Martín Fierro is an epic poem by the Argentine writer José Hernández. The poem was originally published in two parts, El Gaucho Martín Fierro (1872) and La Vuelta de Martín Fierro (1879). The poem is, in part, a protest against the Europeanizing and modernizing tendencies of Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento.
The poem, written in a Spanish that evokes rural Argentina, is widely seen as the pinnacle of the genre of "gauchesque" poetry (poems centered around the life of the gaucho, written in a style that evokes the rural Argentine ballads known as payadas) and a touchstone of Argentine national identity. It has appeared in literally hundreds of editions and has been translated into over 70 languages.
Martín Fierro has been widely considered the fountainhead or pinnacle of Argentine literature, Argentina's Don Quixote or Divine Comedy.
The poem's central character, Martín Fierro, is a gaucho, a free, poor, pampas-dweller, who is illegally drafted to serve at a border fort defending against Indian attacks. He eventually deserts, and becomes a gaucho matrero, basically the Argentinian equivalent of a North American western outlaw.
