Uruguay leather

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Dear reader

Guapu and I have just returned from our favourite second-hand bookshop, where we picked up an EASY LEARNING Spanish dictionary, an INSTANT SPANISH CD, and Learn Spanish THE FAST AND FUN WAY. I my experience, learning a language is always a slow process – the good thing is I did several years of Spanish in high school and at university, so it won’t be like starting from scratch. We also got a book called The Spanish Language which includes Portuguese, Catalan and Basque. This book traces the growth of these languages and illustrates their enrichment from different sources including American-Indian loan words in Spanish. Should be a good read.

The Spanish for leather, by the way, is “cuero”. I’ve been dipping into Uruguay: Portrait of a Democracy (Russell H. Fitzgibbon) which describes how in the 1600s and 1700s Uruguay was home for only two kinds of inhabitants: the wild cattle which overran the whole area of the Plata within a few years after their release by the early Spaniards, and the equally wild gauchos. The gaucho was the personification of independence and anarchy. The age of the gaucho was the age of leather. Clothing, furniture, housing – everything was made from cattle hides and bones. Is it a coincidence that Guapo was a leather worker in a previous life? I’ve just found some interesting souvenir leather covered mate gourds on the web. Apparently, the Indians and the Spaniards covered the yerba mate gourd with leather to protect it, especially in those provinces where it was difficult to get a mate gourd. How about leather panelling on a front door? I’d be curious to hear from anyone who has actually seen this!

Bye for now!
Guapita

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