Visit gaucho Don Segundo Ramirez
Visit gaucho in San Antonio de Areco: the gaucho that is better known and venerated is Don Segundo Ramirez: He used to be working as a “resero” (cowboy herder) at the “Estancia” (ranch) of Ricardo Güiraldes.
Based on the life of this visit gaucho Don Segundo of San Antonio de Areco: Don Segundo Ramirez, the main novel about the Gauchos “Don Segundo Sombra” was written by Ricardo Güiraldes…
Gaucho Don Segundo Ramírez
Güiraldes, based on the real stories of Don Segundo, wrote the main novel about Gauchos: “Don Segundo Sombra”, firstly published in 1926 in the gaucho town San Antonio de Areco.
He describes visit gaucho “don Segundo” the same as the real character: “His chest was vast, bony joints like a colt, short foot with big instep, thick hands with callus and a dark complexion with small eyes…”.
Gaucho Don Segundo
On the ranch, not far from the main house, was a great Ombú: This is a tree which, grows only on the Pampas. Every day, Ricardo Güiraldes climbed into a notch of this tree and wrote the story of Don Segundo Sombra. It was published in 1926, and made its author famous. Indeed, it was one of those rare books, like the great gaucho epic Martín Fierro (1872), that are read by everyone, intellectual and farmer, adult and child.
Don Segundo Sombra with horse
Don Segundo was born in 1860, and got married with Venancia Rodríguez in 1891. He worked for many Estancias in Areco: San Fermín, La Merced, La Fe, La Porteña, but never had any identity card nor employment contract.
Don Tomás Huarte, foreman of Estancia La Enriqueta, told some things about don Segundo:
– Don Tomás, while siping mate with don Segundo, ask him why being such a good worker, he stay just one year in one Estancia, then maybe two years in another Estancia an so on: “Look, if as a simple worker I stay here for two years knowing all your weakness, by the third one I will pretend to be the foreman, and that situation will not like you, and being a foreman for three or four years, by the fifth I will feel like being the owner and I should settled here.
Instead of this I prefer to go and feel free. I do not want to be tied to any obligation.”
Don Segundo Ramirez in Areco
– Don Segundo was in the fireplace with some others gauchos, and told this story: “I used to know a blind man in the Capilla town, to whom some people bring a horse, and that man begin to touch the horse in the neck, then feeling the horsehair in the chest, in the rib cage, and finally said: this animal is black, or bay or cream-coloured…”
One listener said: “wow…but, does he ever failed?”
Don Segundo: If he ever failed?, he failed all the time!!!