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 News from Around Banderas Bay | February 2007 
Charros on Horseback: Icons of Mexican Sport, History
 Associated Press
Flashy, well-dressed and reckless, the bronco riding cowboys known as charros are Mexican icons, displaying a style and macho bravery romanticized in the nation's folk songs, paintings and movies.
Their life-risking antics, or "charreria," are rural Mexico's official sport. Annual events, such as January's interstate championship in Mexico City, dazzle poor peasants, rich farm owners and tourists alike.
Like its rodeo cousin in the United States, charreria turns cattle farming skills into competitive stunts.
Contending teams show off techniques of jumping through the air onto wild mares, riding bucking broncos and bringing down rampaging bulls with lassos.
Charreria's roots lie with the Spanish conquistadors who brought horse riding and bull fighting to the new world. But it was given a uniquely Mexican twist by Indian and mestizo farm hands who managed herds of horses on colonial plantations.
From a birth in the arid central Mexican states of Hidalgo and Puebla, charreria spread like wildfire across New Spain, gaining special popularity in the northern territories - now part of the U.S. - and the western Mexican state of Jalisco.
While the big haciendas declined after Mexico's bloody 1910-1917 revolution, the charro was embraced by the new nationalist government as an emblem of Mexico's tough but romantic character.
The elegantly clad charros paraded alongside soldiers on Independence Day celebrations and charros became the central characters in Mexico's government-backed film industry.
"Your pride is the charro," movie star Jorge Negrete sung in "Yo soy Mexicano" - or "I Am Mexican." "Courageous and resolute, to wear my silver rimmed hat, so nobody can call me a coward."
That resolution not to back down in the face of wild bulls and trampling horses lives on the modern charreria competitions. |
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