Argentine Gauchos: Who They Are and Where to Ride with Them

Few figures stand for Argentina the way the gaucho does: the horseman of the open plains, at home in the saddle, with a knife in his sash and a mate gourd in his hand. Gauchos are often called the cowboys of South America, and the comparison is fair as far as it goes. But the gaucho has his own history, his own clothes and his own habits, and in the Patagonian countryside around our lodge the tradition is still part of everyday life.

This guide covers who the gauchos are, where they came from, what they wear, eat and drink, and where you can ride with them today. We run horseback trips with local gauchos from our lodge in the Cholila valley, in Chubut, so the last part is written from our own corner of Patagonia.

What is a gaucho?

A gaucho is a horseman of the South American plains, skilled with cattle and horses and famous for living on horseback. The figure belongs mainly to Argentina and Uruguay, with versions in southern Brazil, where the word is spelled gaúcho, and in neighboring countries. In Argentina today the word is also used more loosely for any country person who works livestock in the traditional way.

Nobody knows for sure where the word comes from. By 1933 one author had counted 36 competing theories, and more than 50 have been proposed since, from Quechua and Mapuche words to Spanish and Portuguese slang. What is known is that the word first turns up in Spanish colonial records in the 18th century, in what is now Uruguay.

Where the gauchos came from

The first gauchos appeared on the pampas in the 1600s and 1700s, when huge herds of wild cattle and horses roamed the grasslands. A good rider could live without a fixed job, hunting cattle for their hides, eating beef and moving wherever he pleased. Most were of mixed Spanish and Indigenous descent, and to colonial officials the word gaucho meant something close to outlaw: a hide smuggler, a cattle thief, a man with no master.

That image changed in the wars of independence in the early 1800s. Gaucho cavalry fought on the patriot side, most famously under Martín Miguel de Güemes in Salta, who took the insult and turned it into a badge of honor by calling his men "my gauchos."

The free-roaming life did not last. Through the 1800s, laws required rural workers to carry papers showing who employed them, and from 1822 to 1873 they even needed internal passports to move around. Then barbed wire, cheap from 1876, fenced the open range. Gauchos who had ridden where they liked became hired hands on the estancias, the big cattle and sheep ranches, or drifted into the towns.

Martín Fierro and the Día de la Tradición

Just as the old way of life was ending, the gaucho became a national hero. In 1872 José Hernández published El gaucho Martín Fierro, a long poem in the voice of a gaucho who is forced into frontier military service, deserts and lives as an outlaw. It was a huge popular success in the countryside. Hernández followed it with La vuelta de Martín Fierro in 1879, and the two parts are often called Argentina's national epic.

Argentina still marks the connection every year. November 10, the day Hernández was born in 1834, is the Día de la Tradición, the Day of Tradition, first made official by Buenos Aires province in 1939. Towns across the country hold parades, folk music and riding displays around that date, and the best known is the Fiesta de la Tradición in San Antonio de Areco, outside Buenos Aires.

What gauchos wear

Gaucho clothing grew out of life on horseback, and much of it is still worn in the countryside, not only at festivals. These are the pieces you are most likely to see.

Boina. A wool beret in the Basque style. It is the everyday hat of many gauchos in Patagonia.

Wide-brimmed hat. Gauchos also wear a felt hat with a wide, flat brim, often held on by a cord under the chin.

Bombachas. Loose, comfortable trousers made for long days in the saddle. Before them, gauchos wore the chiripá, a cloth wrapped around the hips and between the legs.

Faja and belt. A woven sash around the waist, often with a wide leather belt over it, sometimes decorated with coins and silver buckles.

Facón. The long knife tucked into the back of the sash. For centuries it was the only cutlery a gaucho carried, and you will still see one come out at an asado to cut the meat.

Poncho. Warm in the cold, a saddle blanket by day and a blanket to sleep under at night. In Patagonia, where the weather turns fast, a poncho is still one of the most useful things a rider can own.

Boots. Tall leather boots protect the legs on long rides through brush and rough ground.

The working tools went with the clothes: the lazo, or lasso; the rebenque, a short leather whip; and the boleadoras, three stones wrapped in leather and tied together with leather cords, thrown to tangle the legs of a running animal.

Mate, asado and the gaucho table

On the range, the gaucho diet was beef and very little else, washed down with mate. Mate is an infusion of yerba mate leaves, drunk from a hollowed gourd through a metal straw called a bombilla, with water heated short of boiling. It is now the national drink of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, and it is still shared the gaucho way: one gourd, refilled and handed to each person in turn.

Asado, the Argentine barbecue, comes from the same place. Gauchos cooked beef over an open fire wherever they stopped, and big asados are still how the countryside gets together. In Patagonia it is often lamb, cooked slowly on an iron cross beside the fire.

Gauchos and baqueanos in Patagonia

In Patagonia the tradition lives on in ranch country, where gaucho families still work cattle, sheep and horses, and events like la yerra, the yearly branding, are celebrations of family and gaucho culture.

Here you will often hear another word: baqueano. It comes from baquía, a deep knowledge of the land, and a baqueano is a countryman who knows every trail, river crossing and weather sign of his valley. Historically, baqueanos guided travelers, and even armies, through country nobody else could find their way across. In the countryside a baqueano is usually described simply as a gaucho with that extra knowledge of the ground.

How gauchos live and work today

The gaucho of the 1800s, roaming free across unfenced plains, is gone. The work and the culture are not. Gauchos today work on estancias tending cattle, sheep and horses. Trucks and quad bikes have joined the horse, but horsemanship still matters in country too rough for anything else, and many gauchos also guide visitors.

For a visitor, a gaucho experience usually means riding with local horsemen who grew up working the land, stopping at a puesto, a gaucho outpost, sharing mate along the way and ending the day around a fire. If you are still deciding where in the country to ride, our guide to horseback riding in Argentina goes region by region.

Riding with gauchos from the Cholila valley

Our lodge sits on the Carrileufú River at the north entrance to Los Alerces National Park, in the Cholila valley in Chubut. Our Gaucho Experience is four nights with four days on horseback: a short ride on the afternoon you arrive, then three full days. Your guides are baqueanos from the valley, and Iñaki or Toto from our family rides out with the group.

On the river day you cross the Carrileufú on horseback, follow the shore of Lago Rivadavia and stop at a gaucho outpost that belongs to our guide's family, where he was born. There is mate along the way, lunch on the trail or on a beach inside the park, and every evening ends back at the lodge by the fire. Some nights, when there are enough of us, the asado gets going.

You do not need to have ridden before. Our horses are a mix of breeds, calm and used to the mountain, and the guides set the pace for the group. We only have five rooms, so there are never more than ten riders. For more on what the riding itself is like, see our post on riding in Patagonia from the Cholila valley.