Gaucho
A gaucho () or gaúcho () is a skilled horseman, reputed to be brave and unruly. The figure of the gaucho is a folk symbol of Argentina, Uruguay, Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, and the south of Chilean Patagonia. Gauchos became greatly admired and renowned in legend, folklore, and literature and became an important part of their regional cultural tradition. Beginning late in the 19th century, after the heyday of the gauchos, they were celebrated by South American writers. The gaucho in some respects resembled members of other nineteenth century rural, horse-based cultures such as the North American cowboy  ( in Spanish), of Central Chile, the Peruvian or , the Venezuelan and Colombian , the Ecuadorian , the Hawaiian , the Mexican , and the Portuguese . According to the , in its historical sense a gaucho was a "mestizo who, in the 18th and 19th centuries, inhabited Argentina, Uruguay, and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, and was a migratory horseman, and adept in cattle work". In Argentina and Uruguay today, gaucho can refer to any "country person, experienced in traditional livestock farming". Because historical gauchos were reputed to be brave, if unruly, the word is also applied metaphorically to mean "noble, brave and generous", but  also "one who is skillful in subtle tricks, crafty". In Portuguese the word gaúcho means "an inhabitant of the plains of Rio Grande do Sul or the Pampas of Argentina of European and indigenous American descent who devotes himself to lassoing and raising cattle and horses"; gaúcho has also acquired a metonymic signification in Brazil, meaning anyone, even an urban dweller, who is a citizen of the State of Rio Grande do Sul. Etymology. There are several hypotheses concerning the origin of the term. It may derive from the Spanish term , in turn derived from a Turkish low-rank military  term Chiaus (), through Arabic which became broadly applied to any guard/watcher or aide. Another theory is that the word may derive from the Portuguese , which was designated to the inhabitants of the vast regions of and in the 18th century or the Portuguese that points to an instrument used by the gauchos to trap and hamstring cattle. The 18th century chronicler speaks of when it mentions the gauchos or as poorly dressed men. Another plausible origin is from a South American indigenous language, such as Mapudungun ("vagrant", "wanderer"), ("friend"), or Quechua ("vagabond", "poor person”) which means the state of  being lonely in the wilderness. History. The historical "gaucho" is elusive, because there has been more than one kind. Mythologisation has obscured the topic. Origins. Itinerant horsemen, hunting wild cattle on the pampas, originated as a social class during the 17th century. "The great natural abundance of the pampa", wrote Richard W. Slatta, The original gaucho was typically descended from unions between Iberian men and Amerindian women, although he might also have African ancestry. A DNA analysis study of rural inhabitants of Rio Grande do Sul, who style themselves "gaúchos", has claimed to discern, not only Amerindian (charrúa and guaraní ) ancestry in the female line but, in the male line, a higher proportion of Spanish ancestry than is usual in Brazil. However, gauchos were a social class, not an ethnic group. Gauchos are first mentioned by name in the 18th century records of the Spanish colonial authorities who adminstered the Banda Oriental (present-day Uruguay). For them, he is an outlaw, cattle thief, robber and smuggler. Félix de Azara (1790) said gauchos were "the dregs of the Rio de la Plata and of Brazil". Summarised one scholar: "Fundamentally [the gaucho of the time] was a colonial bootlegger whose business was  contraband trade in cattle hides. His work was highly illegal; his character lamentably reprehensible; his social standing exceedingly low. "Gaucho" was an insult; yet it was possible to use the word to refer, without animosity, to country people in general. Furthermore the gaucho's skills, though useful in banditry or smuggling, were just as useful for serving in the frontier police. The Spanish administration recruited its antismuggling Cuerpo de Blandengues from among the outlaws themselves. The Uruguayan patriot José Gervasio Artigas made precisely that career transition. Wars of emancipation; independence. The gaucho was a born cavalryman, and his bravery in  the patriot cause in the wars of independence, especially under Artigas and Martín Miguel de Güemes, earned admiration and improved his image. Visitors to the newly emergent Argentina and Uruguay perceived that a "gaucho" was a country person or herdsman: seldom was there a pejorative significance". Emeric Essex Vidal, the first artist to paint gauchos, noted their mobility (1820): Vidal also painted visiting gauchos from up-country Tucumán. ("Their features are particularly Spanish, uncrossed by that mixture observable in the citizens of Buenos Ayres"). They are not horsemen: they are oxcart drivers, and may or may not have called themselves  gauchos in their home province. Charles Darwin observed life on the pampas for six months and reflected in his diary (1833): Controlling the wandering gaucho. Argentina. As cattle estates grew bigger the freely wandering gaucho became a nuisance to landed proprietors, except when his casual labour was wanted e.g. at branding. Furthermore his services were needed in the armies that were fighting on the Indian frontiers, or in the frequent civil wars. Hence in Argentina, vagrancy laws required rural workers to carry employment documents. Some restrictions on the gaucho's freedom of movement were imposed under Spanish Viceroy Sobremonte, but  they were greatly intensified under Bernardino Rivadavia, and were enforced more vigorously still under Juan Manuel de Rosas. Those who did not carry the documentation could be sentenced to years in the military. From 1822 to 1873 even internal passports were required. According to Marxist and other scholars the gaucho became "proletarianized", preferring life as a salaried peon on an estancia to forced enlistment, irregular pay and harsh discipline. However, some resisted. "In words and deeds, soldiers contested the state's disciplinary model", frequently deserting. Deserters often fled to the Indian frontier, or even took refuge with the Indians themselves . José Hernández described the bitter fate of just such a gaucho protagonist in his poem Martín Fierro (1872}, a great popular success in the countryside. One estimate was that renegade gauchos comprised half of all Indian raiding parties. Lucio Victorio Mansilla (1877) thought he could discern two types of gaucho in the soldiers under his command: The "paisano gaucho" (country worker) has a home, a fixed abode, work habits, respect for authority, on whose side he will always be, even against his better feelings. But the "gaucho neto" (out-and-out gaucho) is the typical wandering "criollo", here today, there  tomorrow; gambler, quarreler, enemy of discipline; who flees military service when it is his turn, takes refuge among the Indians if he knifes someone, or joins the "montonera" (armed rabble) if it shows up. The first has the instincts of civilization; he imitates the man of the cities in his dress, in his customs. The second loves tradition; he hates foreigners; his luxury is his spurs, his flash gear, his leather sash, his facón (dagger-sword). The first takes off his poncho to go into town, the second goes there flaunting his trappings. The first is a cultivator, oxcart driver , cattle drover, herdsman, a peon. The second hires himself out for cattle branding. The first has been a soldier several times. The second was once part of a squadron and as soon as he saw his chance he deserted. The first is always "federal", the second is no longer anything. The first still believes in something; the second believes in nothing. He has suffered more than the city slicker, and so has been disillusioned quicker. He votes, because the Commander or the Mayor tells him to, and with that universal suffrage is achieved. If he has a claim, he drops  it because he thinks it is frankly a waste of time. In a word, the first is a useful man for industry and work — the second is a dangerous inhabitant anywhere. If he resorts to the courts, it is because he has the instinct to believe that they will do him justice out of fear – and there are examples, if they don't do it he takes revenge — he wounds or kills. The former makes up the Argentine social mass; the second is disappearing. Already in 1845 a local dialect dictionary, by a knowledgeable compiler, gave "gaucho" as meaning any  kind of rural worker, including one who cultivated the soil. To refer to the wandering sort, one had to specify further. Documentary research has shown the great majority of rural workers in Buenos Aires province were not herdsmen, but cultivators or shepherds. Thus, the gaucho that survives in today's popular imagination — the galloping horseman — was not typical. Brazil and Uruguay. Gauchos north of the Río de la Plata were similar to their Argentine counterparts; however there were some differences, particularly in the region straddling Brazil and Uruguay. The Portuguese Crown, in order to conquer southern Brazil — it was disputed  with the Spanish Empire — distributed vast tracts of land to a few hundred families. Labour in this region was scarce, so great landowners acquired it by allowing a social class, called "agregados", to settle on their land with their own animals. Values were martial and paternalistic, for the territory went back and forth between Portugal and Spain. Brazilian inheritance laws compelled landowners to leave their lands in equal shares to their sons and daughters, and since they were numerous, and those laws were hard to evade, great landholdings fractured in a few generations. There were not the huge cattle estates  of Buenos Aires province where, as an extreme example, the Anchorena family owned in 1864. Unlike Argentina, cattlemen in Rio Grande do Sul did not have vagrancy laws to tie gaúchos to their ranches. However, slavery was legal in Brazil; in Rio Grande do Sul it existed until 1884; and perhaps a majority of permanent ranch workers were enslaved. Thus many horse-riding "campeiros" (cowboys) were black slaves. They enjoyed sharply better living conditions than the slaves who worked in the brutal "xarqueadas" (beef-salting plants). John Charles Chasteen explained why: Land-hungry Rio Grande cattlemen bought up estates cheaply  in neighbouring Uruguay until they owned about 30% of that country, which they ranched with their slaves and cattle. The border area was fluid, bilingual and lawless. Though slavery was abolished in Uruguay in 1846, and there were laws against human trafficking, weak governments poorly enforced those laws. Often Brazilian ranchers simply ignored them, even crossing and re-crossing the border with their slaves and cattle. An 1851 extradition treaty required Uruguay to return fugitive Brazilian slaves. Governments found it hard to establish a monopoly of violence in the border area. In the Federalist Revolution of 1893 gaúcho-manned armies  led by elite families fought each other with exceptional barbarity. Powerful Brazilian-Uruguayan families, like the Saraivas, led mounted insurrections in both countries, even in the 20th century. In the satirical cartoon (1904) Aparicio Saravia says it is time for "another little revolution": they have been at peace long enough and are starting to look ridiculous. This time, however, his mobile, lance-wielding horsemen were put down, and decisively, by Uruguayan troops armed with Mauser rifles and Krupp cannon, efficiently deployed by telegraph and rail. European immigration; fencing the pampa. It was official government policy, enshrined in the Argentine Constitution  of 1853, to encourage European immigration. The purpose, which was not concealed, was to supplant the "lower races" of the sparsely populated interior, including gauchos, whom the elite believed to be hopelessly backward. Famously, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Argentina's second elected president, had written (in Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie) that gauchos, although audacious and skilled in country lore, were brutal, feckless, lived indolently in squalor, and — by upholding the caudillos (provincial strongmen) — were obstacles to national unity. The population was so thinly spread it was impossible to educate. They were barbarians, inimical to progress. Juan Bautista Alberdi, deviser of the  Constitution, held that "to govern is to populate". Once political stability was achieved the results were dramatic. From around 1875 a flood of immigrants altered the country's ethnic composition. In 1914, 40% of Argentina's residents were foreign-born. Today, Italian surnames are more common than Spanish. Barbed wire, cheap from 1876, fenced the pampa "and thus eliminated the need for gaucho cowboys". Gauchos were forced off the land, drifting into rural towns to look for work, though a few were retained as peon labourers. Cunninghame Graham, after whom a Buenos Aires street is named, and who had lived  as a gaucho in the 1870s, returned in 1914 to "his first love, Argentina" and found it had greatly changed. "Progress, which he constantly lambasted, had rendered the gaucho virtually extinct". Wote S. Samuel Trifilo (1964): "The gaucho of today working on the pampas of Argentina is no more a real gaucho than is our own present-day cowboy the cowboy of the Wild West; both have gone forever." Two-thirds of Uruguay lies south of the Río Negro, and this part was fenced most intensively in the decade 1870-1880. The gaucho was marginalised and was frequently driven to  live in "pueblos de ratas" (rural slums, literally rat towns). North of the Río Negro mobile gauchos survived rather longer. A Scottish anthropologist in the central region (1882) saw many of them as unsettled. European immigration to the countryside was smaller. The central government failed to consolidate its power over the countryside, and gaucho-manned armies continued to defy it until 1904. The turbulent gaucho leaders e.g. the Saravias had connections with the cattlemen over the Brazilian border, where there was much less European immigration; Wire fences did not become common in the borderland until the close of the 19th  century. The revolutionary battles in Brazil ended by 1930 under the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, who disarmed the private gaúcho armies and prohibited the carrying of guns in public. The gaucho as an icon. Argentina. In the 20th century urban intellectuals promoted the gaucho as the Argentine national icon; it was a reaction to massive European immigration and a rapidly changing way of life. Jeane DeLaney has argued that the immigrant was being scapegoated for the problems of modernity; thus, the sentiment was antimodernistic, with a xenophobic, nationalistic edge. Writers variously reflecting this tendency included José María Ramos Mejía, Manuel  Gálvez, Rafael Obligado, José Ingenieros, Miguel Cané, and above all Leopoldo Lugones and Ricardo Güiraldes. Their answer was to go back to values that could be attributed to the old-time gaucho. However, the gaucho they chose was not the one who cultivated the land, but the one who galloped across it. For Lugones (1913), to discern a people's true character, one had to read its epic poetry; and "Martín Fierro" was the Argentine epic poem "par excellence". Far from being a barbarian, the gaucho was the hero who did what the Spanish Empire could not — civilise the pampa  by subjugating the Indian. To be a gaucho demanded "composure, courage, ingenuity, meditation, sobriety, vigour; all this made him a free man". But in that case, asked Lugones, why did the gaucho disappear? Because, together with his virtues, he had inherited two defects from his Indian and Spanish ancestors: laziness and pessimism. Lugones' lectures, where he canonised "Martín Fierro" with its quarreling gaucho protagonist, had official support: the president of the Republic and his cabinet attended them, as did prominent members of the traditional ruling classes. However, wrote a Mexican sholar, in exalting this gaucho Lugones and others were not  recreating a real historical character, they were weaving a nationalist myth, for political purposes. Jorge Luis Borges thought their choice of gaucho was a poor role model for Argentines. Wrote musicologist Melanie Plesch: The iconic gaucho gained traction in popular culture because he appealed to diverse social groups: displaced rural workers; European immigrants anxious to assimilate; traditional ruling classes wanting to affirm their own legitimacy. At a time when the elite was extolling Argentina as a "white" country, a fourth group, those who possessed dark skins, felt validated by the gaucho's elevation, seeing that his non-white ancestry was  too well known too be concealed. Today a popular movement celebrates gaucho culture. Brazil. In Rio Grande do Sul the gaúcho has been mythified too, not in reaction to massive immigration as in Argentina, but to give the state a regional identity. The main celebration is the "Semana Farroupilha", a week of festivities, mass horseback parades, "churrasco", rodeos and dances. It refers to the Ragamuffin War (1835-45), an elite-led separatist war against the Brazilian Empire; politicians have reinterpreted it as democratic movement. Hence, wrote Luciano Bornholdt, All the inhabitants of Rio Grande do Sul today, even lawyers and  midwives, call themselves "gaúchos". Actual ranchers and "peões" (peons), when referring to their own social group, use the word rather less. For them, "gaúcho" is not a tradition, just a skillset. The "Movimento Tradicionalista Gaúcho" (MTG) has an active participation of two million people, and claims to be the largest popular culture movement in the Western world. Essentially urban, rooted in nostalgia for rural life, the MTG fosters gaúcho culture. There are 2,000 Centres for Gaúcho Traditions, not only in the state, but elsewhere, even Los Angeles and Osaka, Japan. Gaúcho products include television and radio programs, articles, books, dance  halls, performers, records, theme restaurants, and clothing. The movement was founded by intellectuals, apparently sons of downwardly mobile small landowners who had moved to the cities to study. Since gaúcho culture was seen as male, only later were women invited to participate. Though the real gaúchos of history lived in the Campanha (plains region), some of the first to join were of German or Italian ethnicity from outside that area, a social class who had idealised the gaúcho rancher as a type superior to themselves. Horsemanship. For many, an essential attribute of a gaucho is that he is a skilled  horseman. Scottish physician and botanist David Christison noted in 1882, "He has taken his first lessons in riding before he is well able to walk". Without a horse the gaucho himself felt unmanned. During the wars of the 19th century in the Southern Cone, the cavalries on all sides were composed almost entirely of gauchos. In Argentina, gaucho armies such as that of Martín Miguel de Güemes, slowed Spanish advances. Furthermore, many relied on gaucho armies to control the Argentine provinces. The naturalist William Henry Hudson, who was born on the Pampas of Buenos Aires province, recorded that the gauchos  of his childhood used to say that a man without a horse was a man without legs. He described meeting a blind gaucho who was obliged to beg for his food yet behaved with dignity and went about on horseback. Richard W. Slatta, the author of a scholarly work about gauchos, notes that the gaucho used horses to collect, mark, drive or tame cattle, to draw fishing nets, to hunt ostriches, to snare partridges, to draw well water, and even—with the help of his friends—to ride to his own burial. By reputation the quintessential gaucho Juan Manuel de  Rosas could throw his hat on the ground and scoop it up while galloping his horse, without touching the saddle with his hand. For the gaucho, the horse was absolutely essential to his survival for, said Hudson: "he must every day traverse vast distances, see quickly, judge rapidly, be ready at all times to encounter hunger and fatigue, violent changes of temperature, great and sudden perils". A popular was: It was the gaucho's passion to own all his steeds in matching colours. Hudson recalled: The gaucho, from the poorest worker on horseback to the largest owner of lands and  cattle, has, or had in those days, a fancy for having all his riding-horses of one colour. Every man as a rule had his tropilla — his own half a dozen or a dozen or more saddle-horses, and he would have them all as nearly alike as possible, so that one man had chestnuts, another browns, bays, silver- or iron-greys, duns, fawns, cream-noses, or blacks, or whites, or piebalds. The Chacho Peñaloza described the low point of his life as "In Chile − and on foot!" () Extreme equestrianship. Richard W. Slatta collected instances of extreme equestrian sports  practised by 19th century gauchos. To perform these required and developed skills and courage that helped gauchos to survive on the pampas. Gauchos routinely maltreated their horses since these were plentiful. Even a poor gaucho usually had a "tropilla" of perhaps a dozen. Most of those sports were banned by the elite. The higher skills were lost as the gaucho was marginalised, wrote Slatta: Culture. The gaucho plays an important symbolic role in the nationalist feelings of this region, especially that of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The epic poem by José Hernández (considered by some the national epic of Argentina ) used the gaucho as a symbol against corruption and of Argentine national tradition, pitted against Europeanising tendencies. Martín Fierro, the hero of the poem, is drafted into the Argentine military for a border war, deserts, and becomes an outlaw and fugitive. The image of the free gaucho is often contrasted to the slaves who worked the northern Brazilian lands. Further literary descriptions are found in Ricardo Güiraldes' . Gauchos were generally reputed to be strong, honest, silent types, but proud and capable of violence when provoked. The gaucho tendency to violence over petty matters is also recognized as a typical trait . Gauchos' use of the —a large knife generally tucked into the rear of the gaucho's sash—is legendary, often associated with considerable bloodletting. Historically, the was typically the only eating instrument that a gaucho carried. The gaucho diet was composed almost entirely of beef while on the range, supplemented by , an herbal infusion made from the leaves of yerba mate, a type of holly rich in caffeine and nutrients. The water for was heated short of boiling on a stove in a kettle, and traditionally served in a hollowed-out gourd and sipped through a metal straw called a  . Gauchos dressed and wielded tools quite distinct from North American cowboys. In addition to the lariat, gauchos used or ( in Portuguese)—three leather-bound rocks tied together with leather straps. The typical gaucho outfit would include a poncho, which doubled as a saddle blanket and as sleeping gear; a ; a leather whip called a ; and loose-fitting trousers called or a poncho or blanket wrapped around the loins like a diaper called a , belted with a sash called a . A leather belt, sometimes decorated with coins and elaborate buckles, is often worn over the sash. During winters, gauchos wore heavy wool  ponchos to protect against cold. Their tasks were to move the cattle between grazing fields, or to market sites such as the port of Buenos Aires. The consists of branding the animal with the owner’s sign. The taming of animals was another of their usual activities. Taming was a trade especially appreciated throughout Argentina and competitions to domesticate wild foal remained in force at festivals. The majority of gauchos were illiterate and considered as countrymen. Modern influences. , a boy in the Argentine colors and a gaucho hat, was the mascot for the 1978 FIFA World Cup.