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Originally Posted by Atlantia
Hi Chris,
What were these made for exactly? I take it they weren't really Gaucho knives by the 1940s, so who was buying them?
Best
Gene
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These knives are strictly speaking not `gaucho knives', rather `Creole knives'. This way we sidestep this extremely contentious question. Creoles (Span:Criollos) were the locally born offsprings of Europena settlers. Plenty of Crillos around to this day, but not gauchos. In reality, these knives are upholding a mythical pampean heritage and not utility, much like the ornate Colt single action became an American cultural icon of the West.
Much as I respect and esteem Doemench, in that essay, he claims that the "real" gauchos disappeared sometime around 1880, I and others disagree with this. The first thing to bear in mind is that throughout the 19th century the term gaucho kept changing. Originally, towards the late 18th cntry it was used as described by Domenech, nomadic outlaw vagabonds who lived off the fat of the land, but later it was applied to any agricultural labourer who could ride a horse, mere peons and station hands. What is very significant is that even in the 1790s their numbers were small, the Buenos Aires pampas only having a gaucho population of around 10,000 souls (if they had one! See Facundo Quiroga) and there weren't any in the other parts of the country because gauchos were plains dwellers. This number could only diminish, which it did with the emergence of institutionalized agriculture in the Pampas and an increase in indian population that competed for the same life sustaining resources. So, by the 1880s, if there were any left, they would have been very small in numbers and mostly bandits, fugitive station hands who committed a crime and army deserters. There is evidence to suggest that by the early decades of the 19th cntry, the numbers of wild cattle and horse were greatly reduced due to over exploitation. Because of this, it is my view and that of others, that the halcyon days of real gauchos was before the 19th cntry.
However the emergence of a national sense of identity in the later decades of the 19th cntry demanded a stereotype that everyone could identify with in an agricultural economy and the gaucho, as we know him, was invented. He was a composite character that embodied all the nation building virtues needed at that time. In time, `gaucho' was reduced to a wild card word that stood for many things, but always good, such as "gauchada" for a good deed and so on, even a trade brand, as in the 70's, if I remember right, "marca gaucha" stood for a good/reliable trade brand. This usage of the word stood in stark contrast to its earlier meanings, when it was used to describe good for nothings (see Facundo Quiroga).
Three very good works to read on the subject are: Sarmiento's Facundo Quiroga, Slattas The Gaucho and The Vanishing Frontier, and Lynch's Argentienan Caudillo (The Life of Juan Manuel Rosas Dictator). All these works are available in English.'
Cheers
Chris