Way of the Gaucho

How I rediscovered Martín Fierro and its modern cultural relevance.

When I was a boy, I remember being curious about our copy of El Gaucho Martín Fierro by José Hernández that was on display in our living room bookcase. The leather-bound book sat next to our Christian scriptures and it was treated with as much reverence as these religious texts.

Having grown up in a household with a mother and grandparents who were from Argentina, I was taught that Martín Fierro was an epic poem about the life of a gaucho, written in the 19th century, and within its verses, or cantos, were life lessons to be passed onto future generations.

While holding the book, I would marvel at the engravings of a heavily creased face of an old man on the front cover. He had a full gray beard, mid-length hair drawn back with a headband, and he wore a neckerchief and a poncho that was traditional gaucho garb.

I would trace the pattern of the wise-looking face with my fingers, but upon opening the book I could barely comprehend any of the text inside its pages. It was written in old-style Spanish and contained lunfardo, or old folksy slang, as my grandmother explained to me, that had lost most of its meaning today.

So growing up I would only know the tale of Martín Fierro as it was summarized to me by others and I was also familiar with many of its verses, which were oft-quoted to me, mainly by my mother or grandparents.

I especially recall once when my mother, after catching me fighting with one of my siblings, recited to me a verse, translated here as, Brothers be united, for that is the first law; because if brothers fight with themselves, then they’ll be devoured by outsiders.”

While quotes like these stuck with me, I‘d never read the complete story of the old gaucho in full — that is, until just recently during the pandemic summer of 2020. It was during this time that I decided to read it aloud over the phone or video calls during a period of months to my 90-year-old grandmother.

Folksy Gaucho Wisdom and Bonding with My “Nona”

I didn’t think much of this exercise of reading to my “Nona” (as I call my grandmother) save that it would be a good way to bond with her and keep her company during our time of isolation. I also thought it was high time I finally did read the full poem in full and in its original Spanish employing Nona’s help to decipher its cantos.

I read the book to her while we both sipped on yerba mate, which in a way served to connect us through our own tradition while keeping in mind the drink’s origins with the gauchos of the past.

As Nona and I read through through the pages of cantos, I’d stop to ask her what they meant to her. She helped me better understand the meanings of a lot of the words and each of the verses, of which I will relate here.

What I found in the pages of Martín Fierro was more profound than I realized — a relatable story of social protest against the government oppression of a people and their way of life, the gauchos. The old gaucho’s song of woe had an unexpected relevance across cultures and times.

A Gaucho’s Tale in the Form of Song

As the author writes, Martín Fierro was a gaucho who began his story in the form of song, as a form of consolation to himself, and to the rhythm of his guitar. He had once been a law-abiding gaucho, living in his own house with wife and children, breaking horses, rounding up cattle. He could’ve died happily out in the country among his own kind.

They had been good times, but soon all turned sour. He was now a gaucho on the run, an outlaw simply for being born a gaucho. Don’t tell him about suffering, because suffering is how the gaucho lives…no one should ever feel high and mighty, because even with his feet in the stirrups, even the most expert gaucho could be left on foot…you gather experience in life, enough to lend or give to others; nothing teaches you more than to suffer and cry.*

Who were the gauchos?

The gauchos who were singularly responsible for first settling the land in Argentina, Nona explained to me. After the Spanish attempted to find silver in country and didn’t find any, they left it abandoned. But they had left behind horses and cattle, and the gaucho — the word gaucho means “orphan” or “child without a father” in the indigenous language.

These gauchos, most of mixed race as part Spanish or other European and part indigenous, would learn to tame the horses and cattle. From a colony that had been considered a disappointment, these newfound cowboys would later be celebrated for bringing riches to Spain with beef export.

But those good ol’ days for the gaucho would soon be over, as the Spanish returned and began lording over the lands. Over a century or more, the open land of the pampas would be overrun by roads and fences. The gauchos would be forced off their lands, or worse — conscripted to fight in wars against outsiders, such as Brazil, Great Britain or France, or against the country’s own Native Peoples.

The Gaucho’s Life as a Soldier — or Slave?

As Martín Fierro song-tale continues, he was one of these gauchos who was conscripted to fight against those who were his own Native Peoples. Because of their expertise on horseback, Nona explained, the gauchos were more useful for this dirty work as compared to normal soldiers.

But Fierro soon found that he’d never be given a gun. Instead he was put to work on a the Colonel’s own farm sowing wheat and building corrals. Any kind of resistance was met with lashes. He also discovers that while other soldiers receive payment he receives none.

When the natives did attack, they’d have to defend their fort with spears or old swords. But the attackers were much more adept at riding and fighting scattering the soldiers and making off with their horses, according to Fierro’s tale. He would escape only by jumping on his horse and racing away as fast as he could manage it.

After continuing to suffer horrid military conditions, Fierro reaches his limit when he’s punished for no good reason. In the night, he passes by a drunk gringo (a term used to describe any European foreigner with broken Spanish but usually those of Italian descent, Nona explained to me). The gringo is startled by his presence and takes a shot at him with his gun.

It was enough to stir the wasp’s nest, or officers, who came out and decided to punish Fierro for his act. He’s stretched and tied to the ground with the Major shouting at him that this is what he gets for asking for compensation. Tied at the stakes, Fierro wonders why the government sends unskilled, know-nothing gringos to the frontier when all they do is create extra work or cause trouble for the gauchos.

Fierro starts making his plans to escape rather than kill the Indians (who he’d come to admire) and live to only fill the pockets of others. There’s no honor in a life like that. While the officers were distracted at the gambling table one night, he steals a horse and takes off into the night.

Upon reaching his home after three years, however, he discovers that there was nothing left for him there. His house was left in ruins, his cattle had been confiscated and sold by the government, and his wife and children were nowhere to be found.

Devastated, the gaucho grieves over the suffering his family must’ve gone through in his absence and knows that he may never find them. He has become nothing more than a poor, naked deserter who’d spend the rest of his life running from the law.

A Gaucho’s Life on The Run

Over the rest of the gaucho’s story, Fierro describes what life is like for a gaucho on the run — a life of sadness, without a nest, always poor, and always hounded. But being a gaucho, he swears to not be caught asleep by the law.

Things go from bad to far worse when Fierro, in a drunken stupor, provokes an argument with a black man defending the honor of his woman and ends up killing him in a knife fight. Fierro expresses full regret for the act, saddened that the man was just rolled into a grave without even a proper burial; and he confesses that he’d like to dig up his bones and put them in a cemetery.*

In another barroom brawl, he ends up in a tangle with the town bully — slashing his guts out — and takes off only to be pursued by the police. Rather than surrender, Fierro takes them on all at once. This act of bravery inspires one of the police sergeants called Cruz who switches sides and joins the gaucho in the fight against the law. They escape.

Cruz’s own sorrowful story comes to light. He was a gaucho who had lost his his woman and lands to the Commandant in charge of the troops. (There were lessons to learn about women from his tale: if she’s good, she won’t leave you when she sees your luck’s run out…the best companion for a man…but nothing’s sadder than catching your woman in another man’s arms, leaving you with nothing but an empty sack;* better to put your trust in a horse!)

Riding together, the two outlaws would share troubles and turn to the only place they know to go in search of refuge—to the frontier with the native peoples, traveling in the wild, where they would at last be safe and free. And they’d make it through by stealing when they could, foraging and living off the land, drinking mate tea and singing by their campfire.

Finally at the end of his song-poem story — in a moment akin to dropping the mic — the author writes that the gaucho reaches for his drink, finishes it, and then slams the guitar on the ground shattering it to pieces, making sure that no one else would sing after him. Tears ran down his face.

Relevance in Modern Times

I won’t begin to explain the number of times reading Martín Fierro — a little here and there over months to my Nona in 2020—I thought about how the story was relevant across different cultures, across our different histories, and in current happenings.

Nona explained tome that Hernández had written the story to shine a light on the the plight of the gauchos against the powerful forces that existed at the time.

Beforehand, the gauchos were a misjudged people often regarded as ignorant or a backwards people, or living in the past. But the truth was that they were an oppressed people. The reasoning was grounded in racism, with mestizo gauchos often treated as slaves or worse — used as cannon fodder or as enemies against their own kind.

In this way, in Argentina, Martín Fierro helped lead to progressive changes within government and created greater social awareness. While the tale itself is fictitious, and written in a different time, its lessons are relatable to modern times not simply for the book’s clever and quote-worthy verses, but also as a cautionary tale.

*Translations presented here are my own and/or from the UNESCO 1974 translation of the text.