Gaucho Girlfriends
By: Camille Cusumano
Tags: Travel, Girlfriends, Gauchos, Argentina, Cowboys

“Cowboys are your weakness,” I say, poking fun at her a little bit. But I stop when I see the look on her face. I realize, somewhat embarrassed, that I’m treading on her national identity. The pampas are the sacred ground of legend, song, and culture of the gaucho. There is even a tango ballad to them, “Adiós Mis Pampas.” They spread from the Atlantic to the Andes, stretching to Uruguay and Brazil. South America’s “oceans of grass” conjure up a similar feeling in the psyche of Argentines as the western United States, with its red rock country and mesquite- and creosote-covered Sonora and Mohave Deserts, does in the psyche of Americans. Every Argentine schoolchild has read the epic 1873 poem “Martin Fierro,” by José Hernández, a seminal work about the plight of the gaucho that’s likened to El Cid, Song of Roland, and The Iliad.

“The Argentine cowboy roamed the open range working for cattle ranchers,” says Pato. “He never owned land because he valued his independence. His spirit was so given to the wild — he owned the birds, grass, skies, leaves, the trees themselves!” I can tell by the way she’s speaking that she doesn’t hold my comment against me. Her love for the gaucho is earnest and true, and it moves me to a nostalgic space. I am seeing the landscape through Pato’s eyes now.

Pato has earned her right to wax rhapsodic. She’s had organic bonding with the pampas through her years with the man who broke horses. Ironically, born and bred in Buenos Aires, he longed for the rural life — and it must’ve been soul-deep because he since found another wife to share his love with him. Pato says that she loved living rustically on a ranch with no electricity early on in her life. “I’d spend two hours ironing his shirts, with their many pleats, and scarves. I loved it all. We raised three children — all boys — and hens, ducks, calves, sheep, and vegetables. We collected ten liters of milk a day. I made cheese, ice cream, and dulce de leche on a wood-burning stove.”

Then, as the kids got older, she grew tired of being stranded when it rained and the road to and from their ranch became an impassible river of mud. She longed for movies, theater, and dancing. “He was happy with beef, bread, and maté,” she tells me.

I ask Pato what she thinks about Gaucho Gil, one of the more cultish folk heroes born in Mercedes in the late nineteenth century in the province of Corrientes. I find him intriguing, but she screws up her face and dismisses him with, “No, no, he’s not real.” I gather she finds the mob hysteria his story incites distasteful.

Antonio Gil was an actual person who refused to be conscripted for a political fight in Corrientes between whites and people of color. He’s the Argentine Robin Hood who went on the lam, robbing and — it is said — sharing with the poor until he was caught in 1875 and hung from a carob tree upside down and then beheaded. His “martyrdom” has inspired multitudes of pilgrims to journey every January 8 to the tree in Corrientes where he was strung up. They petition their folk saint for favors from better health to a job. Anecdotal miracles abound — from people who got the health, got the job. Gauchito Gil has the respect of the Catholic Church — and of numerous vendors who survive today, selling Gil mementos from T-shirts and medallions to mugs and plaster images. More than 100,000 believers attend the annual festivities in his honor. They camp out, build candle-lit altars to Gil, and dance the chamame, a folk dance, all with an al fresco euphoria that recalls the nonsecular fervor of the annual Burning Man in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

We reach Rancho El Tata, an undistinguished structure set back from the two-lane highway on a thick lawn with outdoor seating for warm weather. Pato stops at every table to hug or chat with friends, introducing me as her American friend. She presents me to Iris, the petit, pretty unprepossessing owner, who kisses us both. We sit on the heated, plastic-enclosed terrace in view of the open brick parrilla. Although the barbecue looks industrial in strength, it resembles those in the homes of many Argentine families for whom asado is an indispensable weekly ritual, often on Sundays.

A cook emerges with his long tongs in hand to add wood fuel to the barbecue from a nearby stockpile. I watch as he tends to the sizzling meat, momentarily thrilled to observe the red-hot embers flare up with an occasional flame. I recognize the slabs of beef and ribs, but the chichulines (or chitlins), the offal (or intestines) of a calf, are a new delicacy. I do not try them, but I do eat heartily from every other grass-fed part Iris lays before us. This is my first parrilla and I’m not disappointed.