José Hernández published only two poems: The Gaucho Martín Fierro and The Return of Martín Fierro. The Gaucho Martín Fierro, popularly known as La ida (The Departure), protested the unjust laws and social conditions that forced the gaucho to become an outlaw and led to the demise of his rural way of life. Hernández, who grew up among gauchos on the cattle ranches of Argentina where his father worked as an overseer, committed himself to righting the wrongs they suffered. In addition to producing this poem, perhaps the most widely read piece of Argentinian literature, Hernández supported the gauchos’ cause as a political activist, a soldier, a government official, and a journalist.
The rise of the gaucho. The Gaucho Martín Fierro takes place in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when gauchos as a recognizable social group were on the decline. In a few short years, the gaucho would be a semi-mythical figure of the past. But who was the gaucho and how did he live before his world began to disintegrate?
Spanish explorers and settlers who arrived in what is now Argentina, beginning in the sixteenth century, brought with them cattle and horses.
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