"They Don't Do That Anymore"

 

Ricardo Guiraldes, scion of a notable Argentine ranching family, saw the end of the gaucho way of life coming forty years ahead.  His novel Don Segundo Sombra (1926) idealized the cowboy era much like Zane Grey did for the North American West; an elegy for tradition passing away.  The story is based on real-life neighbor Segundo Ramirez.

Guiraldes wrote in the estate house, La Portena, of the 1500 acre estancia in the heart of cattle country near Areca until his death at age 42, and was affectionately known as the "voice of the gaucho."  

The gauchos wandered from job to job all over Argentina, supporting themselves in between on wild cattle and ostriches.  Their distinctive accoutrement of beret or Andalusian sombrero, baggy pants, large knife, poncho and scarf reminds me of the Cossacks, another hard-living brotherhood whose glory days are gone.   

 The urban and land owning elite of Argentina grew tired of the gauchos' drifting, drinking and lawlessness, working over decades to rein them in.  Like the wild and free clan life of the Scots highlanders,   it was soon after popularized and romanticized when the threat was removed.  The moment the gauchos must have known it was over came in the late 1960s with the last traditional cattle drive.  Five ranch hands drove around 400 cattle from San Antonio de Areco to the stockyards outside of Buenos Aires in three days.   Said one, "They don't do that anymore.  Now they put the cattle in big trucks."

Segundo Ramirez himself