The gaúchos of Southern Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina mark their horses and cattle during a marcação with a red-hot branding iron. The iron burns a mark, usually the breeder’s initials, into the animal’s hide. This provides proof of it being the property of someone.
For young bulls, the marcação coincides with the castração, or castration. The animals are castrated to keep them more submissive and make their meat juicier. In the so-called castration by pocket knife, the animal’s scrotum is cut open and the testicles severed off by one of the men – and it is always the job of a man. Horses are castrated later in life because their testicles only descend into the scrotum when the colts are about one year old. To indicate the castration, i.e. the conversion of a stallion into a gelding, the tail of the animal is cropped and cut straight. This procedure embodies an archetype of our civilisation and also the primal function of a bank: appropriation and multiplication, or control determined by economic objectives.