Story by Ryan T. Bell  /  Photographs by Eliseo Miciú

An American reflects on cowboy life on an Argentine estancia.

More than a century later, history repeated itself when I signed on with the Estancia Ranquilcó, a 100,000-acre cattle ranch nestled high in the Andes Mountains.  Working alongside a dozen gauchos at the annual roundup – held in December and January, the height of the South American summer – I felt as though I’d found horsemen’s heaven.

The morning before the roundup began, citrus-colored firelight flickered through the cracks in the estancia cabin’s wood-burning stove.  The mayordomo, or ranch foreman, Hugo Manterola, lifted a teapot from the stove’s surface and poured steaming water into a gourd filled with crushed yerba maté, herbal tea.

Where North American cowboys swear by coffee, a gaucho won’t make his first lazo throw before his morning tea, and will anxiously wait his turn to drink from the communal maté gourd.  The centuries-old custom is becoming popular in the U.S.A. because of the tea’s health benefits.  But gauchos can’t even pronounce the English word “antioxidant.”  All they know is that “gaucho coffee” is the reason few of them need a doctor visit before the age of 50.

“These cattle won’t brand themselves,” Hugo declared in Spanish before issuing instructions for the morning’s work.  “Lalo, you and Chipi bring down the herd from the holding pasture.  Vincente, start the branding-iron fires.  The day’s already half-gone,”

With that, he adjourned tea time and walked out the cabin door into what normal people call the middle of the night.

The Criollo Horse

Luis was a young gaucho with a reputation for being more horseman than cattleman.  As with so many gauchos in the Andes, it was hard to guess Luis’ ancestry.  From a distance, his black hair, dark skin and short frame looked typically Spaniard, but up close, his high set cheekbones and round face hinted of native Mapuche or Tehuelche Indian descent.  When Luis spoke, his sing-song Spanish carried a Chilean accent.

Luis and I forged a friendship based on horsemanship, and he proved to be a knowledgeable tutor in the way of the gaucho.

That morning, we followed Hugo outside to fetch our horses from their pasture.  Luis’ gelding was easiest to spot, with his telltale gaucho grooming: the mane and forelock clipped to the nape, the tail chopped to a bob to protect it from getting snagged or torn in thick brush.  The gelding watched us approach and blew a snort like a steam locomotive, leaving the vapor to hang in the quiet, starlit night.

The Argentine Criollo is an amicable, robust cow pony known affectionately as the “South American Quarter Horse.”  The nickname, however, is a misnomer.  More accurately, the Criollo is a South American Mustang, descended from escaped conquistador stock horses from the 16th century.  Half a millenium-worth of natural selection has produced a distinct breed.

My horse, an estancia loaner, had once been a gaucho mount.  But he didn’t have the classic good looks of Luis’ Criollo.  I thought of him as Mr. Potato Horse.  The muzzle was from a Percheron, the rump from a  Thoroughbred, and the large feet were Shire-sized.  ”Charger” was his Americanized name, but “Gramps,” or “Shadows-Spook-Him,” might’ve better suited the horse.

Gaucho Imprints

We haltered the horses and tied them to a rail in front of the cabin.  Luis rummaged through a pile of saddlery.  The gaucho recado is a complicated, seven-layer system that includes a saddle blanket, saddle pad, leather saddle seat, cinch, padded sheepskin blanket, leather blanket and a second cinch to hold it all together.  Saddling Charger in the near-black dawn, I knew I’d need help.

No sooner had I peaked over Charger’s withers, Luis looked up and caught me spying.  His laughter made me wonder if this had been a joke, and if the real saddles would be brought out at any moment.  Finally, though, I positioned the throne-like saddle on my horse and mounted.  Sitting so high up off the horse made me feel like Little Miss Muffet going for a trail ride.  But, as with everything gaucho, the saddle served a purpose.

Luis explained that most gaucho traditions date back to the Argentine frontier, when gauchos were nomads.  They spent their lives on the trail and had to be self-sufficient, carrying everything they needed with them on horseback.  The recado saddle is an example of that life-on-the-range utilitarianism.  For instance, the saddles’ multiple layers spread out to make a comfortable mattress, much appreciated on Estancia Ranquilcó, where the gauchos spend many nights sleeping on the trail.

That afternoon, as we herded cattle to a high mountain pasture, Luis explained another aspect of gaucho horsemanship that echoes that sense of self-reliance.

Corrals and fenced pastures aren’t always available so, lacking other options, gauchos often began training their horses while on the move.  Once a colt or filly was a couple months old, a gaucho began putting miles on the mare, forcing the foal to follow.  It’s still common to see weanlings tagging along on a cattle drive, experiencing a defacto training course that prepares them to become surefooted cow ponies with plenty of stamina.  Luis joked, though, that it’s a miracle such foals don’t grow up thinking they’re herd dogs instead of horses.

Groundwork

The sound of bawling calves filled the air, and the midday sun burned hot in the clear, blue sky.  I wiped a stream of sweat from my temple, staining my shirt-sleeve corral-dirt brown.  “Can it really be December?” I thought.  My home in the snow-covered Rocky Mountains seemed a universe away.

Charger stood saddled nearby, his lower lip drooping as he snoozed in the shade of a tree.  It’d been an easy day for him so far because we mostly labored on foot, branding, vaccinating and castrating.

The estancia’s corrals were shaped kind of like an hourglass, with a roofed shed at the center.  Cattle were vaccinated and ear-marked in the shed, then divided by a swinging door at the end of the chute that lead to a holding corral on one side, and the branding/castrating corral on the other.  You can imagine which one the steers prefered.  Each time a would-be bull passed was up, the swing-door operator yelled, “Steer out of the chute!”  A dozen gauchos descended on the animal, taking their lazo shots in turn.

Once the steer was roped, a team raced from the periphery to wrestle him to the ground, followed by a gaucho with a spark-plug hot branding iron.

The exhausting work had ignited a hunger that was made agonizing by the scent of roasting meat that wafted from a nearby fire pit, mixing with the smell of burned hair and flesh.  At an Argentine cattle roundup, wages often are paid in barbecue.  Gauchos come out of the woodwork to offer a hand in return for a chance to show off their lazo skills and for free asado (barbecued beef).  They also earn a rare social gathering amid a hard existence.

Hugo’s Lazo

Argentina is a large country, nearly one-third the size of the United States, and gaucho customs vary by region.  Hugo was born and raised in the cattle-ranching country of Buenos Aires Province, a credential similar to being a cowboy from Texas or Wyoming.  Two things were immediately noticeable about Hugo: his ox-like, five-foot stature, and the boina (beret) he wore.

The boina, a customary hat brought to Argentina by Basque immigrants, is the unofficial hat of the gaucho.  It’s tough to imagine any self-respecting North American cowboy in a beret, but Hugo wouldn’t be caught dead without his.  And considering his size and fierceness, it wouldn’t be wise to imply anything sissy about his character.

As the afternoon’s work continued, Hugo couldn’t resist making a couple of throws with his lazo.  The rest of us scattered to the corral fence as Hugo fed out enough rope to make a loop 10 feet in diameter.  In one motion, Hugo spun his body like a discuss thrower and motored the heavy gauge, eight-strand rawhide rope into flight.

Hugo yelled to the swing-door keeper, who turned a steer into the corral.  Hugo funneled the steer along the perimeter and in three quick steps closed the gap between them, casting an airborne snare that might as well have been a fishing net, for all the chance the steer had of escaping it.  The loop encircled it and Hugo backpedaled hard with the rope wrapped around his waist.    The lazo zipped tight around all four legs and the steer fell to the ground.

“That’s how we rope cattle in Buenos Aires, boys,” Hugo taunted.  You had to admit that he made a beret look tough.

The Chase

Horses speak Spanish.  At least that’s the folk wisdom Cormac McCarthy share in his Border Trilogy novels.  The theory holds true in the way a gaucho’s rolled Rs of the brogue-like Argentine Spanish make words sound like phonetecized nickers and whinnies.  Maybe that’s the reason, when someone opened the wrong gate and some steers escaped the corral, our horses seemed to understand the urgency of every shouted word.

It doesn’t take long for 50 steers to scatter into the mountains, but it can be an afternoon’s work gathering them again.  Because our horses were the nearest saddled mounts, Hugo ordered Luis and I to head off the steers.  By the time I reached Charger, Luis and his Criollo were already galloping into the foothills.  I pulled my cinch tight, mounted, and we were off before my rear hit the saddle, quickly catching up with Luis.

The rogue herd had split into two, one group heading straight up an incline, another dropping down into a river valley.  Luis and I galloped side by side, standing in our stirrups, and it was clear Mr. Potato Horse was faster than Luis’s fancy Criollo gelding.

“You take the valley herd,” he yelled.

Luis reined in his gelding and climbed the rocky mountainside in pursuit of the other band.  It was terrain well-suited for a gaited Criollo.

It took the better part of an hour, but we reunited the two herds and returned them to the corrals, where there wasn’t a gaucho in sight.

Back at the cabin, a full-blown fiesta was underway.  Hugo had called lunch break while we were gone and everyone was reclined on the front porch, gnawing on beef ribs, passing around bottles of wine and playing guitar.  Hugo walked toward us as Luis and I unbridled our horses.

“What took you so long?” he asked, calling upon the gaucho work ethic, which dictates a man can always work harder.

“We’re not the ones taking an early lunch,” Luis retorted.

As Luis and I sat down to eat our asado reward, I reflected on the idea that the North American cowboy and the gaucho are like twin brothers, separated at birth, each bearing the imprint of our passionate heritage with horses and cattle.  Luis’s and my feeling of satisfaction bridged the equatorial distance between our two worlds.