Argentine writer Eduardo Cormick was born in Junín (province
of Buenos Aires) in 1956. His family roots go back to
a long line of Irish migrants, mainly from Co. Westmeath
and Longford, who emigrated to Argentina throughout the
nineteenth-century. He has received various awards for
his novels and short stories, most of which explore the
subject of the Irish diaspora in Argentina. In this article
I will discuss the short story ‘El Padre Victor da
batalla’ – which belongs to the collection Entre
Gringos y Criollos (2006) – taking into account the
historical, cultural, and linguistic background in which
the story is set, and paying particular attention to the
social customs of the Irish diaspora. For example I will
focus around themes such as the linguistic peculiarities
of River Plate Spanish; farm labour (mainly on estancias)
in the Buenos Aires; cultural aspects related to food
and drink; and the interface between the Irish diaspora
and the Argentine gaucho. The term transculturation will
remain central to my discussion.
‘El Padre Victorda batalla’ narrates the series
of events that take place during the visit of an Irish
priest to a family of Irish migrants who live in the outskirts
of Buenos Aires. The social and religious role of Irish
Roman Catholic priests consisted of regular visits to
the ‘estancias’ or ‘chacras’ to attend their parishioners
scattered throughout inland Argentina.
the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española
(3), the word gringo
is defined as: ‘Extranjero, especialmente de habla inglesa,
y en general hablante de una lengua que no sea la española./Persona
rubia y de tez blanca; (Foreigner, especially one who
speaks English, and generally a speaker of a language
that is not Spanish/ · a fair-haired person with a white
complexion). The term criollo is defined as:
‘Dicho de una persona nacida en un país hispanoamericano,
para resaltar que posee las cualidades estimadas como
características de aquel pais./Auctóctono, propio, distintivo
de un pais hispanoamericano./Peculiar, propio de Hispanoamérica’;
(Person born in a Hispano-American country, someone who
possesses the qualities considered as characteristics
of that country/ Indigenous, typical, distinctive of a
Hispano-American country/ Peculiar to or typical of Hispano-America).
uses the title of his book Entre Gringos y Criollos
with a double meaning. On the one hand it reflects the
definitions of the Diccionario de la Real Academia
Española in that Cormick writes stories where the
protagonists are either gringos (of Irish descent) or
criollos (native people).On the other hand, his title
also conveys a mixture of both terms thus bringing into
mind the concept of transculturation. For Cormick, Irish
immigrants maintained their own traditions and public
image (religion, food, family conventions and physical
appearance), which identified them as gringos, but at
the same time they adopted traditions and customs of the
country where they lived, mainly those of the gauchos
(such as dress, horse riding, the ability to work a type
of terrain that was different to those of their native
land), which in a way certainly converted them into criollos.
As Mary Louise Pratt writes, ‘in a way unimaginable in
Europe, the arbiters of culture in the emergent Argentine
metropolis seized on gaucho culture as the source of authenticity’
(Pratt 1992: p. 187). In this light, there is even the
possibility that the title Entre gringos y criollos,
could have been changed to two different titles depending
on the two possible options.
Stories of gringos and criollos that live in Argentina.
Stories of Argentineans who are part gringo and part
the prologue of the book Entre gringos y criollos,
family stories combine with the general story of the
cities, they grow, they get distorted and when they
are told, they are still not the general story, nor
the truth, but they are versions of the truth’ (4)
(Cormick 2006: p. 7) (5)
padre Victor de batalla is Cormick’s own version
of a story that is repeatedly told in different places,
with slight changes depending on the storyteller. This
narrative shows the role and the importance of the Irish
priests in various situations, including the situations
of confrontation between good and evil, such as this case
with Father Victor O Carrollan.
priests constituted a strong religious institution for
all the Irish immigrants dotted along the countryside,
in villages or small cities, on farms both large and small,
all across the Pampas. These priests travelled to help
their parish, celebrate Sunday mass, give the sacrament
of the Holy Communion, baptise, marry, and bless land-holdings
(6). Generally these
celebrations occurred at periods when work with livestock
was lighter. On a few occasions they had to carry out
another type of duty, as it happened in this story, where
Father Víctor had to perform an exorcism.
McKenna writes that: ‘The first to organize the Irish
were the merchants. They were joined by the middle of
the century by the wealthy migrants. These groups exercised
strict control over the poorer migrants to ensure an adequate
supply of reliable labour. The Irish Catholic Church was
to play a central role in the process [...] the Irish
were allowed to retain their own chaplain [...] in the
beginning the chaplain remained in the city and confined
his work to spiritual duties’ (McKenna 1997: 188-9). McKenna
continues showing us the importance that the Irish priests
had in the Irish diaspora:
Fr Anthony Fahy arrived in Argentina as chaplain to
the Irish emigrants [...] he set about organizing the
community in such a way that they were to remain a separate
Irish colony, isolated socially and culturally from
the rest of the population [...] Fahy saw his duty as
“protecting” his congregation from the influence of
the “natives”, whose way of life did not conform to
the Irish Catholic ethos of the nineteenth century.
To maintain this isolation [...] the cultural and ethnic
difference was emphasized to the point of racism. The
maintenance of English [...] was a central element in
preventing assimilation [...] the majority of the migrants,
by mid-century, learned little if any Spanish, and they
certainly could not read it’ (7)
(McKenna 1997: p. 188-9).
use of English as we can read in McKenna’s’ transcription
was used to maintain the separation of the Irish community
from other groups of immigrants or natives, to keep them
marginalised and in a certain way, controlled. The majority
of the Irish Immigrants and their descendents in the middle
of the nineteeth-century knew very little or no Castilian
(8), and they certainly
could not read it. For Tim Pat Coogan, father Fahy created
ghettos of the mind, ‘[I] thought they were on the pampas,
their mind-set was that of a ghetto, they tended not to
have their children taught Spanish, but strove to maintain
their Irish identity’ (Coogan 2000: p. 630).
can see examples of this in the story El Padre Victor
da batalla, when we read that Father Víctor ‘greets
the family with “God bless all!” in English’ (Cormick
2006: p. 15) (9): and
also when the family members are mentioned, they all bear
English Christian names : Pat, Maggie, Mary, Ruth, Micky
and Billyn (10).
it is worth mentioning the difference in the way the priest
addresses himself to the foreman Manuel Costa, ‘in Castilian,
with a criollo accent’ (Cormick 2006: p. 15)
(11), and also the
confirmation that ‘everyone spoke English, except Manual
Costa’ (Cormick 2006: p. 19) (12).
reflection of both cultures is found when the drinks that
are consumed are mentioned in this story. (13)
Throughout the story, we see that the drink that is most
consumed at home is tea in this case reflecting the gringo
culture, but Cormick mentions the consumption of various
other drinks such as mate or caña (14).
In this way, a certain type of transculturation occurs
when the Irish immigrants or their descendents begin to
drink or eat produce typical of the land where they now
live, such as mate, caña or asados,
products mainly consumed by the gauchos. This type of
hybrid behaviour which amalgamates both gringo
and criollo cultural habits takes us back to
Ortiz’s definition of transculturation. According to Spitta:
created the neologism “transculturation” to undermine
the homogenizing impact implicit in the term “acculturation”
[...]. Instead, Ortiz insisted on understanding intercultural
dynamics as a two-way toma y daca
(give and take) [...] Ortiz defined transculturation
in Cuba as a three-fold process: the partial loss of
culture by each immigrant group [...], the concomitant
assimilation of elements from other cultures (European,
African and Asian), and finally, the creation of a new
Cuban culture [...] As Ortiz explains, the child always
inherits something from both parents, but is also always
different from each one of them (Spitta 2006, p. 4).
this point I would like to make a reference to the way
in which some of the Irish immigrants adapted to a new
way of cattle rising, and to the work carried out in these
types of ranches called “estancias”. For Piaras MacEinri
the Irish who emigrated to Argentina were ‘a group of
midlands farmers and skilled and semi-skilled trades people’
(McKenna 2000: 7).
the story of ‘El Padre de batalla’ we read that
‘It’s the third time that Father Víctor has come to the
house. The first [...] was to accompany Pat, who was kept
busy as a shepherd in that corner of the estancia’ (Cormick
2006: .16) (15).
An estancia (16)
is something similar to an American ranch, with sufficient
land for cultivation and also for the livestock to graze,
while a chacra (17),
a word of Quechuan origin, denotes a much more modest
typical model of a shepherd on an estancia is
explained by Patrick Mc Kenna (18),
who argues that shepherds were helping the estancia
owners in two ways, they ‘could provide a buffer between
the indigenous population and the Creole-owned estancias,
as well as supplying those goods which the estancieros
were unwilling to become directly involved in themselves’
(McKenna 2000: 198-9). McKenna writes that ‘in fact the
estancieros promoted such settlements to the
extent that they were willing to finance the stock purchase
necessary to graze the new “camps” while allowing the
settler to earn equity in the stock by contributing his
labour’ (McKenna 2000: 198-9). This is wonderfully illustrated
in the following example:
An estanciero would provide a flock of about
2,000 sheep, while the immigrant was responsible for
looking after the sheep, including the provision of
grazing (over a period of four to five years). At the
end of the contract the shepherd and the owner would
divide the flock, the owner getting back his original
2,000 sheep plus the agreed percentage of the increase
(usually 50%) as well as his share of the price for
the wool clip for the contract period (McKenna 2000:
the central role played by Irish migrants in the Argentine
woollen industry is highlighted by Coogan: ‘Irish ranchers
were responsible for almost half of Argentina’s wool exports
in the 1870’s’ (Coogan 2000: 627). Consequently, many
of the Irish immigrants came from the same region in Ireland
(Longford and Westmeath) and the shepherd usually was
successful in contacting relatives, neighbours or acquaintances
from his Irish locality and persuaded them to emigrate
Pat Coogan (19) writes
that the Irish immigrants mainly arrived to Argentina
in three different forms: as soldiers from Spain or England,
as missionaries, or simply emigrants in search of work
and a new life.
Cormick’s story, we see examples of the latter two cases
in Father Víctor and the family that receives him, the
first is a religious missionary and as Cormick mentions:
‘ Father Víctor was there for the second time[...] in
his evangelistic mission’ (Cormick 2006: 16)‘ (20).
this third category (emigrants), Laura Izarra writes that
the ‘Irish migrants were received in Buenos Aires by friends
or Irish immigrants who introduced them to their community
and hosted them in Irish homes and boarding houses till
they found a job on various estancias and sheep-farms
in the pampas which were owned by the Irish who had come
in the early 1840’s’ (Izarra 2002: 5). This way of getting
jobs is reflected when Cormick writes about Manuel Costa
[...] ‘recommended to Father Víctor by the administrator
of the farm, Irish like themselves’ (Cormick 2006: 16)
is necessary to mention that not all of the Irish immigrants
went to work in the countryside, such as Eduardo Cormick
this way of thinking overlooks the existence of those
thousands of Irish people who failed as priests, and had
to work as servants or in other jobs, such as accountants,
on the railway (like his own family) or in the coal mines.
Piaras Mac Einrí mentions that for McKenna ‘the Argentinean
case represents an alternative model to the individualist
“Anglo-American” migration experience, with a strong community
based ethos driving the process of migration and a consciously
separatist culture maintaining, for better or worse, a
sense of diasporic identity’ (McKenna 2000: 7). In this
sense, it is important to return to James Clifford’s definition
of the term diaspora:
minority communities, dispersed from an original centre
to a peripheral position, maintaining a memory, vision
or myth about their original homeland, that see ancestral
home as a place of eventual return, whose consciousness
and solidarity as a group are importantly defined by
continuing their relationship with homeland, and whose
collective identity is defined by this relationship
(Clifford 1997: 247).
of these characteristics are typical of the Irish community
in Argentina as I will now explain. The Irish in Argentina
maintained elements of their original culture during generations,
such as their food and eating habits, traditional Irish
music, storytelling, Gaelic sports such as hurling, parties
and accents from their regions of origin. We can see a
reflection of Clifford’s statement in the following examples:
Expatriate minority communities: The Irish in Argentina
were a “minority community” when compared to other groups
of immigrants such as the Spanish or the Italians, and
they were also a minority when compared to other groups
of Irish emigrants that went to other countries (for
example in comparison to the quantity of Irish who went
to the United States, to England or to Australia).
Dispersed from an original centre to a peripheral position:
This situation of periphery gives as much with respect
to the normal routes of emigration (living far away
from Ireland, and far from English speaking countries)
also with respect to the act of being dispersed outside
the city of Buenos Aires (23).
Maintaining a memory, vision or myth about their original
homeland: we can see an example of the maintenance of
memories, visions or myths of the homeland when we read
that, ‘on the wall of the gallery there are two pictures:
St. Patrick, the patron of the house, with his bishop’s
investiture, banished the snakes from Ireland; McZweeny
(sic), the Lord Mayor of Cork looks the world in the
face before being martyred by the English’ (Cormick
the previous text we can read of the Lord Mayor of Cork,
McZweeny (sic) who in reality is Terence MacSwiney. As
Cormick clarified (25):
was elected Lord Mayor of Cork after the assassination
of his predecessor, on the 20th March 1920. On 12th
August, MacSwiney was arrested and commenced a hunger
strike until his death, on 5th October that same year.
This event affected the Irish community in Argentina
enormously. Up until a few years ago, there was a picture
with his photograph in the headquarters of the Irish
Thoroughbred Society in Junín. MacSwiney’s hunger strike
was a direct antecedent to that led by Bob (sic) Sands
and his group from March of 1981 during the English
Government of Mrs Thatcher.
means of writers such as Eduardo Cormick we can rediscover
the way of life of the Irish Diaspora in Argentina, mainly
in his version of the ‘truth’, the way in which they actually
lived, what they did, and where they worked. In other
works, Cormick has developed a form of literature based
on real-life people, such as his grandmother ‘mamagrande’,
his father, and other members of the Irish community.
Cormick’s complex interpretation of the Irish diapora
in Argentina offers a unique insight into the history,
culture, and language of a Spanish American country.
University College Cork.
Department of Spanish, National University of Ireland
See Diccionario esencial de la lengua española: Real Academia
Española (Espasa Calpe: Madrid, 2006), pp.741-2; 428.
All translations from the Spanish belong to Ita Dagger,
Grace Marron, and Rachel Waters, unless otherwise stated.
‘Las historias familiares se mezclan en la historia general
de las ciudades, crecen, se distorsionan, y cuando se
cuentan, ya no son la historia general, ni son verdad,
pero son una versión de la verdad’ (Cormick, 2006, p.7).
The Spanish original goes thus: ‘Las historias familiares
se mezclan en la historia general de las ciudades, crecen,
se distorsionan, y cuando se cuentan, ya son la historia
general, ni son verdad, pero son una versión de la verdad’.
Susana Taurozzi writes that ‘the religious missions in
the estancias for the Irish immigrants were preferable
in the time of the year when the sheep labour wasn’t at
its peak [...] and were also an occasion for social activities’.
McKenna, Patrick, The Irish World Wide, Volume One, Irish
Migration to Argentina, p. 77-79
When I refer to the Spanish Language, which is used in
the English Language, I prefer to define it as Castillian,
as do many Argentinians, in contrast to the word Spanish.
‘saluda a los presentes con un ¡Dios los bendiga! dicho
In this story the pile of names in English are a reflection
of the way in which the members of the family are treated
in the home or community (although their official names
in Argentina were in Castillian).
‘en castellano, con acento criollo’.
‘Hablan todos en inglés, excepto Manuel Costa’.
We can read that the priest goes to drink mate with Pat
and Andy(p.18), that they finish the tea and bring the
caña (p.19), that Mary is preparing the tea (p.21), or
the priest accepts a cup of tea (p.21).
La caña is a typical alcoholic Argentinean drink (mainly
during the xix and xx centuries) Various types of caña
exist, dry (such as la caña Ombú) or sweet (such as la
Legus o Mariposa). Mate is also a typical Argentinean
‘Es la tercera vez que el padre Victor llega a esta casa.
La primera fue para acompañar a Pat, que iba para ocuparse
como puestero en ese rincón de la estancia’.
ESTANCIA (D.R.A.E): f.Am. Mer y Hond, A piece of land
dedicated to cultivation, and more specifically to raising
CHACRA (D.R.A.E) (From Quechua, previously chacra, modified
to chajra). 1.f.Am. Mer, Farmhouse ( a working house with
agricultural properties) o farm.
Mc Kenna, Patrick, The Irish Diaspora, edited by Andy
Bielenberg, Irish Emigration to Argentina: A Different
Model, pages 198-199.
Coogan, Tim Pat, wherever Green is Worn, The Story of
the Irish Diaspora, Arrow books, 2002, ISBN 0-09-995850-3:
‘It can be said with some certainty that the Irish came
to Latin America principally in three ways: via the armed
services of England and Spain […], as missionaries or
–mainly in the case of Argentina- as emigrants’ (p.602)
‘El padre Víctor estuvo por acá una segunda vez […] en
su misión evangelizadora’), the second Irish emigrants’.
We can read an example of the emigration of a soldier
in the essay Cormick wrote about the singer and poet Buenaventura
Luna, who was of Irish ancestry, descendant from an Irish
soldier John Dougherty. In this essay we read that; ‘one
hundred years before he was born, at the time of the English
invasion at the Plata river, the soldier John Dougherty
arrived as part of a battallion. With the well known result,
the English troops were exiled to different provinces
of the viceroyalty […] Almost three hundred of them were
sent to San Juan, John Dougherty and his brother William
among them, where they arrived by December 1806 […] In
the town of Huacom beside the old mill. Eusebio de Jesús
Dojorti shared his childhood with the workmen and labourours
who worked for his family, he understood their ambitions
and difficulties, and he took it upon himself to give
voice to these sentiments, and to fight so that everyone
would have a more decent life. To express these ideals,
Eusebio de Jesús Dojorti adopted the name of one of the
farmhands from his parental home.
‘Manuel Costa, recomendado al padre Víctor por el administrador
de la estancia, irlandés como ellos’). The priest, Pat
and the administrator were all Irish.
In an email that he sent me in the summer of 2008.
Cormick writes: ‘after keeping moving for an hour and
a half up from the dog-cart (p.15) & ‘the householders
enjoyed the latest news that Father Víctor told them,
above all what was happening in Buenos Aires and in the
towns furthest away’ (p.19), giving us an idea of the
distances between the different estancias.
‘en la pared de la galería hay dos cuadros: San Patricio,
el patrón de la casa con su investidura de Obispo, echa
a las serpientes de irlando; McZweeny, el alcalde de Cork,
mira de frente al mundo antes de ser martirizado por los
Information obtained from the email that Eduardo Cormick
sent me on the 19th of January 2008.
Clifford, James, Routes: Travel and Translation in
the late Twentieth Century (Massachusetts & London:
Harvard University Press, 1997).
Coogan, Tim Pat, Wherever Green is Worn, The Story
of the Irish Diaspora, (London:Hutchinson, 2001).
Cormick, Eduardo Remigio, Almacén y despacho de bebidas
“El Alba” (1992), (documento en Word de esta novela
Cormick, Eduardo Remigio, Quema su memoria (2004),
novela corta incluida en El arte de la Novela Corta, Premio
Edenor 2004, (Buenos Aires: Fundación el Libro, 2004).
Cormick, Eduardo Remigio, ‘Buenaventura Luna, irlandés
sin saberlo’ in Segundo Simposio de Estudios Irlandeses
en Sudamérica (Santa Rosa: Universidad de La Pampa,
Cormick, Eduardo Remigio, Entre gringos y criollos
(Junín: De Las Tres Lagunas, 2006).
Diccionario esencial de la lengua española: Real Academia
Española (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2006).
Eliggi, Maria Graciela,‘Moira Sullivan and O’Malley’s
Widow by Juan José Delaney, Journeys, Diasporas,
and the Concept of Home’ in Segundo Simposio de Estudios
Irlandeses en Sudamérica (Santa Rosa: Universidad
de La Pampa, 2007).
Izarra, Laura, Battle in the Books 12: The Irish Diaspora
in Argentina. William Bulfin: An Irish nationalist in
the Argentine Pampas, in British Association
for Irish Studies Newsletter 32 (London 20 October
McKenna, Patrick, ‘Irish Emigration to Argentina: A Different
Model’ in The Irish Diaspora Bielberg, Andy (ed.),
(London: Pearson Education Ltd, 2000).
McKenna, Patrick, ‘Irish Migration to Argentina’ in The
Irish World Wide, Volume One, Patterns of Migration,
O’Sullivan, Patrick (ed.), (London & Washington: Leicester
University Press, 1992, 1997).
Murray, Edmundo, Becoming Irlandes, Private Narratives
of the Irish Emigration to Argentina (1844-1912),
(Buenos Aires: L.O.L.A., 2006)
Pratt, Mary Louise, Travel Writing and Transculturation,
(London: Routledge, 1992).
Spitta, Silvia, Between Two Waters, Narratives of
Transculturation in Latin America, (Texas: A&M University
Taurozzi, Susana, ‘La misiones en las estancias Irlandesas’in
Todo es Historia, Nº 471 (Buenos Aires)
2006: p. 32-38.