Martín Fierro

El gaucho Martín Fierro recounts the plight of the gaucho. The upper classes expropriated the South American cowboys’ land and livestock, while the government forced them into military service during the Argentine War of Independence, the War of the Triple Alliance, and the Conquest of the Desert. Each time, the gaucho fought to protect ideas that were not his own.

José Hernández Pueyrreddon fought alongside the gaucho in the Argentine War of Independence and worked alongside them in the pampas. He witnessed the sustained abuse and neglect that led the gaucho to lose their identity.

Hernández published El gaucho Martín Fierro in 1873. According to Frank Carrino’s introduction, the poem came too late. The gaucho were already a fading minority. The poem was an attempt to alert the government to the problems faced by that minority.

While the gaucho have come and gone, the poem endures. It could have been written about other oppressed groups around the world at almost any time. For that reason, Carrino writes, the poem has universal appeal and remains relevant today.

I learned about Martín Fierro in Gravity’s Rainbow. In the novel, Francesco Squalidozzi, an Argentine anarchist who hijacks a German U-boat to seek political exile in Europe, suggests to fictional filmmaker Gerhard von Göll that Martín’s story would make a swell film. Indeed it would.

In terms of style, Hernández used six-line verse to create what is essentially a long poem or a very short verse novel. The poem stands at just over 2,000 lines. Section I starts like this:

Here I’ll sit and sing
to the beat of my guitar,
‘cause a man who’s kept awake
by heavy sorrow,
like a lonely bird
consoles himself with song.

Martín’s upset. He wants to share his feelings. But a simple telling won’t do. Martín whips out his guitar and prepares to strum the strings of pain and struggle. Over the first 50 lines of the poem, Martín tells you just how damn committed he is to singing this song. He’s going to war, armed with his guitar and his voice. He’ll keep singing even if the earth splits open.

Across the next 40 lines, Martín tells us how tough he is. I don’t step to one side even if they come slashin’ at my throat, he tells us. I’m a bull in my corral.

So listen, all of you
to the story of my woes,
that I never fight or kill
unless I have to
and all my troubles
come from raw deals I got.

In Section II, Martín first brings us into the school of hard knocks:

A man comes to this world blind,
pushed ahead by hope
and soon gets hit by
the hard blows of life;
holy Christ, but what lessons
we learn as time goes by!

Martín then talks about how great life was in the past. Ways of living, ways of working. After days of arduous labor, the gaucho would fill their bellies and sleep beside their beauties. Here, Martín says they would go to sleep like real people, foreshadowing that they are real people no longer. Soon, we learn that it was fate that all of the wonderful elements of gaucho life would come to an end.

And they’ll bruise your back,
bust your head open
and then right away,
while you’re still hurtin’,
they’ll tie you up
and take you to the stakes.

There’s where your troubles begin,
there’s where the party starts;
‘cause there’s no savin’ you now,
and like it or not,
you’ll be sent to the frontier
or get tossed in a regiment.

Robbed and beaten, the gaucho’s fate is to be put to work or sent to military service. Once they catch up with you, he tells us, not even the saints can save you.

Section III brings us into the common plight of the gaucho. The first sweep says it all:

Once, out my way, I had
children, cattle and a woman,
but things started to go bad;
I was shoved out to the frontier
and what did I find when I got back?
nothing but ruins, and that’s all.

We find Martín singing at a party. The Justice of Peace comes in and starts crackin’ skulls. While some flee, Martín stands his ground. He later stands before a judge who holds a grudge because Martín didn’t cast a vote in his favor. Martín and others are sent away to work in a colonel’s field. Here, the gaucho rivalry with the Indians grows as the latter steal from and attack them. The section ends with a close call in which an Indian almost spears Martín, who turns the situation around and kills the Indian.

Section IV conveys the poverty that Martín contends with. He wears no shirt and struggles to afford food. At every turn, someone tries to take advantage of the gaucho, even the shopkeeper. By this time Martín has been working for two years without pay. He reaches his limits but doesn’t know what to do:

But how could I fight them?
I was just a babe in the woods.
I might as well give myself up for dead
to keep from gettin’ in any deeper,
and pretend I’m half asleep,
though I’m really awake.

Martín becomes desperate in Section V. He hopes for a surprise Indian raid to create enough confusion so that he can become an outlaw and head home. Martín’s wish doesn’t come to pass. Instead, a drunk gringo guarding the camp takes a shot at Martín one night. This brings out the major, who ties him up.

To my hands and feet
they tied four straps.
I took all their tugs and jerks
and didn’t let out a peep,
but all night long that gringo
got an earful of my cursin’.

Martín’s fate worsens in Section VI:

Now we’re coming to
the saddest part of my story,
though my whole life
it’s a chain of griefs.
Every soul that suffers
has to sing out his troubles.

Our boy steals off on a horse. Three years after his initial departure, he returns to find his home in ruins. His children have been put to work somewhere, his wife left with a ladies’ man to secure food, and his cattle and land were all sold. Martín breaks down in tears. From this point on, Martín decides to be as mean as a tiger whose cubs have been stolen.

In Section VII, Martín gets in trouble. Interestingly, Hernández switches from six-line verse to four-line verse to increase the pacing. You can see why: Martín goes to a party, gets wasted, and instigates a fight with a black couple. The entire section recounts a knife fight in which Martín kills the other man, whose body gets dumped in the woods. Martín later feels guilty about it.

Sometimes I get the urge,
to keep ‘im from sufferin’ too much,
to dig up his bones
and stick ‘em in a cemetery.

Martín kills again in Section VIII. This time, he takes on the bully of a small town who instigates a fight. After gutting the guy in a bar, Martín goes on the run and challenges fate.

Come on fate, let’s go.
Since we were born together,
and since we live together
and can’t never be apart,
with my blade I’ll clear
a path for us to follow.

The police catch up with Martín in Section IX. Another knife fight ensues. Martín kills a few of the police. His actions inspire another gaucho, who joins Martín in the fight. After laying waste to the police, Martín and his new friend, Cruz, ride off drinking.

I gathered up the bodies,
knelt and said a little prayer for ‘em
I made a cross from a little stick
and begged my merciful God
to pardon me for the crime
of havin’ killed so many people.

We switch to Cruz’s perspective in Section X. He ultimately sings the same song that Martín sings, though sometimes with the view that tomorrow is another day. The point here seems to be that Martín is not one of a kind, but one of many who share the same plight.

My friend, to suffer
we men were born;
these are the times
to prove you’re strong,
until death comes
and grabs hold of you.

The collective grief expands at the start of Section XI. Hernández uses “like water from a spring” for the third time across the poem in this section. A bit lazy, if you ask me!

From others, verses gush out
like water from a spring;
and it’s the same with me,
though mine ain’t worth much:
they pour out of me
like sheep from a corral.

We then move into another party scene at a bar. A gaucho with a guitar starts bad-mouthing Martín, who then slashes the strings of his guitar. Another fight breaks out and, of course, Martín kills and gets away again.

Martín’s life takes a turn for the better in Section XII. A friend fixes things with the judge on his behalf. In turn, the judge offers Martín a job on the police force. But that’s not his style. Martín overhears the judge talking about plans to get rich and wants nothing of it.

Everything turns out to be schemes
for colonies and railways
and for spendin’ piles of money
on recruitin’ gringos for pay,
while the poor soldier
gets stripped bare. Those dirty bastards!

Martín wraps the song in Section XIII. He praises God for creating all things beautiful and then sings of the gaucho’s resilience once again. Yet he ends on the note of getting out:

Both in love and war,
a real man makes it with song;
besides, in the raids
we might pick up something’ for ourselves;
anyhow, my friend, I’m for gettin’ out
of this life of wanderin’.

We wrap with a note from the author, who tells us that Martín smashes his guitar on the ground. No one else is gonna sing after this gaucho has sung.

From a ranch, Cruz and Fierro
rounded up a string of horses;
they drove them on ahead
like people who know how
and soon, without being noticed,
crossed over the frontier.

While short, I find Martín Fierro too long for the story it tells. There’s a lot of hardship and killing, which is perhaps the point. Survival instinct drives Martín, who proves resilient throughout. Yet he doesn’t make the greatest folk hero.