Martín Caparrós takes the voice of Martín Fierro to tell, with rhyme, the life of José Hernández

Here I begin to tell / the story I wouldn't want to, / the story of that cunning snake / that, by telling a story, / stole my memory, / changed it entirely.

His name was José Hernández, / although he was also called / Pueyrredón, because he boasted / of being a man from below / and he was rich as hell / more than the Queen of Sheba.

His family was one of those / who raided our lands: / pampas, rivers, forests, mountains, / they kept everything / and just like that they fenced it / to leave us outside.

It was a sheer horror to see them: / they arrived with their soldiers / and a tightly sealed paper / that said that those fields, our weeds, / our beloved world were theirs.

And you had to get out of jail / because if you didn't escape / they would recruit you right there / to work you to death: / from sunrise to sunset on the job / for a pittance.

It was sad to walk like that, / escaping and escaping; / it was sad to walk away / from our own place: / not knowing where to go / if they were stealing everything.

So we lived for a time / that seemed long, those years, / so many gauchos without herds, / so many chinas without food, / making a living / through skill and mischief.

Some became thieves, / stealing along the roads; / others, poor, without a future, / drowned in the limeta, / swallowing and swallowing, goal and goal, / they sank like pigs.

Others were out there / offering their services; / they didn't even get what they earned to pay for their vices / and they worked their butts off / to make a profit.

They were like lost souls: / they couldn't have a wife, / a ranch, a bed, a poncho, a slab; / only their horse, the tools / and a sausage knife / to protect their belongings.

They went here and there, / they had nowhere to stay, / they slept in that home / which is the moon and the sky; / no ground was their ground, / no lot was their lot.

Some resigned themselves: / they joined forces and / they lost their freedom. / Instead of gauchos, / the bosses called them pions: / they were pions, nothing more.

I also resigned myself, / and it hates me to say it: / I am one of those blackbirds / who learned to live in a cage, / even though later that scoundrel / caged me in his book.

It took me a while, I know it took me a while: / first I was a thug, / then, as a pure jerk, / I wanted to become a woman, / and I tried, without being able / to convince them, I'm sincere.

The true life of José Hernández (told by Martín Fierro) , Martín Caparrós & Rep (Random House).