Gaucho Literature
Authors: Stavans Ilan 
Published: April 2019

The myth and folklore of gauchos are at the core of Argentina’s national identity. This rural population—compared, misguidedly, to the American cowboy in the Southwest, the Colombian llanero, and the Mexican charro—is the subject of more than a few of the country’s foundational literary works, including Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (1855), which established the rhetorical boundaries of how Argentina should see itself vis-à-vis Europe, and José Hernández’s ballad El gaucho Martín Fierro (1872) and its sequel, El regreso de Martín Fierro (1879) (all cited under Authors). Gauchos were itinerant, horse-riding, mestizo cattle workers who from the late 18th century to the early 20th lived in the pampas, in the territories where Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil meet. This population developed its own customs, which included dressing in unique fashion, expounding a life of marginalization, courage, and revenge, and telling their adventures through ballads. Sarmiento and others see them as primitive, an element in need of reformation if Argentina wants to be part of the modern world. Gaucho literature is unreservedly about masculinity. Although it is at its most influential through poetry, it also manifests itself in novels, such as Eduardo Gutiérrez’s Juan Moreira (1880), Ricardo Güiraldes’ Don Segundo Sombra (1926), and Benito Lynch’s El romance del gaucho (1930). The most important gaucho authors and those whose oeuvre expounded on the genre are Hilario Ascasubi, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, Estanislao del Campo, José Hernández, Bartolomé Hidalgo, Alberto Gerchunoff, and Leopoldo Lugones. All discussion of gaucho literature is, implicitly, about identity, nativism, and authenticity. At the core of that discussion is a debate, led by Jorge Luis Borges, on the difference between what is “gaucho” and “gauchesco.” The former is the gaucho’s authentic viewpoint, as told by himself. The latter is an adulterated version delivered by a city dweller on behalf of gauchos. Given its status in the nation’s canon, the focus of this bibliography is Argentina. It also includes, albeit in smaller numbers, entries about Uruguay and Brazil. (With few exceptions, the selected sources and bibliography here belong to the gauchesca type.) It is also fundamental to note that a central issue in gaucho literature is the integration—or not—of the gauchos into the nation. Most of the gauchesca literature that is written by city authors (non-gaucho, i.e., Sarmiento, Hernández, Lugones, Borges) engaged in the national debate around modernization and how the gauchos could be perceived as obstacle to modernization as well as iconic identity for Argentina. In Facundo, this topic is prominent, especially in describing “el gaucho malo” (bad gaucho), which Sarmiento associates with caudillism and barbarism (specifically, Federal leader Juan M. de Rosas). Several decades later, in Lugones, gauchos are viewed in a positive nostalgic light, because of the massive European immigration, which the Argentine elite perceived as a threat to national identity. In other words, discussions on gauchos were always at the center of national identity even as that changed according to political debates: modernization, wars, gauchos and caudillos, gauchos and indigenous population, tradition versus immigration, etc.