During the 1600's the Spanish, being conquerers and all, found themselves out of favor with the locals (indigenous at the time) and kicked out of Buenos Aires. Not intending to lose out on the riches afforded by these lovely navigable rivers, they simply moved up the Parana River and founded Asuncion, Paraguay. Soon they began casting their greedy eyes south again, this time beyond Buenos Aires to the flat, empty, fertile land across the Rio de la Plata.

They discovered the land in what is now Uruguay was fertile, flat and grassy with no predators and no mountains to get in the way. They moved some cattle onto this fertile plain and left them to roam for the next 50 to a hundred years to do what cows do--eat and breed and eat and breed until they filled the entire country from coast to coast. As far as the eye could see---cows.

And what do cows wear that the Spanish could develop a great market for? Not the meat--but the hides. They began to slaughter cattle and strip the valuable hides to send back to Spain. 

As with the American buffalo, the meat was left to rot on the plain. There were so many wild cattle there seemed to be no end to this versatile product.

Finding this open, empty space appealing, some of the men brought from Spain to kill cattle remained. Thus, the birth of the gaucho. This is not the Hollywood version. The gaucho was a wild, filthy, lawless individual living here because there was no law. There was nothing but cows and a few Indians. There were no sheriffs, no towns, no white women, no borders, no fences. They roamed the country at will. When hungry they killed a cow. When they needed a jacket--another cow. But when they needed new boots they were ingenious.

They killed a young horse and peeled the hides off its legs, dried them in the sun, then slipped them over their feet and up the leg for a boot. But a boot with an open toe, which suited them fine, as they needed their toes bare to grip the rope stirrup.

They had nothing--needed nothing--but a horse and a knife. 

Gauchos are of no particular race although they began as white men. They mixed first with the Indian population and then with the slaves, so the notion of gaucho is more of lawlessness and wandering than it is of any race.

Ever try to catch a wild cow? American cowboys used lassos, but their gaucho cousins went a different route. They took round rocks the size of their fist and wrapped them in leather, then joined them together by a braided leather thong and called it a boleadero. 

As he's racing alongside the cow he twirls this thing over his head and slams it at the cows' hooves. The running feet get entangled and the cow stumbles or slows down long enough for the gaucho to break it's leg jabbing it with a long spear-like tool with an curved iron head. Then he can kill it with his knife. Always the knife--and no dainty one either--this thing would make Crocodile Dundee proud.

The life of the gaucho flourished for as much as a hundred years until the country began to be more civilized and property was claimed and fenced and cows were branded. Now when he killed a cow, it belonged to someone--he was breaking the law.

So the gaucho is no John Wayne, but a bunch of dirty, wild criminals--or at least men who considered themselves not above the law but just not affected by it. They were here first. 

But this land was just too rich. Civilization slowly crept into Uruguayan society. Men with money on their minds claimed the cattle as their own and the gaucho was fenced out and forced to find work or die. He was now working for the very men who stole away his freedom.