Payada

Roots, trunk, branches, branches, trunk, root
A scar opened from where I sprouted in the landscape
Time made me a message that the pampas winds direct
Of the yearnings that afflict me to transplant horizons
Seeking the rumor of the sources to drink water at the origin

On the back of the distance, from stop to stop
I was tracing the message of barbaric resonance
Making homeland in childhood because I needed to make it
And freedom, always the guiding star
That my gaze pursued as if searching for a star

I thought I would reach it, in the stage of a rude Indian
But never in fullness, because this baguala goddess
That hoodwinks the wanderers, no one ever reached
Great-grandson nor great-grandfather, in the roughest skirmishes
Flame of minutes that the wind always extinguished

First it was the open field, unbounded, without boundaries
With imprecise borders, a world without far or near
I was the liberated Indian, wild and warrior
King of myself, lord of the wild nature
The religion of courage and the bronze Sun in color

One day came the Jesuit to this corner of the planet
Wearing the black cassock in the blessed catechesis
It was more than a visit to my brown pampa
I pumped behind the mane, eyes on the brother's eyes
And engraved in the heart the Holy Cross of Lorena!

Later, more people came to my countryside lands
The phalanx of flags, ruthless and relentless
I rose suddenly and the tribes rose
The meadows were bloodied, once green
But I defeated the bandeirantes, who never returned!

And then came the Portuguese, the blacks, the Spaniards
And in the countryside lands, new norms, new customs
The violence and abuses of Iberia, Castile, and Lazio
That tore the preface and killed the prayers
And the communal yearnings of the brothers of Saint Ignatius

I couldn't stop the wave of Andonega and Barbacena
If history doesn't condemn them, the stain never fades
Oppression never questions in its petty ambition
It was my everything I had, it was my everything there was
And I died because I said that land was mine!

But the eternal doesn't die, because I remain alive
In the primitive flash of every event that occurs
My red blood flows in the old gaucho race
Bucking in every artery through miscegenation
In the barbaric transfusion with the wanderers from Iberia

I was always what I am, I am always what I was
Because life doesn't dilute what Mother Earth bore
I am the ember that remained and stayed lit
I am the gaucho who grew up next to the combat forts
And was already drinking mate when the homeland dawned!

And so, growing in the open air, raised far from my father
Next to the sweet sea, Uruguay, the river of my birth
Soldier without regiment in the vastness barracks
One day I felt like it, I let the mane grow
And I mixed with a China that I called freedom

For over three hundred years I was a shepherd and sentinel
In the green and yellow line, fighting with the Spaniards
Recording with los hermanos the epic of the frontier
Poet, singer, and warrior of the America that was born
In the blessed stubbornness to continue Brazilian!

With Bento in a thousand skirmishes, in wild rehearsals
Then against the Paraguayans, in Humaitá and Toneleros
I walked in Monte Caseros, Paiçandu, Peribebuí
Passo da Pátria, Avaí, far from my territory
And I was Osório's aide in the Tuiuti fields

Then, in ninety-three, in twenty-four again
It is the destiny of my people who became so proud
The mark of the intrepid of this old territory!
Before the barbaric ostensorium of the red and white handkerchiefs
I followed the starts of the old Flores, and Honório

Chimangos and maragatos, farrapos, federalists
Walks and conquests that history keeps in its facts
The intrepid tauras with dagger and pistol at the waist
There is no one who denies our root lineage
That took hold of the matrix in the thirties

Then I wore the olive green, as always a volunteer
In the Expeditionary Corps, forming a group
Of our native indians to answer a libel
And the green and yellow banner, on the other side of the world
I firmly and deeply planted it in the old Monte Castelo!

Today the times have changed, my heart continues
The same charrua tiger from the wanderings of the past
Always with a saddled horse, pumping pampa and hill
The homeland is my family! There is no Brazil without Rio Grande
And no tyrant who rules the soul of a farroupilha!