Somos los Hombres Huecos

A gaucho soul just yearns to roam
Now his lawyer says he might never come home
Eyes I only see in gloam
It wasn't quite brotherly love
It wasn't quite brotherly love
More him getting us kicked out of a clubs

It's fun to flirt with the nurses, sure
In her twilight kingdom on the memory floor
But I don't visit his mom anymore
'Cause we agree it's partly my fault
'Cause we agree it's partly my fault
That he spends every night in a vault

Cowboy tongues and desert tribes
This cactus land must civilize
Twisted wire and telegraphed lies
Replaced the sash with a national flag
Replaced the sash with a national flag
So now we just pray to a rag

Behind the saloon
Where the dry wind whistled a tune
His dagger right in the ribs of some goon
I heard oblivion gasp as it ran out of room at last

When they brought me in for questioning
I told the inquisition everything
But if I had foreseen
The whimpering of middle age
This frontier country's terminal stage
The "freedom" of an urban wage
The lithium, the burning sage
Well I would have helped clean up the blood
Yeah I would have helped clean up the blood

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Unreleased



Somos los Hombres Huecos Spanish translation of the first line of "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot. This poem quotes Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and was itself quoted in Apocalypse Now. All three works address the question of morality in a place (The Belgian Congo, the desert, Vietnam) outside of so-called Western civilization.



gaucho A South American cowboy, immortalized in The Gaucho Martin Fierro by Jose Hernandez. Considered a foundational text in Argentinian culture, Martin Fierro has been re-imagined by Gabriela Cabezon Camara, Martin Kohan, and twice by Jorge Luis Borges, among others.



Eyes "Eyes I dare not meet in dreams" - Eliot.



gloam "death's twilight kingdom" - Eliot.

Also
"The Gloaming"; Despite a typically anti-fascist and anti-imperalist stance, Radiohead have been accused of condoning a very different conquest of the desert.



clubs Nightclubs and the suite of clubs (bastos) in the gaucho card game of truco.



twilight kingdom

"Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom" - Eliot.

The mother is in her twilight years.




memory floor The floor of a nursing home reserved for dementia patients.



cowboy tongues The informal and syncretic gaucho dialect was considered unsophisticated by elites in Buenos Aires.



desert tribes As portrayed in Martin Fierro, gauchos were conscripted as soldiers in the genocide of Argentina's Indigenous peoples.



cactus land "This is cactus land" - Eliot.



civilize Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (Argentine writer and President from 1868 to 1874), is considered another key text in Argentine literature. Facundo argues for "Enlightened" European culture over that of the gaucho and strongman (caudillo) in the interior of the country. See also page 3 of Bergero, Adriana J. Intersecting Tango: Cultural Geographies of Buenos Aires, 1900-1930. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010.



twisted wire As in the American West, the barbed wire fencing of cattle helped end the era of the free-roaming gaucho. According to Netz, "by 1907 it was estimated that there was enough barbed wire in Argentina to go round the perimeter of the country 140 times."



telegraphed lies Along with the railroad and barbed wire, the telegraph played a role in the "modernization" of the American West and the Argentine frontier.



sash The fata worn by gauchos.



national flag The flag of Argentina created by Manuel Belgrano in 1812. Symbols such as flags play a role in the construction of national identity.



pray The Argentine state has been, at times, in conflict with the Catholic church.



dry wind

Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
- Eliot




tune The Gaucho Martin Fierro is an epic poem in the style of a gaucho campfire song.



dagger The gaucho knife, or facón.



ran out of room Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis bemoaned the closing of the American frontier, which he considered essential for the development of the United States.



inquisition Argentina's revolutionary Assembly outlawed the Spanish Inquisition in 1813. Interrogation techniques by the 1976-1983 military dictatorship were notoriously inhumane.



frontier country's Argentina's population is 93% urban, with a third of the entire population living in Buenos Aires. However, much of its rural expanse has been fenced.



terminal stage "This is the way the world ends" - Eliot

Late Capitalism but also a train terminal.



"freedom" of an urban wage The government of Argentina intentionally transformed gauchos into urban wage laborers. "Proletarianization", or the incorporation of (often rural) people into capitalism, was often celebrated as "freedom" by classical political economists. The economic liberty of President Milei pushed Argentina's poverty rate to 53% in 2024.



lithium A medication prescribed for bipolar disorder. Also a key component in renewable energy technology; lithium mining in northwest Argentina threatens the water and civil rights of present-day Indigenous people.