Playing Gaucho: Sociedades Criollas and Making Tradition

In May 1894 Dr. Elías Regules turned his dream of a Sociedad Criolla, or Creole social club, into a reality. On May 25 (a patriotic holiday in the region) Regules and thirty-two friends gathered in the Podestá-Scotti circus tent in downtown Montevideo for the inaugural ceremony. Members pledged to “welcome under its traditionalist banner any and all who hold the true concept of the Patria.” Decked out in gaucho regalia they paraded on horseback past the elegant shops and apartment buildings to their ranch on the outskirts of the city where they celebrated in proper rural fashion, meaning with dance, song, mate, and a barbeque blowout. After the meal a group of aficionados put on a representation of the gaucho theatrical hit, Juan Moreira. Then they all disbanded and went about their regular routines.

Regules’s Sociedad Criolla was the first among hundreds of similar societies established between 1894 and the 1910s throughout Uruguay, Argentina, and southern Brazil. They offered spaces where members (both locals and immigrants) engaged in the making of tradition rooted in the idea of Creole nationalism, participated in community building through dance, music, and other modes of sociability, all while “playing gaucho.” For members tradition was inseparable from a romanticized understanding of rural life, folkways, and modes of work and speech. Tradition was about loyalty. By the end of the 1800s this mythic gaucho had come to be both the iconic representative of tradition and emblem of freedom, national identity, and loyalty.

Why did so many of these societies appear, and what did their members get out of participating in activities? What relationship did these societies have with political culture and the budding popular culture industry? We’ll explore these questions through one of the most prominent activities at Creole societies: playing gaucho.