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Cocoliche: The Art of Assimilation and Dissimulation Among Italians and Argentines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Ana Cara-Walker
Ana Cara-Walker*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College
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Cocoliche, that curious dramatic character improvised under the circus tent during the last decades of the nineteenth century, is no longer a vital aspect of Argentine life today. Yet his caricatured presence over a period of fifty years proved critical in the creolization of Italians and natives as well as in the sociocultural redefinition of Argentina's “national character.” Creolization (the cultural redefinition negotiated by two or more diverse groups coming into contact—in this case, Italians and Argentines) yields a new ethic and aesthetic order wherein the presence of each group becomes integral to the national whole. As will be shown, Cocoliche became a key vehicle for this process of creolization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , 1987 , pp. 37 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

I wish to thank José Gobello and Orestes A. Vaggi for their willingness to share their extensive knowledge about Cocoliche and their indispensable help with this essay. My acknowledgement and gratitude also extend to the National Endowment for the Humanities and all the participants of the 1980 NEH Summer Seminar, “Sociolinguistics and Literature,” led by Professor John F. Szwed at the University of Pennsylvania, where the first stages of this essay were accomplished.

References

Notes

1. For a model treatment of creolization in this light, see Edward Kamai Brathwaite, Contradictory Omens (Mona, Jamaica: Savacou Publications, 1974).

2. The word criollo has been used in diverse ways since the discovery of America. See José Juan Arrom, “Criollo: definiciones y matices de un concepto,” Certidumbre de América (Madrid: Gredos, 1971), 11–26. The reference here is to the native, although not indigenous, population of Argentina whose cultural identity was shaped by local history, geography, and demography, as well as to aspects of their customs. In the Argentine context, criollo can be applied to urban and rural groups, elite and non-elite populations, with varying connotations. Culturally, criollo often refers to aspects of gaucho or rural life in Argentina and to values drawn from this context representing native traditions and national culture.

3. Gino Germani, Política y sociedad en una época de transición: de la sociedad tradicional a la sociedad de masas (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1962), 179. This and all following translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

4. James R. Scobie, Argentina: A City and a Nation, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 134.

5. First published in 1845, Facundo was fully titled Civilización y barbarie o vida de Juan Facundo Quiroga. Compare the English translation by Mary Mann, Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants, or, Civilization and Barbarism (New York: Collier Books, 1961).

6. Juan Bautista Alberdi, Bases y puntos de partida para la organización política de la República Argentina, 2d ed. (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1984), 60–62, 67.

7. Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 186–88.

8. Scobie, Argentina: City and Nation, 33, 134.

9. Julio Mafud, Psicología de la viveza criolla: contribuciones para una interpretación de la realidad social argentina y americana, 5th ed. (Buenos Aires: Americalee, 1973), 54–55.

10. See Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, 168.

11. Ricardo Rodríguez Molas, Historia social del gaucho (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Marú, 1968), 48–49.

12. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, 180–92; and Madaline Wallis Nichols, The Gaucho (Durham: Duke University Press, 1942), 58–63.

13. Felix Coluccio, Diccionario folklórico argentino, vol. 1 (Buenos Aires: Luis Lasserre, 1964); and Mariabo G. Bosch, Historia de los orígenes del teatro nacional argentino y la época de Pablo Podestá, preliminary study by Edmundo Guibourg (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Argentinos L. J. Rosso, 1929; reprint, Buenos Aires: Solar/Hachette, 1969), 92–94.

14. For a brief introduction to gauchesque literature, see Edward Larocque Tinker, Life and Literature of the Pampas (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1961).

15. Among the most celebrated poets of gauchesque literature are Bartolomé Hidalgo (1788–1822), known for his Diálogos and Cielitos patrióticos; Hilario Ascasubi (1807–1875), author of Paulino Lucero, Aniceto el Gallo, and Santos Vega (or Los mellizos e la flor); Estanislao del Campo (1834–1880), who wrote Fausto; and of course, José Hernández (1834–1886), creator of Martín Fierro.

16. Instead, Don Segundo Sombra, by Ricardo Güiraldes, became the apogee of the appropriation of the gaucho myth by right-wing nationalist ideology.

17. Nichols, Gaucho, 60.

18. See Raúl H. Castagnino, El circo criollo: datos y documentos para su historias, 1757–1924 (Buenos Aires: Lajouane, 1953).

19. Eduardo Gutiérrez and José Podestá, Juan Moreira, Sección de Documentos, vol. 6, no. 1 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Universidad, 1935). The appendix gives a detailed version of how the first staging of Moreira came about (43–58).

20. Gutiérrez and Podestá, Juan Moreira, 54–57; and Livio Ponce, El circo criollo (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1971), 29. Many versions of the play followed the original performance, including a versed rendition written by the well-known sainete author Alberto Vacarezza. For a history of the origins and evolution of the Juan Moreira drama, see Bosch, Historia de los orígenes del teatro nacional, and Vicente Rossi, Teatro nacional rioplatense, preliminary study by J. A. de Diego, (1910; reprint, Buenos Aires: Solar/Hachette, 1969).

21. José Podestá, Medio siglo de farándula (Córdoba: Río de la Plata, 1930), 62–63.

22. Pablo Raffetto, for example, was one of the well-known foreign actors who repeatedly played the role of Cocoliche in the Moreira play. See Ponce, El circo criollo, 32–33.

23. Podestá, Medio siglo de farándula, 63. Philologist José Gobello has noted that Cocoliche seemed to be an unlikely Italian surname, considering Cocoliccio more probable. After lecturing on this subject in La Plata, Gobello had the apparent discrepancy confirmed by a woman who approached him to verify the source of the original character and term. She told him, “What you say is in fact right. The man you mentioned [Antonio, the hired hand] was a relative of mine.” She then produced for Gobello a personal document bearing her last name—Cocoliccio. Interview with José Gobello, Academia Porteña del Lunfardo, Buenos Aires, July 1979; and José Gobello, Diccionario lunfardo (Buenos Aires: A. Peña Lillo, 1976), 48–49.

24. Gobello, Diccionario lunfardo, 48–49; Beatriz Lavandera, s.v. “cocoliche” in Diccionario de ciencias sociales (Madrid: UNESCO, 1974), 429.

25. See for example, Domingo F. Casadeval, La evolución de la Argentina vista por el teatro nacional (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Culturales Argentinas, 1965), 49–60.

26. José Hernández, The Gaucho Martín Fierro: El gaucho Martín Fierro (Buenos Aires: Instituto Cultural Walter Owen, 1967), 57.

27. José Hernández, The Gaucho Martín Fierro, trans. by Frank G. Carrino, Alberto J. Carlos, and Norman Mangouni (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974), 95, n. 32.

28. Ibid., 40.

29. José Hernández, Martín Fierro, 7th ed., preliminary study and notes by Carlos Alberto Leguizamón, ed. by María Hortensia Lacau (Buenos Aires: Kapelusz, 1965), 35, n. 864.

30. Compare Roger D. Abrahams, The Man-of-Words in the West Indies: Performance and the Emergence of Creole Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).

31. Ismael Moya, Didáctica del folklore, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: Compañía General Fabril, 1972), 80. Fieldwork observation in 1979 and 1984.

32. Ibid., 80, 85.

33. Enrique H. Puccia, Breve historia del carnaval porteño, Cuadernos de Buenos Aires, no. 46 (Buenos Aires: Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1974), 58.

34. Ibid.

35. I am most indebted to Mr. Orestes Vaggi, whose outstanding collection of carnival photographs and materials revealed to me the carnivalesque appearance of Cocoliche during my 1979 and 1984 visits to Buenos Aires. I am especially grateful for his generous gift of the Cocoliche photograph reproduced here.

36. See Fernando O. Assunção, Pilchas criollas: usos y costumbres del gaucho, 1st rev. ed. (Montevideo: Ediciones Master Fer, 1979). Traditional gaucho wear is illustrated here with detailed explanations of terminology and use.

37. Ernesto Quesada, El “criollismo” en la literatura argentina (Buenos Aires: Coni Hermanos, 1902), 53.

38. Ibid. For examples of Cocoliche relaciones and other verses, see 58–59.

39. To my knowledge, no study exists of the possible Italian traditional influences on these verbal art forms. Indeed, such an investigation would prove most informative in understanding Italo-Argentine expressive forms.

40. Rodríguez Molas, Historia social del gaucho, 497.

41. Nichols, Gaucho, 62.

42. For example, Giovanni Meo Zilio, the foremost scholar of Cocoliche, has described it extensively as a language of transition. Keith Whinnom writes of it as an example of secondary hybridization. Ian Hancock included it in his world map and list of pidgin and creole languages. For a thorough survey of linguistic studies of Cocoliche, see these works: Renata Donghi de Halperín, “Contribución al estudio del italianismo en la la República Argentina,” Cuaderno of the Instituto de Filología 1 (1925):183–98; also her article “Los italianos y la lengua de los argentinos,” Quaderni Ibero-Americani 3 (1958):446–49; William J. Entwistle, The Spanish Language (2nd ed., London: Faber and Faber, 1969), 274–75; María Beatriz Fontanella de Weinberg, “Algunos aspectos de la asimilación lingüística de la población inmigratoria en la Argentina,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 18 (1974):5–36; Rudolf Grossmann, Mitteilungen und Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiet der Romanischen Philologie (Hamburg: Seminar für Romanische Sprachen und Kultur, 1926), especially chaps, 4 and 6; Ian F. Hancock, “A Survey of the Pidgins and Creoles of the World,” in Pidginization and Creolization of Languages, ed. by Dell Hymes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 509–23; Beatriz Lavandera, s.v. “cocoliche” in Diccionario de ciencias sociales, 429–30; Almanzor Medina and Vicente Rossi, “Supuesta contribución al estudio del italianismo en la Arjentina,” Folletos Lenguaraces 4 (1928); Giovanni Meo Zilio, “Notas de fono- y auto-fonodidáctica italo-hispánica,” Anales del Instituto de Profesores Artigas 2 (1957):83ff.; Giovanni Meo Zilio, “Alcune tendenze sintattiche e stilistiche dello spagnolo medio rioplatense,” Quaderni Ibero-Americani 22 (1958):417–27; Giovanni Meo Zilio, “El ‘cocoliche’ rioplatense,” Boletín de Filología 16 (1964):61–119 (this article is a translation and amalgamation of a series of articles published in Italian in Lingua Nostra in Florence between 1955 and 1956); Giovanni Meo Zilio, “Italianismos generales en el español rioplatense,” Thesaurus 20, no. 1 (1965):68–119; Giovanni Meo Zilio, “Italianismos meridionales en el español rioplatense,” Boletín de Filología 17 (1965):225–35; Giovanni Meo Zilio, “Notas de español americano,” Quaderni Iberoamericani 31 (1965):411–28; Giovanni Meo Zilio and Ettore Rossi, El elemento italiano en el habla de Buenos Aires y Montevideo, vol. 1 (Florence: Valmartina Editore, 1970); Julio Ricci, “The Influence of Locally Spoken Italian Dialects on River Plate Spanish,” Forum Italicum 1 (1967):48–59; A. Rosell, Cocoliche (Montevideo: Distribuidora Ibana, 1970); Max Leopold Wagner, “Review of Grossmann (1926) and Donghi de Halperín (1925),” Revista de Filología Española 15 (1928):192–96; Keith Whinnom, “Linguistic Hybridization and the ‘Special Case’ of Pidgins and Creoles,” in Hymes, Pidginization, 91–115.

43. Dell Hymes, “The Contributions of Folklore to Sociolinguistic Research,” in Toward New Perspectives in Folklore, ed. by Américo Paredes and Richard Bauman (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), 42–50.

44. Although definitions of pidgins or creoles vary somewhat among linguists, Loreto Todd's summary serves as a fair reference: “A pidgin is a marginal language which arises to fulfill certain restricted communication needs among people who have no common language.” For a more detailed explanation, see Loreto Todd, Pidgins and Creoles (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), 1–11.

45. Whinnom, “Linguistic Hybridization,” 97; Lavandera, Diccionario de ciencias sociales, 430; Fontanella de Weinberg, “Asimilación lingüística,” 16, 32–33, n. 15.

46. Although this description may fit any language, there is no proposed “standard” grammar or orthography, of Cocoliche.

47. Whinnom, “Linguistic Hybridization,” 111, 104–5.

48. Meo Zilio, “El ‘cocoliche’ rioplatense,” 62, emphasis in original.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid., 62–64.

51. One possible exception may be Fragnol (the “mixture” of French and Spanish). See André Rigaud, “Le Fragnol,” Vie et Language 83 (1959):96–99. Fragnol was not as widespread as Cocoliche, however, and did not achieve the same cultural impact or symbolic importance in Argentina as Cocoliche.

52. For example, when I asked José Gobello at the Academia Porteña del Lunfardo for references on cocoliche, he responded with this note: “About cocoliche, I remind you that in ‘El amor de la estanciera’ there's an example of Spanish (castellano)/Portuguese cocoliche; in ‘El sargento Palma,’ by Martín Coronado, an example of Spanish (castellano)/French cocoliche, and in ‘Con los ‘Nueve’,' by Felix Lima, various examples of Spanish (castellano)/ Yiddish (valesco).” Personal correspondence, dated Buenos Aires, 1984 (my translation).

53. See Fontanella de Weinberg, “Asimilación lingüística,” 14–20.

54. Ibid., 16; James R. Scobie, Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, 1870–1910 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 200–201; Scobie, Argentina: City and Nation, 192.

55. A similar expressive form known as literatura giacumina, also existed concurrently with literatura cocoliche. This “genre” was named after Giacumina, the main character in the story-play Los amores de Giacumina, first published in 1886. See also Ramón Romero's Los amores de Giacumina, escrita per il hicos dil duoño de la Fundita dil Pacarito (1909: n.p., n.p.); Agustín Fontanella, Los amores de Giacumina: sainete cómico en un acto y cinco cuadros (Buenos Aires: Editor Salvador Matera, 1906). For a discussion of this genre and term, see Vicente Rossi, Teatro nacional rioplatense: contribución a su análisis y a su historia, foreword by J. A. de Diego (Buenos Aires: Solar/Hachette, 1969), 128–30; Luis Soler Cañas, “Literatura ‘cocoliche,’ literatura ‘giacumina’, ” La Capital (Rosario), 19 Dec. 1981, p. 5; Luis Soler Cañas, “La curiosa y efímera literatura ‘giacumina’,” El Nacional, 26 Apr. 1959; and Juan José de Urquiza, “Martiniano Leguizamón,” La Nación (Buenos Aires), 24 Feb. 1963, p. 2.

56. Quesada, “El criollismo,” 58, 59 n. 1. Note that the series title is Biblioteca Criolla.

57. Enrique Horacio Puccia, El Buenos Aires de Angel G. Villoldo (1860 … 1919) (Buenos Aires: n.p., 1976), 347–48.

58. For a history of this genre, see Blas Raúl Gallo, Historia del sainete nacional (Buenos Aires: Buenos Aires Leyendo, 1970).

59. For example, the Pasatiempo Theater, which had been divided into three sections with each offering a one-act play for fifty centavos, led all Buenos Aires theaters with fifty thousand tickets sold in one month. The San Martín sold forty-three thousand, the Politeama thirty-eight thousand, the Opera thirty-six thousand, and the Variedades twenty-one thousand. This popularity and success was summarized as “the triumph of the chicken coops over the golden cages of canaries and nightingales.” See Judith Evans, “Setting the Stage for Struggle: Popular Theater in Buenos Aires, 1890–1914,” in Radical History Review 21 (1979):51; and Gallo, Historia del sainete, 72.

60. See Evans, “Setting the Stage,” 52–59.

61. See Susana Marco, Abel Posadas, Marta Speroni, and Griselda Vignolo, Teoría del género chico criollo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1974); Gallo, Historia del sainete; and Rossi, Teatro nacional rioplatense, 120–32.

62. Marco et al., Teoría del género chico criollo, 419.

63. Ibid., 390.

64. Each word is a slang term for woman that corresponds roughly to such English slang as broad, article, package, chick, cookie, choice bit of calico, and dish. Amusingly, when Aberastury uses mosaico (a manipulation of the Spanish word moza meaning young woman), he means broad, girlie, or babe. But when Don Antonio picks up mosaico a few lines later, he understands only the literal meaning of the word play (mosaico meaning floortile or brick), and he goes on to list irrelevant and inappropriate nouns like zaguán (hallway) and escopeta (shotgun), foolishly assuming that anything goes.

65. Cited in Rosell, Cocoliche, 114–16.

66. See José Gobello, Vieja y nueva lunfardía (Buenos Aires: Editorial Freeland, 1964), 36–47.

67. Cited in Rosell, Cocoliche, 95.

68. Meo Zilio, “El ‘cocoliche’ rioplatense,” 114.

69. Cited in Quesada, “El criollismo,” 59–60.

70. Cited in Rosell, Cocoliche, 74–76.

71. Nicasio Perera San Martín, “El cocoliche en el teatro de Florencio Sánchez,” Comunicación al Vo Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas, Bordeaux, 1974, Bulletin Hispanique (1975):108–22.

72. Florencio Sánchez, La gringa, 3rd ed., with an introduction by Jorge Raúl Lafforgue (Buenos Aires: Editorial Huemul, 1970), 82, 78, 69.

73. Ibid., 99.

74. The “image” or shadow of Cocoliche is sometimes recalled in various areas of contemporary Argentine culture. I am told, for example, that in the smash telenovela Rosa de lejos, Doña Pierina, a cocoliche-speaking matrona de barrio represents one of the ideological poles of the plot. Roberto Cossa's La nona also offers a renewed version of this cultural type. Similarly, Cocolichesque figures continue to appear routinely in the novel.

75. Germani, Política y sociedad, 209.

76. Scobie, Argentina: City and Nation, 192.