Facundo and Chacho in Songs and Stories: Oral Culture and the Representations of Caudillos in the Nineteenth-Century Argentine Interior

“There must be some truly great quality in the character of that old gaucho,” Domingo F. Sarmiento admitted in his ambiguous reflections on Chacho Peñaloza, a caudillo whose assassination he allegedly ordered.¹ Sarmiento’s commentary in 1866 suggested that there was something unique and mysterious about caudillos because of their sentimental appeal and ability to mobilize gauchos through a personalistic rapport;2 in fact, the unique personality traits of these rural leaders was an essential component of the first explanation of Latin American caudillismo proposed by Sarmiento himself in his book, Facundo, and documents and contemporary accounts are replete with references to this phenomenon.³ Yet this question has been largely neglected by modern historiography, which preferred to focus on the broad social, economic, and cultural factors that created the conditions for the emergence and development of this type of political leadership, authority, and mass mobilization in post-independence Latin America....