Richard W. Slatta

Chronicles the life of Simon Bolivar, one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in Latin American history, focusing on his extensive military career.

Looks at how major western figures, events, and places are depicted in folklore, legends, art, literature, and popular culture.

This collection of essays functions as a how-to guide to comparative frontier research in the Americas. Frontiers specialist Richard W. Slatta presents topics, techniques, and methods that will intrigue social-science professionals and western-history buffs alike as he explores the frontiers of North and South America from Spanish colonial days into the twentieth century. The always popular cowboy is joined by the fascinating gaucho, llanero, vaquero, and charro as Slatta compares their work techniques, roundups, songs, tack, lingo, equestrian culture, and vices. We visit saloons and pulperias as well as plains and pampas, and Slatta expertly compares clothing, weather, terrain, diets, alcoholic beverages, card games, and military tactics. From primary records we learn how Europeans, Native Americans, and African Americans became the ranch hands, cowmen, and buckaroos of the Americas, and why their dependence on the ranch cattle industry kept them bachelors and landless peons.

Alphabetically arranged, this book highlights the people, places, historical events, and cultural imagery surrounding the cowboys of both North and South America.

Although as much romanticized as the American cowboy, the Argentine gaucho lived a persecuted, marginal existence, beleaguered by mandatory passports, vagrancy laws, and forced military service. The story of this nineteenth-century migratory ranch hand is told in vivid detail by Richard W. Slatta, a professor of history at North Carolina State University at Raleigh and the author of Cowboys of the Americas (1990).--Publisher description.