José Hernández (1834–1886) was a celebrated Argentine journalist, politician, and poet. He is best known for writing the masterpiece The Gaucho Martín Fierro (1872) and its sequel, La Vuelta de Martín Fierro (1879). [1]

The epic poem is widely considered the national book of Argentina. It tells the story of a nomadic cowboy (a gaucho) who is forced into military service, deserts, and becomes a fugitive outlaw fighting against a corrupt system. [1, 2, 3]José Hernández was a passionate Federalist who spent his life fighting for regional autonomy and the rights of the rural working class against the centralized, ruling oligarchy of Buenos Aires. [1, 2, 3]

His core political leanings and beliefs included:

• Anti-Centralism & Pro-Provinces: He strongly opposed the "Europeanizing" and modernizing tendencies of the central government, particularly under President Domingo Sarmiento. Hernández argued that the central government squeezed wealth from the rural interior to enrich the port city of Buenos Aires. [1, 2, 3]
• Champion of the Gaucho: His political identity was heavily tied to social justice for rural laborers. He vocally opposed the state's forced conscription of gauchos into brutal military service along the frontiers, which he famously protested through his masterpiece, Martín Fierro. [1, 2, 3]
• Local Democracy: Through his newspaper, El Río de la Plata, he advocated for decentralized local control, demanding that community members—rather than a distant capital—elect their own judges, military commanders, and school boards. [1, 2]
• Nuanced Traditionalist: While he was a staunch Federalist, he was not a blind loyalist; he openly criticized former Federalist dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas, calling him a despot. He championed a pastoral economy but fiercely advocated for widespread public education to create a literate, self-governing rural population. [1, 2]

Because of his opposition to the central regime, he lived as a man of action—frequently fighting in the provincial civil wars, working as a regional legislator, and even spending years exiled in Brazil following an unsuccessful revolt in 1870. [1]