Hailed when first published in Spanish in 1988 as one of the best contemporary examples of Latin American critical thought, Josefina Ludmer's El g nero gauchesco describes the emergence of gaucho poetry-which uses the voice of the cowboy of the Argentine pampas for political purposes-as an urgent encounter of popular and elite tradition, of subaltern and hegemonic discourses. Molly Weigel's translation captures the original's...