A gaucho () or gaúcho (, ) is a skilled horseman, reputed to be brave and unruly. The figure of the gaucho is a folk symbol mainly in Argentina and Uruguay but also in Paraguay, southern Brazil, southern Bolivia, and southern Chile. 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.
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
Many explanations have been proposed, but no-one really knows how the word gaucho originated. Already in 1933 an author had counted 36 different theories; more recently, over fifty. They can proliferate because "there is no documentation of any sort that will fix its origin to any time, place or language".
Resemblance theories Most seem to have been conjured up by finding a word that looks something like gaucho and guessing that it changed to its present form, perhaps without awareness that there are sound laws that describe how languages and words really evolve over time. The etymologist Joan Corominas said most of these theories were "not worthy of discussion". Of the following explanations, Rona said that only #5, #8 and #9 might be taken seriously.
+ Some proposed explanations for "gaucho" # Proposer Alleged root and evolution Objection(s) Discussed in 1 Emeric Essex Vidal Same root as English gawky (awkward, uncouth) Earliest theory (1820), dismissed as "humorous" Paullada 1961; Trifilo 1964 2 Monlau and Diez French gauche (rough, uncouth) > Argentine gaucho. French little spoken in region. Paullada 1961 3Emilio Daireaux Arabic chauch (herder) > Andalusian Spanish chaucho > guttural Amerindian gaucho Sp. chaucho is unattested. That Indians could not have pronounced "chaucho" is untenable. Groussac 1904; Paullada 1961; Trifilo 1964; Gibson 1892; 4 Rodolfo Lenz Pehuenche cachu (friend) or Araucanian kauchu (astute man) > Argentine gaucho No proof that it was not the other way round Paullada 1961; Hollinger 1928 5 Martiniano Leguizamón Quichua huajcho or wáhča (orphan, abandoned, maverick) > colonial Sp. guacho > Arg. gaucho by metathesis Guacho > gaucho is an improbable metathesis. Theory does not explain Braz. gaúcho Groussac 1893; Groussac 1904; Paullada 1961; Rona 1964; 6 Vicuña Mackenna Chilean Quichua or Araucanian guaso (modern sp.huaso) (countryman or cowboy) > guacho > gaucho Same as #5. Hollinger 1928 7 Lehmann-Nitsche Gitano (i.e. Sp. Romani) gachó (foreigner) > Andalusian gachó (bohemian, wanderer) > Arg. gaucho or Braz. gaúcho Transition unexplained Lehmann-Nitsche 1928 8 Paul Groussac Lat. gaudeo (I enjoy) > Sp. gauderio (peasant, one who enjoys life) > Urug. gauderio (low person, cattle rustler) > derisive *gauducho > gaúcho and gaucho *Gauducho unattested, linguistically improbable. Unlikely transition to gaucho Groussac 1904; Paullada 1961; Hollinger 1928; Rona 1964 9 Buenaventura Caviglia, Jr *Garrucho (supp. from Sp. garrocha, a cattle pole) > gaúcho, "under negroid influence" > gaucho Cattle pole origin implausible speculation; negroid theory untenable Rona 1964 10 Fernando O. Assunção Learned Sp. gaucho (in math. & architecture, "not level", "warped") Elite technical word unknown to the masses Assunção 2011; Hollinger 1928.
The dialect frontier theory
A different approach is to consider that the word might have originated north of the Río de la Plata, where the indigenous languages were quite different and there is a Portuguese influence. Two facts that any theory could usefully account for are: The word actually exists in two forms: Port. gaúcho and Sp. gaucho, both long attested. Gauchos are first mentioned by name in the Spanish colonial records for present-day Uruguay, often in connection with smuggling to Brazil (see below, Origins). Thus Azara wrote (around 1784):
Hence the Uruguayan sociolinguist José Pedro Rona thought the origin of the word was to be sought "on the frontier zone between Spanish and Portuguese, which goes from northern Uruguay to the Argentine province of Corrientes and the Brazilian area between them".
Rona, himself born on a language frontier in pre-war Europe, was a pioneer of the concept of linguistic borders, and studied the dialects of northern Uruguay where Portuguese and Spanish intermingle. Rona thought that, of the two forms — gaúcho and gaucho — the former probably came first, because it was linguistically more natural for gaúcho to evolve by accent-shift to gáucho, than the other way round. Thus the problem came down to explaining the origin of gaúcho.
As to that, Rona thought that gaúcho originated in northern Uruguay, and came from garrucho, a derisive wordTwo examples are: (1) An 1813 copla mocking the besiegers of Montevideo (2) An incident in 1817 in the town of São Borja, in the tri-border area. An angry marauder, sacking the local church, tore the earrings off a statue of the BV Mary, saying (in Portuguese) "this garrucha doesn't need them any more". The parish priest, a learned man, explained that the word meant "old indian": . possibly of CharruaThe Charrua language became extinct in the 19th century, as did the people, but Rona points out that, most unusually for an indigenous language, it contained the phoneme /rr/, as its very name testifies: . origin, which meant something like "old indian" or "contemptible person", and is actually foundHere his theory differs from Caravaglia's (#9, above), who also postulated garrucho but conjectured that it had been a Spanish word meaning "cattle pole wielder"; this meaning is nowhere attested. (There is indeed a Spanish word garrucho, but this refers to an item of nautical equipment, and is therefore remote). in the historical record. However in the Portuguese-based dialects of northern Uruguay the phoneme /rr/ is not easily pronounced, and so is rendered as /h/ (sounding rather like English h). Thus garrucho would be rendered as gahucho, and indeed the French naturalist Augustin Saint-Hilaire, travelling in Uruguay during the Artigas insurgency, wrote in his diary (16 October 1820): The native Spanish-speakers of these borderlands, however, could not process the phoneme /h/, and would render it as a null, thus gaúcho. In sum, according to this theory, gaúcho originated in the Uruguay-Brazil dialect borderlands, deriving from a derisive indigenous word garrucho, then in Spanish lands evolved by accent-shift to gaucho.
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 administered 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 anti-smuggling 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. The Spanish general García Gamba, who fought against Güemes in Salta, said: Knowing "gaucho" to be an insult, the Spanish hurled it at the patriot militias; Güemes, however, picked it up as a badge of honour, referring to his troops as "my gauchos".
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,See the article on that artist. 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.