The gaucho

The sovereign holds the allotment of the earth that occupied to the feudal system, by means of the "posts", and big "graces" that he agreed characters that left the cultivation of the floor or the care of his livestocks in hands of proletariats. The colonist lived fighting in the costs to save the new populations of the looting and the pillagings of the French pirates, Englishmen and Danish that in those times infested the seas, and in the inside lands fighting with the Indian that defended his floor of the new occupation, without for this reason he had property neither roots. He lived without home and without family. This was the origin of our gauchos: at the beginning of the XVIII century, Buenos Aires hardly had 3% of proprietors on their total population.

This man lived fighting with the weapon in his arm to defend the property of his gentlemen, working at the same time to spread to the payment of the sovereign's strong taxes and the taxes and extortions of his patterns; so that he had the necessary thing to get dressed and to stay, without being able to think of being resided to the floor to form a family, because to more the government prohibited new allotments of the earth.

He lived this way nomad and without bonds that tied him to the society for whose stability fought using all his energy. The indigenous race was untamable and unsociable, so that few contact points he had with her, living in continuous war; that made the Buenos Aires gaucho to largely conserve the purity of the Spanish race.

The horse

For the gaucho, the horse it was like a part of himself, and, when the not very common case was given that doesn't have it, he said that "he walked without feet". Maybe for that reason he gave him so many and so different names, each one of which it contained a true definition of the conditions of the animal.

Rag, freight, credit, parejero, chuzo, matungo, gavel, mancarrón, sotreta, bichoco, etc. Rag, freight and chuzo are general denominations, although it usually uses also with admiring sense. Parejero was and it is, exclusively, the career horse; credit is called to the one that, among all those of the tropilla, it deserved more trust for the occasions in that its owner should shine his abilities, already in the rodeo, one "misses", one bowled or a long trip.

On the other hand mancarrón, matungo, gavel, bichoco and sotreta are pejorative forms and they are applied the horses that lack some of the necessary conditions: speed, endurance, good to walk, the same thing that to the old animals or mañeros, that is to say, useless for the good work cattleman.

The "mate"

The origin of the mate herb and their use is told per centuries, and in its principles they mix history and legend.
It is said that the Indians already consumed it, the name among them was "caa-maté", word that is achieved adding a Guarani word that with one seemingly Quechua, like it was "matí." "Caa" in Guarani means herb and "matí", of where it would have derived "maté", it is voice that denominates to a small pumpkin in Quechua where it is drinks the infusion. Hardly a hundred years after the discovery of America, it is awarded to Hernando Arias de Saavedra - Hernandarias -, in 1592, the discovery of the use of the herb leaves.

According to these stories, the Indians that harassed the Spaniards took, together with their weapons, some small leather sacks exceptionally weatherbeaten, well-known as "gauyacas" where they kept mate herb semi-ground and a little toast, that they accustomed to toast in their long adventures or, adding water, they sipped it with small refined and dry internodes, elaborated with canes.

Some of these narrations, reflect with extraordinary fidelity essential features of the environment and the atmosphere, and how much it meant the maté for it. Juan Parish and Guillermo P. Robertson, in their story "The Vivac"(1815), they express: The gaucho's first distraction, after compliment its laborious work, is the maté. So that, as soon as they finished their tasks, they go out to glitter the peasants and dented boilers and soon it could see the men filling the matés and sucking the bulbs, while they walked slowly or they remained seated next to the fire on a cow head and smoking paper cigarettes. It was the prelude of the most succulent dinner that can imagine: on the fires, and threaded in long wooden stakes or in iron brochettes, inclined a half dozen of roasted made up of the best parts in the animal was seen; the delicious smell of the roasted meat, filling the air, opened up more and more the appetite. Once everything in calm, the men covered with their ponchos surrounded the vents and they continued smoking cigarettes and drinking maté."

That habit of the gaucho's inveterate courtesy of the past, it still subsists in the current compatriot: he offers the maté and he touch his hat in expression of respectful deference toward the guest.

It is part of the field man's innate education, maybe for their estrangement of the populated centers and not to be subjected to the tensions and modalities of the habitant's coexistence of the important cities.

Identified with the tradition and Argentinean town, the maté transforms, not speaking about its alimentary character, in a true representative symbology that still continues staying in many cases, in particular in areas far from the domestic interior.