’s a rich history there, and I’ve touched little of it other that reading about Butch and Sundance holing up there until their luck ran out in Bolivia. And I’ve read a bit about Gaucho culture, mostly in Richard Slatta’s wonderful tome Cowboys of the Americas.

This is a comparative study of the social history and mythology of cowboy culture right across the Western Hemisphere, from Patagonia to the Tukon, including the unique cowboys of the Hawaiian cattle industry. Slatta argues that Spanish influence, neglected in most accepted historiography, is primary in all open-range cattle frontiers of North and South America. His focus is on people, working ranch hands, and how they lived their lives, quoting frequently from first-hand descriptions of cowboy and ranch life.

The Gauchos rode the frontier outback of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and most especially the Argentine pampas. In Argentina, the Gaucho is an even more potent cultural symbol than the American cowboy is to us. They ride still.

 

It’s remarkable how similar the horse-based cultures of cattle ranching really are, though there are also strong distinctions in dress and equipage. Of particular interest to me is that the gauchos were a knife culture. Firearms were rare and hard to obtain, and the knife was both practical tool and symbol of masculine identity. Here’s an in-depth piece on the subject by Abel A. Domenech.

Gauchos were men of the frontier and recognized no Law, no King, no Patron and they committed robberies and other felonies and, as such, were pursued by the Law. Their services as knowledgeable men of the plains were required from time to time by owners of big rodeos of cattle or by the chiefs of the expeditions organized by the Cabildo to hunt wild cows and get their skins. This helped to put an end to the pursuit by the Law, at least during the course of those authorized expeditions. But then, they also hunted wild cattle for themselves, without the required Cabildo permission, and smuggled the skins for their own profit or were employed by the organizers of the non-authorized expeditions….

Gauchos were simple poor people; skilled riders and handlers of cattle, they had and required very little equipment. Among the gaucho’s tools and weapons were the lazo (lariat) and bolas (a throwing weapon inherited from the Indians). The hobbles were another humble, but important, tool which, used to tie together the front legs of the gaucho’s horse, prevented the loss of the horse out in the middle of the great lonely plains. A gaucho without horse, in the middle of those great plains, was a dead man. Then, of course, there was the knife, an edged weapon and a multipurpose tool used almost at any time during the gaucho’s day. Gauchos had limited access to firearms, which in our territories were reserved to the high or military classes almost exclusively. For this same reason, gauchos seemed to look upon firearms with disdain and little confidence, preferring edged weapons over all other types…

…Together with his horse, the knife, especially the facón or daga, was the distinctive tool/weapon of the gaucho, to the point of not himself existing without them. Gauchos were famous for the skillful use of knives and the use and abuse made of edged weapons during their duels. To understand this, we should bear in mind their background and epoch: these were solitary men. Very tough men raised in total solitude, almost without parental guidance. With no education, almost no religion, they spent their lives in the middle of the large plains in constant touch with nature, the danger of wild animals and Indians, the constant peril. They often spent long periods of time in solitude without seeing another human being and their only source of distraction or satisfying their very few extra needs was to reach one of the hundreds of pulperias distributed along the frontier.

Pulperias were a special kind of country store, poorly built with adobe walls and a thatched roof. The owner of the pulperia provided the few gaucho needs: tobacco and paper for making cigarettes, yerba to prepare the national infusion called mate and some pieces of clothing, among a very few other things. Gauchos paid with silver coins obtained in their part time jobs or by smuggling or earned by playing cards, or simply paid for those goods with exchange of cow hides, ostrich plumes and other products of animals they had hunted. Pulperias also provided the unique possibility of social distractions, joining other gauchos to drink, to play cards and to talk, or just to play guitar and dance. They also provided the unique opportunity of seeing a woman for the first time in several months and the oldest profession in the world was one of the main attractions of those places. Gauchos liked drinking and high alcohol content beverages were their favorite ones. Now, the meeting in the same small place of several tough men, heavy drinking and very few and rarely seen women was a very explosive formula indeed!

Any gesture, under this delicate atmosphere, could ignite a dispute and give rise to a duel. A contradiction during conversation, the misunderstood use of a word, an erroneous comment about a woman present in the pulperia, or just about anything pronounced after having finished a couple of bottles of alcohol could be the invitation to prove who was better with the knife, or who was more rude or brave. Sometimes, a person had the reputation of being the best knife of the region, and this was reason enough for to provoke the challenge of another gaucho. Once the duel was inevitable, the men went outside the building to prove themselves, knife in one hand and their poncho rolled on the other arm to protect the body as a shield, a technique inherited from the Spaniards, who used their capes in the same way.

The intention was far from killing the opponent. They just wanted to mark the other, especially on the face. That mark would tell to everybody and forever that the bearer of the scar had lost a duel. But sometimes in the heat of the moment, the excess of alcohol and the rage generated in the fight ended in a fatal wound. One of the gauchos died and this was considered an accident, a disgrace, an unwanted death. The killer was seen with sympathy and was often helped by the onlookers, who considered him as a man in disgrace who was in need of protection and help in escaping from the Law. He often fled to the plains, sometimes getting a home for some time in the nearby Indian villages where he waited till his crime was forgotten or authorities changed. Or, he took this as an opportunity to travel to a far town. Only those gauchos who were known deliberate killers were seen with little sympathy and persecuted by the Law with more care. These were called gauchos matreros, always changing of place, always persecuted.

As always, I sought a musical connection and found it in the gorgeous and romantic guitar music of Roberto Lara. It’ll take you there.

OK, I know it’s odd, but this is a beautiful video from Dior for cryin’ out loud. What the hell, it works.

I have much to explore and I’m eager to do it. Part of the fascination comes from the mestizo nature of the culture — a new culture that came out of mixing bloodlines and material culture of the Spanish and the Indians. I’ve become somewhat obsessed with this process in my studies of late.

 

Comments

  1. Matthew says

    I know of Gauchos mostly from Jorge Luis Borges. He’s mostly known for his fantasy stories, but like any good Argentinean was fascinated by Gauchos.

    Reply

  2. deuce says

    You have a whole continent to explore, Jim.

    By and large, all the “cowboy” cultures in the Western Hemisphere stem from the Spanish. North of the Rio Grande, there was — perhaps — a slight influence from the Scots-Irish tradition, but that was more an oral memory rather than a living tradition. So many terms found in the cowboy culture of the Old West come from the Spanish language. The Scots-Irish had to relearn much from the Spaniards/Mexicans they found in the West.

    Hyland’s TRAINING THE ROMAN CAVALRY, an examination of Arrian’s “Ars Tactica”, analyzes several Gaulish/Celtic terms that ended up in Latin and eventually passed into Spanish. It’s quite possible that some came directly from Iberian Celtic to Iberian Latin and spread through the Empire. First and foremost is the word for “horse”: “caballus”, which became “caballo” (and “caballero” and “cavalry” and “cavalier” and “chivalry” and…). So, there’s a through-line from the drovers who brought cattle culture to Europe to the cowboys of the Old West and the gauchos. A heritage stretching back 5000 years.

    Some people sneer at the “Spaghetti Westerns” being filmed in Spain. There’s a poetic justice in a return to that fountainhead of Western cowboy culture.

    Reply

  3. Paul McNamee says

    How do you say “enabler” in Portuguese?

    Ah well, you are welcome, senhor. 😉

    I know Dave Hardy set my path to THE VIOLENT LAND.

    I don’t recall if this one came from you or also from Dave. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my wishlist.

    The War At The End of the World
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004QGYWMG

    I really do need to note who recommends what on my wishlists!

    Reply

  5. tom says

    a little closer to home, check out the californio culture of baja, mexico. there are remnant populations of Hispanic cowboy culture in the mountainous areas of the baja peninsula. altho they have some cash currency the majority of their subsistence is via barter and “do it yourself” efforts…..a good video is called “Corazon vaquero”. it shows many aspects of their subsistence xistence, and has some good Mexican musical accompaniment…….one point made in the video is they seem to prefer a hinny over a mule, and reasons are given. I figure that preference is about like our “chevy, dodge, or ford”?!!!!!

    Reply

  6. Keith West says

    The thing I’ve enjoyed most about gaucho culture are the steakhouses, places like Chourasco’s, Texas de Brazil, and Fogo de Chao.

    Oh, wait. Was that cultural appropriation…

    Reply

  7. Black Tyrone says

    Nice to hear about SA Cowboys. I went to college and had a house mate who went to a prep school in Uruguay. A great Rugby player. We called him the Gaucho! Father was from Akron Ohio and was an executive in the rubber Industry. We still “made things in he early 70s. Pardon my sarcasim.

    Reply

      • Bozz Scaggs says

        I’ve friend who grew up in the 50’s in Florida. He and his brother were crackers riding crackers, herding crackers and using cracker curs and cracker whips to move those those landrace cattle out of the palmettos. The cows calved for years, the dogs herded cattle all day hunted coons at night, and black bears, and willing to challenge and “put the sheer on” the Florida Panther. The horses were small and tough and sometimes you’d find one with a pretty nice gait, a leftover from the gaited Iberian horse that was left in Florida by the Spanish.

        Reply

  8. john roberts says

    That stag-handled punal is a beauty. I’d love to have one like that. Interesting that the “Mediterranean dirk” was ancestor to both the punal and the Bowie.

    Reply

  9. Eccentric Cowboy says

    I know exactly what you’re going through pard! I myself recently realized, oh my gosh, I’ve neglected researching an entire continent worth of history and Frontier Partisan lore! Something akin to panic struck me when I realized how truly ignorant I was.

    They’ve got jaguar hunters, gold panners, smugglers, gauchos, plenty of their own indians and a mess of other things to keep my mind occupied. I’ve begun collecting information from some of the first explorers, such as Coronado and Cortez, but that’s just the tip of the ice berg!

    Perhaps now you can exercise some justice on us readers who have flogged you with book recommendations, and make some to us. I have no doubt that others are as hungry on this subject as myself!

    Excellent article compadre, I look forward to seeing more.

    Reply

  10. lane batot says

    Along this subject is an old favorite novel of mine, that just happens to sometimes be available and cheap, is Paul Finger’s “A Dog At His Heel”, all about an Australian adventurer and his dog(a cross of Irish Terrier/Airedale/etc.) hiring out to take some sheep to Argentina, and an EPIC tale of the adventures they have there, with gauchos, Indians, and the wildlife–a TRUE “Frontier Partisans” CLASSIC! Just sayin’…..

    Reply

  11. David Southwell says

    Sir, you have a great world to discover here, the life and times of the gaucho. I’ve been to southern brazil albeit mostly the capital area of Rio Grande and urban setting there is still traces of gaucho lifestyle. Southern brazilians are really proud of their gaucho heritage. It’s not just steakhouses LOL.
    Let me know if you need a portuguese translator. My brother spent 15+ years in southern brazil and i speak about 70% fluent also.
    God bless

    Reply

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