Historia de Juan Fiel

(Milonga)

He came from Rio Grande,
I can imagine why;
like steel, cold,
straight as a spear,
and in a slow Portuguese,
musical like a dripping,
he said: I am me, John Faithful,
and his whole story was.

When the civil wars,
he got involved with the government
and a red ribbon
faded on his hat.
He never complained about anything,
among the dust, under the rain,
on foot or on horseback; dead
from hunger, thirst, hardships.

But, facing the enemy,
he was a terrible machine
to hurt and to kill,
with a rifle or a spear;
but, facing the enemy,
even though he didn't understand anything;
and what could he understand,
either he killed or they killed him.

Back to the law of the jungle
his knife - the dance -
touched after many battles,
and this was almost a rule,
and this, even though many keep quiet about it,
in both sides it was a law
that, in this slaughter,
Juan Fiel was not alone.

I don't know if a document
or in some war report,
alive or dead, reality is assigned
to his existence,
but Juan Fiel and his shadow
are the secret reality
of so many heroic tales,
its background of disgust and shame.

Where death sowed
its sinister agriculture,
Juan Fiel, the purplish land,
that you stepped on, is this land;
where death sowed
its sinister agriculture,
Juan Fiel, the purplish land,
that you stepped on, is this land.

Juan Fiel, the purplish land,
that you stepped on, is this land.

Chorus
This is the land...