Argentina and Gaucho Life in the 1940s
Social Life in the city: Buenos Aires, 1940s
Source: Letters from the Argentine, written in the early 1940s by Francis Herron, a young student visiting from the US.
There has never been, insofar as I have been able to learn, even one happy tango. The tango dates back to the early 1900s when it succeeded the milonga [two Argentine dances]. The milonga has many of the qualities of the tango. In fact, the tango is an adaptation or evolution of it. The other night I heard a milonga which concerned itself with the Negro race. I was surprised, for there are but a handful of Negroes in the Argentine. In the earlier days of the Republic, however, there were a lot of them. A friend of mine explained that in the war with Paraguay the Negroes were sent to the front as troops de choque (assault troops). Very few of them returned to the Argentine from this terrible war.
One of the most noticeable customs to the foreigner is the piropo. Men of whatever age standing idly on the sidewalk or passing in the street make remarks to women whose beauty they fancy. It is a custom which, oddly enough, seems to please the women. Although it seems to be done in the best social circles, I know I shan't speak a piropo very soon. While returning to the hotel one evening by automobile with a friend, the driver suddenly slammed on the brakes, stopping the car almost in the middle of a busy intersection. A young lady had paused on the corner to allow the traffic to go by before she set out to cross the street. She waved us on. My friend would not proceed until she crossed the street. I never saw such gallant showmanship in my life. I asked him if it were a kind of piropo. He told me that it was not, that it was something more special, an "atencion."
Economy and Social Classes of the Pampas (1940s)
Source: Letters from the Argentine, written in the early 1940s by Francis Herron, a young student visiting from the US.
Corn is stored in bins (trojes), some of them more than 20 feet in diameter and from 12 to 18 feet high. The 1914 corn crop is almost entirely stored in trojes. Last year's corn has even now deteriorated to such an extent that, given the possibility of an immediate demand for it and the ocean bottoms to transport it, it would be unlikely that any considerable percentage of it would be marketable. It is alive with weevils and other insects. On some ears there is not a kernel which has not been explored by some "bug." Again this year the farmer will gather his corn in the usual arduous manner, store it in the trojes and sell it to the government. There will be a lot of corn, probably 300,000,000 bushels, but unless the war ends in the next twelve months the weevils will have another feast.
There is another feature to the corn surplus. It is also the story of the wheat and flax surpluses. It is the dilemma of the grain trade. The government, by reason of impossible world-trade conditions, has had to make an artificial market for the "Big Three" in the cereal market. In December the grain futures market at Buenos Aires was discontinued. Obviously, exporters, with the foreign market completely gone, do not need a futures market for hedging purposes. There are no price prospects for grain farmers and no business for grain traders until war's end. Meantime it would seem that the cereal farmers are farming merely to keep in practice.
A studied, scholarly statement of the United States position with respect to the hoof-and-mouth disease, called here the fiebre aftosa, has been received by the United States Embassy and will shortly be released to those Argentines who would like a clarifying statement. The hoof-and-mouth disease is a controversial subject which has many technical aspects and about which there are many points on which even the best-informed men do not agree. The Argentine argument is that the disease as it exists here is mild and relatively harmless; that the Argentine government has an inspection service which would prevent the exporting of diseased carcasses; that England, a country with an excellent cattle industry, allows the wholesale importation of Argentine chilled meat. The agricultural expert who wrote the United States statement submits a history of the problem as it has affected the United States. He points out the fact that the foot-and-mouth disease has appeared twice in the United States during the past 30 years-following the passage of the Underwood tariff act in Wilson's administration and , again it the early 1920's. In both cases there was reason to believe that the disease had been transmitted by virus in scraps of Argentine meat which were fed to hogs. The statement asserts that England has been most concerned with the disease, especially since it has appeared there in the past 20 years at least every other year and often in consecutive years.
The record of the United States, where the sanitary sanctions are in effect, is obviously better, the report states. Canada, too, has in effect the same kind of sanitary sanctions as the United States. In England's case, it is suggested that it is necessary for the island to import large quantities of meat for its civil population, irrespective of the consequences to its cattle industry. The report states that Argentine veterinary experts, far from regarding the disease as mild and relatively harmless, have warned against the complacency with which it is viewed. With respect to Argentine inspection, the report counters with the contention that it is impossible by such a method to eliminate virus-infected carcasses. It is asserted that even the best, most careful inspection of meats removes only those meats where the effects of the disease are apparent. An animal might have a high fever at the time of slaughter, and the disease would leave no indication; yet the virus would be present in all its virulence. One thing about which all the experts agree is that fiebre aftosa does not make meat unfit for human consumption.
The Argentine feeling is that the sanitary sanctions are used as a pretext to prevent the importation of superior Argentine beef into the United States. That is not the purpose of the sanctions, and they are not interpreted in that way by the United States Department of Agriculture. The concern of those who are enforcing the sanctions is to see that the disease does not spread to the United States. The fiebre aftosa is so widely prevalent in the pampa area that it would be exceedingly difficult to control and eliminate it. Wholesale slaughter is the only manner in which to war against the disease. It is a scientific problem which can only be approached in a scientific way. However, political and economic concerns have become so mingled in the usual treatment of the subject that it is very hard to separate them. If this problem could somehow be solved, Argentine-United States relations would improve noticeably. Anyone who has seen the beautiful grazing land of the Argentine, with its thousands upon thousands of well fed, blooded cattle, can understand the pride which the Argentine citizen has in this, his greatest industry.
Rural Social Classes
In the strict sense, perhaps, many of these people ought not to be placed in the middle class. To make a goup of it, I am placing all those who make more than 150 pesos a month in the middle class. This kind of classification would not obtain in Buenos Aires or in some of the larger provincial cities, particularly the capitals. Guardia says there are a fair number of merchants in Venado Tuerto who make considerably more than a thousand pesos a month. The estancia owners form the richest part o£ rural society. Their bright and shiny North American cars come to town in the evenings, on Saturdays and Sundays, or take their owners on periodical vacations to Mar del Plata. Some estancias, speaking in terms of economics, are going to seed because o£ the propensity of their owners to follow an entertainment program the year around.
I have spoken of the poorer people, the middle class and the estanciero (estancia or ranch owner.) There is left the chacarero [sharecropper]. Many students of the Argentine social-economic problem look to the chacarero as the individual who will solve the landed estate difficulty by buying farm property from the estanciero and converting the landed system into one of small units on which diversified farming is practiced. The realization of this ideal is in a future which does not yet seem in sight. There are few chacareros who make enough money cropping the land to purchase farm property. Approximately half of the land in the Venado Tuerto district is devoted to cereal farming, and is rented to the chacareros by the estancieros. In the case where land is rented on a cash basis, the chacarero is, in general, hopelessly in debt. He lives in as cheap and primitive a house as the one in which a town-rooted peon has. However, he does have more independence, for he is certain o£ his subsistence living. In the rich agricultural zones, as around Venado Tuerto, it is possible, when prices are high and farming is done on a share basis, for the chacarero to make some money.
If the land is rented from the estanciero on a cash basis the owner shoots the rent up with the rise in prices, and when prices fall the chacarero is penniless. In a sense, the owner exercises a kind of tyranny over the chacarero, allowing him to plant only that which he orders. In most cases he forbids the chacarero to have more stock than the few work horses he needs for his work. With such restrictions, the farm system is extremely rigid, and the chacarero can do little or nothing to accommodate himself to such market dilemmas as those caused by the present war-or, what is worse, to work out his own financial independence. Today there is no, market for cereals. On the other hand, there is a tremendous demand for all kinds of livestock. Nevertheless, the chacarero has to continue planting corn, wheat and flax. There is talk now of an export tax on livestock to pay for the subsidies which it has been necessary for the government to provide for the chacareros. In effect, this would be a tax on the livestock raiser, or the estanciero. Of all the cereal problems the corn problem is the most hopeless. The 1941 corn crop is of no earthly use. The way corn is kept here makes it perishable. There is some talk of disposing of part of the corn by burning it wholesale, right where it is on the farms. The corn stocks have caused an increase in vermin and insects. Rats are moving from the campo into Venado Tuerto. Good clothing is being punctured by the weevils when they are in the larva stage.. Moths are everywhere in the cereal region. They seem to prefer the fideo factory in Venado Tuerto above all else.
A thousand landowners possess a third part of the Province of Buenos Aires. Hundreds more of them own square league upon square league of land. They were fearful in 1930, and are equally fearful today, that a liberalism born of the times and conditions might give to land a social interpretation. They are fearful that the natural wealth of the various parts of the Republic will be developed, and that independent regions will flourish and overwhelm them politically. Therefore they wanted, and they desire to keep, the reins of government in their own hands--these people whose ancestors obtained land through the beneficence of the royal cedula (land grant), by reason of the tyrannical decrees of the Great Restorer, Don Juan Manuel Rosas, or through the generosity of the Republic. Literally, the forefathers of the landed class staked out and claimed the wealth of the country. The government has not counterclaimed it or asked them to give much. Scarcely more than a hundred years ago men went out into the pampa, herded together thousands of wild cattle which roamed the plains, branded them, and claimed them and the land upon which they grazed. It was never the intent, after the Republic had been proclaimed, that the land be a gift to be handed down as property from generation to generation. It was the intent that land be rented to individuals by the government until death, and then should be returned to the public domain, eventually to be used for colonization purposes. Today Argentina has a landed aristocracy which is the economic and political ruler of peons and chacra farmers. Relatively few can hope to buy land. There are interest rates at five and six percent. Estanciero leases will permit no mixed farming by chacareros, without which they cannot attain financial independence. Grain farming has failed to break up the estancias. In effect, the chacarero sows and reaps grain as the peon of the estanciero.
In 1930 change was in the air, just as it is today. It was manifested in the Provinces of Cordoba, Santa Fe, and Entre Rios, rich agricultural provinces, and in the city of Buenos Aires. These provinces were the stronghold of the Radical party. Within Buenos Aires Province large cities were growing in which the power of the Radical and Socialist parties was becoming stronger and stronger. "Urbanization" was taking on a political significance. What if the people of the cities should organize cohesively and should outvote the "few"? That was the question which troubled the conservatives. Although the people of the cities supplied the enthusiasm which made the revolution of 1930 a reality, they did not then have either sufficient leaders or strength to obtain political power. In any event, the conservatives emerged the actual winners. The conservatives are not anxious that the rest of the country develop, for they fear that that kind of progress will endanger their security. They want to keep political and economic authority concentrated in their hands. The perpetuation of privilege is a trait which stems from feudal Spain. Viceregal politics is maintained in modern Argentina by large property owners and the privileged class in a way comparable to the manner in which it was imposed in the days of the cabildo [town council] by the Spanish merchants of Cadiz and Seville who attempted, by repressive acts, to prevent colonial Argentina from trading with the merchants of other nations.
20th-Century Gauchos?
Source: Letters from the Argentine, written in the early 1940s by Francis Herron, a young student visiting from the US.
It is an Argentine joke out of stock to ask a foreigner if he has seen a gaucho. If the foreigner by his answer indicates that it is his conviction that gauchos ride the plains, he is considered to have little authentic knowledge about Argentina. It was not long before I discovered that gauchos did not exist in twentieth-century Argentina and that I, like other newcomers, had to learn Argentina's folklore and way of life from the beginning. Many foreigners presume that gauchos still roam the Argentine plains, I think, because the gaucho tradition survives in so much of the language, the art, the literature and even the every-day life of the country.
The rural workers are young men, old men and middle-aged men. Some of them work for a month or two, and move to other places. Most of them are of Spanish blood, or criollos-which is to say that they are mestizos of Spanish-Indian blood. There are also a few Portuguese and some others of European origin who have become peons by fateful circumstances. Peons receive 40 pesos a month if they are drifters and 50 to 55 if they are men who work for more than a year at El Deseado (a ranch). In addition, they get their food and a place where they can rest upon their sheepskin, often the only thing, save their cuchillo (knife, called facón by the gauchos), which they really possess. They cannot afford to drink fine liquors or wines, only the common caña (sugar cane liquor) which is as heady as desire might wish. Some do not seem to possess the mate gourd which is the traditional container for mate. Instead they sip mate tea as if it were soup, from a tin plate. They love and ride a horse as does a gaucho. Often they do not own one, for the years and civilization have made a prison of the campo (countryside), dividing it into fenced fields and potreros (pastures). Many a peon, therefore, in his travels prefers to walk.
Arriving at an estancia he climbs the double gates, for they are locked, and enters to ask for work or the favor of a meal. If he has a horse, the horse must stay without. If a peon wishes to buy- a horse he can have one for a month's work. As with the gaucho, the knife or cuchillo which he carries behind him in his sash-like belt is his tool of all work. He kills and eats an animal with this implement. If he must, he saves his life or guards his honor with it. Many say there are no more gauchos. What is this type of man who loves a horse, who drinks his mate, who has no family and no home and who in his heart would like to see the fences disappear so that he might ride his own flete (horse) in whatever direction?
Argentines revere the story of Martin Fierro [See Slatta, Gauchos, for details of this important poem]. Their best beloved artist is Florencio Molina Campos, who is the authentic portrayer of the gaucho. The best plays which I saw in Argentina were those about gaucho-like characters whose tragic, but courageous, doings on the stage deeply affected both porteño (inhabitant of the “port,” Buenos Aires) and provincial audiences. The truth is that the gaucho tradition is much alive; and the truth is that Argentines insist on cultivating the gaucho ideal and the cult of courage which is a part of that ideal. So it is that the gaucho, once a nomad, is now glorified and romanticized. A mystic flair of the Argentine mind will not let him be, but insists on recreating him and perpetuating him as a spiritual "reality." And at the same time Argentines make much of the point that he does not exist at all.
I listened to many an appraisal of the gaucho, but the most interesting I ever heard was in a bar near La Consulta in the province of Mendoza. A Mendocino told me there that long ago he had had a friend who was a real gaucho and that through him he had come to know the inner mind and psychology of that breed of men. The gaucho, he said, had a most curious set o£ loyalties and values. His chief concerns in this order were: His horse, his dog, and his woman. A gaucho could go afield for days and weeks and never would the thought of his woman come to mind. That is an incredible and an exaggerated appraisal of gaucho psychology, but he was a strange kind of man and this strangeness gave him distinctive and legendary qualities. Before the confusion which I had in mind about the gaucho being a flesh-and-blood contemporary figure had been dismissed, a newspaper reporter carne to interview me. One of the questions he asked me was whether I had seen a gaucho. I did not recognize then the guile of the question. and I answered that I had not seen. a gaucho, but that I meant soon to go to the country so that I might talk with one or more and study them. I showed my interviewer a copy of Martin Fierro which I intended to study and from which, too, I expected to learn much about the gaucho. The result of that interview was fantastic and was probably the foremost verguenza, or embarrassment, of my first month in Argentina. The published account must have provoked many a laugh among Argentines who were introduced to one more foreigner whose curiosity would not be satisfied until he had seen and talked with a gaucho. The paragraph of the interview which must have most amused Argentines read as follows: "The: North American smiled, perhaps because he was visualizing the wild and rebellious charm of the gaucho whom Jose Hernandez made an immortal character." Finally, of course, I did learn the truth about there being no gauchos and came to welcome the frequently and seriously put question as to whether or not I had seen a gaucho. "But, of course,” I always answered. And when Argentines, with continued seriousness, fell into my trap and asked me where I had seen a gaucho, I made reply that I had seen many a gaucho in Argentine movies.
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