Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [50]
The array of gear behind the man looked a bit like the kind of stuff you’d find in one of the more interesting stores in San Francisco—lots of jangly, studded, leather. A rack of boleadores, one of the traditional hunting weapons of both the gauchos and the plains Indians, hung over his head. The bolas consist of two heavy, metal spheres or rounded rocks, about the size of a baseball, connected by a long leather strap. Hunters whirl the balls around their head and then throw them at the legs of animals, entangling the animal and tripping it so it can be finished off with a spear or knife. Darwin tried his hand at both the lazo (lasso) and the bolas, with less-than-perfect results. After riding hard, whirling the bolas around his head, he tossed them—and snared his own horse. The gauchos, he reported, roared with laughter. They’d seen all kinds of animals caught with the bolas, they teased Darwin, but they’d never seen a rider catch himself.
I asked the man in the saddle shop if he could use the bolas.
“Me?” he said, surprised at the question. “No. The gauchos use them. Not me.”
I picked one up, briefly, and was surprised at the weight of the metal ball. I put it back. The leather smith smiled and set aside his saddle to sip his maté.
In the front of the store, a flier advertised a performance of gaucho fo lklór ico dances that evening in the community center on the edge of town. A few hours later, a taxi driver dropped me on a small, dark street and pointed back at an unmarked building. The inside reminded me of my high school gymnasium. Concrete bleachers cascaded onto a smooth concrete floor, and folding tables and chairs clustered around the edges. A group of teenage girls operated a concession stand in the corner. I bought a soda from them, and one of the girls caught my accent. She asked where I was from. “And you came here for this?” she asked, incredulous.
The dancing started around 10 P.M. with a crowd-pleasing dance by the youngest troupe in attendance. Dressed in oversized gaucho duds or Spanish ranch finery, ten children tripped out under the lights to perform a simple partner dance. The boys wore huge baggy pants, knee-high leather boots, white long-sleeved shirts, and red kerchiefs and sashes. They covered up with tightly cut red, black, or brown jackets, like Spanish matadors. Most also donned the low, flat, black sombreros fancied by the gauchos. The girls, meanwhile, wore ornate long dresses and pulled their hair back and up. For the dance, both boys and girls raised their arms and moved around each other in stumbling circles, vaguely in time with the music and under direction of their coach, who stood alongside, waving to remind them of positions. One boy lost his red sash, which he kicked aside with a smile. Another boy and girl forgot their steps and excused themselves to stand and wait for everyone else to finish. The audience of several hundred maté-drinking family members and friends loved it. The kids trickled back out of the lights to enthusiastic applause.
I went in search of someone who could explain the dances that followed and found Paula Gil, a twenty-eight-year-old professional dance instructor from Bahia Blanca. She pointed me up to the top of the bleachers, where her girls-only troupe prepared for its performance later in the evening. Watching from above, we could see dancing couples circling each other. Every once in a while, the boy would stop dancing, turn his back to the girl, and start to clap in time with the music. The girl sashayed around him, working closer and closer, until she ended up right in front of him. They would split apart again and continue dancing.
The dances, Paula told me, represented a specific period in Argentine history, from about 1815 to 1870, and resulted from a blending of Spanish and Italian culture.
“Are many people interested in folklórico?” I asked.
“Of course more people do the tango,” she said. “It’s