Mercedes

Mercedes in Buenos Aires Province is the last town in Argentina with functioning pulperías — the colonial-era rural taverns where gauchos tied their horses outside and drank behind a wooden counter that still separates customer from landlord as a remnant of the law requiring alcoholic drinks to be served through a grille, to prevent violence. The Pulpería de Cacho, in operation since the nineteenth century, serves wine from the same casks it has always used and closes when Cacho decides it's time.

Mercedes is a provincial city of 60,000 in Buenos Aires Province, 97 kilometres southwest of the capital, whose gaucho culture has remained more intact than in comparable pampas towns due to its position on the southern edge of the Cuenca del Salado wetland region — an area of large cattle estancias that maintained the gaucho labour tradition longer than the more agriculturally developed northern pampas. The town has four registered pulperías — the highest density in any Argentine city — of which the most historically intact is the Pulpería Cacho (formally Pulpería Gaucho Sin Fronteras), a functioning tavern that has operated without significant modification since the nineteenth century. Mercedes is the birthplace of Carlos Gardel — a disputed claim it shares with France and Uruguay, though the Argentine official position is that Gardel was born here in 1890. The annual Fiesta del Gaucho in November draws riders from across Buenos Aires Province for a traditional cattle skills competition.