THE GAUCHOS

The problem was not the gauchos, I see…

by Adrián Paenza.Argentine Teacher´s

In this enthusiastic trip by different places from the life, I want to reclaim a text of the English scientist Charles Darwin, who with their theory on the evolution and the natural selection changed the history of the humanity for always. Darwin was long time in Argentina. From 1831 to 1836 ' traveled like naturalist on board the English ship; H.M.S. Beagle'. In fact, Darwin comprised of an expedition that she tried to give the return to the world in boat. After reading the text that wrote in 1833, they will realize of which many of the things they pass which us to the Argentineans have a older origin del than we ourself we create. The temptation always exists to think that all past time was better. Well. It can be that there have been moments of the past that were better. But certainly I also can mention present moments that are better than those of the past. In any case, he reads the commentary that did on the Argentineans in 1833. And later I invite, it to a minute of reflection.

Charles Darwin -Extract of one notices Today published in Science, Volume 6, Nº 31

Magazine of Scientific and Technological Spreading of the Association Science Today

“During last the six months, I have had the opportunity to appreciate in something the way to be of the inhabitants of these provinces [of The River de la Plata].

The gauchos or men of field are very superiors to which they reside in the cities. The gaucho is invariably very helpful, courteous and hospitable. I have not been with a single example of lack of courtesy or hospitality. He is modest, it is respected and it respected to the country, but he is also a personage with energy and boldness. The police and justice are completely inefficient. If a man commits a murder and must be apprehended, perhaps streamlining can be jailed or even; but he is rich and it has friendly in which to trust, nothing will happen.

He is peculiar to state that the people most respectable invariably help to escape to an assassin. They seem to think that the individual committed a crime that affects to the government and not the society. (A traveller does not have another protection that his arms, and is the constant habit to take them what mainly he prevents that are more robberies).

The upper and educated classes than live in the cities commit many other crimes, but they lack the virtues of the character of the gaucho. One is sensual people and disolutas that is mofan of all religion and practices the crudest corruptions; its lack of principles is complete. Having the opportunity, not to defraud a friend is considered a weakness act; to say the truth in circumstances in that it would agree to have lain would be an infantile simpleza. The honor concept is not included/understood; neither this one, nor generous feelings, vices of chivalry, managed to survive the long passage of the Atlantic.

If it had read these opinions a year ago, it had accused to me of intolerance: now I do not do it. All that has a good opportunity to judge thinks the same.

In the Room of Buenos Aires I do not believe that there are six men whose honesty and principles could be to trust. All government official is bribable. The head of Post office sells falsified currency. The governor and prime minister sack the public coffers…

Justice cannot be hoped if there is gold of by means. I meet a man (he was right good to do it) that he appeared the judge and he said: “I give two hundred pesos him if it arrests such person illegally; my lawyer advised to give this situation to me”.

The judge smiled in assent and was thankful; before the night, the man was imprisoned. With this extreme deficiency of principles between the leaders, and with the plagued of violent civil servants and bad country payments, have, nevertheless, the hope of which the democratic government lasts. In my opinion, before many years they will shake under the iron hand of some dictador".

(29 of November to the 4 of December of 1833) the texts are of Charles Darwin' s Diary of the Voyage of ' H.M.S. Beagle'. Edited from the MS by Nora Barlow, 1933, Cambridge University Press, pp. 197-200. Translation to the Spanish of the Magazine Science Today and returned to translate the English.

Now itself I: he is not wonderful to be with writings of a person whom almost two centuries back it described what it happens to us today? Which was then the passed time in which everything was better? It was not, perhaps, that the corruption was product of the era of the globalisation and aims of century XX? It was not truth that the heroes lived at those times? Obvious, I do not create either that all past time has been worse. I only propose not to think that because one did not live it, it was better. Something as well as that when a person dies, happens to be faultless and unpollluted. We are, neither the more nor the less, that a set of miseries and virtues. In any case, an average of them. To some people, ' agujita' it marks a little more above to them. And to others, more down. The great majority lives (we lived) in an average term. And very only privileged or depraveed they have the possibility of escaping of the average, as much it is by the greater excellence or the perversion of his acts. We are, in any case, humans. And we fought by a better, more generous, shared in common society and with one better distribution of the wealth.

That would be a good step. Beyond the scientific revolution, this century would have to be marked by to have obtained one more a more equitable distribution of the material wealth, but also of the intellectual. That one is the challenge.

Adrián Paenza. Argentine Teacher´s

Translation of Héctor Rigaldo