Pampas

When the American or English boy is just learning to stand on his feet alone, the infant gaucho is being taught by his fond mother to steady himself on the back of one of the ponies of the herd.

At the age of four years he can ride the wildest colt that roams the Pampas, and from that time he and his horse are practically one, and to unseat him would be almost to tear from the horse a portion of his own anatomy.

He is by virtue of his home life and occupations completely dependent on his horse.

He spends most of his life on horseback, and is associated with the wild equine to a greater degree than any member of the other equestrian races of the world.

That's one of the windiest places on Earth, too, so I imagine that they will be wind-powered.

Oh, yes, wind-powered, sun-powered, hydroelectric-powered, to turn Argentina's beautiful but unsettled Patagonia and Pampas, to turn that into one giant data center.

That...

You say to Musk, I see you're going to build a big one in Texas.

They were more like cowboys, and they rode their horses across the pampas, seizing political power through charisma and sheer brute force.

They were, unfortunately, just another type of authoritarian leader.

And just like they dominated the Argentinian Pampas, Caldillo's also dominated the literature of the period.

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's 1845 novel, Facundo, Civilización y Barbarie, Civilization and Barbarism, is a prime example.

It's a fictionalized biography of the titular Facundo, who's pretty much the platonic ideal of the corrupt Caldillo.

And Sarmiento describes them lyrically, immense the plains, immense the forests, immense the rivers, the always uncertain horizon.

Apparently, everything is bigger in Argentina too.

But Sarmiento also thinks the region is barbaric because the Pampas are so isolated from so-called civilization.

Not long after, they took his mom too.

His parents were among tens of thousands of people who were kidnapped and disappeared by the military dictatorship of Jorge Videla, who's been nicknamed the Hitler of the Pampas.

All told, Videla's regime murdered or disappeared tens of thousands of Argentinians in an attempt to crush opposition and spread terror.

Not only that, but many of the regime's victims included pregnant women, who were forced to give birth in secret detention centers, They're babies taken away and illegally adopted, sometimes by the same people who had detained or killed their parents.

I was sure it was Argentina.

[laughs] In the Pampas.

[laughs]

Uh, that's not a desert.

So I definitely don't wanna throw any more shame nuggets out.

[laughs]

But the Pampas are a vast, fertile, low grassland in Sou- South America.

Okay.

Pleasures, comforts, necessities, aye, living itself would be impossible to either of these if his horse was not part of his worldly possessions.

The desert, the Pampas, the Llanos, and the prairie without horses would, for the uses of man, be as an ocean without ships or boats.

But to the fashionables of the world, the art of horsemanship is a beautiful and admirable accomplishment, a means of healthful exercise.

The rider's grace of carriage, his easy seat, his courageous bearing, like the fit of his handsome tailor-made riding suit, are objects of pride to himself and causes of congratulation from his associates.

From his earliest infancy, the half-wild horses have been his intimates and familiars.

When the American or English boy is just learning to stand on his feet alone, the infant gaucho is being taught by his fond mother to steady himself on the back of one of the ponies of the herd.

At the age of four years, he can ride the wildest colt that roams the Pampas, and from that time he and his horse are practically one, and to unseat him would be almost to tear from the horse a portion of his own anatomy.

He is by virtue of his home life and occupations completely dependent on his horse.

But they've created this world and what happens is that it becomes too potent.

The literature magic is too strong and it starts dropping into our own world, like you were saying, the map of Argentina dropping onto the Pampas.

And suddenly objects start appearing in Borghese's world, the world of the writer at least who's written this story.

And there's a couple of different things that drop.