SOURCE: Slatta, Richard W. “Man to Myth: Literary and Symbolic Images.” In Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, pp. 180-92. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

In the following essay, Slatta demonstrates how Hernández's Martín Fierro and similar works sought to humanize the gaucho tradition in the eyes of the general public after having been tainted by the writings of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento.

Gauchos disappeared as a recognizable social group in the last third of the nineteenth century, but literary and symbolic evocations persisted into the twentieth. Sarmiento had shaped the negative attitudes of many Argentines toward the gaucho with his compelling dichotomy of civilization versus barbarism. Hernández poetically and convincingly refuted Sarmiento's interpretation with Martín Fierro. The gaucho's disappearance, a necessity to Sarmiento and an avoidable tragedy to Hernández, set the stage for his mythical return in the works of twentieth-century nationalists and traditionalists...