[The myth of the Gaucho Martín Fierro]

The Gaucho Martín Fierro, written by José Hernández in 1872 and 1879, is today considered the most beautiful of the original productions of the River Plate literature. It is the one that best represents the mentality and the individual and social attitudes and customs of the common people. Hernández re-creates not only their rustic speech, but also the natural prosody peculiar to the peasant. Most especially, he gives vivid and pathetic shape to the myth of the gaucho in his context: the rural community in its early stages. This paper analyzes the epic nature of the poem (its glamour of adventure, courage and destiny), its nature as a national epic (depecting the values and aspirations of a developing society) and especially its character as a mythical prototype (referring to origins, to destiny and to a "primitive crime"). This myth is embodied by a stoic and conflictive figure, product of an ethnic mixture, but more essentially of transculturation. The conflict and dissociations are revealed as much by the two contrasting parts of the poem as by the vicissitudes of Hernández' own life. The psychological, historical, social and political effects of the poem are analyzed. Argentines have identified themselves on several planes with this mythical hero, since Martín Fierro represents the drama of dissociation, trikery, and unsuccessful attempts at social integration or compromise throughout Argentina's dramatic history.