Circling the ranch

While in Barra do Bugres during my third year in the Peace Corps, Sr. René stopped by my house and asked me to attend a churrasco at his place on the upcoming Jan. 1st. René was the biggest rancher in the area, running about 20,000 cows.

He said that his son-in-law was going to make a circle of the ranch that day, and if I wanted, I should arrive in the early morning and go along. I accepted.

I got there about 7 a.m., and we caught our horses. As I finished saddling my horse, the son-in-law handed me a .38 pistol in a cheap holster. I noticed that he and the manager who was going with us were both armed, so I put the weapon on my belt and we left the ranch.

Sr. René´s land was on the south side of the Rio Paraguai, and was low-lying, with sparse trees and a lot of native grass. Hundreds of families lived on the thousands of acres, trading a part of their labor as rent for the small lots they worked.

In about a half-hour we came on a small group of houses and a rustic corral. The head man of the little enclave came out and called us over to the corral. He showed us a cow that had died, and explained that she was dead at daylight. After listening to the story, the manager told the man that they could butcher the cow and make use of her. Meat is a rarity with people who practice subsistence farming, but there is a strict protocol that a knife doesn't touch a dead beef before the owner or boss is told about the incident. René was a very urbane gentleman, but known to resort to lethal means when he felt wronged. The cow was well bloated, but that didn't bother anyone due to the paucity of meat in their diets. They were glad to get anything more than rice, beans, mandioca, and an occasional chicken.

It took us another hour to get to the next mud and bamboo house. No one was at the door, so we pulled our horses up about 50 feet away and called. It must be something in our genes, but I automatically turned my horse so my pistol and shooting arm were on the house side in case things got weird. There were scores of people hiding from the police out on that ranch, so we were careful.

We continued on for miles and it was a weird phenomenon that everyone knew we were coming even given the distances between their tiny settlements. I saw it a number of times, and it always amazed me because that areas were too great for a person to physically pass the word ahead of our arrival.

Later, in the heat of afternoon, we finished our circle and arrived back where we saw the dead cow. The place was packed with probably 50 – 100 people. They had heard that there was a cow being butchered, and came to participate in the event. It was a big day.

Of course we accepted, so they took us inside where we sat at a little table on the dirt floor. I was with my back to the wall, right against the dripping front half of the bloated cow's carcass. My shirt got blood on it when I leaned back.

The senhora of the house brought me a bowl of watery noodles with a huge lump of cartilage, tendon and bone in the middle. I think it was a knee or something. The smell of the hot and bloated meat I had seen in the corral made it worse. I ate a few token bites, then sneaked my serving to the dogs through a hole in the mud wall. My companions took full advantage, but my memory of the bloated cow lying in the dry manure restrained me.

After an hour or so we got our horses and headed back to the ranch headquarters where René was having his party. It took about an hour, and the day was cooling off by the time we got back.

It was difficult to eat even the good meat at the party, but I had to, or René would have felt slighted. He kept company with some of the richest people in Brazil, but had come from simple means and had traditional values.

The trip around the property was interesting, mostly because of how fast word got to people that we were in the area. It was physically impossible, I think, for a man afoot to stay ahead of us, but we never surprised anyone.

Another thing I came away with was how natural it was to turn one's gun hand to the risky side. Maybe I'm related to John Wayne or something.

But even John couldn't have eaten that meat.