Born: Pueyrredon (now part of San Martin), Argentina, 10 November 1834. Education: Educated to elementary level at the school of Don Pedro Sanchez, Barracas, 1841-45, Family: Married Carolina Gonzalez del Solar in 1863; four daughters and one son. Career: Worked with his father, in Camarones and Laguna de los Padres, 1846-52; supported the Federalists against the Unitarians (joined the Federal Reform Party, 1855), and fought at the battles of Rincon de San Gregorio (1853) and El Tala (1854), then travelled to Parana, capital of the Confederation of Argentina, to escape persecution in Buenos Aires; store assistant and judicial scribe, Parana, 1856-58; stenographer for the Confederation Senate, 1859; appointed Second Official to the Confederation’s government, 1859; fought at the battle of Cepeda, 1859; private secretary to President Juan Esteban Pedernera, 1860; received promotion to Captain, and fought at the battle of Pavon, 1861; secretary, Convention of Nogoya, 1864; state attorney and secretary of the legislature, Corrientes, 1867-68; editor, El Eco de Corrientes, 1867-68; joined the resistance movement of Evaristo Lopez Jordan, 1868: ministerial secretary under Lopez, La Paz, 1868; co-founder, Club de los Libres, 1869; fought under Ricardo Lopez Jordan against President Sarmiento at the battle of Naembe, 1871; lived in Buenos Aires, 1872-73; followed Jordan into exile into Montevideo, Uruguay (then part of Brazil), 1873-75; settled in Belgrano, following amnesty from the new President Avellaneda, 1875; deputy for the provincial legislature, 1879-80; vice-president, Chamber of Deputies, 1880; provincial senator, 1881-86; co-founder, national insurance company ”La Previsora,” 1884; board-member, Banco Hipotecario, from 1884. Also political journalist, including: contributor, La Reforma Pacifica, from 1856, and El Argentino, from 1863; editor, El Nacional Argentino, 1860, and El Argentino, 1863; founding editor, Rio de la Plata, 1869-70, and La Patria, Montevideo, 1873-75. Died: 21 October 1886.
Publications
Verse
El gaucho Martin Fierro; La vuelta de Martin Fierro. 2 vols., 1872-79; edited by Eleuterio F. Tiscornia, 1925 (corrected by Santiago M. Lugones, 1926), Ramon Estrella Gutierrez, 1953, Jose Edmundo Clemente, 1953, Augusto Raul Cortazar, 1961, Jorge Becco, 1962, Walter Rela, 1963, Pilo Mayo, 1970, Luis Sainz de Medrono, 1979, and Gisela Frechou and Monica Garcia, 1984; as The Gaucho Martin Fierro, translated and adapted by Walter Owen, 1935; also translated by Catherine E. Ward (bilingual edition), annotated by Frank G. Carrino and Alberto J. Carlos, 1967; as Martin Fierro: The Argentine Gaucho Epic, translated by Henry Alfred Holmes, 1948. Los otros poemas. 1968.
Other
Rasgos biograficos del general Angel V. Penazola. 1863.
Vida del Chacho: rasgos biograficos del general Angel Vicente Penaloza. 1863 (in magazine); 1947 (as book). Instruction del estanciero (cattle rancher’s guide). 1882.
Las Malvinas (writings about Falkland Islands). 1982.
Critical Studies:
Martin Fierro: An Epic of the Argentine by Henry Alfred Holmes, 1923; La lengua de Martin Fierro by Eluterio Tiscornia, 1930; El poeta creador: Como hizo Hernandez La vuelta de Martin Fierro by Carlos Alberto Leumann, 1945; Los motivos del Martin Fierro en la vida de Jose Hernandez by Pedro de Paoli, 1947; El mito gaucho: Martin Fierro y el hombre argentino by Carlos Astrada, 1948; Muerte y transfigurarcion de Martin Fierro by Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, 1948, revised edition, 2 vols., 1958; Martin Fierro by Enrique Bianchi, 1952; Prosas del Martin Fierro by Antonio Pages Larraya, 1952; El Martin Fierro by Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Guerrero, 1953; Jose Hernandez: Periodista, politico y poeta, 1959, and La vuelta de Jose Hernandez, 1973, both by Fermfn Chavez; La elaboration literaria del Martin Fierro, 1960, and Con el Martin Fierro, 1968, both by Angel Hector Azeves; Martin Fierro y La justicia social by Eduardo B. Astesano, 1963; El nombre, el pago y la frontera de Martin Fierro by R. Darfo Capdevila, 1967; Arte y sentido del Martin Fierro by John B. Hughes, 1970; Valoracion de Martin Fierro by Hector Adolfo Cordero, 1971; Jose Hernandez by Noe Jitrik, 1971; Genio y figura de Jose Hernandez by Roque Raul Aragon, 1972; Ida y vuelta de Jose Hernandez by Andres Carretero, 1972; Contenido historico-social del Martin Fierro by Nestor A. Fayo, 1972; Jose Hernandez by Hialmar E. Gammalsson, 1972; Tiempo y vida de Jose Hernandez by Horacio Zorraqufn Becu, 1972; Hernandez: Poesiaypolitica by Rodolfo Borello, 1973; De las aguas profundas en el Martin Fierro by Bernardo Cana-Feijoo, 1973; La creacion del Martin Fierro by Emilio Carilla, 1973; Hernandismo y martin-fierrismo by Elfas Gimenez Vega and Julio Gonzalez, 1975; Prehistoria del Martin Fierro by Olga Fernandez Latour de Botas, 1977; Jose Hernandezy sus mundos by Tulio Halpenn Donghi, 1985; Jose Hernandez: Sus ideas politicas by Enrique de Gandfa, 1985; Martin Fierro: Cien anos de critica edited by Jose Isaacson, 1986; Cuatro Versiones del Martin Fierro by Alba Omil, 1994; Las Vidas de Jose Hernandez by Beatriz Celina Doallo, 1995; Concordancias del poema Martin Fierro by Angela B. Dellepiane, 1995; Tres arquetipos argentinos: Sarmiento, Hernandez, Lugones by Cesar Rosales, 1999; Las voces secretas del Martin Fierro by Victor Zenobi, 2000.
Jose Hernandez was the last of a series of 19th-century Argentinian writers of gauchesque poetry: they were educated men who imitated in their works the idiom and naive style of the songs of the pampas cowboys. (The best known of the others are Bartolome Hidalgo, Hilario de Ascasubi and Estanislao del Campo.) This genre tended to treat the gaucho as a figure of fun; Hernandez, however, exalted the gaucho’s virtues of courage, endurance, and honour, while also denouncing the abuses to which contemporary society subjected such men.
In travel literature, and in anthropological and sociological writing, the gauchos had frequently been described as ill-educated, workshy, violent, nomadic, and antisocial, and in the quarrel between Unitarians (Centralists) and Federalists which divided Argentinians for most of the 19th century, they were depicted by Unitarian writers as an obstacle to democracy and progress because of their support for the caudillos, men who had led their own armies in the Independence wars and became de facto political leaders in the power-vacuum left by the departure of the Spanish. In Domingo Sarmiento’s Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants not merely the cowboy, but cattle-ranching itself, is seen as barbaric.
Hernandez’s book, Vida del Chacho [The Life of El Chacho] is a polemical and uplifting portrait of the Federalist General Penaloza, who had been killed by the Unitarians. Much of Hernandez’s writing took the form of political journalism. In 1869 he founded a newspaper, in which he published fierce attacks on several aspects of Sarmiento’s government’s policy, particularly the use of vagrancy laws to conscript gauchos forcibly into service in the wars against the natives.
Hernandez’s best-known work is his long narrative poem published in two parts, El gaucho Martin Fierro [The Gaucho Martin Fierro], 1872, entitled in some later editions La ida de Martin Fierro [Martin Fierro's Departure] and La vuelta de Martin Fierro [The Return of Martin Fierro], 1879. There are many humorous moments, but the prevailing tone of the first part of the poem is one of bitter moral indignation, and the contemporary audience would have recognized it immediately as a polemical work directed against the government of the day, although there are aspects of the poem that contradict or modify this political intention: for example, Martin Fierro often uses concepts such as ”fate” or ”luck” in commenting on his predicament.
In contrast to the humanitarian sentiments experienced in relation to the gaucho, the 20th-century reader may be struck by the expression of racist feelings in the poem. Martin Fierro, at one point, addresses racial insults to a black man. Fierro admits that he is drunk and feels like picking a fight, but in the course of the duel the black man offends against the gaucho fighting code by being the first to take out a knife, thereby restoring Martin Fierro’s position as the man of honour. Italian and English immigrants are also portrayed unfavourably in the poem: Hernandez thus expresses his opposition to Sarmiento’s policy of encouraging European immigration as a means of reducing Argentina’s dependence on the cattle industry and the cowboys. The portrayal of the native pampas Indians is more complex: Hernandez’s main aim, in the first part of the poem, is to criticize the conduct of the Indian wars. To this end, he depicts the natives as fierce warriors and excellent horsemen, that is, as formidable opponents who should have been countered with well-fed and well-equipped troops. He has no particular interest in depicting the natives negatively in any other respect, and in fact Fierro and his friend Cruz state confidently, at the end of this part of the poem, that the life they propose with the natives will be preferable to life under Sarmiento.
The first part of the poem proved immensely popular with both the educated audience and the gauchos it depicted. Two years after its publication, political circumstances changed in Argentina. President Avellaneda ushered in an era of national reconciliation and Hernandez was elected to the Senate. The Gaucho Martin Fierro strikes a mellower note than the first part of the poem. Many critics, such as Noe Jitrik, consider the second part inferior to the first: it is more consciously literary, seeking to tie up the loose ends of the story, yet the structure is more diffuse, for the sequel narrates not only the subsequent adventures of Fierro and Cruz (until the latter’s death), but also those of Fierro’s two sons, whom he re-encounters, and that of Cruz’s son, Picardfa. All are shown to have suffered misfortune, but the powerful moral anger of the first part seems to have been dissipated. The mood of national reconciliation is expressed in the final episode, in which Martin Fierro is confronted by the brother of the black man he had killed in part one. Instead of the expected duel with knives, they are persuaded to settle their differences by means of a payada or improvised singing contest. Martin Fierro wins, and the black man leaves, though still threatening that he may one day return and exact vengeance.
The mood of reconciliation does not extend to the natives. Hernandez seems eager in this second part of the poem to establish the native peoples as the ethnic and religious enemy, depicting them as barbarous, cruel, and unfeeling, a vision that is at odds with the majority of the anthropological evidence. Angel Hector Azeves suggests in La elaboracion literaria del Martin Fierro that Hernandez drew on information supplied by an uncle who had published a study of the native peoples written from a military rather than an anthropological viewpoint.
The poem has been described by Santiago Lugones and others as the national epic of Argentina. While the term is perhaps not appropriate in its strict rhetorical sense, it may be considered apt in that the poem exalts the gauchos, who were instrumental in winning independence from Spain, and who made a vital contribution to the main economic activity of the nation—cattle-raising. Today the poem is familiar to all Argentinians.
