Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier Hardcover – September 1, 1983

I bought this so I wouldn't have to pay the expensive price at the bookstore. The quality of this book was okay...it looks like there are some water stains on the back cover, but otherwise, it gets the job done.

Slatta brings the Argentine gaucho alive in all his splendor and squalor. One gains an appreciation for the extraordinary lives of this equestrian people who almost literally lived in the saddle. The author depicts life on the pampa in sometimes searing realism: a hard, state-of-nature life, but one the gaucho himself would not have changed (and did not change at the few junctures where he had the chance).Slatta presents a structuralist history of one of the W. Hemisphere's most colorful and renowned peoples. In other hands this approach might minimize the role of personality and personal choice, as though the gaucho bobbed helplessly on the rough seas of impersonal historical force acting thru the medium of latin culture.Not so here. The author dispassionately shows that the gaucho's fierce independence and tribalism contributed directly to the demise of his culture in its collision with mainstream Argentine society on the pampa. It could not be otherwise. Modernity was simply incomprehensible to the gaucho. One could not be gaucho and latino at the same time, and civilization destroyed the gaucho way of life.Slatta explores obvious parallels with other horse cultures such as that of the Mongols, the American Indian and the American cowboy. He demonstrates subject mastery in a wealth of detail concerning equipment, words, and convergent ways of handling similar challenges. The inherent drama of the gaucho story had echoes of "Monte Walsh" sounding in my mind as I finished the work.This thoroughly readable book is enjoyable both as history and as entertainment.

Slatta brings the Argentine gaucho alive in all his splendor and squalor. One gains an appreciation for the extraordinary lives of this equestrian people who almost literally lived in the saddle. The author depicts life on the pampa in sometimes searing realism: a hard, state-of-nature life, but one the gaucho himself would not have changed (and did not change at the few junctures where he had the chance).Slatta presents a structuralist history of one of the W. Hemisphere's most colorful and renowned peoples. In other hands this approach might minimize the role of personality and personal choice, as though the gaucho bobbed helplessly on the rough seas of impersonal historical force acting thru the medium of latin culture.Not so here. The author dispassionately shows that the gaucho's fierce independence and tribalism contributed directly to the demise of his culture in its collision with mainstream Argentine society on the pampa. It could not be otherwise. Modernity was simply incomprehensible to the gaucho. One could not be gaucho and latino at the same time, and civilization destroyed the gaucho way of life.Slatta explores obvious parallels with other horse cultures such as that of the Mongols, the American Indian and the American cowboy. He demonstrates subject mastery in a wealth of detail concerning equipment, words, and convergent ways of handling similar challenges. The inherent drama of the gaucho story had echoes of "Monte Walsh" sounding in my mind as I finished the work.This thoroughly readable book is enjoyable both as history and as entertainment.

This book is a real find- in English language- of a subject which of course in Spanish has countless specialised texts but difficult to find in English. Having written my Master Degree thesis years ago on the "Psychology of the Gaucho" only now have I found a book which deals in great detail a demographic study of the phenomenon of this personage which is now extinct in its countries of origin. So this study is almost like a scientific analysis of the Argentina and Uruguay of an era now lost, romantic and now seemingly unbelievable for the extreme conditions and historical background which brought about the existence of the gaucho.Full of facts which go beyond what I had hoped to find the author traces the rise and fall of the short-lived existence of this character which spans the mid nineteenth century to the turn of the 19th to 20th century.A book that maybe more people than a select few would appreciate! Only one flaw- I would have loved to see an enrichment of the book with photographic material of the costume of the era and the variations in dress from one region of the country to another. Perhaps only available in Argentine or Uruguayan texts? It contains a modest map and two illustrations of paintings which could be better.