Argentine Farm-Cum-Fashion Show : Gauchos Meet Guccis at Buenos Aires’ La Rural

Gauchos in flat-brimmed hats and baggy trousers competed with mink-draped society women for a glimpse of the auburn-haired young American.

And there, unmoved by all the attention, his handsome head deep in a trough of hay, stood R. P. S. Tribune, all 2,343 pounds of him.

He is, as one of his 11 medals attests, a gran campeon , a grand champion. A three-year-old North American shorthorn bull, he was wowing the Argentines, who take their beef more seriously than any other people on Earth.

“Winnin’ here, why, it’s like winnin’ the Indy 500 and the World Series,” exulted Louie Molt, who came in his Stetson hat to help show R. P. S. Tribune on behalf of his owners in California and Oregon.

Once again, Argentina has surrendered to a midwinter rite called La Rural, the national livestock and agriculture-show-cum-social event that is without peer in Latin America. If you cannot bring a champion bull, bring your pearls. The Hereford Bar is all right, but it is better to be seen lunching at the Aberdeen Angus Restaurant.

A Bittersweet Festival

This year, La Rural is a bittersweet festival, a microcosm of the majesty and malaise of the Latin American countryside, from Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande.

In Argentina, the quality of cattle is good, but domestic prices are poor. Grain harvests are bountiful, but international prices are low. The countryside is great, but nobody wants to live there: In a country of 30 million people with plenty of land--Argentina is about one-third the size of the United States--only 5 million live outside the cities. Twice as many live in and around Buenos Aires alone.

What with the continuing migration to the cities, Latin America’s food production is failing to keep pace with the expanding population, according to an Inter-American Development Bank estimate.

As in Mexico, Brazil and Peru, the government is trying to reinvigorate agriculture. Agriculture accounts for only 15% of Argentina’s gross national product but for 78% of its exports, and exports are the key source of foreign exchange needed to repay a crushing foreign debt of $48 billion.

Yet farmers and ranchers--who for years have had to deal with worsening terms of trade, with low prices for what they produce and high prices for what they must buy--complain that agricultural policies are often biased in favor of the cities, where most of the voters live.

No Parts, No Potatoes

“The government wants more exports, yet grain exports are taxed up to 32%,” said Andres Weil, who brought Aberdeen Angus cattle to show at La Rural. “A few years ago we could import what we liked, so I brought in a $175,000 potato digger from Germany. Now, the machine is stopped because imports are prohibited and I cannot get an $800 part. I have American tractors that won’t run because I can’t import replacement fuel pumps.”

La Rural indicated that all was not well on another front, either. While an Aberdeen Angus champion fetched more than $45,000, overall sales of cattle, horses and sheep were considered disappointing. A local newspaper reckoned sadly that a champion pig had gone for the price of about 300 of the paper-thin ham sandwiches sold at stand-up restaurants around the fairgrounds.

Through bad years and good, La Rural remains a powerful unifying constant for those who challenge the Argentine outback. And it is more than that: As a century-old ritual, it has become an annual reaffirmation of national identity and purpose.

“This is a national showpiece--of animal quality and human pride; it is the countryside, which, through thick and thin, holds Argentina together,” said Reginald R. Rowland, an 82-year-old reporter for the Buenos Aires Herald who was covering his 53rd La Rural.

“It is not so much that this is one of the biggest shows of its kind in the world, but rather that it is not also a carnival. There are no roller coasters; nobody bakes cakes. This is a working countryman’s show,” Rowland added.

2 Million Visitors

Still, as a spectacle, La Rural bursts with enough brawn and dazzling color to attract 2 million visitors during its three-week run.

The show animals, displayed in huge sheds, are looked after by squat, wide-belted gauchos. Inside the sheds, it is regarded as good form to have mud on your Gucci loafers and bad form to mention the pervasive odor of ammonia.

“Do cows eat ice cream?” a sweet young thing asked ranch foreman Juan (El Rengo) Miranda as he fed his Charolais dairy cattle. Miranda gently explained that cows do not eat ice cream and that the cow the girl happened to be admiring was a bull.

“This is a very romantic place,” said La Rural secretary Enrique Crotto. “Everyone loves the countryside, even those who come here never having seen a live farm animal.”

There to be seen is a menagerie that ranges from chinchillas to splendid white sheep and cow ponies of legendary endurance. The cattle, though, are the stars.

Bovine Beauty

If a cow makes it to La Rural, it can count on having its hair sprayed, its hoofs buffed, its tail arranged in a neat bouffant. It goes into the ring nearly as well-groomed as some of the buyers in Harris tweed, who paid more than $800,000 for this year’s best of the best.

Argentina’s 55 million head of cattle, many of them descended from American stock, are the enduring staple of a nation whose triumph and tumult have been fueled through the years by steak twice a day.

Americans consume an average of 70 pounds of beef per person per year, beef from animals fed on grain in pens and slaughtered when they are less than 2 years old, according to Tom James, who accompanied the bull Tribune to Argentina on behalf of a shorthorn breeding service in Elk Grove, Calif. The Argentine, on the other hand, consumes 248 pounds a year, mostly from cattle that feed on grass on huge ranches and go to market when they are at least three years old.

“American beef is more tender; Argentine beef is more flavorful,” James said.

He would get no argument from the Argentines at La Rural, certainly not from Venancio Benavides, a one-eyed ranch hand from out on the Pampas who never lost sight of the Charolais champions that were his special charge. Benavides, though, is 41 and this year’s show marked his first visit to his nation’s capital. So, there was another flavor for him to savor.

“The city? Oh, the city is fine,” he said. “But to have seen La Rural . . . who could ask for anything more?”