New Perspectives on an Old Problem and the Same Source: The Gaucho and the Rural History of the Colonial Río de la Plata

While doing some research on the rural world of the Río de la Plata of the late colonial period, centered in the region of Colonia, Víbora, and Santo Domingo of the Banda Oriental, I received the issue of HAHR that contains an article by Ricardo Salvatore and Jonathan Brown about the so-called “Estancia de las Vacas” of the same region, based on some exceptionally rich materials, that I had been analyzing too.¹ As I read this article, I was confronted with a growing paradox, for in spite of having used the same source— a very specific, rich, and detailed source—with a common problem as a starting point, my analysis led me to an interpretation noticeably different from that offered by these authors. Beyond the historiographical curiosity of this paradox, I want to present some of the viewpoints I have arrived at because I believe they open new approaches to the study of Platine rural society at the end of the colonial period.²

After examining the sources of the Estancia de las Vacas, Salvatore and Brown arrive at an important conclusion that I can agree with: the work force of the estancia was very unstable and the majority of the peons were employed only during short periods.³ This basic characteristic of the condition of work at the end of the colonial peRiod is also confirmed by research (not very abundant, to be sure) that has been done on other estancias of the same Platine region.⁴ The question asked by Salvatore and Brown is, “Why?” For them, there are basically two causes: 1) the accommodation of the estancia to the fluctuations of the commerce of leather and hides with Europe and 2) “the working habits” of the gauchos.

I agree with the first of these explanations. Without a doubt, the instability, or better still the great rotation, of peons in the estancia is linked in part to the ups and downs of the trade in hides with Europe (particularly with Spain)—a very irregular trade indeed, due to the many European wars. In other words, one of the factors for the high rotation of the labor force is on the side of “demand,” where the hiring adjusts to the irregular cycles of the estancia’s needs, the by-product of variations in its relationship to the European market.

However, my agreement on this last point does not apply to the “form,” to the way in which trade fluctuations influenced the production policy of the Estancia de las Vacas. It seems reasonable that the Platine estancias adjusted their production of hides for the European market to the conditions of that trade. For instance, at the start of a European war and the collapse of the Atlantic trade, there is a drop in the local (American) price of hides which are overstocked in the warehouses, thus generating, in turn, a drop in the slaughter of cattle on the estancias. When the Atlantic trade reopens, the process reverses itself.

If this could hold true for the large estancieros whose primary objective was the accumulation of wealth, the reaction of small producers, whose market sales were destined to satisfy basic subsistence needs, may have been quite different. Facing a drop in the price of their products, they should tend to increase production and sales to maintain their minimum level of consumption. In the case of the estancia that we are analyzing, the reactions to market conditions seem to have occasionally followed the patterns of small producers rather than those of the estanciero-capitalista. Thus, at the outbreak of war in Europe in 1796 and the drop in the price of hides, the Estancia de las Vacas, instead of cutting back in the slaughter of cattle, increased it enormously. This apparent contradiction between the general commercial conjuncture and the productive behavior of the estancia can be observed very clearly in Graphs 1 and 2 published by Salvatore and Brown (the general decline of trade in 1796-97 is shown in Graph 1 and the upward movement of estancia sales during the same years in Graph 2), as well as in their Table II where one can see how, despite the war, the estancia’s demand for labor increases significantly in 1797-98.

This not very “capitalistic” response to market stimuli is due no doubt to the fact that the Estancia de las Vacas belonged to the Hermandad de la Caridad of Buenos Aires, with its production serving not for the accumulation of capital, but rather the support of a school of orphan girls and a women’s hospital that could not be supported otherwise since the “capitalistic” members of the brotherhood were not disposed to cover these costs at their own expense. A letter from the hermano mayor to the estancia administrator expresses it very clearly in mid-1797: he requests an increase in hide remittances because they have many expenses to cover, “even though hides have now a low price.” This type of reaction to market stimuli does not seem exceptional. It has, after all, been pointed out by authors who have studied the Jesuit haciendas, whose products were also destined to defray fixed expenses to a great extent.⁵

Besides this factor that conditioned the labor requirements of the estancia and caused instability in employment, it is important to incorporate another factor that acts in a similar manner: the seasonal fluctuations of the needs of the estancia in the course of each year, to which Brown and Salvatore attribute less importance.⁶ A clear example of this kind of fluctuation is found in June 1795 when the administrator of the estancia asks the brotherhood for money to pay the peons, giving as his reason that he is “going to dismiss the peons who are employed in the branding, because it is finished.. . .”⁷ In other words, it was the end of an extraordinary seasonal task, and the estancia discharged surplus peons.

The second explanation given by Salvatore and Brown for the unstable pattern of employment refers to the “working habits of the gauchos,” who refuse to work for long stretches because “they prefer idleness” or “vagrancy” (pp. 447, 452), or prefer to hunt animals for subsistence and eventually sell meat in a semiclandestine market (pp. 448, 452), or frequent the pulperías (p. 448), and so on.

As they themselves state, the authors are reaffirming what has been postulated by the classical literature on the subject, from Félix de Azara onward. In this case, the views are supported by detailed sources and many calculations as to the habits (bad or good, according to one’s taste) of the rioplatense gaucho. However, as I will show, the “evidence of the Estancia de las Vacas” tends to alter the picture of the incidence of this mythic personage on the supply of labor for the colonial estancias, and permits us to postulate a new perspective.

What is this evidence? First, the movement of peons in and out of the estancia, which in Table I is indicated during five consecutive years. This type of calculation has been made by Salvatore and Brown in their Table V, gathering the information by quarter, and showing the lack of seasonal regularity in the employment of the labor force from one year to the next. In this manner, the authors confirmed, among other things, the presence of the gaucho who refuses to work regularly.⁸ In my Table I, I have counted the movement of peons in a more detailed manner, not quarterly but monthly during five years; and the results are exactly the opposite.

Before analyzing this table I need to clarify the extremes that are found in it, i.e., the yearly hiring of peons in January, as well as the apparent dismissal of peons every December. As we can see, every December as many peons “left” the estancia as stayed, with a cumulative balance for that month of zero. This does not, however, reflect the reality of the presence of peons in the estancia, but is a simple bookkeeping maneuver. Since the accounting system is on a yearly basis, in December one “closes” the books, which makes it appear as if all the peons stopped working at the end of the year. On the other hand, on “opening” the books in January of the following year, it appears as though the peons have been recently “hired,” when the obvious fact is that the peons working in January are the same ones working the previous month. Therefore, the figures for the contracting of peons in January do not reflect an accurate number of hands hired, but the continuity of peons from the previous year. The correct way to study the movement of peons between December and January is to consider that the majority of those who supposedly leave the estancia in December have been working there until the final days of the month, and that only in the last days does a sizable segment leave—a segment which is represented by the difference between the “outgoing” peons of December and the “incoming” peons of January.

What can be seen in the table then? First, something that is very surprising—the regularity of the incoming and outgoing movement of peons every year, during the five consecutive years.⁹ By itself this type of regularity excludes any explanation of the movement of the work force on the eighteenth-century rioplatense estancias based on the existence of gauchos with little disposition for steady work, or their penchant to acquire meat of stolen or wild cattle, or because they prefer to kill time at the pulperías or roam about the pampas. If such were the case, we would have to admit that these were very peculiar gauchos in their regularity, since they always left to practice those “other” activities at the same time every year.

If we observe only the recruiting of peons, excluding January for the reason mentioned above, there is, above all, one month in which we can detect a more or less massive hiring—March. Another period of significant hiring during the year takes place between July and August, though always less important than March. The discharge of peons is more irregular than the hiring, but we still find that there are two important periods of the year. One of them, between May and July, almost coincides with one of the recruiting periods, although it begins a little earlier. In some cases (1795 and 1799) there are significant departures in September, but the other period in which the estancia normally loses peons in large numbers is at the end of the year, in November and especially December. (Let us remember that in order to calculate the net outflow in December we have to subtract from it the hirings of the following January.) If we study the balance of these two patterns, we find that the estancia regularly has a few peons in January and February, and that only in March does its labor force increase appreciably to levels that will remain stable during the rest of the year—until finally in November and particularly in December it begins to lose laborers in significant numbers.

A problem that arises whenever we analyze this type of movement of the labor force is whether we can definitely say that it is the result of voluntary action by the estancia that hires and fires workers when it wants. Or does it depend on the will of the peons, who agree to work and also to depart whenever they wish? In fact, the estancia’s accounts that have been found never clarify this point with certainty, and therefore it is necessary to resort to inferences or to different types of sources that may throw light on those accounts.

In our case, first, we can link the pattern of employment to the permanent and occasional needs of the estancia. Without a doubt, the seasonality of demand influences the movement of peons. We know, for example, from the monthly reports by estancia administrators that January and February are months in which “the extraordinary tasks” (branding, castration, skinning) are reduced due to “excessive heat,” which would coincide with the small number of peons hired in those same months. However, this does not wholly explain why there are so few peons at that time of the year. The number of peons added to the slaves that we know worked in the fields sometimes does not reach even the minimum figure required by the estancia “to take care of the tame cattle,” not to mention that required for the “extraordinary tasks sometimes also done in January.¹⁰ Nor is the time of parturition (August—September), which presumably demands less work on the estancia, reflected in the number of peons hired, who are generally as many or more than in the immediately preceding months. Finally, at the end of the year, when the estancia supposedly should be ready to do important “extraordinary toil” (particularly involving hides), it begins to lose more and more peons, reaching the lowest level of the whole year.

Another clear indication that not only seasonal demand conditions the movement of the labor force is what happens in the middle part of the year. As stated above, one of the important peaks in the departure of peons takes place between May and July. Obviously, this cannot be attributed to the estancia firing them, since, as can be seen in Table I, the estancia systematically hires a significant number of peons in those months, in order to make up somewhat for the previous “departures” (see the balances for those months in the table). In this case it is obvious that the peons that left in those months did so of their own volition and not by decision of the estancia.

The problem appears again in situations like that of November-December, where the peons depart and are not offset by new recruits. How can we be sure whether this is due to the will of the estancia, that does not need them anymore, or to the wish of the peons? Luckily, the sources provide us with the answer. First, we know that during almost all of 1797 and the beginning of 1798 the estancia had a constant need of peons because it decided to slaughter a substantial part of the cattle on the hoof to cover a series of urgent needs of the brotherhood in Buenos Aires with the product of the hides sold.¹¹ Therefore, we can verify that when the estancia loses peons at the end of 1797, just as when it cannot find enough to hire in January and February of 1798, this is against its own wishes and can only be explained by other factors that influence the supply of workers. The descriptive sources for the estancia that I have found, particularly its correspondence, fully confirm this conclusion, and not only for the period 1797-98.

Let me make a brief review of some letters in which the administrator complains of the lack of peons. I recognize that the number of quotations may seem excessive, but I think them necessary:

• —December 1791. The administrator says, “[I]t is true that the backwoodsmen [montaraces] and other peons have left or want to leave, they are only waiting to be paid, they want to go to the harvest, and there is no way to stop them. . . until this [the harvest] is finished.”¹²

• —November 1794. The administrator explains that he could not produce any more hides,. due to so much rain, and after it was over, for the lack of peons.”¹³

• —December 1796. He explains that he will suspend the extermination of wild dogs in the next two months, “. . . because of the excessive heat and the absence of peons due to the wheat harvest. . ..”¹⁴

• —November 1797. The administrator asks the brotherhood for money to pay the peons’ wages, “. . . because [by] the 15th or 20th of next month I will be without peons due to the harvest, and they do not want to work on a monthly basis because in the harvest they earn four or five reales daily, and this does not bring any benefit to the house [the estancia] and one has to wait until the harvest is concluded.”¹⁵

• —December 1797. He says he cannot finish the production of hides nor even ship the ones already finished, “. . .due to the fact that the hides are ready, but all the peons left for the harvest.”¹⁶

• —December 1798. He says he cannot finish more hides due to the excessive heat and also “to the fact that today there are no peons who will contract to work on a monthly basis, due to the harvest. At the end of January we will begin to work.”¹⁷

• —January 1800. He says that they left in search of peons in order to finish the work in progress but that this would not be possible until the end of the harvest.¹⁸

• —November 1800. The new administrator, Wright, in explaining the absence of peons, reports, “. . .and I have been assured that from the end of December until March the house is left only with the slaves.. . .”¹⁹

All these complaints refer systematically to the same period during the year, as is well attested by the last quotation. One cannot obtain peons, between the end of December and March, unless the estancia is willing to pay four or five reales as a daily wage, which would mean doubling the peons’ monthly salary that normally fluctuates around seven pesos. The quotations from the administrator also explain the absence of workers: the peons leave for the harvest.” In other words, the movement of the work force is related not only to the labor requirements of the estancia, but also to the scarce supply in those months that in turn reflects the demand for labor created by the wheat harvest. And this is the new phenomenon that emerges clearly from the sources of the Estancia de las Vacas: the importance of the wheat cycle in the regional labor market.

When we speak of the rioplatense countryside at the end of the eighteenth century, we conventionally consider it as almost a synonym of gauchos, cows, and mules, as if agriculture did not exist. It has been this way since Félix de Azara observed, “[T]hose who generally despise the agricultural way of life more than anybody are the inhabitants in the area of the Río de la Plata. They say that agriculture is not necessary in the country, because they all can live like herdsmen, eating only meat, and without need of any agricultural product.”²⁰ Only very recently, many years after Félix Weinberg pointed out the importance of agriculture (and its difficulties) in the rioplatense countryside of the eighteenth century, Juan Carlos Garavaglia has begun to set things in order. Studying the tithes in the region, Garavaglia has confirmed that in tithe receipts wheat surpassed cattle products in the late colonial period.²¹ What we need to know now is the nature and extent of the demand for labor during the wheat cycle, and in what way it influenced the labor supply for the cattle estancias. Fortunately, the estancia sources allow us to approach these problems in a detailed manner.

Actually, the Estancia de las Vacas cultivated wheat, at least until the end of the eighteenth century, and the surviving sources permit us to know the ups and downs of its production. The cycle of wheat had two periods of intense labor during the year. The first came between March and July, the time of the plowing and sowing of the land, with a certain flexibility regarding the duration of the first task, which sometimes began in March but more often in the case of our estancia in April. In all cases, the sowing took place in June and July, eventually extending into the first part of August, and in this month the fencing of the farm (chacra) took place to prevent the invasion of cattle that might destroy the cultivated fields. The other important period was that of the harvest and thrashing, which in this estancia took place regularly in January.²²

Let us see with figures how these seasonal cycles show up in the farm of the estancia (see Table II). It is necessary, however, to make some prior clarifications about the table, where the fluctuation of peons in the farm in relation to wheat-related tasks is shown. The peons indicated there work complete or almost complete months, except those January peons hired for the harvesting and thrashing of wheat. At this point, the estancia is forced to hire them for a much higher daily wage, and the task of harvesting is always done in a period of a few days, depending on the quantities to be harvested. Therefore, the best indicator of the labor demand in January and its relationship to the amount harvested would be not so much the number of peons employed on a monthly basis as the number hired daily, or better yet, the amount of man-days needed for a specific harvest, a figure which we know in any case. Thus, in 1795, in the harvest we see 1 peon who works by the month plus 16 people who do only 84 man-days of work; in 1796, there are 1 monthly peon plus 10 persons who work 97 man-days; in 1797, 1 monthly peon plus 10 persons who work 169.5 man-days; and finally in 1798, 1 monthly peon plus 12 whom I estimate to have done 144 man-days’ work, according to the wages received.²³

Taking into account these figures of man-days worked in January, the relationship between work done and the amount harvested becomes more readily understandable: if we considered only the total number of peons employed during the month of January, it would be incomprehensible that in 1795 17 were needed to harvest 60 fanegas, whereas in 1797 2 fewer people were required for a harvest that was twice the size of that in 1795. However, the figure of man-days required in relation to the harvest can also be deceiving, since this work is not satisfied by the estancia in just any manner, but by the hiring of a certain quantity of workers, as indicated in Table II. In January 1795, for example, if the work had been done regularly throughout that month, only 4 peons would have been needed. What do we observe then in Table II? In the first place, there is a very pronounced seasonal variation in the demand for labor. There are between five and seven months in which only one peon is needed to take care of the farm; a central period, between April and July, which sometimes begins a little earlier or ends a little later, with a more important demand for labor to plow the land, plant the wheat, and, in the case of this estancia, at the end to fence the land to prevent the cattle from destroying the plants; finally, a period of very high labor demand in January for the harvesting and thrashing.

If we take the figures of our own farm as indicators of the general needs for the cultivation of wheat in the Buenos Aires countryside, we can infer some interesting problems.²⁴ To calculate minimum labor requirements, I will take as evidence figures from the period that goes from February 1796 to January 1797 (in which the wheat cycle ends with the harvesting and thrashing), because it is the best year as regards the yield of wheat. In other years, of only average yield, the amount of labor used (in relation to size of harvest) would, of course, be greater. We see, then, that to obtain 120 fanegas of wheat in the January 1797 harvest, 15 persons were required in that month; during the central months about 5 peons; and 1 during the rest of the year. Overall wheat production figures of the Buenos Aires countryside as given by Félix de Azara, for the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, amount to 100,000 local fanegas.²⁵ If the relationship between labor requirements and production was the same as on the farm in the Estancia de las Vacas, we would have a global labor demand for the wheat production of Buenos Aires of 12,500 people in January for harvesting-thrashing, of 4,166 people in the central months of May to July, and during the other months only 833 people required to look after the farms.²⁶

It is clear that these figures cannot pretend to reflect the exact reality, for various reasons. First, the demand in January was probably less, for the simple reason that the entire harvest did not take place at precisely the same moment. The possibility existed that a gang of harvesters would go from farm to farm in succession;²⁷ besides reducing global demand, this would lengthen the period of demand itself. At the same time, it is certain that the lower figure for labor demand in the dead months is underestimated, because not all the wheat farms of the region were as large as the Estancia de las Vacas, and therefore, if there were more farms for the same total production, a larger minimum of caretakers would be required to look after the land in the period when there were no special tasks.²⁸ Finally, the central period of demand, May-July, may have varied both in number of workers and in the time lapse. It would seem that the small farmer, at any rate, generally cultivated no more land than he could plow by himself,²⁹ and this could well lead him to increase the time he spent on that activity. However, it could also lead to a reduction of the central period of labor demand, if the small farmer decided not to plow the land, at the expense of reducing the yield of grain harvested per seed sown. Despite these considerations, the figures I have indicated before give us an approximation as to the size of the global labor demand for the cultivation of wheat in Buenos Aires in the different months.

Let us now examine the potential supply of labor in the Buenos Aires countryside, starting from the available population figures. We know that in 1778 there were about 37,000 people in Buenos Aires—25,000 in the city and 12,000 in the rural area. By 1810, these figures had grown to 78,000 in all, distributed between 44,000 in the city and 34,000 in the countryside.³⁰ Using the percentage of annual growth for the rural population between those two dates, 3.2 percent,³¹ we can get to the date that interests us, 1797, with a population of a little more than 20,000 in the Buenos Aires rural sector, which of course is not composed entirely of potential workers, since the figure includes children, old people, women who do not work, etc.

This means that during the greatest part of the year (the dead months) the demand for labor in wheat activities represents minimal figures in relation to the local rural population; in the midyear months (May-July) it would mean a quite high percentage of the population (one-fourth or one-fifth); and above all in January and sometimes into February it would mean a demand of more than half the total population of the countryside. If we reduced that total population to the portion that can really be considered available for the labor market (no children, no old people, etc.) we would probably find that in January-February the demand for labor for the wheat harvest alone (not to mention cattle raising or other activities) would be equal to or greater than the potential labor supply.

Of course, there are indications that a portion of the city population went into the rural area to work at the time of the harvest or that there were temporary migrations from other areas of the viceroyalty at that time.³² Even so, these figures appear to explain why the administrator of the estancia systematically complains of the scarcity of cattle peons from the end of December until March; and likewise we can better understand the departure of peons from the estancia in midyear, which in this case does not quite cause a labor scarcity since the estancia can replace them fairly easily. In short, we find that the cattle estancia in this region has no major problems in recruiting free laborers, for the permanent work as well as for the seasonal jobs, except in some specific moments.

These moments may be linked, on the one hand, to conjunctural problems that cause a certain scarcity of laborers in particular years. For instance, the unfolding of war situations could force the colonial state to implant more or less massive levies of militiamen either to participate directly in fighting or to replace the regular troops in routine military tasks like the security of the countryside, so that those troops could if necessary engage in combat.³³ A situation of this kind affected the Estancia de las Vacas in 1797 (in the midst of one of the Napoleonic wars) when the administrator urged the brotherhood to send him ten or twelve “peons with the necessary tools, which I need badly because they are very scarce around here due to the war.”³⁴ But these cases are rather exceptional. The other times when it was difficult to recruit labor were linked to the wheat cycle, particularly the harvest. If it is true that due to the “excessive heat” the estancia had less work requirements in January and February, in those months it was difficult to keep even the minimum of peons needed for roundups. Though the shortage of hands at the beginning of the year was a minor problem for the cattle estancia, it became, on the other hand, a major obstacle for the development of the region’s wheat production. The peak point of the wheat cycle, the harvest, could only be accomplished with great difficulties and by paying salaries that sometimes were twice the average rural wage, as noted before. Félix de Azara had already pointed this out when he observed, “[I]t is hard to find harvesters at any price.. . ..”³⁵ Furthermore, this impact of the wheat cycle on the supply of labor for the cattle estancia explains in part the urgent need of all great estancias with domesticated cattle to have a nucleus of slaves or of “loyal” contract workers (conchabados)—with good wages or as agregados, etc.—to guarantee the minimum tasks of keeping the cattle rounded up, in those months in which the peons inevitably left for the harvest.

The wheat cycle accordingly allows us to reconsider the enormous instability of the work force in the Estancia de las Vacas. It is true that the majority of the peons worked in the estancia less than six months, some even less than three. But these, no matter how short a time they worked in the estancia, did not enter and depart at just any moment but generally in the same months: they joined mainly in March and July, and they departed in December or in some cases May and June. Thus, I reach the same conclusion as before: the rotation of peons is also linked to a great extent to the wheat cycle.

What do we suppose, then, that the majority of peons that left the estancia actually did? In reality, more than a mere supposition, at this stage confirmation is provided by all the estimates and testimonies cited: in December the peons would “leave for the harvest,” and in March they returned from it. To be sure, I do not want to exaggerate the importance of the wheat cycle in the work activity of the Platine countryside. We are beginning to learn that many of the poor settlers possessed also their own small herds of cattle, horses, or mares,³⁶ but all the information we find for this estancia confirms the role of wheat cultivation. In any case, the peons on leaving for the harvest had two alternatives: to get hired for higher wages (and in cash)³⁷ on the large and medium farms that existed particularly in the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires and other cities, or inside the very same estancias;³⁸ or to go to work on their own farms located usually on the land of others as tenants, retainers, or simply as squatters, or on crown lands that they occupied without a title. The existence of such small farmers and their ways of settlement and occupation of the land, in the countryside of Buenos Aires as well as the Banda Oriental, have been pointed out by numerous witnesses of the period and reconsidered in some more or less recent monographs, though there are no systematic studies yet that illustrate these phenomena with quantitative data.³⁹

In conclusion, the image of the rioplatense countryside at the end of the eighteenth century, presented by studying this case, is very different from the traditional view. First, agriculture appears as an important activity side by side with cattle raising, confirming through the problem of the labor force what Garavaglia has shown through the study of tithes. Second, the demand for labor for these activities shows extreme irregularity according to the type of production and the kind of property, with cattleraising activity generating a more stable demand than wheat production. The supply of free labor appears to have been sufficient in general for the needs of the cattle estancia, though with some difficulties linked to the seasonal demand of wheat growing or to conjunctural problems.

I do not pretend to deny the existence of such things as a certain access of the rural settler to cimarrón cattle or stolen cattle (with variations according to the region and the period), the existence of a semiopen frontier with the Indian, and even the “indiscipline” of the rural peon. But to say this looks like a truism: we are not speaking of Manchester in the nineteenth century, but of the Río de la Plata countryside in the eighteenth. We are not looking at an industrial proletariat, nor even a rural one. The majority of the laborers seem to have had alternatives to employment on the cattle estancias, but what emerges clearly from the study of this case is that the alternatives were above all work options, either as harvesting peons or as farmers with their own crops and animals. The great instability of the cattle peons appears directly linked to the latter phenomena, and, to a lesser extent, to the will of the estancia that hired and fired according to its seasonal needs.

If something new emerges from all this, it is the existence in the Platine area at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth of a numerous peasantry with various alternatives—a phenomenon that without a doubt would condition the process of expansion of the great estancias in the nineteenth century. As a corollary, the image of our much-maligned gaucho, roaming about from pulpería to estancia, from estancia to Indian encampments and on and on, necessarily fades just a bit. It would even be necessary to know what we are talking about when we mention the gaucho. Do we mean someone who lives without working, or somebody who merely seeks certain working alternatives to employment in the estancias?

In any case, for the estancieros of the eighteenth century, the few serious problems they appeared to have with the labor force seem to have stemmed from these peasants and harvesters more than from a few vagabond gauchos.⁴⁰ It would even be interesting to study whether the gauchos, contrary to what is usually assumed, emerge afterward mainly as a result of the progressive expulsion of peasants from the land they occupied, as well as their flight from the massive levies of soldiers before and after the May Revolution. A gaucho, then, would not be a product mainly of his own volition and of the possibility to take advantage of ill-controlled resources but rather a person pushed into marginality and persecution (or in the “worst case” to contract labor or the army) by the expansion of the estancias and the militarization of the countryside in the nineteenth century.

Author notes