Cowboys of the South: Patagonia imagined in Argentine popular culture

Article by Sam Ellis. Edited and Researched by Rob Russell.

The Cowboy is a figure most often associated with North America; Kansas, Buffalo Bill, Gunslingers, Railroad robberies, the Wild West.  The link is even cemented in popular culture, a whole film genre being entitled ‘Westerns’. However, away from British and American academia, we find the same character appear elsewhere, in particular far to the south: Patagonia, and the vast plains that cover most of Argentina, Uruguay and Rio Do Sul in Brazil.

Los Gauchos, as they are known, have developed an image that in some ways is very similar to that of their northern counterparts. There are a few slight differences: Cowboys are gunslingers, Gauchos are knife-fighters. Cowboys inhabit the Wild West, Gauchos the Southern pampas.  However, their worlds are ultimately not so different. And, just like the western Cowboy, Il Gaucho and the fantasies surrounding his lifestyle have played an important, varying role in Argentine history.

Before the nineteenth century cities along and near the Rio Plata, such as Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Rosario were hemmed in by expansive grasslands, the Pampas. After independence from Spain however, the fledgling South American nations began to look outwards. At this point, the South was seen as a wilderness, summed up in the statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s 1845 book Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism. After years of civil war, bloodshed and economic failure Sarmiento regarded the South as untameable, a natural barrier to the progress of a nation. The same applied to the people who lived there. Cattle herders, Indigenous groups, groups of fugitives, bandits armed in the aftermath of the Wars of Independence, were all seen as wild, backwards, uneducated, violent and ultimately, an obstacle.

Fast forward to the opening epoch of the twentieth century, and Il Gaucho had become a national symbol. Take for example Ricardo Güiraldes’ bestselling novel Don Segundo Sombra, written in 1926. Il Gaucho is a hero, a paternal figure offering words of wisdom, a man quicker to wit than violence. He rides off into the setting sun, his back turned. And it is always his: the Pampas was imagined as a truly masculine sphere, the women in Don Segundo Sombra are either a nuisance or the cause of an unnecessary fight.

A lot had changed over the course of a century. Patagonia had been conquered, mapped, and then bought up by European ranch owners and railway speculators. It was no longer a vast open space, full of opportunity and adventure. The Pampas became an export economy, selling beef to the expanding industrial cities and worse, to overseas buyers. Many former Gauchos found they couldn’t keep up with the big ranch owners, or even afford to eat their own produce. The reality is that Los Gauchos and their world were feared when in existence, but lamented once gone.  In a developing, industrializing country not everyone was happy and at this point they romanticized anything that had been lost.

Another century onwards, and the character is once again being re-shaped.  Historians are now asking whether the Pampas was such an exclusively masculine, violent sphere after all, and if it really was, whether that should actually be romanticised or criticised. This could have begun with Jorge Luis Borges, the great Argentine writer whose 1953 short story The South begins as a male fantasy: a mysterious stranger drinking in the Cantina. However, just like romancing the gaucho, the reality is still violent and cruel: The stranger, who is really just a day-tripper from the city, is forced to pick up a knife for the first time and step out into the street and fight to the death. The character is scared and no longer wants to be involved, but is bound by ideas of masculinity.

Nor is the Pampas still seen as an empty wilderness, the lives and stories of the many indigenous groups are being recognized. This has caused controversy in Argentina: For a long time The Conquest of the Desert, an 1870’s campaign on behalf of the Argentine republic into Patagonia, was cause for celebration. Now, it is seen by many as a violent attack on indigenous people. The image of the military leader involved, Julio Argentino Roca, has been removed from banknotes, and in more extreme circumstances academics have lost their jobs for holding contentious opinions. Whether it brought civilization or devastation, the debate rages on.

The North American Cowboy is so well established in popular culture: film, folklore, music. It is also being challenged. Take for example the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain, the box office triumph that smashed a long standing myth: that cowboys were too masculine for homosexuality.

The same foundational strength and likewise the same modern day tremors can be applied to Los Gauchos of Patagonia, the cowboys of the South.

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