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The aim of this paper is to analyze the cultural models in two Gaucho novels: José J. de Vedia's Aventuras de un centauro en la América Meridional (1868), and Eduarda Mansilla's Pablo, o la vida en las pampas (1869). Both novels propose a gaucho's ethopoeia. This was later developed by others writers, who also established new generic conventions for sentimental novels. The Gaucho's lack of culture about religion, education and citizenship entail new cultural paradigms (Lotman). These are linked to political discourses, the press and literature, and also turn the national romance into a means of complaint, a discourse more rooted onto a realistic aesthetics than onto a romantic one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the end of 19th Century and the beginning of 20th Century, anarchist writers from the Rio de la Plata region were committed to the discovery and literary creation of a whole group of human types that were novel representations of the "ser nacional" thus claiming for the participation of marginal social groups in the nation building plans. The cultural scenario moved from the countryside to the outskirts of the cities transforming the rural traditional gaucho figure into a heterogeneous group of suburban characters as being part of new aspects of national identity. These displacements and transformations were celebrated by anarchist writers through an original appropriation process of cultural tradition elements. This article analyzes the process of cultural and political transformation of the gaucho figure and Sarmientos's scheme "civilization vs. barbarism" pointing out that the outskirts were the place where painful signals of authoritarian modern impulse could be seen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before the definitive canonization of gauchesca poetry around Argentina's 100th anniversary in 1910, the second generation of nativist writers, who began publishing in the mid-1890s, had already initiated the revaluation of this genre. In contrast to the first generation of nativist writers, these new Argentine authors, led by Martiniano Leguizamón, exalted gauchesca poetry as a strategy to legitimize their negotiations with urban and popular cultural expressions and, at the same time, to draw a line before these emerging forms of Argentine mass cultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author considers the character of the gaucho, the South American mestizo equivalent to the American cowboy, in the literature of Argentina and Uruguay. Argentine poetry by poets Maziel (1727-1788), Panteleón Rivarola (1754-1821), and Bartolomé Hidalgo (1788-1823) which features the colloquial language used by gauchos is discussed. The author compares and contrasts the poems "Martín Fierro," by Argentine poet José Hernández and "Los Tres Orientales," by Uruguayan poet Antonio Luccich. The author also considers how pulp fiction writer Eduardo Gutierrez adapted his novel "Juan Moreira" as a theatrical production, leading to a popular trend of gauchos in circuses, plays, and other entertainment performances.