Promised Land

Platero is small, downy, smooth--so soft to the touch that one would think he were all cotton, that he had no bones. He eats everything I give him. He likes tangerines, muscatel grapes, all amber-colored, and purple figs with their crystal points of honey.

--Platero and I

In La Rioja, a picturesque town of 35,-000 on the Andean slopes of northwestern Argentina, the little donkeys of the community are nicknamed plateritos, because they are just as lovable and usually just as hungry as famed Poet Juan Ramon

Jimenez' fictional pet. The poorer folk use them to haul firewood from the forests or farm produce to market. The children ride them to school.

Allowed for the most part to forage for themselves by night, the plateritos chewed the grass of the town square down to nubbins, ate up the flowerbeds around the bandstand, munched the leaves and pink buds off the scrubby palo borracho trees that line La Rioja's streets. They followed housewives from the marketplace and sometimes quietly stole vegetables from their baskets. At newsstands they even snagged and ate the latest edition of the daily Cordoba. As the pack prospered and multiplied on such fare, fines were imposed on loose burros and a squad of "burreros" was formed to round them up. The owners just waited and eventually bought back their animals at city auction for purely nominal prices. Public opinion would not stand for destroying the strays.

After the number of loose burros topped 300, Mayor Adolfo Santocchi decided to act. One day last week his men rounded up 20 burros, loaded them on a truck and drove away. Twelve miles out from town the burros were set down in a green valley, sheltered by hills and watered by a cool stream. In an address to the town by soundtruck, Mayor Santocchi explained that he had sought out the valley as a refuge--suitably distant--"where our plateritos can live happily and in peace." As his men began rounding up the rest of the strays, the mayor promised periodic inspections to make certain that the donkeys were prospering. He hoped that the plateritos would stay permanently lost. Other townspeople did not believe it. "Twelve miles, a green valley and a cool river will not keep our plateritos away," said one old Riojano. "They don't come here just for food. They come here because they love us. They'll be back."

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