cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

My new book, Gauchos & Gumption, My Argentine Honeymoon , will be released in digital format January 7th from Turquoise Morning Press (www.turquoisemorningpress.com). It’s a (fictionalized) diary kept by my grandmother, Leora Marie Banning, who as a new bride of 18 sailed off to South America to run cattle on the Argentine pampas. The year is 1910. Far from civilization, Marie struggles to adjust to the rough life of the pampas, to be accepted for herself, and to realize what loving her husband demands. She learns to make ostrich egg omelets, converse in Spanish with the gauchos, and wear “bombaches,” the baggy, calf-length pants worn by the Argentine cowhands. Then, camped a thousand miles from Buenos Aires, Marie discovers she is pregnant. The battle to save herself and her unborn child challenges everything she believes in. This memoir is based on stories that Marie related to her granddaughter, author Lynna Banning, while she was growing up. The photographs included in th...

Gauchos were the residents of the South American pampas or Patagonian grasslands, found in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile and Southern Brazil. Loosely, the word is the South American equivalent of “cowboy,” ( vaquero in Spanish), and, like that of his North American counterpart, it’s mostly a 19th century term. Theories as to origins of the gaucho vary. The term may derive from the Mapuche cauchu (“vagabond”) or the Quecha huachu (“orphan”). The first recorded uses of the term date from the time of Argentine independence in 1816. At one time, gauchos made up most of the rural population in Argentina, herding cattle and practicing hunting in addition to serving as guerrilla fighting forces. Cattle came to the pampas from Paraguay in 1580. In the 18th century, the gauderios , who lived by hunting wild cattle, were recorded by the travel writer Alonso Carrio de la Vandera when he passed through northern Argentina. Commercial cattle ranching began in the second half of the 1...