CHARRERÍA, NATIONALISM, AND MANLY RELEVANCE IN MODERN MEXICO

Angélica Castillo Reyna

A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History.

Chapel Hill 2018

Approved by:

John C. Chasteen

Kathryn Burns

Cynthia M. Radding

Miguel La Serna

Jocelyn Olcott © 2018 Angélica Castillo Reyna ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ii ABSTRACT

Angélica Castillo Reyna: Charrería, Nationalism, and Manly Relevance in Modern Mexico (Under the direction of John C. Chasteen)

This dissertation offers two premises. First, there is a deep history of relationships between power, horsemanship, and constructions of masculinity in modern Mexico. Second, because of this history, Mexicans in various eras and situations have depended on rural equestrian costumes, identities, and traditions to influence, interpret, and navigate the world around them. Part 1 of this dissertation consists of three chapters and provides an overview of the development of Mexican equestrian customs and the ways that Mexicans in colonial, independent, and revolutionary Mexico used horsemanship to make their lives meaningful, central, and sustainable. Part II, composed of five chapters, shifts to a discussion of the emergence of the equestrian sport community of organized charrería and the way that organized charros continued the practice of transforming Mexico’s equestrian past into a form of strategic cultural capital. Post-revolutionary organized charros, cognizant of the rich equestrian history they had to draw upon, used the idea of Mexican horsemen’s historic contributions in order to claim relevance in post-revolutionary Mexico as the heirs and latest representatives of that historically-significant equestrian tradition.

iii A mis amados, mama chula y mi viejito.

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Una aventura como esta tesis no se hace sin el apoyo y amor de muchos. Gracias, desde el fondo de mi corazón, a todos los que me acompañaron, me guiaron y me ayudaron.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... ix

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 1: HORSEMANSHIP IN THE COLONY AND EARLY INDEPENDENCE ...... 13

Introduction ...... 13

Horses and Horsemen of the Conquest ...... 13

Elite and Popular Equestrian Traditions in New Spain ...... 21

Insurgent Horsemen in Independent Mexico ...... 27

Literary Portraits of Horsemen and the New Nation ...... 31

Gentlemen or Criminals? Horsemen at the Boundaries of Law and Order ...... 42

Conclusion ...... 49

CHAPTER 2: RANCHEROS IN PORFIRIAN MEXICO ...... 51

Introduction ...... 51

Progress and Order in Porfirian Mexico ...... 53

Ignacio de la Torre y Mier: Occasionally, A Charro Hacendado ...... 60

Alejandro Velaz: The Cross-Dressing Charrito from Málaga ...... 66

Vicente Oropeza: A Transnational Charro Entertainer ...... 70

Los Rurales: Charro Enforcers of the State ...... 79

Conclusion ...... 83

CHAPTER 3: HORSEMEN OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION ...... 84

Introduction ...... 84

The Mexican Revolution...... 85

vi Pancho Villa, A Bandit-Hero on Horseback ...... 88

The Charro Emiliano Zapata ...... 101

Hacendados and Charro Nostalgia ...... 115

Conclusion ...... 122

PART II: THE RISE OF ORGANIZED CHARRERÍA, 1920-1960 ...... 124

CHAPTER 4: THE WRITINGS OF AN OLD GUARD CHARRO ...... 129

Introduction ...... 129

The Marquis and his Background ...... 133

The Marquis’ Initial Explanations of Charrería ...... 138

Modeling an Ideal Charro Masculinity ...... 141

Conclusion ...... 147

CHAPTER 5: THE VISION OF CHARRO NATIONALISTS ...... 149

Introduction ...... 149

Debating the Charro’s Origins ...... 153

Charro Patriotic Service ...... 162

The Charro’s Iconic Masculinity ...... 165

Conclusion ...... 170

CHAPTER 6: CHARRERÍA AND MANLY POLITICAL LEADERSHIP ...... 171

Introduction ...... 171

Caciquismo and Leadership in Post-Revolutionary Mexico ...... 173

Roberto Cruz in the World of Organized Charrería ...... 176

The ANCh and Roberto Cruz in Rebellion ...... 183

Conclusion ...... 187

CHAPTER 7: CHARROS ENGAGE THE REVOLUTIONARY STATE ...... 189

Introduction ...... 189

vii Charro Petitions to the State ...... 191

The Mexican State: An Unreliable Patron ...... 197

Charrismo, Charrería, and Independent Leaders’ Subjection to the Mexican State ...... 202

Conclusion ...... 207

CHAPTER 8: CHARRERÍA AND CHARRO RESPECTABILITY, CONTESTED ...... 209

Introduction ...... 209

The Troubles with Maintaining Charro Respectability ...... 211

The Problem of Popular Charro Entertainers ...... 220

Contesting Depictions of Charrería on Film ...... 229

Conclusion ...... 238

EPILOGUE: ORGANIZED CHARRERÍA AFTER 1950 ...... 239

CONCLUSION ...... 248

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 250

viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ANCh Asociación Nacional de Charros

FNCh Federación Nacional de Charros

ix INTRODUCTION

This dissertation offers two premises. First, there is a deep history of relationships between power, manly relevance, and horsemanship in modern Mexico. Second, because of this history, Mexicans in various eras and situations have depended on rural equestrian costumes, identities, and traditions to influence, interpret, and navigate the world around them.

These premises are the result of research sparked by a favorite childhood pastime. As a child and adolescent, I spent a lot of time watching films produced during Mexico’s famed

Golden Age of cinema, and the charros of classic black and white productions such as Allá en el rancho grande (1948) were among my favorite childhood heroes.1 Once a doctoral student, I chose to meld that childhood appreciation with two basic historical questions: Why were charro films so common and popular in post-revolutionary Mexico? Why did charros—rural, gala-clad horsemen who evoked a world of paternalistic hacendados, ranches and peasant villages—seem to emerge as major national emblems at a time when industrialization and modernization were the law of the land? Implicit in these early questions, of course, were several limiting assumptions, chief among them, that the Mexican revolution, the series of violent civil wars that

1 When discussing the Golden Age, scholars of Mexican cinema generally refer to a period stretching roughly from 1936 (release of the first major Spanish-language blockbuster) to the mid-1950s when challenging market conditions and competition from the United States led to a severe decline in the quality and production of Mexican films. The films produced during this period were generally low-budget, commercial projects which were not especially well- made in comparison to contemporary Hollywood productions, but they gave rise to icons, music, and traditions which to this day continue to form the basic fabric of Mexican popular culture. See “El cine mexicano como fuente y forma de la identidad nacional (1930-1949),” in Nos Vemos en el Cine, ed. Jorge del Pozo Marx (Guadalajara, Jal.: Dirección de Publicaciones del Gobierno de Jalisco, 2007). See also Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro, “The Decline of the Golden Age and the Making of the Crisis,” in Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers, eds. Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1999).

1 tore through the country between 1910 and 1921, had unleashed a process of thoroughly uniform and unchallenged radical changes to Mexican society after 1921.

My studies and research since then have made clear that conservative criticism and reaction were tangled with radical reformism and acceptance of change in the mosaic of post- revolutionary life. Between 1920 and 1960, revolutionary leadership passed from the fiercely anti-clerical, regime survival focused norteños, Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles, to the agrarian and labor populism of Lázaro Cárdenas, to the centrist, business and industry-friendly policies of Manuel Ávila Camacho and Miguel Alemán Valdés. In the course of revolutionary state leaders’ shifts between reform and retrenchment, Mexican society underwent substantial cultural, demographic, and social transformations.2 The country began to shed its predominantly rural character. The revolution also opened the way for growing mass political participation. And along with their growing political agency, more Mexicans than ever also embraced the features and innovations of “modern” life. Mexicans, by choice and by necessity, remade their lives to reflect the growing prosperity and economic modernization of the post-revolution.

At the same time, not all Mexicans experienced the transformations of the post-revolution with alacrity or a sense of optimism. For considerable segments of the population, the spiritual and social transformations of the era were intolerable. The lower classes (whether rural or urban) appeared fractious and disrespectful of authority. The revolutionary state threatened the role of

Catholicism in day-to-day life. Women loudly and visibly demanded greater rights and freedoms.

2 For thorough discussions of the complicated political and social landscapes of the post-revolution see Thomas Benjamin, “Rebuilding the Nation” and John W. Sherman, “The Mexican ‘Miracle’ and its Collapse” in The Oxford History of Mexico, eds. William H. Beezley and Michael C. Meyer (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

2 The darker-skinned, rural, and uneducated threatened to overrun the respectable, civilized

avenues and neighborhoods of the urban middle and upper classes.3

For these and other reasons, discontented Mexicans devised a variety of strategies to

counteract and challenge post-revolutionary modernity. Sometimes they resorted to armed

violence. Peasant reactionaries in the center-west of the country, for example, waged a vicious

guerrilla war against the anticlerical Callista government between 1924 and1927 and again in

1931. More often, the discontented resorted to political mobilization.4 Through the 1920s and

30s, political groups and organizations across the spectrum of right-wing politics provided forums for urban and rural Mexicans of all class backgrounds to reject the economic and social policies of revolutionary leaders.5 Cultural production and artistry also contributed to counter-

discourse and reaction. Leading post-revolutionary filmmakers, for example, evinced a strong

tendency to idealize Porfirian society and the pre-revolutionary countryside in romantic charro melodramas which avoided references to the fantastically violent social revolution that had recently taken place.6 The evolution of the revolution after 1920 gave rise to a complicated social

and cultural panorama with ample space (indeed, need) for the rise of a conservative nationalist

icon like the charro.

3 Benjamin, “Rebuilding” and Sherman, “Mexican ‘Miracle’”.

4 For in depth studies, see Jennie Purnell, Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacán (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). Also see Jean Meyer, The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican People Between Church and State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

5 For discussions of conservative and right-wing political organizing in post-revolutionary Mexico, see Jean Meyer, El Sinarquismo: un Fascismo Mexicano? (México: Editorial Joaquín Mortiz, 1979. See also Ricardo Pérez Montfort, "Por la patria y por la raza": la derecha secular en el sexenio de Lázaro Cárdenas, (México, D.F.: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1993).

6 See Ricardo Pérez Montfort, “El hispanismo conservador en el cine mexicano de los años 40” in Miradas, esperanzas y contradicciones. Mexico y España 1898-1948. Cinco ensayos (Santander: Universidad de Cantabria, DL, 2013).

3 As I conducted my initial research on charro films and worked to understand the place of

these productions in the complex panorama outlined briefly above, I encountered references to a

colorfully reactionary and deeply nostalgic sports community known as charrería organizada.

Intrigued and having up to that point believed that the singing actors of Golden Age cinema were

the only ‘charros’ strutting about 1930s and 40s Mexico, I soon made organized charrería my

new focus of study. It did not take long before I realized that with organized charros and the

development of their equestrian sport community, I had a broader story about rural nostalgia and

the cultural tactics of powerful (or at least aspiring) Mexican men.

Organized charrería was born, depending on the accounts consulted, either in 1919 or in

1921. With the shots of a fiery revolution still ringing throughout the countryside, groups of

equestrian aficionados in Guadalajara, Jalisco and in Mexico City came together to practice and

revive the riding culture and customs of the central-western Mexican cowboy known as the

charro. The first charro association with a formal club charter was the Asociación Nacional de

Charros established in Mexico City in 1921.7 Founded by a small group of ranchers and

landowners residing in the capital as well as their closest city friends and employees, the

organization established itself as an early leader among charro sportsmen, expanded the number

of charro associations throughout 1920s Mexico and defined diverse aspects of this patriotic-

equestrian sports community. Through the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, a small group of impassioned

nationalists within this emergent organized charro community proclaimed the charro’s relevance

7The seniority of the Asociación Nacional de Charros is hotly disputed by Jalisco-based charros and others who argue that the customs of charrería originated in western Mexico and that the ANCh was pre-dated by the Asociación de Charros de Jalisco, a group whose earliest meetings began to take place in 1919. See Cristina Palomar Verea, En cada charro, un hermano: la charrería en el estado de Jalisco (Guadalajara, Jalisco: Secretaría de Cultura, Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco, 2004).

4 as a living symbol of Mexico, and they led efforts to have charrería be recognized as the single most authentic and enduring expression of Mexican national identity.

The rise of organized charrería contributes some necessary details to our historical understanding of the reconstruction of Mexican society and the nation-state in the aftermath of revolution. Organized charros, for one, show how cultural nationalism works in the lives of ordinary individuals.

For years, scholars of modern Mexico have discussed what forces drove the construction of the post-revolutionary nation-state. Was this a mostly elite project with peace and national unity achieved through the prerogatives of a Mexican state as Leviathan? Were nation-building policies conceived solely by intellectual elites, deployed by the new revolutionary leadership, and simply imposed upon the common Mexican citizen? Or was nation-building a popular project as well? With state leaders securing peace (and retaining dominance) by adjusting to and negotiating the demands of an active, heterogeneous, often fractious civil society?

Scholarship in the last ten years has placed particular emphasis on the role of popular agency in Mexico’s mid-20th century recovery process. Historians have begun to closely examine

how grassroots actors re-appropriated and strategically deployed elite discourses on the nation

while in pursuit of local and community-level concerns.8 This dissertation too extends that

emphasis on popular agency.

Charro organizations illustrate what historian Paul Gillingham describes as everyday

nationalism – the nationalist activity of grassroots actors for whom nationalism represented a

8 See for example, Rick A. López, Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State After the Revolution (NC: Duke University Press, 2010) and Paul Gillingham, Cuauhtémoc’s Bones: Forging National Identity in Modern Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press), 2011.

5 cultural construction with clear tactical uses in quotidian life.9 For Gillingham, “everyday nationalists” were clearly at work in the tiny provincial community of Ixcateopan, Guerrero, where a village leader and intellectual invented an indigenista legend and set into motion a nationalist hoax, all to place to his village at the heart of Mexican national history and in the path of development programs. Organized charros similarly found in cultural nationalism a valuable tool for community development, survival, and the construction of social relevance.

Facing considerable political and economic limitations in the tense aftermath of the

Mexican revolution, a small coterie of displaced ranchers, landowners, and their sympathizers developed a new charro sport community that celebrated the worldview and equestrian gravitas of Porfirian hacendados. Fundamental to reactionary sensibilities and social conservatism were impassioned narratives of charro patriotism which placed rural horsemen at the heart of Mexican national history. At a time when defining Mexico’s unique cultural characteristics and traditions became a wide priority and celebrations of national culture were deemed by state leaders to be crucial for the country’s recovery, organized charros successfully positioned themselves as living embodiments of the very spiritual essence of the nation.

Without discounting the possibility that ordinary actors might also embrace nationalism out of simple patriotism, my research follows the recent scholarly trend of examining how and why grassroots actors devise, deploy, or adapt nationalism and its ideas. After all, had ordinary individuals not found nationalism helpful in making their lives meaningful, the post- revolutionary project of national reconstruction could very well have failed.

9 Gillingham’s everyday nationalists take shape in the historiography of Mexican nationalism as “grass-roots instrumentalists… who confronted material and political poverty with self-conscious, half-cynical manipulation of nationalist symbols, for both individual and group advantage.” See Gillingham, Cuauhtémoc’s Bones, 214.

6 Studying organized charros has provided insights into the alternative national narratives that competed with and coexisted with post-revolutionary indigenismo. 10 The anthropologist and historian Ricardo Pérez Montfort has noted that nationalism in post-revolutionary Mexico was actually the “conglomeration of many cultural narratives” that defined central characteristics for a new Mexican nation, and a number of monographs, chapters, and articles focusing on post- revolutionary life have touched upon the role of indigenismo’s primary counter-discourse, hispanismo. 11

Hispanista discourse celebrated Mexico’s Spanish heritage and rejected its indigenous one. It enjoyed significant traction among former landowners, middle and upper class Catholics, and leading cultural intellectuals of the post-revolution. Golden Age filmmakers also helped

Hispanismo reach the masses by incorporating its vision of Mexican society – white, Spanish,

10 Indigenismo represented some of the most redeeming aspects of the Mexican revolution’s legacy after 1921. Adopted as official state policy during the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas, indigenismo acknowledged and celebrated Mexico’s indigenous heritage, and it provided the framework for long-marginalized indigenous communities to finally receive support and treatment as full and contributing members of Mexican society. As one of the most ‘revolutionary’ legacies of the Mexican revolution, it makes sense that scholars have focused on understanding indigenismo and its functions in the lives of marginal indigenous actors. The study of indigenismo also fits within the general social history trend among academic historians to give increased attention to the experience of underclass and grassroots actors, so with good reasons, scholars have focused on indigenismo in the most recent and in-depth studies of post-revolutionary nationalism. In the process, however, there seems to have been a shift away from the study of historical actors who did not find or experience the revolution as socially redemptive or uplifting process. Aside from critical studies on the peasant Catholic fighters of the Cristiada, there has been much less interest in parsing out the experiences and agencies of actors that were perhaps on the ‘wrong side’ of the revolution – landowners, urban middle and upper class Catholics, conservative and deeply right-wing cultural intellectuals, and others who often entertained Hispanista sympathies or ideas and who also had to figure out how to make a place for themselves in a rebuilding society.

11 For monograph length studies of hispanismo and the secular far-right, see Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Hispanismo y Falange: los sueños de la derecha española y México (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992). In English, see Mauricio Tenorio’s discussion of the educator and intellectual José Vasconcelos in Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, México at the world's fairs: crafting a modern nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). For discussions of hispanismo in Golden Age popular culture, see Joanne Hershfield, “Screening the Nation” in The eagle and the virgin: nation and cultural revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940, eds. Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 273-274. See also Aurea Toxqui, “‘That Mariachi Band and That Tequila’: Modernity, Identity, and Cultural Politics in Alcohol Songs of the Mexican Golden Age Cinema” in Mexico in Verse: A History of Music, Rhyme, and Power, eds. Stephen Neufeld and Michael Matthews (Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 2015).

7 Catholic, and patriarchal – into numerous films including the wildly popular comedias rancheras

starring famous “singing charros.”

Primed by Golden Age charro films to expect that charro organizations similarly

functioned as vehicles for post-revolutionary Hispanista ideology, I was surprised again. My

studies revealed instead that organized charros developed a cultural narrative which does not fit

neatly under the umbrella of Hispanismo. In fact, organized charros identified the living

manifestation of Mexican identity as primarily mestizo. They rejected Hispanist narratives of

supposedly “pure” Spanish origins in the mythical charro homeland of Los Altos, Jalisco.12

Helen Delpar agrees that “despite the affirmation of purely indigenous traditions, mestizaje – the

blending of the Indian and the European – lay at the root of the cultural nationalism of the era.”13

An examination of organized charros’ narratives on Mexican national culture and identity reveals

that they were certainly influenced by aspects of Hispanista thought. However, organized

charros, unlike the creators of charro film characters, staked their success and stability on

operating within the post-revolutionary impulse to unite Mexico’s fragmented ethnic and social

polities.

Organized charros melded claims about a patriotic equestrian heritage with a virile

ranchero athleticism and the language of cultural nationalism en vogue after the Mexican

Revolution to carve a place of significance for their traditionalist communities and sport in the

post-revolution. But they were not at all the first Mexican actors to use equestrian traditions in the construction of status and leadership.

12 See José Orozco, “‘Esos Altos de Jalisco!’ Emigration and the Idea of Alteno Exceptionalism, 1926-1952” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1998), ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

13 See Helen Delpar, “Mexican Culture, 1920-45” in The Oxford History of Mexico, eds. William H. Beezley and Michael C. Meyer (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

8 Part 1 of this dissertation consists of three chapters and provides an overview of the

development of Mexican equestrian customs and the ways that Mexicans in colonial,

independent, and revolutionary Mexico used horsemanship to make their lives meaningful,

central, and sustainable. As Chapter One discusses, when Spanish conquistadores introduced

horses to Amerindian Mexico in the early 16th century, their equestrian traditions already served

as potent symbols of dominion, status, and nobility. In the immediate aftermath of the conquest,

horses grew to further embody the martial strength and authority of the colonizers, and so

colonial authorities sought at regular intervals to control indigenous and Afro-descended

subjects’ access to horseflesh. By the start of the 19th century, however, Mexico had become a

territory of horsemen from all class and ethnic backgrounds, and racially-mixed, working-class ranchers had emerged as highly-skilled, independent equestrian actors. In the wars for independence and the many political conflicts that hobbled the newborn nation after independence, rural horsemen erupted on to the scene as powerful figures whose support could determine the outcome of military conflicts regarding the governance and political future of the republic.

More than 300 years of associations with power, virility, and independence thus transformed vernacular horsemen into figures who gained an important place in the 19th century

popular imagination. Nationalist intellectuals, writers, and foreign travelers saw in rural

horsemen, a living embodiment of the stumbling newborn nation. Diverse other Mexicans, in

turn, demonstrated that their country’s traditions of equestrian potency could be put to practical

use. As Chapters Two and Three discuss, Porfirian and Revolutionary Mexico was populated by

individuals who turned to equestrian guises and identities in order to more successfully accrue

social authority, respect, independence, wealth, and stability.

9 Cumulatively, the first three chapters of this dissertation show that by the start of the 20th

century, vernacular horsemanship had become a key cultural device for male (and on occasion,

female) actors looking for ways to more successfully navigate the limits of gender, sexuality,

class, and politics affecting their lives. Horsemanship and equestrian identities were also shaping

up to be crucial for the performance of leading manliness, gendered behaviors and obligations

that enabled men to project power, influence, and greatness.

Part II of this dissertation, composed of five chapters, shifts to a discussion of the

emergence of organized charrería and the way that organized charros continued the practice of

transforming Mexico’s equestrian past into a form of strategic cultural capital. Post-revolutionary charros used the idea of Mexican horsemen’s historic contributions to claim relevance as the heirs of that historically-significant equestrian tradition.

The study will conclude by discussing the development of organized charrería through

the end of the twentieth century. Most notably, the sport was introduced into the United States

where it maintains a growing presence to this day. Charrería also maintains enduring links to the

corridors of economic and political power in Mexico. In the last fifteen years, notable political

figures and even drug trafficking kingpins have been documented enjoying and investing in

Mexico’s most venerable equestrian sport tradition, making clear that the charro remains a

compelling model of masculine power in contemporary Mexican life.

10 PART I: HEROES ON HORSEBACK BEFORE 1921

Charro organizations of the early twentieth century began to carve a place for themselves in the new post-revolutionary social order by claiming that the charro was the preeminent symbol of Mexican identity. Their claim rested on three points: First, charros were sustainers of tradition; they maintained rural and equestrian customs that had long defined Mexican society.

Second, charros were products of Mexican history; they were proof of the blending of colonial

European and indigenous civilizations and as such were vessels of a uniquely Mexican character.

Third, charros were patriot heroes; led by an innate courage and devotion to their land, charros had developed a lengthy record of patriotic military service to the nation.

The following chapters will explore the roots of horsemanship in pre-revolutionary

Mexican society to reconstruct the cultural and historic logic underlying the nationalism of post- revolutionary organized charros. Men on horseback of the colonial and early post-independence eras had many names--- caballeros, cuerudos, vaqueros, rancheros, hacendados, payos, chinacos, and charros. These elite and popular figures were implicated in a complex history of colonialism, the development of pre-industrial rural economies and transportation systems, and the emergence and centralization of an independent Mexican nation-state.

Beginning in the sixteenth century, conquest and colonial expansion introduced equestrian actors and rural practices that substantially shaped the landscapes of Mexico. The first

Mexican horsemen were Spanish conquistadors. Before long, however, Spanish equestrian customs began to be adjusted to the reality of a society traversed by diverse groups of people.

Though horses had initially been introduced to the land and its native peoples as symbols of

11 specifically European might, by the late colonial period horsemanship had been creolized, allowing men of diverse social origin to display manly prowess.

For this reason, when the colony entered the insurgent decade of the 1810s, powerful and independent underclass horsemen erupted onto the political scene as military leaders and insurgents. In the decades following Mexican independence, horsemen of ambiguous social origins and equally ambiguous political affiliations became enmeshed in the popular imagination in a way that reflected the fledgling country’s lurching journey to modern nationhood.

Gentlemen bandits, patriot heroes as well as violent marauders, inspired fear and fascination in

Mexicans and foreigners. They also became the subject of some of the earliest attempts to assign national characteristics and define the spirit of the Mexican republic. To an extent then, the claims of tradition, history, and patriotism upholding modern charros’ arguments for recognition as post-revolutionary national icons are legitimate although they have also been substantially simplified and romanticized.

12 CHAPTER 1: HORSEMANSHIP IN THE COLONY AND EARLY INDEPENDENCE

Introduction

Colonial and early post-independence sources reflect the gamut of characteristics that would come to define the charro as a post-revolutionary national icon. Rural, mestizo, equestrian, virile, insurgent, but also traditional–-rancheros, the small property owners and horsemen of the countryside, were a force to be reckoned with in colonial and independent

Mexico. As Mexico transitioned from colonial holding to independent nation-state, men on horseback left a mark on Mexican society so profound that their image and equestrian customs retained their connotations of power, freedom, and relevance long after the country had shed the predominantly rural and pre-industrial conditions in which horsemen rose to dominance.

Horses and Horsemen of the Conquest

When the Spanish began their expeditions across the Atlantic in 1492, they carried with them horses and equestrian practices rife with great practical and symbolic value.14 Spain was a

“horseman’s country,” where honor and tradition dictated that men of rank and circumstance ride

only stallions and become masters of the brida and jineta equestrian traditions en vogue at the

time.15 Even the Spanish language made explicit the connection between nobility and

14 Peter Edwards, Karl Enenkel, and Elspeth Graham, eds. The horse as cultural icon: the real and symbolic horse in the early modern world (Leiden; Boston, Brill, 2012), 3.

15 The brida style of horsemanship with heavy armor on both horse and rider, deep-seated saddles that protected the lower half of the body and came outfitted with long stirrups was the fashion among Spanish medieval knights when the Moors arrived in the 8th century and introduced a short-stirrup a la jineta style that permitted rapid stops, changes in direction, and departures. By the time of the conquest, Spanish caballeros were expected to be masters of both styles. For the Moorish roots of Spanish equestrian military culture and honor see Robert Moorman Denhardt, The horse of the Americas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1947), 15-18.

13 horsemanship; the word for “gentleman,” caballero, meant “horseman.” Most Spaniards valued

horses as assets that enabled them to conduct war, display their rank and nobility, and exhibit

their masculine prowess and control. Having recently expelled Moorish settlers from the south of

Spain (using the same small, fleet horses and a la jineta style introduced by the Moors in earlier

centuries), the conquistadores led by Columbus and subsequent leaders arrived in the Caribbean

and the shores of Mexico prizing horses as potent symbols of dominion, status, and social

identity.

Early chroniclers of the conquest of Mexico made clear that horses were crucial for the

colonization of the Americas.16 Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a member of the Cortés expedition to

Tenochtitlan, devoted numerous anecdotes to the role of horses in the conquest. He carefully

described the first steeds, their talents, and instances in which Hernán Cortés used horses to

intimidate the indigenous population.17 Díaz del Castillo indicated that horses had provided the

small band of conquerors with many life-saving advantages. For instance, when the chronicler and his fellows had been caught in a deadly encounter with indigenous forces from Tabasco, the men had felt their hopes restored by the arrival of their cavalry:

When we, who were already hotly engaged with the enemy, espied our cavalry, we fought with renewed energy, while the latter, by attacking them in the rear at the same time, now obliged them to face about. The Indians, who had never seen any horses before, could not think otherwise than that horse and rider were one body. Quite astounded at this to them so novel a sight, they quitted the plain and retreated to a rising ground.18

16 See Denhardt, Horse, 67.

17 Kathleen M. Sands, Charrería Mexicana: an equestrian folk tradition (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993), 22-23. Denhardt also provides a summary of key examples described by chroniclers. See Denhardt, Horse, 52-56.

18Bernal Díaz del Castillo and John Ingram Lockhart, trans., The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo written by himself containing a true and full account of the discovery and conquest of Mexico and New Spain (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1844), 76.

14 Summing up the attitude of many who had lived through the initial conquest, the chronicler

Pedro Castañeda de Negera claimed that horses had been “the most necessary objects in the new

country” because they frightened Indian warriors to such a degree that victory soon belonged to

the Spanish.19

Though native resisters did soon discover that horses could be killed, they continued to

understand them as symbols of the invaders’ violence and military might. Díaz del Castillo noted

that when a party of avenging conquerors arrived to the townships of Zacatemi and Xalatzinco to

avenge comrades killed by a community of defiant Mexica, they found that the natives had made

a present of horse-trappings to their idols.20 In subsequent colonizing expeditions to the south of

Tenochtitlan, conquistadores encountered Indian nations that honored their horses as deities and

other-worldly beings.21 Though the accuracy of early conquest accounts has been thoroughly

dissected by scholars in intervening years, these incidents suggest that the native populations of

New Spain had begun to develop a fascination with the Spaniards’ four-legged beasts. This mutual Spanish and Indian fascination would play out in post-conquest contests over who could access horses and who could display the trappings of horsemanship.

After the fall of Tenochtitlan, horses became more important than ever as military resources and symbols of colonial might. Wary of native uprisings and reprisals, Hernán Cortés made the horse a basic requirement of Iberian power in the colony. Regardless of financial circumstance or lineage, every able-bodied Spaniard was to secure a mount and present himself, armed and attired to the degree that his personal means made possible, at monthly revistas

19 Mullen Sands, Charrería Mexicana, 26.

20Díaz del Castillo and Lockhart, Memoirs, 376. See also, José Álvarez del Villar, Historia de la charrería (México: Imprenta Londres, 1941), 43.

21 For the tale of Morzillo, the horse worshipped as a god, see Denhardt, Horses, 64 and 71.

15 militares. These military reviews acted as social events, preparation for new colonizing

expeditions, and highly public spectacles of masculine prowess, but ultimately, Cortés sought

above all to dramatize the Spaniards’ newly-acquired dominion and discourage indigenous

challenges.22

Colonial authorities also sought to prevent horses from falling into the hands of

undesirables. Well into the first decade of the 17th century, Mexico City leaders and officials of

the mesta (stock-raisers’ administrative body) were continuously promulgating laws that

prohibited or strictly policed Indian horsemen.23 Severe penalties (including death) faced perpetrators as well the individuals who facilitated their rule-breaking.24 Colonial officials feared

that Indians on horseback and bearing arms would turn their weapons against their Iberian

superiors.25 They were equally concerned that Indians would begin to consider themselves equal

to the dominant colonizing class.26

These fears had a number of sources. For one, ecological and environmental factors made

it difficult for officials to prevent horses from falling into the hands of the larger colonial

population. The demand for horses was great in the early years of the post-conquest, and the

22 Álvarez del Villar, Historia, 91.

23 For an overview of the duties and characteristics of the mesta see, William Howard Dusenberry. The Mexican Mesta: the administration of ranching in colonial Mexico (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963).

24 See Álvarez del Villar, Historia, 272 and Mullen Sands, Charrería Mexicana, 31-32.

25 These fears that were not totally unfounded as would become obvious in the north where frontier settlers began a centuries long war with highly skilled, nomadic plains Indians. See Denhardt, Horses, 87 and Ana María Alonso, Thread of Blood: colonialism, revolution, and gender on Mexico’s northern frontier (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995), 26.

26 See José Álvarez del Villar, Orígenes del charro mexicano (México: Librería A. Pola, 1968), 18. Álvarez del Villar quotes Fray Bernardo de Motolinía; “Hasta el buen padre Motolinía preocupaba el que ya muchos indios usaran caballos y sugiere al rey que no se les diese licencia para tener animales de silla ‘sino a los principales señores, porque si se hacen los indios a los caballos… muchos se van haciendo jinetes, y querranse igualar por tiempo a los españoles.”

16 conquistadors met this demand by constantly importing shipments of stock (cattle, sheep, and

horses) from the Caribbean.27 They also began breeding livestock using the labor encomiendas

they had received from the Crown.28 The fertile pasture lands of the hills surrounding the Valley

of Mexico provided all of the sustenance necessary for a home-grown population of horses and

livestock to thrive. By 1529, the population of wild, unbranded (and therefore legally unowned)

horses and other livestock had grown to such numbers, that city officials of Mexico City passed

laws requiring owners to mark their stock and register their brands so that the city government

could have clear records of ownership.29

With herds of semi-wild horses roaming the colony, it was impossible to prevent anyone who desired a horse from acquiring one cheaply and efficiently. Viceroy Luis de Velasco observed that during his tenure “the larger livestock . . . propagated so much in the provinces of

the Indies and especially in New Spain . . . that in a short time their price was no higher than the

fatigue of seizing . . . them.”30

Concerns about the rise of horsemen among the colonized populations also sprang in part from officials’ own colonizing tactics. Authorities frequently created exceptions to equestrian prohibitions.

27 Spanish and Caribbean authorities were so concerned about the number of horses being imported to New Spain, they began to impose restrictions on shipments in order to curve their loss of control of the livestock market. See Denhardt, Horses, 39-40.

28 Hernán Cortés and many of his lieutenants became a very wealthy cattle kings and livestock entrepreneurs. For an overview of the Cortés agricultural estates in what is today the state of Oaxaca, see Lolita Gutierrez Brockington, The leverage of labor: managing the Cortes haciendas in Tehuantepec (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989).

29 Mullen Sands, Charrería Mexicana, 27 and Álvarez del Villar, Historia, 31.

30 See José Álvarez del Villar, Men and horses of Mexico: history and practice of “Charrería” (Mexico, D.F.: Ediciones Lara and S. Rendon, 1979), 22. For a discussion of the damages caused by livestock to local ecologies and indigenous plots of land, see Andrew Sluyter, "The ecological origins and consequences of cattle ranching in sixteenth-century New Spain," Geographical Review 86, no. 2 (April 1996): 161-77, https:// doi:10.2307/215954.

17 The conquistadors had profited substantially from the military aid of native allies during the campaigns against the Mexica. In the first century of the colony, authorities continued to depend on the fighting power of loyal indigenous vassals. During the reigns of Antonio de

Mendoza (1535-1550) and Luís de Velasco (1550-1565), Indian chieftains, caciques from

Tlaxcala, Cholula, and Texcoco had been vital to the success of colonizing expeditions to lands that would become the future states of Querétaro, Jalisco, and Michoacán. As a reward for the caciques’ loyalty and service, both Viceroys had authorized the provision of horses along with weapons and standards. The cacique Nicolás Montañez, for example, reportedly marched on campaign against Chichimec warriors in Querétaro equipped with one hundred horses (including a powerful white steed for his personal use) and thirty escopetas gifted by Luís de Velasco.

Montañez armed and equipped his cavalry unit composed of personal retainers and rode forth to conquer the restive north.31 Through such episodes, Indian chieftains and their subordinates became owners and skillful handlers of war horses.

The colonial economy also necessitated that Indians learn to master the horse. By the end of the 16th century, mining and ranching had become the greatest sources of wealth in New

Spain. The two industries depended upon each other for resources, market demand, and profits.32

As colonizers pushed further from the Valley of Mexico in search of new wealth and opportunities, agriculture and livestock estates were founded to provision the mining ventures to the north and west of Mexico City. Horses and mules were needed throughout the colony to provide transport and, in mining settlements, to provide the power needed for processing the rich

31 Álvarez del Villar, Historia, 272.

32 For critical overviews of rural agricultural and mining economies see the landmark studies of D.A. Brading, Miners and merchants in Bourbon Mexico, 1763-1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) and Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajío: León 1700-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). See also Eric Van Young, Hacienda and Market in eighteenth century Mexico: the rural economy of the Guadalajara region, 1675-1820 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

18 mineral ore.33 Horses, mules, and bovines were also slaughtered to feed mining settlement

populations and to provide hides for quotidian use.

To supply the demand for these animal resources, livestock ventures required hardy,

mobile laborers skilled at propagating and overseeing greatly dispersed herds in untamed

rangelands. Initially, authorities, fearing threats to Spanish supremacy, dictated that only Iberians

and American-born Spaniards could serve as livestock handlers. But colonial and economic

realities overwhelmed such prohibitions. The rural ranching economy required greater numbers

of laborers than could be provided by the existing Spanish and creole populations, in great part

because individuals from the dominant classes rarely performed menial ranch work. In frontier

missions, the native populations of the colony received unimpeded access to horses. Missions

frequently provided lessons in horsemanship for practical and civilizing ends.34 All told, it

simply was not practical or profitable to enforce blanket prohibitions on Indian horsemen.

As the colony matured and its population diversified, New Spain also became home to

horsemen of African and mixed-race descent. African slaves were shipped to the colony when it became evident that the native indigenous population was in severe decline. African and mulatto men labored in mines and agricultural estates and proved to be skilled horse handlers.35

Therefore, they formed the lowest (and most numerous) ranks of colonial militias in places with

33 Francis Haines, Horses in America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1971), 42.

34 Mullen Sands, Charrería Mexicana, 32. José Álvarez del Villar also mentions the life and work of Fray Pedro Barrientos in the 16th century in Historia de la Charrería, 273. Missionaries training Indian vaqueros are discussed in Denhardt, Horses, 104-105.

35 See Andrew Sluyter, "How Africans and their Descendants participated in establishing open-range cattle ranching in the Americas," Environment and History 21, no. 1 (February 2015). Also, Andrew Sluyter, Black ranching frontiers: African cattle herders of the Atlantic world, 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

19 large black populations such as coastal Veracruz.36 Negros cimarrones occupying palenques in

the region of Orizaba, Veracruz, were also known to possess large numbers of horses as part of

the cache of weapons and resources they accumulated for the protection of their independent

communities.37 In passing laws to regulate the inevitable reality of mounted indigenous ranch

hands, colonial authorities also made provisions for black horsemen. Ordinances passed for

agricultural activities in the Valley of Mexico in 1574 stated that estate owners were required to

have one Spanish administrator along with four negros or indios (two on foot and two on

horseback) for every 2,000 heads of livestock. The same laws dictated punishments (100 lashes)

for the indio or negro caught making use of horses without the permission of their Spanish

overseers.38

Intermarriage and miscegenation between Spanish, Indian, and African populations gave

rise to mestizo and mulatto cultivators of vernacular equestrian traditions. As artisans, store

owners, low level government functionaries, merchants, soldier-settlers (soldados pobladores),

and ranchers, mixed-race actors occupied a lower-middle strata in colonial society, being neither

fully Spanish (white) or other (Indian/African), and neither powerful nor fully bereft of wealth or

agency. Mestizos and other castas frequently served as higher-ranking foremen and cowboys on

haciendas. They also traveled as settlers to distant frontier settlements, drawn by the promise of

choice land claims and freedom from the strictures of life nearer to the viceregal metropole.39

With time and labor, an emergent class of rancheros who denied identification with either

36 Álvarez del Villar, Orígenes, 16.

37 Ibid, 19.

38 Ibid, 17.

39 Alonso notes that in frontier settlements like northern Sonora, Indian fighters of mixed castes enjoyed fluid social mobility and opportunities to earn wealth and land. See Alonso, Thread of Blood, 31. See also John Tutino, Making a New World: founding capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

20 aristocratic and wealthy españoles or exploited indios and negros, carved out self-sustaining small estates, frequently in locations isolated from the commerce and movement of large settlements. Dependent on their own labor to tend to their livestock and agricultural investments, rancheros developed reputations as unmatched horsemen whose equestrian talents were at the center of their highly independent and idiosyncratic lifestyles.40

All told, the specific cultural, geographic, and economic demands of New Spain sparked a gradual expansion of horsemanship. Members of very diverse social groups in the colony became prolific horsemen. Less than half a century after the fall of Tenochtitlan, New Spain had effectively become another “horseman’s country.”

Elite and Popular Equestrian Traditions in New Spain

Colonial Mexico was awash in the rituals and spectacles of a culture of horsemanship. In the viceregal metropole and larger colonial settlements, nobles and gentlemen dandies

(caballeros) put their talents and mettle on display before other refined observers while participating in bullfights, riding la sortija (a game that required galloping horsemen to spear a small suspended ring) and conducting juegos de cañas (a game of throwing and evading projectiles on horseback).41 The second viceroy of New Spain, Luís de Velasco, reported to be a superb horseman, delighted in holding tournaments of juegos de cañas. Attendance and participation in these events, however, was highly exclusive.

For example, though an economically powerful merchant class had begun to take shape in New Spain by the last half of the 16th century and its members owned fine horses and richly-

40 Mullen Sands, Charrería Mexicana, 38. Álvarez del Villar, Orígenes, 20-21.

41 Bullfighting during the colonial period was very much a horseman’s arena. Nobles would intervene on horseback to rejonear or fight off a bull with a lance. The participation of noble rejoneadores in defense of bullfighters on foot was considered an important part of the spectacle of the bullfight. See Juan Pedro Viqueira Alban, Propriety and Permissiveness in Bourbon Mexico (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1999).

21 appointed riding attire, merchants were never invited to participate in the viceroy’s equestrian

games. Fine horses and equipment alone could not take the place of aristocratic lineage or

peninsular birth, social distinctions which created a major divide between noble Spanish

hidalgos (or those who claimed noble descent) and the businessmen who accrued wealth through

open commerce and labor.42

Colonial authorities also made a point to legalize divisions between peninsular and

native-born Spanish horsemen. The cabildo or town council of Mexico City, for instance, stipulated in 1603 that the caballeros participating in public tournaments of la sortija had to be

Iberian-born españoles exclusively. Spanish men born on Mexican soil were effectively barred by the specter of miscegenation.

Still, these American-born Spaniards found ways to participate in their forefathers’ culture of equestrian display. They simply chose to organize their own festivals and games. And equestrian culture was generalized still further in colonial Mexico. Following a sortija tournament organized by Mexico City españoles in 1610, a group of men identified as morenos criollos decided to organize their own tournament for the purpose of honoring a newly erected church. These criollos carried out the event with great pomp and performed the sortijas with

skill, earning the admiration of the city’s españoles.43 These performers were probably of

African descent. Ultimately, as colonial sources of wealth and affluence diversified and resident

social groups adjusted the codes of civility and distinction inherited from Spain, the exclusive equestrian traditions of Spanish nobles and military heroes became more general spectacles of

42 Álvarez del Villar, Orígenes, 15. For an extensive discussion of the complicated constructions of class in colonial New Spain, see María Elena Martinez, Genealogical Fictions: limpieza de sangre, religion, and gender in colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008).

43 Álvarez del Villar, Orígenes, 14-15.

22 social influence and wealth. As the colony distanced itself from the violent colonizing campaigns of the first few decades, equestrian games began to lose some of their military character with military parades (alardes) and revistas militares gradually evolving into pleasure rides and social events that gave the most affluent and fashionable members of colonial society the chance to exhibit their wherewithal. 44

In the countryside, vernacular and more expressly work-focused equestrian practices also began to take shape. On ranches and cattle estates, the bulk of ranching labor—herding, branding, castrating, doctoring, and slaughtering livestock—was conducted by an ethnically- diverse underclass of workers known as cuerudos and vaqueros. Colonial vaqueros, particularly those closer to the viceregal metropole, were neither affluent nor socially powerful.45 The seasonal, itinerant, and precarious nature of their work provided limited opportunities for upward mobility, and vaqueros rarely accumulated sufficient capital to acquire their own plots of land or even own their horses.46 However, because these men spent (and often lost) their lives conducting and confronting the day-to-day challenges of livestock handling, colonial vaqueros were instrumental actors in the development of a unique Mexican equestrian culture.

When Spanish missionaries and encomenderos introduced livestock enterprises and ranching in New Spain, they brought with them with a tradition that already featured mounted herdsmen tending to large herds in open pastures.47 These herdsmen depended primarily on

44 Richard W. Slatta, Cowboys of the Americas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 212.

45 There were exceptions to this rule in the north where the conditions of constant Indian fighting opened opportunities for social advancement and wealth creation. Closer to the center, however, vaqueros and peons were more subject to labor exploitation and debt slavery.

46 Slatta, Cowboys, 6.

47 See Charles Julian Bishko, “The Peninsular Background of Latin American Cattle Ranching” The Hispanic American Historical Review 32, no. 4 (November 1952).

23 barbed lances to conduct their work. In New Spain, the substantially more numerous herds and

wide swatches of untamed rangeland forced ranchers and cowboys to modify the equipment and

techniques required for ranch work.48 Colonial horsemen developed a saddle and bridle that

compromised between the short-stirrup jineta style which suspended the rider high upon the horse’s withers and the long-stirrup brida. These adjustments were designed to give riders greater comfort and control during open range work that required days in the saddle.49

Vaqueros additionally constructed their own clothing and equipment. Cuerudos (from cuera or hide), constructed rough work saddles, quirts (cuartas), rudimentary chaps

(chaparejos), hats, shoes, and most other elements of their attire using horse and cattle hides,

horse hair, and local plant materials such as the fibrous threads of the maguey plant (for durable

reatas or ropes). Many of their creations were unique contributions to the ranching culture they

had inherited from Spain. Vaqueros and rancheros devised a broad saddle tree to facilitate rope

work and reining maneuvers on the open range. They developed leather skirts, early forerunners,

of modern cowboy chaps, to protect their legs from thorns and brambles, and though lassoes

were not unfamiliar to herdsmen in the old world, the cowboys of New Spain and other

American possessions transformed reatas into indispensable work tools.50

Vaqueros further modified Spanish equestrian customs by introducing games and skills

grounded in the needs of their ranch labor. As early as the 1550s, European observers recorded

seeing rural horsemen practicing the risky and spectacular skill of bull-tailing or coleadero. The

horseman would speed after a fleeing bull, grasp the bull’s tail, and twisting the tail beneath his

48 Mullen Sands, Charrería Mexicana, 31.

49 Denhardt, Horses, 16 and 20.

50 Slatta, Cowboys, 88-90.

24 right leg while simultaneously wheeling his horse to the left, send the bull rolling onto its back.

On the range, bull-tailing permitted teams of horsemen to bring down fleeing animals for

procedures such as castration and branding. Vaqueros also trained their horses to rayar or come

to a speeding halt by dropping back on their haunches (thus reducing the likelihood of throwing

off their riders). This skill was especially crucial for vaqueros needing to avoid the horns of

terrified cattle, uneven terrain, or collisions with other horsemen during roundups. Unique and

intricate lasso work that was suitable for roping cattle and wild horses at longer distances also

became an important innovation.51

Though never economically powerful or influential, vaqueros developed a reputation for

great independence, courage, and tenacity. In rural festivals and seasonal events such as

herraderos (branding festivals) and capaderos (the sorting and castration of steer), they made

full use of the opportunity to show off their manly prowess and equestrian skills alongside men

of higher rank and circumstance. In regions where landowners and their sons remained active

administrators of their estates, hacendados could be found bull-tailing and racing after cattle alongside estate administrators, foremen, and common vaqueros, all driven by a common desire to display their strength and bravery and to enhance their reputations as “real” men. Skillful and courageous displays could additionally provide vaqueros with the chance of courting greater pay and higher-ranking jobs from prospective employers. 52

By the late colonial period, skilled horsemen could be found in all social groups and

ranks of Mexican society, but no one would have ignored the economic and social chasms that

51 Ibid, 86 and 129-130.

52 Slatta, Cowboys, 141. See also Olga Nájera-Ramírez, "Engendering Nationalism: Identity, Discourse, and the Mexican Charro." Anthropological Quarterly 67, no. 1 (January 1994), 3. And Alonso, Thread of Blood, 100.

25 divided these different equestrian actors. 53 Independent ranchers and close intermediate rural

actors such as muleteers could be virtually indistinguishable from poor cowboys in appearance.

The rural poor, however, depended on their more powerful patrons and bosses to provide the

horses, agricultural and ranching tools, and weapons required to work and survive on livestock

and agricultural estates. With greater financial solvency granted by their small independent

properties and mule train enterprises, rancheros and muleteers could at least own their own

horses and have independent access to weapons and riding equipment.54 Large estate owners,

hacendados, on the other hand, would have been immediately identifiable by the higher quality

fabrics of their equestrian attire, by the spectacle of silver and gold embossed saddles and

bridles, and the quality of their pure-blooded horses.55 Hacendados were distinguishable from

urban caballeros, who sustained a greater tendency to look to the Iberian peninsula for fashion

cues. For the colony’s urban elite, to affect even a refined appearance of the homegrown

ranchero or vaquero populations remained unthinkable. Still, times were changing.

By the end of a tempestuous insurgent decade in the 1810s, elite creoles, Americanos,

united forces with popular insurgents to demand complete political and social independence from

Spain. With victory secured, one of the most visible manifestations of Americanos’ desire to

53 Mullen Sands, Charrería Mexicana, 32. Slatta, Cowboys, 43.

54 Slatta, Cowboys, 136.

55 Anglo and Mexican historians of colonial Mexico have very convincingly established that the owners of colonial haciendas and ranchos, men that modern charros conceive of as historical progenitors of charrería, were commercially innovative, capitalist entrepreneurs who looked upon their lands and stockyards as avenues of wealth and profit. Colonial hacendados have been described as “economically capitalist but socially seigneurial” actors whose keen oversight and profit-making activities transformed agriculture and ranching into pillars of the entire colonial economic system, and though hacendados had distanced themselves from performing an active managerial role in their estates by the early 19th century, the combined enterprise of this social group maintained wealth in the Mexican state treasuries for most of four centuries. For an overview of the historiography on Mexican haciendas, see Eric Van Young, “Waves and Ripples: Studies of the Mexican Hacienda since 1980,” in Writing Mexican History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 21-52.

26 carve out a unique Mexican identity for the new republic came in the form of elite, urban

horsemen adopting finely-made versions of the costume worn by vaqueros and rancheros.56

Insurgent Horsemen in Independent Mexico

By the end of the 18th century, New Spain belonged to a Spanish Bourbon empire

immersed in modernizing reforms. Bourbon monarchs sought to expand the crown’s supervision

of colonial affairs, reduce the bureaucratic participation of American creoles, and increase the

revenues flowing from the colonies to the imperial treasury. In addition to the issues raised by

these reforms, the colony struggled with other serious problems. A tiny number of creole and

Iberian elites controlled the majority of land in New Spain. The rich, the poor, and the castas

benefitted (or suffered) very unequally under the rule of a corrupt colonial administration.

Tensions between religious and state authorities also grew worse. When an empire-building

Napoleon Bonaparte succeeded in removing the young Ferdinand VII from his throne in 1807,

Spain’s colonies were thrown into disarray, and a series of popular insurgent leaders beginning

with Father Miguel Hidalgo in 1810, took the opportunity to demand autonomy from the corrupt

imperial apparatus. For more than ten years, distinct bands of insurgent forces battled royal

armies led by creoles and peninsulares loyal to the crown. Mexican insurgents were finally able

to secure the independence of the colony when they accepted an invitation to join forces with the

elite creole officer Agustín de Iturbide in 1820.57

The newborn country by no means experienced a quick transition to peace, civil order,

and economic stability. More than half a century of political violence and relentless civil wars

56 The costumbrista writer Domingo Revilla noted in his essay “El Ranchero” (1844) that it was not until the early 19th century that it became fashionable for city horsemen to dress in the costume of rancheros and hacendados.

57 For an overview of the Mexican Wars for Independence see Jaime E. Rodríguez O. “We are now the true Spaniards”: sovereignty, revolution, independence, and the emergence of the Federal Republic of Mexico, 1808- 1824” (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).

27 followed, marked by two foreign invasions and the ceaseless insurgencies of regional strongmen

known as caudillos. Men on horseback played central military and criminal roles in the midst of this turmoil. Horses and premodern war went together making political protagonists of men on horseback.

Beginning with the popular insurgency of 1810, rancheros and hacienda employees developed reputations as skilled warriors and fearsome guerrilla strategists. Having issued his famous grito against the abuses of Spanish colonial authorities, Father Miguel Hidalgo expanded his ranks by recruiting individuals skilled in the management of men. Hacienda foremen, parish priests, and miners’ spokesmen became key military leaders, irregular commanders, and political ideologists within Hidalgo and later José María Morelos’ insurrectionary movement.58 Hacienda

foremen such as the Salamanca, Guanajuato native, Albino García were crucial actors in the first

stages of the independence insurgency because they were able to recruit fighters from the estates

they oversaw, and they had intimate knowledge of the regions through which Hidalgo’s fighters

blazed a trail of destruction. García, an expert vaquero and horse-breaker, had made a living for

years selling estate products throughout the region of the Bajío, and on the side, engaging in a

profitable contraband trade of tobacco and gunpowder, both products held under royal

monopolies. Extensive travel in his capacities as work-foreman and contrabandist enabled García

to build an extensive network of fellow overseers and estate managers. García used this network

to gather a band of fighters to join Hidalgo only ten days after the Grito de Dolores and to keep a

58 Brian R. Hamnett, Roots of Insurgency: Mexican Regions, 1750-1824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 125.

28 smaller insurgent band going for several years even after Hidalgo himself had been captured and executed in the summer of 1811.59

Miguel Hidalgo and his successor to the south José María Morelos recruited economic and military support by courting the loyalty of regional caciques and powerful ranchero clans.

Emissaries representing Hidalgo, for instance, were able to recruit supporters throughout the northern sierra of Puebla by gaining the backing of the Osorno family. This powerful clan of rancheros exercised great influence over a wide network of relatives and associates. The Osorno clan provided the insurgency with leadership as well as horses and supplies produced in ranchos and haciendas throughout the region of the Llanos de Apan.60

To the south in the costa grande of the eventual state of Guerrero, José María Morelos, tasked by Hidalgo with the expansion of the insurgency’s military front, inserted himself into the local structures of power by allying with the Galeana family. The Galeana, though marginal to the power holders closer to the center of the viceroyalty, were the dominant clan in their locality.

They owned a series of ranchos and cotton-producing estates in the costa grande, and they held political and economic sway over isolated lowland communities where the influence of Mexico

City officials mattered little. The Galeana clan’s support was crucial for Morelos, and with their help and fighting power and a large number of horses, he sustained an insurgent movement in the tierra caliente for five campaigns that stretched between October of 1810 and January of 1814.61

In addition to these adherents of the Hidalgo and Morelos insurgencies, numerous independent chieftains operated with great impunity throughout the countryside. Driven by local

59 Hamnett, Roots, 125.

60 Hamnett claims that the Osorno clan was composed of thugs and criminals who joined the insurgency to extend their field of operations and influence. Hamnett, 141.

61 Ibid, 143-146.

29 objectives rather than devotion to the larger ideological cause of independence, these bands of

mounted rural fighters oscillated between adherence to the insurgent cause and the royalist

reaction depending on their needs. These chieftains cemented in the colony what historian Brian

Hamnett calls the “rule of force,” a tradition of naked power in which charismatic provincial

caciques cultivated large followings through patronage and the sheer force of their leadership.

This “rule of force” would continue after Independence, in the form of powerful caudillos,

regional warlords who competed against civilian efforts to govern through constitutional legality

and democratic institutions.62 Provincial chieftains, most infamously Antonio López de Santa

Anna of Veracruz, led forces usually drawn from populations of rancheros, hacienda workers,

Indian villages, or mining communities who depended on their caudillo for employment, land

concessions, or protections from harmful government decrees. 63 Armed with such forces, caudillos advanced their personal interests and political imperatives during Mexico’s first half century of independence, including a U.S. military invasion (1846-48), the Wars of the Reforma

(1857-1861), and the French Intervention of 1861-1867. With their fighting power and military equestrian prowess laid bare during the wars for independence, no politician or ideologue would advance without the support of provincial chieftains and their rural cavalries.

The republic’s new politically potent men on horseback had ambiguous political loyalties and an equally ambiguous position between order and lawlessness. Their exploits and shifting relationship with the nascent Mexican state and public order inevitably left a profound impression on the post-independence popular imagination. In travel narratives, lithograph collections, and costumbrista texts, European and Mexican observers recorded impressions

62 Ibid, 179.

63 See Will Fowler, Santa Anna of Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 88-89.

30 which suggested that whether engaged in lawful or deviant activities, Mexican horsemen were

men of power, agency, and fierce independence, at times to be admired and emulated and at

others to be feared and repudiated.

Literary Portraits of Horsemen and the New Nation

Foreign travelers did not wait long to arrive on the shores of the newly independent

Mexico. They came in small numbers—adventurers, prospectors, and curiosity-seekers venturing into a mysterious and virgin economic territory long kept mostly closed to all but those loyal to the Spanish monarchy. What these men and women noted upon arrival was a country badly in need of structural development and effective state governance but one not devoid of cultural charms and picturesque curiosities. Mexican horsemen and ranchers were frequent topics of discussion, and they elicited in foreign observers the combined admiration and disapproval which frequently characterized their feelings for the larger society.

In Mexico City and larger settlements, the richly adorned dress and saddles of gentlemen, variously identified as cavalieurs, paysanos, dandies, or caballeros, inevitably caught the attention of foreign visitors. The English showman and prospector, William Bullock noted in

1824 that, “the dress of the country gentlemen, or paysanos, is showy and expensive; and, when mounted on their handsome and spirited little horses, they make an elegant appearance.”64 These

“country gentlemen” boasted luxurious saddles and spurs worked in heavy quantities of silver and gold, and they provided a daily afternoon spectacle, cantering up and down the lengths of

64 W. Bullock, Six months residence and travels in Mexico: containing remarks on the present state of New Spain, its natural productions, state of society, manufactures, trade, agriculture and antiquities, &c. (London: J. Murray, 1824), 170.

31 Mexico City’s most fashionable paseos displaying “their persons and equestrian skill to

advantage.”65

Only a few years later in 1828, the Italian lithographer and printer Claudio Linati

published a vivid illustration, Hacendado: criollo propietario, that captured the “showy”

spectacle of the rural Mexican dandy. Attired in embroidered deerskin breeches and short jacket

with a fine undershirt of cotton, rows of winking metal buttons lining the sides of his legs, an

elaborate manga or cape lined with velvet and lace over one shoulder, and an exotic llama-skin hat crowning his head, Linati’s Hacendado was introduced to European readers as an “opulent campesino” who had overcome a faulty and enervating colonial education to free his country of

Spanish tyranny.66 Linati, who had arrived to Mexico in 1825 with an extensive history of

involvement in liberal anti-government conspiracies, felt great sympathy for the cause of

Mexican Independence, and in his inventory of Mexican types (tipos mexicanos), Civil, Military

and Religious Costumes of Mexico, he illustrated a variety of equestrian actors he credited with

the achievement of liberty.67

In the print, Criollo tirando lazo, Linati further showcased a stout-hearted ranchero

evading the shots of royalist infantrymen while lassoing one of their companions to the ground.

Linati declared this “simple inhabitant of the countryside” a hero, observing that pure duty to his

patria compelled fearless exploits against the royalist enemy:

Heart ablaze with just indignation, he does not count the enemies nor pause to consider his arsenal. The reata with which he customarily tames wild bulls will be sufficient. His mount of noble Andalusian heritage devours the ground as if comprehending his mission. And then he is facing the enemy. He lassoes a leader from among them and drags the

65 Bullock, Six months, 217.

66 Claudio Linati, Trajes Civiles, Militares y Religiosos de México (México: Imprenta Universitaria, 1828), 74.

67 Linati, Trajes, 19.

32 captive towards his own fellows. In vain, shots whistle past his ears…His reckless valor has been rewarded…Content with having paid his dues to the patria, he retires to his humble rancho and encourages the youths who listen to his tales to follow his example.68

Linati emphasized that Mexico was a land of staunch and militant horsemen. He depicted a

sinewy Apache chief from the northern frontier and Afro-Mexican dragoons from the southern

coastlands sitting confidently astride fleet horses and even an armed and stalwart Mercedarian

friar conducting his missionary visits on horseback.69 In the countryside, Linati claimed, everyone from the richest “property owner” to the humblest “shepherd” conducted even the smallest of tasks while riding astride their “faithful steeds.” It was this constant dependence on the horse, Linati further claimed, that had made the Mexican cavalry superior to that of the

Spanish forces during the armed encounters of the insurgent decade.

Linati’s assertions oversimplified and romanticized the role and motivations of Mexican actors in the war for independence, but he did still capture (and likely helped inspire) the fascination that many a subsequent foreigner would convey in their descriptions of the Mexican people and their horsemen. The sartorial spectacle of luxuriously-outfitted and equipped urban caballeros rarely failed to inspire a reaction. In fact, another foreign visitor, the British mountaineer Charles Joseph Latrobe, had been so impressed by the equestrian vanity on display during his visits to the paseos of Mexico City in 1836 that he had refrained from promenading

68 Ibid, 91.

69 Edward Tylor later echoed Linati’s description of the monk on horseback. He wrote in 1851, “I shall not soon forget the jaunty young monk we saw at Tezcuco, just setting out for a country festival, mounted on a splendid little horse, with his frock tucked up, and a pair of hairy goat-skin chaparreras underneath a broad Mexican hat, a pair of monstrous silver spurs, and a very large cigar in his mouth. The girls came out of the cottage doors to look at him, as he made the fiery little beast curvet and prance along the road; and he was evidently not insensible to the looks of admiration of these young ladies, as they muffled up their faces in their blue rebozos and looked at him through the narrow opening.” See Edward B. Tylor, Anahuac: or, Mexico and the Mexicans, ancient and modern (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861), 205-206.

33 alongside Mexican dandies for fear of the poor showing he would have made while mounted on

Pinto, “one of the shabbiest steeds in the city to look at.” 70

The native range work and skills of rural horsemen also generated great admiration. The

English prospector Mark Beaufoy wrote in 1828 that he had been “gratified” to observe the feats performed by Mexican creoles during a contest of bull-tailing or coleadero. 71 Frances Calderón de la Barca, wife of the Spanish ambassador assigned to Mexico between 1837 and 1841, also wrote in glowing terms of the men she had observed during a coleadero. Acknowledging that the sport was dangerous and too frequently practiced by boys of a very young age, she still commended the tradition for its “notable lack of blood and cruelty,” particularly in comparison to the bullfights she had witnessed in Mexico City. She further credited the coleadero for being the source of an impressive rural manliness: “Such sports…which are mere games of skill, trials of address- are manly and strengthening, and help to keep up the physical superiority of that fine race of men- the Mexican rancheros.”72 For Calderón de la Barca and other foreign visitors, rural horsemen were among the most impressive and intriguing characters to be found in independent Mexico.

For some travelers and European ex-patriots, Mexican customs of dress and horsemanship proved to be too appealing to forego some firsthand experience. The anthropologist Edward Tylor, who visited the country in 1851, detailed an afternoon of equestrian socializing in which “foreigners were fully represented” among the horsemen.

70 Charles Joseph Latrobe, The Rambler in Mexico (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1836), 113.

71 Mark Beaufoy, Mexican illustrations founded upon facts; indicative of the present condition of society, manners, religion, and morals, among the Spanish and native inhabitants of Mexico: with observations upon the government and resources of the republic of Mexico, as they appeared during part of the years 1825, 1826, and 1827. Interspersed with occasional remarks upon the climate, produce, and antiquities of the country, mode of working the mines, &c. (London: Carpentar and Son, 1828), 244.

72 Frances Calderón de la Barca, Life in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 482-483.

34 According to Tylor, the European visitors “generally adopted the high-peaked saddle, and the jacket, and broad-brimmed felt hat of the country, and looked as though the new arrangements quite suited them.” The “native dandies,” however, “were prone to dressing in European fashion, and sitting upon English saddles—in which they looked neither secure nor comfortable.” 73 Tylor also described the exploits of a companion who became enamored with the coleadero:

Though an Englishman, and only arrived in the country a few years before, Don Juan was as clever with the lazo as most Mexicans, and could colear a bull in great style…Our whole ride to Tisapan was enlivened by a series of Don Juan’s exploits. He raced after bulls, got hold of their tails, and coleared (sic) them over into the dust. He lazo’d everything in the road from milestones and trunks of trees upwards.74

Even as travel accounts whetted European and American readers with details of Mexico’s colorful horsemen and equestrian traditions, a local cadre of costumbrista writers began turning their efforts to celebrating the home-grown customs and unique character of rancheros. Mexican scholar María Esther Pérez Salas has noted that costumbrismo, a body of literature with associated print and plastic art traditions, centered on “rescuing,” revalorizing, and often cataloguing folk characters and customs for purposes of outlining the basic cultural elements of a unique national identity. Costumbrismo, though influenced by earlier picaresque literature and

European folk print traditions, was not represented by a defined corpus of writings, authors, or genre characteristics until the three stages of publication that took place between 1841 and 1858 in Mexico City.75

Many of the costumbrista texts published during this era were authored by middle to upper class letrados and urban professionals who demonstrated an interest in exploring the

73 Tylor, Anáhuac, 65.

74 Tylor, 253-254.

75 María Esther Pérez Salas, Costumbrismo y litografía en México: un nuevo modo de ver (México, D.F.: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 2005), 194-198.

35 cultural divides between Mexican elites and under class tipos as well as the divisions between rural and urban social actors. In a tone not unlike that of foreign travel writers, the early costumbrista works of Manuel Payno, Domingo Revilla, José María Rivera, and other authors provided affluent, urbane readers with a taste of the rural and marginal ‘exotic’ all while enticing them to find beauty and charm in the customs of the country’s most politically and economically marginalized peoples. Under the pen of these writers, ranchers and horsemen appeared as rustic ingénues who nonetheless demonstrated astounding physical strength, brazenness, and courage due to lives that were far removed from the excesses and social constraints of city life.

Availing himself of elite literary platforms such as the monthly revista El museo mexicano: ó miscelanea pintoresca de amenidades, curiosa é instructiva published between

1843 and 1845, Manuel Payno, journalist and a career government bureaucrat through the second half of the 19th century, circulated florid paeans of the rural Mexican landscape and its striking rancheros to (at least nominally) increase the interest and adulation of fellow artistes. In Cacería de venados en Orizava, an 1843 short essay accompanied by a minutely-detailed and dynamic illustration, Payno transported readers to the scene of an intrepid deer hunt, promising a refreshing and unanticipated spectacle. “Look! Look!” he demanded “That is no pack of greyhounds or party of English horses with scarlet-jacketed jockeys in black oilcloth caps.”

Instead, rounding the trail at the foot of the hill was a party of rancheros with small, docile, but highly intelligent horses, whose saddles were “heavy though engraved, adorned with silver, secure and highly suited to the demands of the range.” Payno observed that the party “flashed past,” its quarry, an “innocent and unlucky deer,” fated to fall helpless before the rancheros’ two

“terrible agents”—their horses and their lassoes. Descending from the heights of his literary ecstasy, Payno concluded the piece by calling for more artists to “paint these scenes that hold so

36 much simplicity and innocence, of the sublime and the savage.” Fame and fortune, Payno

promised, would follow the person who captured Mexico’s “sapphire sky” and the “singular

customs of new nations.”76

Domingo Revilla, a contemporary of Manuel Payno and also regular contributor to the

literary revista El museo mexicano, wrote even more extensively about rancheros and their way of life. Published between 1844 and 1846, Revilla’s short essays and semi-fictional pieces offered an ‘inside’ perspective from a man who claimed personal childhood and young adult experiences on ranchos and estates and who often signed off with the names of haciendas located in Hidalgo, Puebla, and the Central Valley of Mexico. Revilla regaled readers with minutely- detailed accounts of ranchero weddings, ranchero rites of baptism and compadrazgo, branding festivals (herraderos) and bull-tailing competitions (coleaderos), and even the planning and execution of a norteño wolf hunt. Two related themes appeared consistently in Revilla’s work.

First, Revilla demonstrated a tendency to construct the ranchero as a romantic, patriotic, and spiritually noble character. Revilla carefully distinguished rancheros from other classes of rural actors who lived from agriculture and stock-raising. Rancheros were always “avowed practitioners of horsemanship,” and men who seemed “incomplete” and “bereft” without a horse bearing their weight from beneath. Additionally, nothing stirred the passions of a ranchero as much as the activities they called travesear con los animales. Rancheros would spend hours without pause or attention to their worn out bodies and horses, bull-tailing and lassoing fleeing livestock, driven only by an obsessive pleasure that “bordered on vice”. Because they derived such deep pleasure from the rituals of stock-raising, and their lives were so intimately connected to the management of lands far removed from the “corruption and “noise” of large settlements,

76 Manuel Payno, "Cacería de Venados en Orizava." El museo mexicano o miscelánea pintoresca de amenidades curiosas e instructivas 1 (1843): 516-19.

37 rancheros were imbued with a “purity of spirit” and attachment to place that made their hearts a

“fertile home for the seeds of patriotic love.” Still, according to Revilla, rancheros were “simple”

and “credulous” folk who too easily fell victim to the spiritual and economic exploitation of

priests. Their great capacity for courage, physical endurance, and loyalty also turned them into a

favored source of military power for government representatives and caudillos.77

Revilla’s work also evinced concern for nurturing an urban Mexican audience that was

curious and receptive to the countryside as a source of traditions. “If you wish to witness the

most diverting and varied country scenes,” declared Revilla to readers, “get yourself to a

hacienda,” where he promised that visitors would enjoy “thrilling” and “moving” rural tableaus,

and they would get to see the expert horsemanship of Mexican hombres del campo who had no

match in the horsemen of Andalusia, England, or Russia.78

Revilla also indicated that ranchero activities like the coleadero were becoming far too

common and popular for him not to “say something” about country actors and their lifestyles.79

Wondering whether the inspiration was recreation or vanity, Revilla revealed that it was “in

fashion” among young urban men to dress and fashion reputations as “long-suffering, valiant,

and determined” hombres de a caballo, a development he was all too happy to encourage since it

suggested that a proud home-grown “equestrian spirit” was taking root in 1830s-40s Mexico.80

Moreover, without his readers’ support and interest in the customs of cattle ranchers and the stock trade, Revilla indicated that the country would lose the most valuable national

77 Domingo Revilla, "Los Rancheros." El museo mexicano: ó miscelánea pintoresca de amenidades, curiosa é instructiva 3 (1844): 551-59.

78 Domingo Revilla, "Los Herraderos." Revista científica y literaria de Méjico 1 (1845), 249.

79 Domingo Revilla, "Un coleadero." Revista científica y literaria de Méjico 2 (1846), 243.

80 Revilla, “Los Rancheros”, 559. Revilla, “Un coleadero”, 243.

38 resources of its northern grazing regions. At the time of Revilla’s writing, “bloodthirsty” and

“astute” Indian raiders with the aid (or passive complicity) of North American settlers were

busily decimating the livestock and property of northern Mexican ranchers. Revilla appealed to

readers’ patriotic consciences: “if we continue to remain indolent and apathetic to the plight of

our frontier communities, the magnificent droves of horses and cattle that form part of our

country’s patrimony will disappear… exterminating the principal wealth afforded by the

immense plains and ranges of the North.”81

Revilla’s descriptions focused on the more picturesque, heroic, and thrilling aspects of ranchero lives and customs, educating but also reinforcing to urban readers that rancheros were clear (though unthreatening) “Others”. Still, his rancheros could easily and safely be conceived as evidence of the charms of Mexican popular culture, and his work along with that of other costumbrista writers provided impetus for non-rural Mexicans to begin viewing rancheros as vessels of a unique national identity. When the seminal costumbrista text of the mid-19th century,

Los mexicanos pintados por si mismos, was serialized in 1854 and 1855, it became evident that

rancheros were fast becoming leading characters in the national tableau under construction.

Los mexicanos pintados por si mismos was a cultural text produced by cosmopolitan

urban artists and writers for the consumption of equally cosmopolitan and affluent readers. Its

sketches, which centered on diverse characters or tipos from the urban lower sectors (and only two rural actors), thus often took the form of pseudo-ethnographic tours into the heart of exotic places. The serial featured rancheros in two prominent ways- the cover image of the collection

portrayed a cluster of individuals beneath the words of the title, with one figure pointing at a

young china poblana and an elegantly-clad ranchero, as if to suggest who the Mexicanos were.

81 Revilla, “Los herraderos”, 253.

39 Rancheros also received their own character sketch courtesy of the writer José María Rivera. In

El ranchero, Rivera follows the comedic experiences of an unnamed narrator who, on accepting an invitation to tour the property and livelihood of a ranchero named Don Alonso, discovers how little prepared he is to handle life in the countryside.

Rivera’s sketch draws on ideas established by the earlier works of Payno and Revilla.

Following a harrowing moonlit journey on horseback, the narrator is gratified to take in the rustic simplicity of Don Alonso’s home, family, and culinary offerings. He tumbles into bed at a very early hour and awakens from a deep, refreshing sleep, declaring that “in that moment I began to comprehend the delights of the countryside, and I understood that no one is happier in this world than the ranchero.” Much like Revilla’s ranchero, Don Alonso was declared to be an “ingenuous, candid, and unswervingly modest” man. But, just as Revilla’s characters could direct a truly impressive wit at hapless targets to coerce them into attempting physical feats that were well beyond their abilities, Don Alonso was proficient at trapping the narrator into participating in comedic spectacles of honor. Most notably, near the end of the sketch, Don Alonso needled his guest into riding a bull before a packed audience of rancheros:

D. Alonso: - See here, what a pretty beast! He’s a lamb.

Narrator: -Very pretty, indeed. I refuse to ride him.

D. Alonso: - Oh! Alrighty then. My wife’ll jump on ‘em.

Narrator: -Don Alonso!

D. Alonso: - Yes, siree! You’ll see. Between now and Sunday, we’ll have ‘em ready for you to ride to mass. Git yourself going, Petronila! The young master wants that beast as tame as you!

40 Faced with the ignominy of seeing his host’s wife tame the bull in his place, the narrator mounts

the aptly named El Tumba Calzones, and promptly goes flying through the air, landing with a

hole in the rear end of his trousers and a very sore head.82

Rivera’s comic short story was accompanied by a lithograph. In the portrait, the ranchero stood clad in simple work attire, sarape, and lasso, with a frank and direct gaze turned to his right, as another horseman and his own horse posed behind him. The illustration exuded a quiet dignity and stoicism not entirely matched by Rivera’s jovial and gregarious Don Alonso, though neither work detracted from the larger project of representing rancheros and their rural customs in a positive light. In their pursuit of the home-grown traditions and actors who could be said to constitute evidence of the country’s unique identity before a larger community of emerging modern nations, first generation costumbrista writers like Rivera, Payno, and Revilla engaged in a literary study and showcase of vernacular tipos, in the process highlighting the folk charms, patriotic acts, and admirable character traits of figures like the ranchero without unduly penetrating the historic class, ethnic, and geo-political divides that sustained a deeply hierarchical and fragmented ‘national’ community in the first place. These were works meant to inspire a colorful folk identity, not to encourage greater political and social equality between social groups. And though the lower orders depicted could boast charming, witty personalities and even be seen taking gleeful advantage of the hapless amos who wandered into their domains

(as was the case of Rivera’s narrator), these costumbrista texts and characters generally catered to a paternalistic and affluent reader whose sense of power and place was left unchallenged by any hint of unassailable power or threat in the tipos represented.

82 See Los mexicanos pintados por si mismos; obra escrita por una sociedad de literatos y reproducida en facsímil por la Biblioteca Nacional de México (México: Biblioteca Nacional y Estudios Neolitho, 1935).

41 Yet, however bucolic and ingenious early costumbrista writers sketched rancheros to be,

there remained a decidedly darker side to the culture of rural Mexican horsemen that could not

be ignored by the citizens and visitors of the midcentury.

Gentlemen or Criminals? Horsemen at the Boundaries of Law and Order

In the first four decades of nationhood, continual political uprisings or pronunciamientos, hindered the restoration of order and civic institutions that had been so heavily disrupted during the 1810s. The great military caudillo Antonio López de Santa Anna periodically raised armies under one political banner or another, always with the view of filling the power vacuums created by a weak central government. With an invading force of American troops entering the country in 1846 to force the sale of valuable northern Mexican territories to the United States, Mexicans saw their country continuously limping from one period of disarray to another. Impoverished

Indians, ranchers, farmers, and other rural folk often resorted to banditry and contraband in order to survive during an era of forced military recruitment and socio-economic instability.83 But

many highway gangs were led by white or mestizo figures belonging to more affluent

backgrounds. For this reason, many of the foreign travelers who left evidence of a deep

fascination with Mexico’s equestrian culture, also expressed an ambivalent sense that Mexican

caballeros as a whole could not fully be trusted.

The Englishman Mark Beaufoy remarked that during his stay between 1825 and 1827,

the robberies committed in the outskirts of Mexico City had been perpetrated by “gamblers of a

83 This was not a new development nor would it have been viewed as a dubious option. Many of the rancheros who joined forces with insurgent leaders ran profitable contraband operations in addition to their stock enterprises long before the wars for independence began. Colonial monopolies on tobacco and other products would have made the contraband trade a lucrative enterprise for those willing to run the risks of such operations. Indeed, some rancheros chose to spread the insurgent cause to places far removed from their home territories in the hopes of expanding their realms of economic and black market influence. Banditry seems to have always been an appealing activity for individuals experiencing economic downturns. Chris Frazer, Bandit Nation: a history of outlaws and cultural struggle in Mexico, 1810-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

42 higher order.” Working from hearsay, Beaufoy explained that a number of “officers” had successfully bribed their way out of a prison (presumably for theft) and had set forth almost immediately in a large “well-mounted” party to prey upon careless travelers. These men had been “dexterous with the lasso” and “excellent horsemen,” and they had entrapped victims even at distances of thirty or forty feet. With their quarries secured, the bandits would drag their victims to the ground, despoil them of riches and clothing, and “not infrequently” assassinate them.84

Beaufoy noted that shortly after he left Mexico in 1827, an Englishman had been assaulted while recreating the tour outlined by an earlier traveler writer. The Englishman had been lassoed roughly off his horse, and while his assailants stripped him of his possessions, a party of twenty Mexican gentlemen had ridden by the scene without interfering. Beaufoy concluded that the gentlemen had remained uninvolved because either one of two evils might have occurred: “either the Englishman would have got stabbed, or their brave countrymen would have lost their booty.”85 Beaufoy did not accuse the party of gentlemen of being directly involved with the criminals, but rather, of being somehow complicit in the existing culture of equestrian violence.

Frances Calderón de la Barca also recounted an incident that likewise suggested the porous divisions between bandits and caballeros. Repeating a tale shared by a close friend,

Calderón de la Barca observed that a gentleman had been by the office of the President of

Mexico to bid his farewells before a journey to Veracruz. While in the company of only the president and his aide-de-camp, the gentleman confided plans to carry a very large sum of money

84Beaufoy, Mexican illustrations, 74-76. Charles Joseph Latrobe provides a similar description of the threats presented by bandit horsemen. See Latrobe, Rambler, 210.

85Beaufoy, Mexican illustrations, 76.

43 hidden beneath the lining of a specially-designed trunk. The gentleman pronounced himself confident of arriving to his final destination with his belongings in tact because even if bandits were to assail his carriage, they would never be able to locate the carefully hidden funds. As it happened, however, shortly after the gentleman and his party had exited the gates of Mexico

City, their carriage was attacked, and the bandits singled out his special trunk, departing

“peaceably” as soon as they removed the hidden money. “It was a singular coincidence that the captain of the robbers, though somewhat disguised, bore a striking general resemblance to the president’s aide-de-camp!” exclaimed Calderón de la Barca. Wryly, she concluded, “These

coincidences will happen.”86

Far from being the lurid fabrication of genteel gossips, Calderón de la Barca’s account

described one of the exploits of the brazen military colonel Juan Yáñez, protégé and aide-de-

camp of General Antonio López de Santa Anna. In the spring of 1839, Yáñez had been arrested

and charged with a series of crimes dating back to 1830, including the armed robbery of nearly

30,000 pesos from a monastery’s coffers and the murder of the Swiss consul in Mexico City. The

military trial of Yáñez and his bandit cohorts dominated press accounts and captivated the

residents of Mexico City, staying in the popular memory for many years after Yáñez’ verdict and

execution. Much of the fascination stemmed from the fact that Yáñez had been a caballero who

circulated among the highest echelons of Mexican society and melded a life of courtly grace and

romance (he was reputedly involved with a lady of great wealth and political influence who tried

to bribe the judge overseeing his trial) with a side career in violence and banditry.87 Nor was

Yáñez the only individual who gave banditry a dashing allure to observers.

86 Calderón de la Barca, Life, 108.

87Paul J. Vanderwood, “Los bandidos de Payno” Historia Mexicana 44, no. 1 (July-Sept. 1994), 109.

44 The English soprano Anna Bishop recounted to a coterie of assistants and biographers

that while journeying through the Mexican countryside during a concert tour in 1848, she and her

party had been stopped by a band of well-mounted ladrones, one of whom in “a most

gentlemanly manner” had doffed his sombrero and addressed the diva with:

Señora, do not be alarmed; we do not intend to take from you your valuable bijoux, or your splendid costumes; we wish only to rob you of a song… We have heard of the fame you have won in the ‘Pasadita,’ and we are here for the sole purpose of respectfully asking you to favor us with that beautiful Mexican song.

The bandit claimed to have “had the pleasure” of seeing Bishop’s first concerts in Mexico City,

but the need to replenish purses emptied by excessive merry-making and gambling in the capital

had led him and his fellows to pursue “duties on the road” which prevented them from

witnessing the diva’s performance of the popular tune, “La Pasadita”. With bandits blocking the

road in all directions, the songstress acquiesced. Following her open-air performance, “the

caballeros” conducted Bishop to the coach with “infinite politeness” and following “many

fervent expressions” they “mounted their horses, and disappeared as they came, in a rapid

gallop.”88

Bishop’s travel account, ghost-written by a publicity team intent on expanding the diva’s celebrity and commercial success in an American market dominated by powerful entertainment impresarios like P.T. Barnum, no doubt exhibited great liberties with the basic facts of Bishop’s tour and experiences in Mexico.89 Still, that her writers chose to include an encounter with

gentlemen bandits speaks to the degree that Mexico as a nation had come to be associated with

its equestrian actors. Historian Paul J. Vanderwood has noted that even though criminals like

88 Travels of Anna Bishop in Mexico. 1849 (Philadelphia: Charles Deal, 1852), 286-290.

89 See Eric D. Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb: Charles Stratton, P.T. Barnum, and the Dawn of American Celebrity (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2013).

45 Yáñez were clearly proven to commit acts of unspeakable violence and menace, rumors of great

gentility, religious devotion, daring, and horsemanship all persisted to convince many a traveler

that if one was to fall victim to highway robbers, Mexican bandits were preferable to those of

other nations. Moreover, the tendency of foreign visitors to refer to bandits as caballeros not

only reflected great romanticism but the expectation that an encounter with gentlemen bandits

was one of the experiences that gave color to an adventure in Mexico.90 From early on then,

foreign expectations of the icons that constituted Mexico, dwelled on the figures of dashing if

deviant horsemen and helped cement them as leading symbols within an incipient nationalist

iconography.

Though Mexican writers had been affirming rancheros and rural horsemen as leading

representatives of vernacular Mexican traditions, it was not until the emergence of Luis G. Inclán

in the early 1860s that horsemen who thrived outside of the law were celebrated domestically as

representatives of an innate Mexican national character. Inclán, a printer and writer of popular

novelas de folletín (serial novels), operated outside of the circle of affluent costumbristas such as

Manuel Payno and Domingo Revilla. A life-long ranchero and hacienda administrator, Inclán had moved to Mexico City from the southern district of Tlalpan in the late 1840s to begin life anew after losing his rancho during the upheavals of the U.S.-Mexico War. Using his meagre savings, Inclán established a print shop from which he churned out religious picture cards, scatological comedies, training manuals, and popular epics penned by his own hand. Perhaps inspired by the growing interest in the rural arts described by Payno and Revilla in earlier publications, Inclán published a rural training manual directed at urban youths, Reglas con que un colegial puede colear y lazar (1860). He also composed and published a lengthy poem

90 Vanderwood, “Los Bandidos de Payno”, 111.

46 celebrating the intelligence and skills of a prized stallion, Recuerdos del Chamberín (1860).

Though never awarded much recognition by other writers of his generation, Inclán would eventually receive much posthumous acclaim for the novel Astucia, el jefe de Los Hermanos de la Hoja: O Los Charros Contrabandistas de la Rama: Novela historica de costumbres mexicanas, con episodios originales published in two volumes between 1865 and 1866.91

Astucia relates the exploits of Lorenzo Cabello, a rural merchant and muleteer who operated throughout the Quencio Valley of Michoacán. An honorable and virtuous charro,

Cabello, nonetheless, operated outside of the law, conducting an illegal trade in tobacco to evade the exploitative sales taxes imposed by corrupt alcabala officials. A humiliating betrayal by contacts to whom Cabello refused the payment of a bribe resulted in the discovery of his contraband trade, and Cabello went on the run from rural authorities, vowing to overthrow the tax system and officials who profited from the hard work of rural laborers and merchants. Under the name of Astucia, Cabello and a band of similarly disenchanted rancheros challenged the authority of government officials and rural civil guards through acts of social banditry and contraband, all while nurturing the loyalties of rural communities throughout the Quencio

Valley. Following the tragic defeat of his band (again due to a betrayal by a close comrade),

Cabello abandons his bandit lifestyle to enter political life. He becomes the jefe de seguridad pública of the Quencio Valley and almost single-handedly installs a scrupulously honest and efficient local government that runs on philosophy of his recently deceased bandit brothers, all for one and one for all. Inclán’s hero ends his days retired from public life, devoted to the leadership and prosperity of his rancho and family.

91 Margo Glantz, “Astucia de Luis G. Inclan, ¿Novela ‘Nacional’ Mexicana?” Revista Iberoamericana 63, no. 178- 179 (January-June 1997), 88-89.

47 Given Inclán’s evident desire to celebrate the costumbres and character of ranchero horsemen, it is perhaps surprising that his leading actors were agents who thrived outside of the law. Inclán had introduced his characters as “charros” who epitomized the “true Mexican character and the natural virtues of rancheros,” and he promised that readers would receive a faithful portrait of Mexican men who “through actions proved the sincerity, hospitality, disinterest, respect, true friendship, and usefulness that men can offer each other.”92 However, instead of limiting himself to accounts of colorful rural festivals, coleaderos, and horse races (as had been the tendency of elite costumbrista writers) to showcase the virtues of his characters,

Inclán placed honorable rancheros in comparison to greedy and corrupt representatives of state authority. Never openly critical of the tempestuous political climate of the midcentury, the novel’s characters, nonetheless, evinced Inclán’s knowledge of how rural communities had been negatively affected by the trickled down effects of disorder and corruption at the highest levels of the state. If his characters resorted to illicit activities, they did so with an aura of legitimacy that came from the need to seek justice before the injustices of a weak central government, and

Inclán emphasized throughout the novel that Astucia and his band enjoyed the respect and support of ranchero communities who saw in them, heroic benefactors. 93

Inclán’s characters, acting within the political microcosm of the Quencio Valley, showcased the rebellious potential and militant power of non-elite horsemen, reminding readers that whether for deviant or legal causes, rancheros (or charros as Inclán referred to them) were a potent force. Aging and struggling to make a living from the returns of his small Mexico City

92 Juan Pablo Dabove, “El bandido social mexicano, entre el bárbaro y el soberano ilustrado: El caso de ‘Astucia’ de Luis Inclán (Mexico, 1865)” Latin American Literary Review 33, no. 65 (January-June 2005), 50-51.

93 Ricardo Torres Miguel, “El charro contrabandista: la figura del bandido social en Astucia de Luis G. Inclan” Signos Históricos 24 (July-December 2010), 52.

48 print shop, Inclán undoubtedly channeled the desires and frustrations generated by the loss of his

rancho into a utopian tale of fearless, just, and heroic rancheros. As residents of a pre-industrial

land and a society continuously treated to the spectacle of bandits roaming the countryside, it

was logical for Inclán and his readers to conceive of and accept both their greatest villains and greatest heroes as masters of the horses that literally and figuratively moved their society.

Conclusion

From the very moment of the conquistadors’ arrival on Mexican shores, horses became

symbols of masculine power and status. These associations endured through the centuries of the

colony and the achievement of independence, leading foreign travelers and domestic nationalist

writers to see in rancheros, rural men on horseback, the personification of the characteristics and

ambiguities of independent Mexico. By the mid-19th century, horsemen had taken hold in the

popular imagination as some of the greatest icons and villains to be found in a perpetually war-

torn, pre-industrial, and still predominantly rural Mexico; their physical prowess, martial

abilities, and fierce predisposition towards independent action and livelihoods rendering them

powerful, intriguing, but also politically and morally-ambiguous figures.

With the achievement of greater political stability and the introduction of new forms of

transportation technology in the latter half of the 19th century, Mexico began to shed some of the

social and economic conditions that had sustained a militant and independent popular equestrian

culture. Yet, as the following chapter will discuss, rural men on horseback by no means ceased to

be powerful or evocative cultural figures. Under the rule of the triumphant caudillo Porfirio Díaz,

Mexico entered a phase of long-delayed modernization and openness to foreign cultural and

economic influences that seemed to challenge the place of vernacular equestrian traditions and

horsemen. In fact, however, the image and customs of rural horsemen retained as much

49 relevance as ever with Mexicans of diverse backgrounds and situations demonstrating that they found equestrian customs useful for more successfully navigating the social and economic limitations of their Porfirian lives.

50 CHAPTER 2: RANCHEROS IN PORFIRIAN MEXICO

Introduction

The consolidation of a positivist state regime, technological and transportation revolutions, the rise of major export markets, and the growing presence of foreign cultural imports and communities all brought great changes to Mexico in the final two decades of the 19th century. The testimony of the British travel writer Ethel Alec Tweedie, who toured Mexico in

1900 reflects the spirit of transformation sweeping through the country, and she paints a troubled state of affairs for rural horsemen and vernacular equestrian customs.

What Tweedie grew to admire and regret the most about her stay in Mexico was the familiarity she found in the customs of the respectable upper classes, the gente decente. During a social visit to the residence of President Porfirio Díaz, Tweedie learned through conversation with the First Lady, Doña Carmen Romero Rubio de Díaz, that although the president occasionally chose to wear the national “riding outfit” on outdoors excursions, the costume was considered out of fashion among their circle. Drawn to the picturesque appearance of rural horsemen, Tweedie lamented that “soon there will be no special manners, customs or dress left.

We shall all be exactly alike. National individuality is rapidly disappearing.”94 Tweedie’s friendship with leading families allowed her to observe first hand that the sons of affluent

Mexicans were educated at English boarding schools, dressed in “jack tar suits,” and learned to ride on English saddles, eventually graduating to corduroy breeches and high boots. Tweedie thus believed that the “death knell of the native saddle and dress [was] already tolling.” Only in

94 Mrs. Alec Tweedie, Mexico as I saw it (London: Hurst and Blackett, Limited) 1901, 135

51 distant “feudal” country estates where hacendados lived as “small kings” did Tweedie feel that

she could still find some of the old-world romance and chivalry that had drawn her, like so many

foreign visitors before her, to Mexico.95

Tweedie’s disappointed musings on her genteel hosts’ lack of interest in vernacular riding customs reflect the cultural shifts that had taken place among affluent Mexicans in late 19th century Mexico. By the time Tweedie arrived, middle and upper class Mexicans were interested in conveying the progress and civilization of their country through the enthusiastic pursuit of

European and north American fashions and leisure activities. With the emergence of a Euro and

Anglophile “Porfirian Persuasion,” the vogue for promenading in lavish ranchero-inspired regalia or of displaying expertise at the coleadero before eager foreign travelers, fell out of fashion among urban, upper class Mexicans.96

Yet, as this chapter will discuss, interest in rural equestrian customs from the ‘Old’

Mexico of the years before the Porfiriato still managed to co-exist with the ‘progress’ of

Porfirian era. Section one will begin by discussing the processes of political centralization and

modernization that took place under the long presidency of the Oaxacan caudillo Porfirio Díaz

(1876-1911). Sections two through five will then present four case studies of ranchero or charro

actors from the Porfiriato. A wealthy and well-connected dandy, a cross-dressing adventurer

from Spain, a transnational charro entertainer, and (the most infamous enforcers of Porfirian

state authority) the rurales all help demonstrate that the image and customs of rural men on

horseback retained broad cultural value and resonance for Porfirian Mexicans.

95 Tweedie, Mexico, 338-342.

96 For an extended discussion of the rising “Porfirian Persuasion” for most things foreign see William Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club and other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987).

52 Porfirian state leaders and their most loyal adherents battled to transform Mexico into a modern, capitalist, and technologically-developed country in the model of other great western nations, but even so, local equestrian traditions from Mexico’s rural, and war-torn past remained important and meaningful tools. Because of their continuing associations with ideas of manly prowess, independence, and relevance, ranchero attire and equestrian customs were used by diverse Mexicans to more successfully navigate class, gender, and other forms of social limitations in a country that was modernizing very unevenly.

Progress and Order in Porfirian Mexico

In 1876, a successful military coup against the incumbent liberal president Sebastian

Lerdo de Tejada, brought the Oaxacan strongman Porfirio Díaz to the presidency of Mexico.

Aided by a coterie of scientifically-minded advisors, Díaz brought to life a powerful new state regime that prioritized the pursuit of progress and order. The new administration made economic development and state centralization its leadings priorities, and Díaz understood that for Mexico to finally experience ‘progress’, the country had to be pacified and its regional markets connected to the broader world economy.

Serious obstacles stood in the way of these goals, however. Decades of civil war and political strife had left the national treasury bankrupt, public infrastructure and transportations systems worse than in the colonial era, and foreign creditors wary of taking a risk with loans and investments in Mexico. Bandits threatened travelers on all major thoroughfares, and in some places, they operated nearly autonomous fiefdoms. Caudillismo more broadly remained the leading pattern of regional politics and rule with local powerholders prioritizing local claims and

53 interests over any mandated by outside and national authorities. In the face of such difficulties,

Porfirian officials doubled down on the consolidation of central authority.97

In the main, what Díaz did was to quell competing forces from the municipal to the

national levels through a dual state-building strategy colloquially understood as pan y palo. The

pan involved the creation of strategic client relationships and behind-the-doors manipulation of the Mexican electoral process. Díaz offered leading government posts to powerful regional leaders who gave him their loyalty and subordination in return. Wealthy provincial landholders, always suspicious of national leaders who attempted any oversight of their affairs, were courted through increased access to prime real-estate and investment opportunities. Díaz also ceased a decades-long liberal assault on the Catholic Church by leaving unenforced constitutional mandates that curtailed the Church’s power and wealth.98 Finally, despite being an avowed “no

re-electionist" in the early years of his political career, Díaz used his political influence to change

the Mexican Constitution of 1857 to permit repeat administrations. With the exception of a four

year interregnum between 1880 and1884, a well-greased political machine ensured that Díaz would be continuously reelected over any challengers that might appear.99

The palo was, of course, simple brute force. The Porfirian government invested nearly

half of its national budget on reforms intended to make the army more effective both internally

and on the field. It also directed updates for rural and urban police forces. With its updated army

97 For a general overview of the Porfirian administration, see Daniel Cosío Villegas, “El porfiriato: era de consolidación,” Historia Mexicana 13, no. 1 (July 1963) and Cosío Villegas’ two volume overview of domestic politics during the Porfiriato, volume 8 “La vida política interior, primera parte” and volume 9 “La vida política interior, segunda parte” in Historia Moderna de México. Editorial Hermes, 1955. See also Paul Garner, Porfirio Díaz, Harlo, England: Longman, 2001.

98 Garner, Porfirio Díaz, 117.

99See Don M. Coerver, The Porfirian interregnum: the presidency of Manuel González of Mexico, 1880-1884 (Forth Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press, 1979). See also “Elections and Reelections” in Garner, Porfirio Díaz, 102-106.

54 and auxiliary police forces, the Díaz administration violently imposed its authority wherever the tactics of political compromise and patron-client relations were inadequate or insufficient.100

Targets of the state’s martial response included a broad swathe of civilians involved in criminal

activities or who were simply labeled as ‘criminal’ for rejecting reforms, legislation, and/or

officials from the metropole. With improved weapons, training, and a very liberal application of

the Ley Fuga, the Porfirian army and rural police brought highwaymen and banditry under

control. The Porfirian army also carried out famously repressive campaigns against the

millenarian serrano fighters of Tomóchic in Chihuahua and defiant Yaqui and Mayo Indians in

other parts of northern Mexico. In the south, the national army battled ethnic Mayas for years

before the establishment of a police state in Yucatan finally brought Mayan communities under

some control.101 Industrial workers and urban disturbers of the peace were just as subject to

martial authority. Díaz’s mounted policemen, the rurales, became infamous for trampling

striking laborers at the Cananea copper mine in Sonora and the Río Blanco textile factory in

Veracruz. Whenever crowds in the capital became too raucous after a bullfight or some similar

popular entertainment gone wrong, the rurales were among the first enforcers to appear on the

100 See Stephen Neufeld, “Military and Nation in Mexico, 1821-1916,” in A companion to Mexican history and culture, ed. William H. Beezley (Chichester, West Sussex; Marlton, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.)

101 Tomochitecos had lost substantial property under Porfirian land laws and struggled to convert to the cash-only economies pushed by the state. See “The Revolt that Shook Chihuahua” in Friedrick Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 21-26 and Paul Vanderwood, The Power of God against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the turn of the nineteenth century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998). On Mayan resistance in Yucatan see Don E. Dumond, The Machete and the Cross: Campesino Rebellion in Yucatan (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1997) and Nelson A. Reed, The Caste War of Yucatán (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). On the Yaqui in northern Mexico see Evelyn Hu-de Hart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for Land and Autonomy, 1821-1910 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984).

55 scene.102 Whether through negotiated compliance or through force, the Díaz administration expected all Mexicans to fall in line with its prerogatives of order and progress.

Though the process of establishing “order” was frequently unjust and brutal, the centralizing tactics of the Díaz administration did produce visible forms of “progress.” The country’s expansive railroad network was a particular source of pride for Porfirian state leaders.

Aided by a thirty-fold increase in foreign investment, the national government increased railways from 640 km in 1877 to just over 19,000 km by 1910. With the expansion of the railway system and the installation of hundreds of miles of telegraph cable, communication and transportation improved substantially. 103 Export and import goods were able to be shipped more efficiently between the country’s interior and the coast which in turn helped bolster the growth of commercial agriculture. Before too long, for example, the south central state of Morelos was lagging behind only two other countries in sugar-cane production and sales. Commercial sales of henequen, coffee, textiles, mining, oil, and livestock took off in other regions of the country as well, greatly enriching a small class of landowner and merchant elites.104

The growing wealth and stability of Porfirian Mexico were an irresistible lure for foreign visitors and merchants. Products, technologies, entertainment, and services came pouring in from the United States and Europe, and by the start of the 20th century, a “Porfirian Persuasion” that favored most things foreign as markers of progress and civilization was firmly in evidence

102 See “The President’s Police” in Paul Vanderwood, Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police, and Mexican Development (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1992), 119-130.

103 For in depth studies of the construction and the social and economic effects of railroads in Porfirian Mexico, see John H. Coatsworth, Growth against development: the economic impact of railroads in Porfirian Mexico (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981) and Teresa Van Hoy, A Social History of Mexican Railroads: Peons, prisoners, and priests (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).

104 See “Paying for Order and Progress: Economic Development, 1876-1911” in Paul Garner, Porfirio Díaz, 163- 193.

56 among middle and upper class Mexicans.105 Visitors to the capital noted, for example, that

although Mexicans continued their afternoon paseos, they were increasingly doing the

promenading in luxurious automobiles. At Chapultepec Park, the city’s beauties strolled and

preened before the gaze of debonair lagartijos, dandies clad in French morning coats and

trousers, American patent leather shoes, and English top hats. Crowds of entertainment seekers

flocked to the opening of Luna Park, an amusement venue modeled on the famous Luna Park of

Coney Island, New York.

Mexico City became so cosmopolitan at the turn of the century that some visitors

believed that travelers needed to venture altogether outside of the capital in order to receive a

truer sense of the “real manners and customs” of the Mexican people. As the American travel

writer William Carson indicated in 1908: “In Mexico City a visitor sees Mexican social life

scarcely at its best…For the capital is not truly Mexico…It is a city of motley civilizations; and

in fashionable circles one finds a great deal of Madrid, a little of Paris and slight infusions of

London and New York.”106 The eclectic cultural offerings of the capital, the sustained political

stability, and the stronger insertion of the national economy into the international marketplace

were all markers of the Díaz administration’s most cherished ambition, having Mexico earn a place in the family of modern western nations.107

Porfirian reformers and administrators soon realized, however, that pacification, a robust

economy, and the material trappings of ‘civilized’ nations could only take the country some part

105 See Beezley Judas at the Jockey Club, 13.

106 W.E. Carson, Mexico: The Wonderland of the South (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1909), 123.

107 See Garner, Porfirio Díaz, 143. See also Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, Mexico at the world’s fairs: crafting a modern nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) for an extended study of how Porfirian and revolutionary state leaders used the spaces of world’s fairs to learn and publicize Mexico’s qualifications as a modern and ‘progress’ bound nation.

57 of the distance. The general Mexican population had to be transformed as well. Working class

men and women, widely considered to be vice-ridden and fractious by middle and upper class gentes de bien, became the particular targets of a variety of (unevenly enforced) social engineering policies and projects. Via reforms to criminal statutes, public education, sanitation, health, and even popular entertainment activities such as bullfighting (banning the practice),

Porfirian reformers sought to make orderly, virtuous, and economically-productive citizens of the lower classes. With a thrifty and enterprising pueblo, the entire nation would be certain to progress.108

In this context of reform and social “improvement,” Mexican intellectuals and the writers

of “national” literature began to change the tone of their works on rural equestrian customs and

characters. Where once rancheros, bandits, and other types of vernacular horsemen served as the

inspiration of costumbrista works that extolled the distinctive characteristics of Mexican national

identity, in the Porfiriato, these figures and all of their associated customs became associated

with backwardness and barbarism. One need go no further than the work of the “great man” of

letters, Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, to observe the shift in perspective.

A career prosecutor and magistrate whose political career culminated with senior

positions in the Ministries of Public Works and Development, Altamirano was a devotee of

Porfirian order and progress and staunchly rejected a return to the political chaos and lawlessness

of the early republic. Almost certainly for this reason, when Altamirano decided to pursue the

creation of a major “national narrative” that could define the future course and identity of

108 For an overview of Porfirian social engineering goals and projects, see Claudia Agostoni, “Popular Public Health Education and Propaganda in Times of Peace and War in Mexico City, 1890s-1920s,” American Journal of Public Health, 96, no. 1 (January 2006). See also Milada Bazant, Historia de la Educación en el Porfiriato (México, D.F.: El Colegio de México, AC, 1993). Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900-1931 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001). Katharine Bliss, Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico City (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001).

58 Mexican society, he broke with earlier costumbrista writers (see Chapter 1) and rejected the gala-

clad rancheros known as charros as representatives of Mexican national identity. Instead, his

magnum opus, El Zarco (completed in 1889), features as the hero an earnest Indian ironsmith

whose education had erased nearly all markers of his indigenous heritage (a character who

resembled Altamirano himself). Charros, on the other hand, were placed in the role of

irredeemable villains whose crimes of banditry impeded the arrival of a much desired peace and

prosperity.109

Even Manuel Payno, the genteel statesmen who in the 1840s and 1850s had written such loving and extensive odes to the folk traditions and heroism of rancheros, appointed charros as the leading villains of his final (and most voluminous) national epic. Among various complicated and interconnected storylines, Los Bandidos del Rio Frio, a novel released in installments between 1889 and 1893, detailed the massive national takeover of the charro-clad bandit,

Relumbrón (named so for the flashiness of his charro regalia). However, there was more than a

desire for national modernization at play beneath Payno’s decision to make charros the villains

of his novel; Relumbrón and other charro characters served as thinly-disguised stand-ins for the new class of political “criminals” operating in Porfirian Mexico.110 According to Mexico’s most

prestigious national tastemakers, charros had acquired negative associations.

But getting the general population to reject the ranchero image was an uphill battle.

Outside of Mexico City and the largest urban settlements of the provinces, the influence of

modern Porfirian fashions and foreign cultural practices was significantly less pronounced. The

109 See Alejandro Cortázar, “El Zarco de Ignacio M. Altamirano: la figura del charro y la epopeya que no fue,” Texto Critico 6, no. 12 (2003), 108. See also “El Zarco: Banditry and Foundational Allegories for the Nation-state” in Juan Pablo Dabove, Nightmares of the Lettered City: Banditry and Literature in Latin America, 1816-1929 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), 99.

110 See “Los Bandidos de Rio Frio: Banditry, the Criminal State, and the Critique of Porfirian Illusions” in Juan Pablo Dabove, Nightmares of the Lettered City, 199-212.

59 shift to commercial agriculture in the countryside and the arrival of trains to some of the most isolated reaches of the country also created the conditions for hundreds of thousands of provincial and rural migrants to relocate to larger urban settlements. Between 1880 and 1910, the population of Mexico City, at least, doubled from 230,000 to 471,000. 111 So even as the capital was refurbished into a grand cosmopolitan center with the same amenities, public transportation, and architecture of other metropoles in the western world, a steady influx of migrants from the countryside continued to sustain many of the traditions and cultural habits that Porfirian reformers decried as backward. In this context of the reproduction of the rural within the big city, there was ample space for ranchero equestrian customs and codes of masculine behavior to both thrive and be challenged. Moreover, as the next section will demonstrate, even highly

Europeanized, “civilized” elites had reasons to sustain (and influence) the ranchero customs of earlier decades.

Ignacio de la Torre y Mier: Occasionally, A Charro Hacendado

Under the Díaz government’s friendly commercial agriculture and export economy measures, scores of middling ranchers and major landowners throughout the country entered into increasingly prosperous circumstances.112 Accelerating a process that had already been taking place since the early years of independence, the wealthiest and most elite families decamped permanently to the Mexican capital, leaving their estates under the care of trusted subordinates

111 See Robert Buffinton, A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900-1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 7 and John Lear, Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 23.

112 See “From the Frontier to the Border” in Friedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa, 2008 and “The Planters Progress” in John Womack Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1970). More recently, see the interdisciplinary study conducted by Elizabeth Terese Newman, Biography of a hacienda: work and revolution in rural Mexico (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2014).

60 and administrators. In the city, they used their rising fortunes to articulate new forms of modern

Porfirian gender and class identities.

As Ethel Alec Tweedie’s account reveals, at the turn of the century, Porfirian elites

conveyed their wealth via the enthusiastic embrace of all things American and European. Elite

families consumed foreign foods, fashions, sports, and entertainments, and they provided their

children with cosmopolitan educations under the tutelage of English governesses and tutors and

years abroad in American and European schools.

The effect of these changes became particularly noticeable in the customs that elite men

used to articulate their sense of manliness. Victor M. Macías notes, for example, that where in

the 1830s-40s, upper class Mexican men, had been renowned for their skills as horsemen, ropers, and bull-tailers, by the 1880s, the “pampered” young heirs of Porfirian leading families had developed “sumptuous, decadent interests, like amassing vast collections of art, shopping, drugs, and travel.” These “citified” hacendados and dandies, who could spend upwards of 3 to 4 hours

primping at luxurious public bathhouses, began turning instead to gymnasiums and athletic clubs

for sports and bodybuilding activities that helped “prop up a sagging sense of self resulting from

their abandonment of exhausting physical agrarian feats and growing reliance on exertion-less

mental tasks.” 113

However, as this section will discuss, landowning elites, even the most pampered and

“citified” ones, did not entirely abandon the physically-demanding equestrian and ranching

113 See “The bathhouse and male homosexuality in Porfirian Mexico” in Masculinity and sexuality in modern Mexico, eds. Victor M. Macias-González and Anne Rubenstein (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012), 31.

61 traditions that previous generations of wealthy Mexican men had pursued in times of leisure. 114

Moreover, that the new generation of Porfirian hacendados continued to dabble with local

equestrian customs is evidence that elites found themselves compelled to perform gender and

class identities on more than one register. As one traveler during the times of Porfirio Díaz,

Fanny Gooch Inglehart observed, “the gentleman of ease and wealth, supported by the profits of

his landed property, is one thing when in the city, clad in European dress, and quite another on

his hacienda arrayed in the native garb he so delights in.”115 Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, the

debonair and extremely wealthy son-in-law of Porfirio Díaz helps illustrate how and why some

Porfirian hacendados regularly carried out a shifting performance of rural ranchero and urban civilized masculinities.

De la Torre y Mier, head of a wealthy Morelos landowning family and the husband of

Amada Díaz, was perhaps one of the most iconic representatives of the decadent “effete” masculinity of turn of the century Mexico. He is, therefore, a particularly interesting figure to find performing ranchero customs. Examples of his flourishes included investing grandly in the latest gas-guzzling automobiles, regularly hosting lavish French soirees at his palatial homes in

Mexico City, and maintaining a very memorable collection of men’s fashions.

The fond reminiscences of José Juan Tablada, a close friend of De la Torre y Mier, help illustrate the heights of the young hacendado’s passion for style and luxury. Per Tablada’s

114 For an extended discussion of hacendados as an amorphous and diverse group of individuals see the description of categories of hacendados in José Ramón Ballesteros, Origen y evolución del charro mexicano (México: Porrúa, 1972), 169-170. Ballesteros’ discussion of differences and diversity among hacendados is supported by an extensive colonial land tenure literature. See for example, John Tutino, Making a new world: founding capitalism in the Bajío and Spanish North America (Durham, NC.: Duke University Press, 2011).

115 Fanny Chambers Gooch Iglehart, Face to Face with the Mexicans: Domestic Life, Educational, Social, and Business Ways, Statesmanship and Literature, Legendary and General History of the Mexican People, as seen and studied by an American woman during seven years of intercourse with them (New York: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, 1887), 287-288.

62 account, following a spectacular dinner at the De la Torre mansion in Mexico City, the evening’s guests had passed through their host’s personal dressing room en-route to enjoy brandy and cigars, only to be struck dumb at the sight within. “It was a multitude of items,” wrote Tablada.

“There were afternoon jackets, dinner jackets, ceremonial tailcoats, funerary frock coats, hunting jackets, blue sailor costumes with golden buttons for navigation. On hooks and between dressers, there were bowler hats, top hats, and of course, charro hats sprinkled with silver for the fiestas at

San Nicolas.” Seeing his guests’ wonder, De la Torre y Mier had noted with a smile, “They say…this is my library.”116

Interestingly, though Tablada’s account makes clear that his host was a devoted connoisseur of the latest French and British male fashions, the account also reveals that De la

Torre kept ample space in his closet for the charro attire he would need for his stays at San

Nicolás de Peralta, his bountiful cattle-producing estate located on the river Lerma outside of the capital. According to friends and memoirists, when in residence at San Nicolás, De la Torre y

Mier also did more than simply dress as a wealthy ranchero. He regularly thrilled his guests by joining in some of the physically-exerting and challenging ranch work of his estate. De la Torre, followed by a bevy of cowboys and ranch hands, would wade into corrals to help with the branding and roping of steers (though memoirists remained vague about how skillfully De la

Torre was able to perform these exercises).117

De la Torre y Mier was also as passionate about horses as he was about his new automobiles. He went to great lengths to secure the best employees and caretakers for his stable,

116 See José Juan Tablada as cited in Carlos Tello Díaz, El Exilio: un relato de familia (México, D.F.: Cal y Arena, 1993), 130-131. See also José Juan Tablada, La Feria de la Vida (México: Ediciones Botas, 1937), 286.

117 Tablada, La Feria de la Vida, 285.

63 at one point going so far as to intercede with his father-in-law, Porfirio Díaz, and with military

authorities in the state of Morelos in order to obtain the services of a much-desired horse trainer.

The trainer was none other than Emiliano Zapata, a young villager who within the next decade would become the most famous charro and leader of the revolutionary struggle in southern Mexico. De la Torre y Mier had met and taken a liking to Zapata during a visit to the hacienda San Carlos Borromeo in Morelos, and when news of Zapata’s forced military conscription (the result of a conflict with local authorities) reached De la Torre, he readily interceded on Zapata’s behalf. Zapata was then employed as the lead trainer and caretaker of De la Torre’s racing stable in Mexico City though the arrangement did not last for long. Zapata left after less than half a year, reportedly disgusted by the expenses lavished on De la Torre’s horses while his fellows in rural Morelos starved from lack of work or lands to call their own.118

This curious meeting further suggests the relevance of ranchero customs and markers of

authority in De la Torre’s life. “Citified” hacendado and dandy that he was, his life was not

totally or cleanly divorced from the older markers of rural masculine respectability. De la Torre’s

charro dress and performance of ranchero skills were perhaps only token attempts to channel the

physical virility and ruggedness of country men, but that he even bothered to try is cause enough

for consideration, particularly in light of the fact that De la Torre y Mier was also infamously

associated with one of the most scandalous social events of the Porfirian era – the Baile de los

41.

On November 18, 1901, policemen had been alerted to a raucous soiree taking place in a

residential neighborhood near the city center. They raided the event and discovered forty-one

male attendees drinking, dancing, and carousing with each other, half of the men in female drag.

118 John Womack mentions this incident in Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, 63-64.

64 Rumors abounded that a 42nd guest, De la Torre y Mier, had bribed his way out of the raid and

that authorities had omitted his name from all official records in consideration (or under the

orders) of President Díaz. The Baile de los 41 has been widely considered to be a watershed

moment in modern Mexican gender history - an event after which public opinion crystallized

around the ideas that homosexuality was a crime, male on male desire was effeminate, and

heterosexuality was an indisputable requirement of virile, macho masculinities.119 For De la

Torre y Mier, the Baile de los 41 added fuel to mounting rumors of sexual “deviancy” and moral

excesses. In the aftermath of the scandal, his relations with the Díaz family became severely

strained, and without the support of his powerful father-in-law, De la Torre was also forced to abandon his political aspirations for the governorship of the state of Mexico.120

The effect of the scandal of the 41 on De la Torre’s personal and political circumstances

must have raised concerns among the other young luminaries of his circle. With the tides of

public opinion turning so viciously against refined, and luxury-seeking dandies, was it possible

that the “citified” hacendados of the Porfiriato renewed or situationally maintained their use of

ranchero fashions and customs to counter public (and/or private) anxieties about immoral and

effete upper class masculinity? Possibly so. That Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, the leading

Porfirian dandy of them all, demonstrated a dual register of ranchero and refined city

masculinities does at least indicate that scholars could add more nuance to their readings of how

Porfirian men articulated their gender identities.

119 See “Criminal Male Sexuality: The Turn of the Century” in Robert McKee Irwin, Mexican Masculinities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) and the volume of essays Centenary of the Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, 1901 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

120 Tello Díaz, El exilio, 128.

65 By the turn of the 19th century, parts of Mexico City and the rest of the country were

becoming thoroughly cosmopolitan and modern, but Mexican society as a whole still remained

predominantly rural and untouched by Porfirian progress. As the class of Mexicans who most

had to navigate between the disparate worlds of the rural-traditional and the urban-modern, some

hacendados demonstrated via their situational use of charro costume and ranchero traditions that

the Porfirian modernization project was incomplete. Local riding costumes, horses, and

equipment remained crucial for communicating manly respectability and power, a reality further

demonstrated by the sartorial choices of the intrepid traveler discussed in the following section.

Ultimately, as in many other realms of Porfirian society, new and old traditions mingled when cosmopolitan, elite Porfirian men put their manliness on display.

Alejandro Velaz: The Cross-Dressing Charrito from Málaga

In 1897, the publishing house of Antonio Arroyo Vanegas released a festive broadsheet with a curious news item. “Man in appearance, Woman in reality,” the broadsheet boldly proclaimed before launching into the following colorful account:

Alejandro Velaz is the false name used by a foreign young woman who dresses as a charrito mexicano and claims to be born in Málaga though educated in the Philippines. Not too long ago, she was the terror (la calamidad) of the Colonia Guerrero because of the huge brawls she caused, assaulting the gendarmes and landing monumental blows on the men who, having discovered her true sex, directed florecillas her way. Believed to be crazed, she was consigned to the Hospital de la Canoa, but once there, having been thoroughly examined, it was determined that she was not at all crazy and so was released from the establishment.

The news item (for so it was billed by the publishers of the broadsheet) offered two

additional texts for the enjoyment of its readers. A small sketch of a lithe charrito leaning

casually against a wall suggested the theme of gender disorder at the heart of the broadsheet’s

story, a touch of roundness at the charrito’s chest hinting at the figure’s true sex. Moreover,

66 bordering the sketch, a short poem lamented the reversal of female and male roles that the tale of

Alejandro Velaz seemed to herald for the new century.

Into Men, Women want to change in this century that is about to end. In dress and in hairstyle They seem like men… It is very clear. If into a macho a female changes, We men too shall become females. This charrito is setting the example It won’t be long before he is imitated. Don’t be so shocked my little readers, such things happen at century’s end.121

It is not possible to know the degree of fact or fiction in this broadsheet item. But whether or not a young immigrant woman from Málaga actually cross-dressed her way through Porfirian

Mexico, the tale of Alejandro Velaz suggests the importance of charro dress for articulating popular-class conceptions of manliness. It also provides a glimpse into Porfirian anxieties about modernity-induced gender chaos at the start of a new century.

In the Porfirian public sphere, few people seemed to be free of the stigma of aberrant gender or sexual behavior. The upper classes, reformers, and the Porfirian state, concerned with modernizing the country and increasing the economic productivity of the general populace,

121 La Tarasca, a broadsheet printed by the shop of Antonio Arroyo Vanegas with illustrations by José Guadalupe Posada, June 17, 1897. The writers of the original document use feminine pronouns to discuss Alejandro’s exploits. See Collection of works published by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo, chiefly illustrated by Jose Guadalupe Posada, BANC PIC 2010.025: GP – 13, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

67 invested in a variety of social engineering projects designed to curve the perceived

destructiveness and immorality of lower class men and women.122 Lower class men, in

particular, were viewed as the agents of an unbridled, barbarous masculinity which, if left

unmanaged by authorities, caused great social problems. The unsavory behaviors that working

men were believed to be inherently drawn to ran the gamut of violent crime, alcoholism, the

deflowering of virgins, the blurring of social boundaries (via class and racial miscegenation), and

the destruction of marriage.123

As the previous section has detailed, however, critics also began to fear that Porfirian prosperity had made new generations of affluent Mexican men excessively refined. Both popular

and elite mouthpieces of the turn of the century were replete with criticisms of sumptuously-

attired, coiffed, and effeminate dandies who were self-serving and unmoved by politics and, worse, possibly engaged in “deviant” homosexual behavior.124

Between these extremes, the general public also obsessed about figures who blurred the

boundaries of gender and sexuality. The intersexed (“hermaphrodites”) and women who cross-

dressed and/or assumed manly behaviors inspired equal parts anxiety and fascination.125

Particularly in the big city, where social customs and values of old (kept fresh and relevant by a

steady flow of migrants from the provinces) clashed with new and foreign fashions, it seemed to

122 Buffington, A sentimental education, 5. For an extended discussion of elite fears and responses to working class crime and vice see James Alex Garza, The imagined underworld: sex, crime, and vice in Porfirian Mexico City. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

123 Buffington, A sentimental education, 16 and “Criminal Male Sexuality: The Turn of the Century” in McKee Irwin, Mexican Masculinities.

124See “Civilization and Effeminacy” in McKee Irwin, Mexican Masculinities. See also “The Bathhouse and Male Homosexuality in Porfirian Mexico” in Macias-González and Rubenstein, Masculinity and Sexuality.

125 See “Runaway Daughters: Women’s Masculine Roles in Elopement Cases in Nineteenth-Century Mexico” by Kathryn A. Sloan in Macias-González and Rubenstein, Masculinity and Sexuality in Modern Mexico.

68 social critics that men and women of all conditions were changing in ways that were totally

unacceptable.

Disapproval but also some fascination of gender inconformity is reflected in the tale of

Alejandro Velaz. Though the creators of the broadside delivered the details of Alejandro’s

exploits with salacious humor and no small amount of wonder, the short poem, perhaps written

by a different author, was written in a distinctly reprimanding tone. Addressing Alejandro as a

charrito, a diminutive that communicated lack of respect and providing the admonishment

“Don’t be so shocked”, the poem seemed to remind readers that they were not to let themselves be carried away.

But what can be inferred from Alejandro’s actions if indeed such a personage traversed through the barrios of Mexico City? Her choice of clothing definitely invites further consideration. The broadside’s publishers indicated that Alejandro made much of the idea that she had the right to dress as she pleased. Yet, despite the heavy French and British influences on

Mexican fashion trends and the preponderance of smartly-frocked dandies (lagartijos) upon

whom she could have modelled herself, Alejandro chose to adopt the gala costume of affluent

ranchers.

Following the logic of the character traits assigned to Alejandro—a firebrand who was

quick to claim manly valor – it seems clear why she would have made the choice of charro attire.

The costume and identity of rancheros was by the start of the Porfiriato long associated with

valor, power, and manly (if frequently criminal) strength and virility. These meanings were being

further reinforced during the Porfiriato by the grand physical artistry and exploits of the subjects

of the next section, the charro-clad rural entertainers who built devoted popular followings in the

nation’s bullfighting entertainment scene.

69 Though macho virility and strength were traits that often became entangled in elite reformers’ attacks on lower class manliness, they did not cease to be desirable or accepted among the working classes (indeed, as indicated in the prior section, among members of the upper classes as well). The European-inspired fashions of urban middle and upper class dandies, on the other hand, were becoming caught in fraught public conversations about “effete” modern masculinities.

Possibly attuned to public conversations about the habiliments and behaviors that helped communicate virile manliness and the ones that did not, Alejandro Velaz might have concluded that nothing but the charro costume would suffice for a gender-bending female seeking to live an independent life in Porfirian Mexico.

Vicente Oropeza: A Transnational Charro Entertainer

The realm of popular entertainment in the first half of the Porfiriato was dominated by charros and pastoral themes. The teatros de genero menor or penny theaters, reflecting a wave of literary nationalism that took renewed force from the brief reign of the Hapsburgs, made a thriving business from staging operettas and one act plays with costumbrista settings and characters.126 Charros and chinas poblanas and market scenes at picturesque Indian villages were popular set pieces at Porfirian penny theaters.127

At the same time, for a window of time between the late 1880s and early 1890s, a small group of professional charro entertainers dominated the affections of the general pueblo. Skilled at performing traditional ranching skills such as riding, roping, and bull-tailing with vibrant

126 For overviews of Mexico during the Wars of the Reforma and the French Intervention, see Zachary Brittsan, Popular politics and rebellion in Mexico: Manuel Lozada and La Reforma, 1855-1876 (Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015) and M.M. McAllen, Maximilian and Carlota: Europe’s last empire in Mexico (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2014.

127 See “The Charro in Popular Theatre” in Talia Magdalena Luna de Morris, “The Charro Cantor: A Mediation between Rural and Urban Culture” (PhD diss., King’s College London, University of London, 2004).

70 theatrical flair, charro-clad entertainers appealed to the rural, working class, and nationalist

sentiments of the thousands of ordinary denizens who enjoyed partaking of the Mexican

bullfighting entertainment scene.

The most famous Mexican bullfighter of the era, Ponciano Díaz Salinas enjoyed a

particularly fierce popular class following. A popular ditty of the times claimed that: “There are

two Díaz, Ponciano and Don Porfirio. The pueblo pays more attention to Ponciano than it does to

Don Porfirio.” Moreover, when bullfighters who alternated with Ponciano (as he was known)

failed to perform in his model—on horseback and in charro regalia—spectators were known to

hurl oranges, jugs of pulque, insults, and seat cushions in angry condemnation. Aficionados of

the late 1880s adored Ponciano for his mastery of the homegrown tradition of toreo a la

mexicana in which charro-clad bullfighters confronted bulls on horseback (rejoneo) but also

featured regular exhibitions of Mexican roping and bull-tailing (coleo).128

However, the popular class spectators of Mexican bullfighting were not immune to the

many outside cultural influences that were increasingly pouring into Porfirian Mexico. The

reopening of bullfighting arenas in Mexico City in 1886 drew increasing numbers of Spanish

bullfighters who were intent on conquering a lucrative new market, and their influence on the

Mexican bullfighting scene became so preponderant that by the mid-1890s, public tastes in

Mexico’s largest cities had shifted to a greater appreciation and preference for bullfighters

128 Loyal masses of poncianistas flocked to bullfighting arenas throughout the provinces and in Mexico City to see Ponciano (as he was known) perform. He was the inspiration of numerous popular rhymes, corridos, and a long- running penny theater operetta that was transformed into a film in the 1930s. His image circulated widely in cheap prints and broadsides, and he starred in one of the first short silent films to ever be filmed in Mexico, Corrida entera de toros por la cuadrilla de Ponciano Díaz, filmed in Puebla by the French ex-patriots Moulinie and Courrich in 1897. See Juan Felipe Leal, José Francisco Coello, Eduardo Barraza, El cine y los toros: anales del cine en México, 1895-1911. Vol. 15, 1908: primera parte (Publisher: México, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: Voyeur, 2016), 39-43. See also José Francisco Coello Ugalde, “Ponciano Díaz Salinas, Mitad Charro y Mitad Torero” in Aportaciones Histórico Taurinas Mexicanas, accessed November 2016, https://ahtm.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/ponciano-diaz-salinas-mitad-charro-y-mitad-torero/.

71 clothed in trajes de luces and who performed a Spanish-style lidia over the conventions of toreo

a la mexicana. Charro entertainers like Ponciano Díaz (who died in penury and obscurity in

1899) thus saw their careers rapidly decline, finding it increasingly challenging to draw the same

adoring thousands that had been the norm less than a decade earlier.129

Changing public tastes, however, did not signify a complete end to charro bullfighting

and entertainment. Charro bullfighters continued to perform a mix of coleo and Spanish

bullfighting throughout the provinces where country audiences remained less swayed by the

conventions of foreigners. It was outside of Mexico entirely, however, where charro entertainment reached a peak in spectatorship and popularity during the latter half of the

Porfiriato. The case of Vicente Oropeza provides the clearest example. Oropeza was a charro performer and bullfighter who won great acclaim in the late 1890s and early 1900s as a member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and he proved influential on U.S. cowboy entertainers and the emerging sport of American rodeo. His career in the United States provides a curious but telling example of how rural charro entertainers could continue to make a living as long as they learned to navigate and profit from the contradictions of Mexico’s national image on the two sides of the

U.S.-Mexico border.

Vicente Oropeza’s life is poorly documented, but some basic details can still be

determined. Oropeza was born in Puebla in 1858, and he began his entertainment career touring

central Mexico as a charro bullfighter. For a few years in the late 1880s, Vicente and his brother

129 See a discussion of the decline of Ponciano and other charro bullfighters in María del Carmen Vázquez M., “Charros contra Gentlemen: Un episodio de identidad en la historia de la tauromaquia Mexicana Moderna, 1886- 1905,” in Modernidad, tradición y alteridad: la ciudad de México en el cambio de siglo (XIX-XX), eds. Claudia Agostoni and Elisa Speckman (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2001).

72 Agustín were close to the greatest Mexican bullfighter of the times, Ponciano Díaz, acting as

bull-tailers and picadores in Ponciano’s cuadrilla.

By the early 1890s, however, Oropeza’s professional fortunes diverged from those of

domestic charro entertainers like Ponciano. As changing public tastes and a four-year

bullfighting ban in the metropolitan capital drove charro bullfighters to tour almost exclusively

in the provinces, Oropeza decided to travel north.130 Billing himself the “Premiere ‘Charro

Mexicano’ of the World,” Oropeza carried his act into Texas, and somewhere along the way, he

came into contact with Colonel W. F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody. 131 By 1893, Oropeza was

performing along with a handful of other Mexican and Mexican American cowboy entertainers

who all contracted with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.

From 1893 to an undefined moment just prior to the outbreak of the Mexican revolution,

Vicente Oropeza was one of the most well-known charros north of the Mexican border. Billed as the leader of Buffalo Bill’s troupe of “Mexican vaqueros” (the actual national origin of the riders in the troupe is debatable), Oropeza dazzled thousands of spectators throughout the United States with flamboyant, custom-made charro costumes and intricate roping displays.132 Most famously,

the American comedian and vaudeville cowboy, Will Rogers, credited Oropeza with helping

inspire Roger’s interest in becoming a cowboy entertainer. Rogers had become enchanted with

trick roping when as a young boy, he had witnessed Oropeza spelling his name out one letter at a

130 Vázquez M., “Charros contra Gentlemen,” 180.

131 Jorge Iber, Samuel O. Regalado, José M. Alamillo, and Arnoldo de León, Latinos in U.S. Sport: A History of Isolation, Cultural Identity, and Acceptance (Champaigne, IL: Human Kinetics, 2011), 59-60.

132 Richard W. Slatta, The Cowboy Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 1994), 66.

73 time during a performance at the Chicago World Exposition of 1893.133 In 1900, Oropeza obtained his crowning achievement as a charro showman extraordinaire. He swept the competition to earn a first place victory at the inaugural World Championship of Trick and

Fancy Roping in New York City. 134 Decades later Will Rogers and other U.S. cowboy entertainers would signal Oropeza as an early icon in the emerging American rodeo sporting world.

Vicente Oropeza’s extended professional career in the United States is fascinating for the insight it provides into the contradictory production and uneven acceptance of Mexico’s image as a modern nation. Oropeza’s search for new spectators (and a steady living) was fueled in part by his need to adjust to the changing interests of audiences in Mexico’s largest urban markets.

Exposed to a wide new variety of foreign hobbies and entertainment offerings and encouraged by

Porfirian authorities and reformers to partake of those new offerings as evidence of Mexico’s newfound progress and modernity, spectators in Mexico’s cities were registering reduced interest in toreo a la mexicana and charro bullfighters. Oropeza hence decided to try his chances further and further away from central Mexico.

That Oropeza then found steady audiences and fame performing as a charro for U.S. audiences shows, in turn, that regardless of how much Porfirian authorities battled to reform and update Mexico’s national image, general audiences in the United States remained fascinated by their southern neighbor’s reputation as a land of exotic, untransformed “others”.135 Vicente

133 Larry McMurtry, Sacagawea’s Nickname: Essays on the American West (New York: The New York Review of Books, Inc., 2001), 38. and Mark Svenvold, Elmer McCurdy: The Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw (New York, Basic Books, 2002), 26.

134 Robin S. Doak, Struggling to become American: 1899-1940 (New York: Chelsea House, 2007), 56.

135 U.S. audiences, from their vantage point as residents of a modern and growing imperial power, remained fascinated by nostalgic and swashbuckling portraits of a “disappearing” old American west and by displays of all

74 Oropeza’s relative success in the United States, it should be made clear, was absolutely dependent on American assumptions about lawless and uncivilized Mexicanness. So even as

Oropeza built a comfortable living for himself as traveling charro entertainer in the U.S., he helped U.S. audiences hold to the very vision of an exotic and backwards Mexico that the

Porfirian state expressly worked to overcome.

Oropeza participated in the construction of this exotic national image in a number of ways. While traveling with the Wild West, Oropeza helped recreate scenes of Mexican bandit heists on innocent stage coach travelers and of wild shootouts between bandits and “rurales.” 136

Although there was space in these performances for the actors (whether as bandits or as lawmen) to exhibit great athleticism and heroism, the tableaus also perpetuated the age-old stereotype of a barbarous Mexico.

Exoticizing tropes could be seen as well in the two short silent films that Oropeza and his fellow Mexican-descended performers, the brothers Antonio and José Esquivel shot in 1894.

Filmed at the Edison labs near West Orange, NJ during the Wild West’s visit to the area, the shorts Lasso Thrower and Mexican Knife Fight showcased the three cowboys’ physical abilities.

Oropeza, costumed in charro regalia and twirling his lasso in intricate waves, starred in Lasso

Thrower. His credentials as a superb rural showman were on full display. The Esquivel brothers, armed with knives and lunging and grappling with each other, starred in the second short. Their display was equally athletic but also leaned on the tropes of Mexican violence and incivility.137

kinds cultural exotics. Millions flocked to Wild West shows and various other Barnum-style entertainments. For extended discussions of mid to late 19th century U.S. entertainment and wild west shows, see Joy Kasson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000).

136 Pablo Rangel, “Racialized Nationality: Mexicans, Vaqueros, and U.S. Nationalism in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” (MA thesis, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2013), 55-57.

137 Rangel, “Racialized Nationality,” 80-81.

75 There thus seemed to be no middle ground in the Wild West’s portrayal of Mexicans; they were

either savages or romantic heroes.

The way Mexican performers were promoted also suggests the complex racial and

nationalistic expectations that Oropeza and his fellow performers had to navigate. Buffalo Bill’s

Mexican and Mexican-American performers were regularly identified as “Spanish” and from

“Old Mexico” - designations that seemed to reflect U.S. racial preferences for whiteness (in comparison to a heavily indigenous and mixed race Mexico). Those designations also conveyed the desire for clear distinctions between an “Old” (read, backward) Mexican society and the much-improved (because they had come under U.S. authority) circumstances of residents in the still recently-conquered U.S. southwest.138

The pulp fiction boundaries within which Oropeza had the space to receive recognition

were plainly revealed by his well-meaning acquaintance, A. Hyatt Verrill. An amateur

archaeologist, naturalist, and adventurer who traveled for a season with the Wild West, Verrill

recalled in his later years that, “Oropesa (sic) had led a life that equaled any western thriller.”

Verrill remarked with admiration that Oropeza had tried his hand at a number of thrilling

occupations including being a “popular bullfighter” and a bandit, a career that Oropeza had

eventually abandoned because he had been “too good-natured and too simpatico.” On figuring

out that banditry was not a suitable lifestyle, Oropeza had then “joined the rurales and very soon

distinguished himself by his reckless daring.” Fully convinced of the swashbuckling and colorful

contours of his friend’s life, Verrill proclaimed that “his stories, undoubtedly true, were far more

138Rangel, 45-46.

76 interesting and thrilling than any fiction.” Oropeza, Verrill seemed to want the readers of his

autobiography to believe, had been a truly larger than life and unforgettable man. 139

In the end, it seems likely that beyond sharing thrilling accounts about his earlier life in

Mexico, Vicente Oropeza had very little direct control over the image and narratives of

Mexicanness disseminated by the Wild West and other shows of the Wild West’s character. There

are also no surviving accounts authored by Oropeza that provide his thoughts on the matter.

However, photographs from his Wild West career do suggest that Oropeza was more adept at

navigating shifting cultural expectations than contemporaries like Ponciano Díaz who, unable to

adjust to the changes taking place on the Mexican bullfighting scene had fallen into obscurity.

Oropeza was most frequently depicted in print media illustrations in his distinctive charro attire,

but there were several instances as well where Oropeza broke ranks and wore the dress of a more

American impresario—dark overcoat, Stetson hat, and dark pants free of any embellishments.

His “vaquero” companions, on the other hand, remained in charro attire.

According to Pablo A. Rangel, the tendency of Oropeza and other Mexican and Mexican-

descended cowboy performers to dress in different registers displayed a skill at cultural

navigation that ultimately earned for them greater recognition from the American public: “These

men were at once Mexican and American. They were simultaneously workers and leaders. For

this reason, perhaps, audiences and news reporters recognized them by name as well as ethnicity.

In contrast, available newspaper articles, show programs, and archival photographs do not

include other vaqueros by name.” 140 Oropeza certainly managed to negotiate sufficient media

139 A. Hyatt Verrill and Doug Frizzle, Never a Dull Moment: The Autobiography of A. Hyatt Verrill, 2007, 92-93.

140 Rangel, “Racialized Nationality,” 78-79.

77 relevance and respect to be able to put himself back in the spotlight even years after his journey

with the Wild West show came to an end.

On March 19, 1914, the editorial board of The Billboard newspaper in Cincinnati, Ohio,

posted a brief notice entitled “Don Oropeza Not Dead.” Writing on behalf of Oropeza, a rodeo

impresario by the name of E. Clemento (possibly a misspelling of Clemente) took on the task of

clarifying Oropeza’s fate since his last days with the Wild West. Contrary to reports circulating

among “the show people of the United States” that Oropeza had been killed four or five years

earlier in Mexico, Clemento assured readers that Oropeza was quite alive. He detailed that

Oropeza was “at present a captain in the Mexican cavalry—regular army” and that during his

furloughs, he assisted Clemento with “a series of Jaripeos” which the two men “contracted

through the republic.” Finally, Clemento reported that Oropeza sent the warmest regards to his

former Wild West companions and could be reached via letters addressed to the National Palace

in Mexico City.141 Nearing sixty years of age and residing in a homeland torn asunder by civil war, Oropeza had still evidently managed to find a living using his equestrian expertise and to remain connected to the world of vernacular entertainment. Oropeza would live until 1923, just long enough to see a measure of peace restored to the country and the emergence of new markets for professional charro entertainers—silent film and the nascent sport of organized charrería.

Vicente Oropeza and other U.S. based charro entertainers like him have mostly faded into

obscurity. The limited amounts of information that can be gleaned about Oropeza’s professional

career and life still help demonstrate, however, the tangled sources and consequences of

Mexico’s national image during the Porfiriato. At the start of the 20th century, Mexican

141 Newspaper clipping typed caption, ‘Don Oropeza Not Dead. El Rastro, Mexico City, Mexico, March 19, 1914. Editor The BillBoard, Cincinnati, O., U.S.A.’ Jordan B. Cottle Scrapbook, MS 006 William F. Cody Collection, McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, MS6.4075.11.2.

78 government authorities and reformers worked ceaselessly to institute economic, social, and political reforms that would help the country be accepted into the global community of great western nations. They likely did not suspect that those same reformative and modernizing impulses would have the effect of driving rural entertainers like Vicente Oropeza north to unwittingly participate in the reproduction of many of the same limiting stereotypes Porfirian reformers desired to overcome. Perhaps the deployment of their own charro-clad enforcers of state authority, the rurales who will be discussed in the following section, had government authorities convinced that they had sufficient control and oversight over the way that charro-clad horsemen represented their country before domestic and international observers.

Los Rurales: Charro Enforcers of the State

In the Porfiriato, ranchero dress also became intimately linked to the power and authority of the Mexican state. The rural police or rurales, the most famous representatives of law, order, and repression during the rule of Porfirio Díaz, wore stately charro uniforms and conducted their police duties on horseback. The recollections of Fanny Chambers Gooch Iglehart, an American who resided along with her cotton merchant husband in Mexico during the early 1880s, illustrate the general assumptions that affluent Mexicans and foreigners held about the rurales:

The body known as the Rurales constitutes in Mexico to-day the most competent preservers of the public peace existing within her border. They were once lawless and abandoned men, who led lives of wild adventure, many of them being bandits, fearing nothing.

When General Porfirio Díaz became President, he felt the necessity of providing the rural districts with an efficient mounted police force. The utmost forethought could not have predicted such grand results. Being as they are familiar with every mountain pass and lonely defile, fearless riders, and possessed of extraordinary strength and undaunted courage, they have proved their prowess and valor from first to last. It gives one a feeling of security and satisfaction to see a company of these sturdy horsemen entering a city or town, after a toilsome journey in the wild mountain fastnesses.142

142 Chambers, Face to Face with the Mexicans, 570-572.

79 Foreign visitors to Porfirian Mexico frequently repeated the rumor that President Díaz had put an

end to rural banditry by purchasing the loyalty of leading highwaymen and setting them to the

task of exterminating rival bandit operations. 143 In exchange for their loyalty, the bandits-turned-

policemen received stable salaries, a legitimate career, and the paternalistic favor of the grand

caudillo Díaz. The fact that these supposed former highwaymen had made the decision to

abandon crime for a career of loyal service to the government was also taken as evidence of the

Díaz administration’s successful takeover over of a historically restive countryside.144

The rumors of bandit origins actually fit into a broader corpus of public myths that the

Díaz regime encouraged about the rurales’ power. Although they avoided confirming any bandit

origin stories, the Díaz-controlled media did regularly celebrate the militant capacities of the

rurales by claiming that the majority of recruits on the force hailed from areas in northwestern

Mexico where deeply-rooted traditions of ranching, hunting, and Indian fighting had turned men

into skilled sharpshooters and superior horsemen.145 Porfirian government officials further

helped shape the rurales’ reputation by giving the constabulary a major role in state political

pageantry. The best horsemen and sharpshooters on the force were sent abroad to represent the

country in international cultural and equestrian exhibitions.146 Gallantly-dressed corps of rurales were incorporated into state-sponsored public celebrations, creating memories that for some

Mexico City residents lasted a very long time.

143 For more foreign traveler reflections on the rurales, see Ethel Alec Tweedie, Mexico as I saw It, 260 and 327.

144 Paul Vanderwood has found no evidence of deliberate attempts to recruit highwaymen into the ranks of rurales either before or after the rise of Porfirio Díaz though he does not discount the reality that a good number of former highwaymen did end up becoming rurales. See Paul Vanderwood, “Genesis of the Rurales: Mexico’s Early Struggle for Public Security,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 50, no. 2 (May 1970): 331.

145 Paul Vanderwood, “Mexico’s Rurales: Reputation versus Reality,” The Americas 34, no. 1 (July 1977): 103.

146 Vanderwood, “Mexico’s Rurales: Reputation versus Reality,” 105.

80 Decades after the final corps of rural policemen had paraded down the main avenues of

the capital, the charro folklorist Leovigildo Islas Escárcega evoked their image in one of his

monthly magazine columns. “Surely there is no metropolitano above the age of 50,” he claimed

“who does not fondly recall those memorable military parades before the Revolution in which

the rurales with their eye-catching charro outfits and perfectly matched horses were the most

gallant and picturesque highlight.” According to Islas Escárcega, the top commander of the

constabulary, General Francisco Ramírez had been particularly noteworthy: “A military and

courtly charro, in the purest sense of these qualities, his most Mexican of appearances touched

the heart of his compatriots . . . [and] the whole of Mexico waited for him anxiously and cheered

him with wild abandon.” 147

The nostalgia and romance of these recollections suggests the legitimacy that the

Porfirian state gained (in some quarters) by appropriating a rural icon of major cultural

significance and deploying it in its own service. Equipped with handsome steeds and weaponry,

the rurales on parade encouraged observers to connect the national government with the more

gallant and prestigious traditions of horsemanship in the country (i.e. gentlemen hacendados). At

the same time, they evoked the powerful, fearless, and exceedingly capable bandits of former

years such as the plateados who had lavished their riding costumes with silver ornaments.148 The

suggestion in this double reference to gentlemen and bandit horsemen was that ultimately, the

Díaz regime had been successful in pacifying, uniting, and directing the different traditions of rural power.

147 Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, “Los Rurales,” Charrería Nacional, June 4, 1966.

148 The plateados or “Silvered Ones” were the most famous bandit gang that emerged during the era of the Wars of the Reforma and the Second Intervention. Their numbers and skills as horsemen were so considerable that they were rumored to have been recruited by the Juarez government to harass French and conservative armies. See Chris Frazer, Bandit Nation, 84-85.

81 Indeed, when an economic downturn and growing labor unrest gave rise to a number of

worker strikes in the early 1900s, the rurales loyally defended the state order, smashing worker

rallies and repressing labor organizers so that state officials could continue boasting of the

country’s friendliness to foreign industrial ventures.149 The myth of Díaz’s powerful rurales ended up being so successful that it long outlasted the actual Díaz regime. During the Mexican

Revolution, the rurales were transformed into the most brutal exponents of Porfirian supremacy in foreign and domestic accounts that attempted to grapple with the sources of that bloody revolution.150 As Leovigildo Islas Escárcega’s anecdote about Francisco Ramírez also demonstrates, the rurales remained a source of deep nostalgia for reactionaries in the post- revolution. In any case, regardless of the critical or nostalgic tone of their depictions, the actual assumption of the rurales’ power remained unquestioned.

Scholarship has since ascertained, however, that most of the information circulating about the rurales’ strength was grounded in untruths. Far from being lifelong horsemen and wranglers native to the “hills and valleys of romantic old Mexico,” nearly all of the men recruited during the Porfirian era originated from urban districts and belonged to artisan and merchant professions. The recruits were also very poor horsemen (with some corpsmen reportedly being afraid of horses) and equally poor marksmen. It was not uncommon for

149 See “The Internal Enemy – Of Bandits, Unions, and Other ‘Savages’” in Stephen Neufeld, “Military and Nation in Mexico, 1821-1916” in A Companion to Mexican History and Culture, ed. William H. Beezley (Chichester, West Sussex; Marlton, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

150 See John Reed, Insurgent Mexico (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1914), 180 and 194. See also Vanderwood, “Mexico’s Rurales: Reputation versus Reality,” 110-111. The universally criticized assassinations of Francisco Madero and José María Pino Suarez also created very bad PR for the Rurales. Francisco Cárdenas, one of the perpetrators of the assassinations, had been a rural under the patronage of Ignacio de la Torre y Mier and had even approached De la Torre for assistance in obtaining the vehicle in which Cárdenas and his cohorts would transport the victims to their final resting place. See Tello Diaz, El exilio, 136-137.

82 members of the constabulary to have to get by on horses that were so old they were nearly unserviceable.151

Historian Paul Vanderwood has reached the conclusion that Porfirian officials went to great lengths to disguise the problems suffered by the rural constabulary. Their measures included sending horsemen to represent the rurales abroad who might not have even been actual members of the constabulary and equipping a small group of men specifically to perform during national holidays and parades. The glittering horsemen metropolitanos saw parading through the streets of the capital helped shield the fact that the larger force struggled constantly with rapid turnover rates and unruly barracks behavior.152 Appearances were often misleading in Porfirian

Mexico, and the rurales personified the contradictions between image and reality that would in the 1910s explode into a violent and lengthy social revolution.

Conclusion

A broad cast of ranchero-like characters could be found in Porfirian Mexico. As this chapter has discussed even though segments of the country’s population were undergoing great changes in cultural taste and habits, charro attire and related customs retained great importance for making social statements about manly prowess, power, and patriotic and class identity.

Basically, charro dress proved popular, even necessary, to a very wide variety of Mexicans with a host of realities of class, gender, and social condition to navigate, overcome, or dissemble.

This pattern would continue to hold true even when a virulent social revolution began to tear the country apart in the winter of 1910.

151 Vanderwood, “Mexico’s Rurales: Reputation versus Reality,” 105 and 108.

152 Paul Vanderwood, “Mexico’s Rurales: Image of a Society in Transition,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 61, no. 1 (February 1981): 52-55. See also Stephen Neufeld, The Blood Contingent: The Military and the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1911 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2017), 242.

83 CHAPTER 3: HORSEMEN OF THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION

Introduction

The Mexican Revolution erupted in the final months of 1910. Initiated by a series of popular insurgencies that responded to Francisco Madero’s Plan de San Luis Potosí, the revolution would result in the overthrow of Porfirio Díaz by the spring of 1911 but go on to last for a long, violent decade. After 1913, counterrevolution and enmity between revolutionary factions would cost the lives of more than two million Mexicans, destroy the robust Porfirian economy, and sink the remaining population in a mire of crime, food shortages, and crumbling public infrastructure. In this profoundly turbulent decade, horsemen embodied key developments and legacies of the Mexican Revolution.

On the fields of battle, two figures—Pancho Villa, the “Centaur of the North” and

Emiliano Zapata, the “Attila of the South”—fascinated and horrified the Mexican public. The fierce monikers assigned to Villa and Zapata by the mainstream (and conservative) press reflected that prosperous gente de bien feared their affluent and orderly lifestyles were severely threatened by the barbarism and equestrian supremacy of Villa and Zapata’s “bandit-Indian” hordes. At the same time, among their loyal adherents Villa and Zapata enjoyed reputations as capable, loyal, and ideal leaders in part because of their capacities as masterful horsemen. Villa’s

Division del Norte succumbed to trench warfare in 1915, suggesting that Mexico’s age of men on horseback was over. But in the realm of the popular imagination, Villa and Zapata fit into

Mexico’s long tradition, ensuring that their names and their causes would not soon be forgotten.

84 Traditional horsemanship also figured in the way that members of the Porfirian Old

Guard engaged with or responded to their revolutionary times. Outside of the fields of battle, one of the most well-connected charro hacendados of Porfirian Mexico met his end while pursuing the well-being of his prize thoroughbreds. The flight of notables from the countryside following the failure of Francisco Madero’s presidency heralded the end of hacendado supremacy in

Mexico and also gave rise to a new charro nostalgia vividly captured in the earthy, dynamic equestrian paintings of the rural dandy and ingénue, Ernesto de Icaza. Ultimately, as revolutionary conflict overturned the usually rhythms and patterns of their lives, Mexicans of popular and elite backgrounds continued to use ranchero and equestrian customs to interpret, influence, and connect to the world around them.

The Mexican Revolution

On the eve of the nation’s centennial in 1910, Díaz regime supporters could boast that

Mexico was poised to join the larger community of modern western nations. The previous twenty years had brought unprecedented technological and economic advances to the country, and the Díaz government had presided over years of general peace and order. In truth, however, the threads of the Porfirian order had been unraveling for some time. Rampant cronyism and the authoritarianism of the Porfirian state had been stoking inconformity among a new generation of liberals.153 Many among the general populace could also not claim to have benefited from the

fruits of Porfirian order and export-oriented economic prosperity.154

153 John Mason Hart, “The Mexican Revolution, 1910-20,” in Beezley and Meyer, Oxford History of Mexico, 411- 412.

154 For an extensive study of the revolutionary era, see Alan Knight’s two volume history, The Mexican Revolution (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

85 These and other tensions finally exploded into war in 1910. In the fall of that year,

Francisco Madero, a young and ambitious political leader from Coahuila who felt he had exhausted all other resorts, issued a proclamation calling for dissatisfied Mexicans to take up arms against the regime of Porfirio Díaz.155 Though Madero’s call appeared to have been initially unheeded, by the final days of 1910, small bands of popular revolutionaries had begun to mobilize throughout parts of Chihuahua and other northern states, taking the opportunity of

Madero’s revolution to act upon years of frustrations against the Porfirian state. 156 Facing growing and violent opposition on many fronts, Porfirio Díaz shocked his most loyal constituents when he announced his resignation and departure into exile in the spring of 1911.157 Madero’s

1910 call for revolution appeared to have achieved its goals.

Unfortunately, war and general upheavals proved to be far from over. Less than two years into his presidency, Madero and his vice-president José María Pino Suarez were dead.158 They had fallen victim to a February 1913 military coup organized by Porfirian loyalists and supported

155Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 25- 27.

156 Per Alan Knight, the first major guerrilla movement that developed in response to Madero’s cry for revolution was in the mountains of western Chihuahua. There “rebellion had flared up in the 1890s…the radical PLM enjoyed support, and…the local population – cowboys, muleteers, miners, bandits, and peasant villagers- were known to be redoubtable fighters, well-versed in riding, shooting, and living off the land.” Regional insurgents who took up arms with Madero were often less concerned with electoral and political squabbles than with local issues such as land dispossession, social justice disputes, or lack of municipal political autonomy. See Knight, The Mexican Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, 28-29.

157 Knight, Short Introduction, 31.

158 Madero was ill-prepared to negotiate the demands of the many actors involved in championing his cause. He hesitated on the promises of social justice and land reform he had made to revolutionary jefes such as Pascual Orozco and Emiliano Zapata. Those same negotiations with popular class revolutionaries also alienated him from powerful landholding interests and the Mexican federal army. For more on the opposition that Madero faced during his short presidency, see Knight, The Mexican Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, 33.

86 by the opportunistic federal general, Victoriano Huerta and the U.S. ambassador to Mexico,

Henry Lane Wilson.159

Regional war chiefs across the country, hardly inspired byMadero, had even less reason to trust Madero’s betrayer and successor, Victoriano Huerta. To the north, the allied forces of the

Coahuilan landowner Venustiano Carranza, the Sonoran farmer and inventor Álvaro Obregón, and the former bandit Francisco “Pancho” Villa, declared war against the Huerta-led Mexican state.160 To the south, Emiliano Zapata, independent of the northern revolutionaries, made clear his defiance of the Huerta regime through direct conflict and propaganda campaigns.161 The country was plunged into war on several fronts.Victoriano Huerta’s ouster in the summer of

1914 failed to calm the revolutionary furies. After 1914, the revolutionary leaders who had once found common enemies first in Díaz and then, in Huerta, turned their armies on each other in a revolutionary free-for-all.162

Mexicans on all sides of the struggle made common use of the country’s rural equestrian customs to shape and interpret events unfolding about them. In the process, they laid the groundwork for a cultural nation-building project, investing symbolic leaders on horseback with new significance. Even as they made war on each other, early twentieth-century Mexicans established consensual meanings that would, one day, help bridge the divisions between them.

Sections Two and Three will illustrate these points by examining the public image of the two most prolific popular class leaders of the revolutionary era, Pancho Villa and Emiliano

159Mason Hart, “The Mexican Revolution,” 417.

160 Charles C. Cumberland, Mexican Revolution: The Constitutionalist Years (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972), 70-72.

161 See “Victory, In Part” in Samuel Brunk, Emiliano Zapata! Revolution and Betrayal in Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995).

162 See “The Revolution in power (1914-1920)” in Knight, Short Introduction.

87 Zapata. Villa and Zapata were only two of several powerful revolutionary leaders who gained

nationwide profiles during the 1910s, but in a playing field full of war chiefs who were fearsome

horsemen, they stood out as the “Centaur of the North” and the “Attila of the South,”

respectively. Villa and Zapata reflected the terror respectable Mexicans, the gente de bien, felt in

response to the rise of social underdogs, los de abajo, in the phrase of the period’s most famous

novel. At the same time, Villa’s and Zapata’s equestrian reputations partly explain their

following among Mexicans of the popular classes. So, generating both fear and admiration,

Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata continued Mexico’s 19th century tradition of morally

ambiguous, powerful men on horseback who fascinated the public at large.

Section Four, in turn, will examine how hacendados, a sector of the Mexican population

in direct opposition to popular class revolutionaries like Villa and Zapata, also leaned on rural

equestrian customs to project their experience in times of war. Overall, the existence and

representations of equestrian revolutionaries and equestrian reactionaries during the 1910s

suggests the appeal that cultural traditions like charrería would develop for post-revolutionary nation-builders looking to piece a war-torn society back together after 1921.

Pancho Villa, A Bandit-Hero on Horseback

Born Doroteo Arango in the northern state of Durango, Pancho Villa had a meteoric rise to fame and power as one of the principal revolutionary leaders operating in northern Mexico.

Little known during the Maderista uprising that toppled Porfirio Díaz from power in 1911, Villa commanded one of the main revolutionary armies in Mexico less than two years later. The up- start horseman seemed poised to become one of the ultimate arbiters of post-Porfirian Mexico.163

163 For a discussion of the factors behind Villa’s success between 1911 and 1915, see Friedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 801-802 and 806-807.

88 Villa’s rapidly rising star and military victories inevitably roused divergent reactions from the public.

On the one hand, sympathetic press accounts portrayed Villa as a forthright and capable

(if ruffian) leader.164 Leftist political activists and writers outside of Mexico also wrote admiringly of Villa as a type of frontier Robin Hood who defended and indefatigably fought for the redemption of Chihuahua’s peasantry.165 On the other hand, for a substantial portion of

Mexico’s more prosperous citizens and for government authorities and business interests abroad,

Pancho Villa was manifestly not a figure to be celebrated or trusted.166 Regardless of the political motives or ideology underlying their antipathy towards Villa, critics mostly agreed that he matched the stereotype of the bandit. No good (or legitimacy) could thus be attributed to the revolutionary movement Villa was extending from northern Mexico into the south. And yet, the traits that defined Villa as a bandit also inspired his most dedicated adherents—working folk, cowboys, and ranchers from Chihuahua and Durango—to lift Villa to power and fame.

Mexican reactions to Pancho Villa were in effect a strong indicator of where individuals stood on the question of the accomplishments of the Porfirian state. Generally; (though not always) cosmopolitan, urban, middle and upper class Mexicans—those who had thrived under the “modernizing” initiatives of the Porfiriato—tended to see in a man like Villa, the terrifying possibility that Mexico would regress to the lawless chaos of the first half of the 19th century. To respectable gente de bien, Villa was, and could only ever be, a villain—a villain rendered more

164 See Ignacio Herrerías, El Tiempo, Mexico City, April 1911, Cited in Friedrich Katz, Pancho Villa, 99.

165 Embedded with Villa’s troops for several months in 1912, the American reporter John Reed became convinced that the northern revolutionary embodied an authentic spirit of underclass revolutionary ferment: “In times of famine he fed whole districts, and took care of entire villages evicted by the soldiers under Porfirio Díaz’s outrageous land law. Everywhere he was known as The Friend of the Poor.” See John Reed, Insurgent Mexico (Forgotten Books Press, 2012), 118.

166 Katz, Pancho Villa, 322-324.

89 fearsome by his prowess as a horseman. For the working folk and cowboys who formed the core

of Villa’s armies, however, Villa had all of the qualifications of an indomitable frontier leader.

He was a hero on horseback along with whom they could exorcise their frustrations and

resentments against the Porfirian system and the hacendado oligarchy that had dispossessed them

of access to open ranges, economic opportunities, and local autonomy. A deeply polarizing

equestrian icon, Pancho Villa provides a useful focal point for glimpsing the deep cultural,

social, and economic divides that the Porfirian state-building project failed to resolve (indeed

exacerbated) and that thus provided the groundwork for the violence and turmoil of the 1910s.

A withering 1914 assessment by The World Herald captures the prevailing sentiments of

Villa’s detractors both within and beyond Mexico’s borders:

Everything that has been told of Villa . . . shows him as a monster of brutality and cruelty. His entire history is that of a robber and assassin, lifted now, by the fortunes of war, into a conspicuous position which he has filled with such signal military ability as to give him a coating of semi-respectability.167

Domestic and international critics abhorred Villa, driven by rumors and reports of his grand

capacity for violence against respectable Porfirian citizens, some foreigners, and their private

property. But what the World Herald’s writers even more clearly reflected was a deep sense of frustration that a man with a very pronounced history of criminal behavior had, because of the revolution, risen to occupy a position of extensive power and legitimacy.

Nor were critics wrong in believing Pancho Villa had a criminal past. Both legend and official records coincide in establishing that Villa was an accomplished bandit.168 The scale and terror of his criminal operations vary according to the accounts consulted, but their basic outlines

167 The World Herald (in The Literary Digest) May 16, 1914 as cited in Katz, Pancho Villa, 324.

168 See Friedrich Katz’s discussion of the White, Black, and Epic legends circulating about Villa in Katz, 2-5. On the historical documentation that details Villa’s pre-revolutionary bandit activities, see Katz, 64.

90 cannot be disputed. For respectable, urban, and educated Mexicans who subscribed

wholeheartedly to the reigning Porfirian philosophy of modernity via the Mexican state’s firm

policing, regulation, and repression of crime, vice, and unproductivity, Villa’s dubious reputation

doubling troubling.

Yet Pancho Villa enjoyed wide admiration and substantial support from the working- class people of northern Mexico. To understand why his bandit reputation could inspire deep revulsion in some quarters but not impede his embrace by others, we must take a closer look at banditry in Villa’s northern frontier world.

There were many reasons for why working men like Villa resorted to banditry prior to the

Mexican Revolution. Both Durango (the state of Villa’s birth) and Chihuahua (Villa’s home after

1902) experienced great levels of poverty with few viable trades and careers possible for the

poorest citizens. The leva or forced induction into the Porfirian military was a fear and, all too

frequently, a reality for Chihuahua’s working poor. Caught on the wrong side of an hacendado or

some other notable’s favor, a man could find himself suddenly recruited against his will into the

federal army. 169 The authoritarianism, corruption, and incompetence of local political bosses and

authorities further enhanced a sense of distrust and hatred of the Porfirian system.170 Of great importance as well, both Durango and Chihuahua had frontier outlaw traditions in which a

169 Ibid, 65-66.

170 In the words of Raymond Caballero, the power of Chihuahua’s hacendados and the Porfirian authorities who backed them was “pervasive and suffocating.” You could not “eat, dress, travel, transport, fuel, wash, cement, build, cool, heat, light, electrify, dynamite, insure, borrow, bank, or sweep the floor without involving them….” See Raymond Caballero, Orozco: The Life and Death of a Mexican Revolutionary (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 53.

91 certain degree of popular legitimacy and respect was granted to men who challenged the

Mexican state and local vested interests.171

The almost complete lack of records about Villa’s early life makes it extremely difficult

to ascertain precisely which (or any) of these extenuating circumstances contributed to his

criminal activities prior to the revolution. However, the existence of popular outlaw traditions in

both of the states that Villa called home explains why his criminal history did not exempt him

from becoming an admired revolutionary leader among many working class norteños.

During Villa’s youth and early adulthood, daring outlaws who enjoyed extensive popular legitimacy roamed Durango and Chihuahua, much to the consternation and outrage of Porfirian authorities. In Durango, those outlaws included famous social bandits like Heraclio Bernal and

Ignacio Parra (Villa’s first mentor in banditry) who made a name for themselves robbing mines, stagecoaches, and ranches while also engaging in political rebellion and maintaining positive relations with peasant leaders and working folk. Despite reaping huge dividends from terrorizing travelers and local wealth-producing enterprises, bandits like Bernal enjoyed substantial popular support and respect because they took care to never harass the residents of their home territories and would provide monetary gifts, protection, and alliances to both poor villagers and important men in their local communities. Bandits, then, did not summarily inspire hatred, fear, and rejection among the general populace in Durango. 172

In Chihuahua, banditry (whether social or otherwise) was much less positively viewed.

Chihuahuans, however, had their own kind of social outlaw to whom they were willing to afford

respect and legitimacy—the intrepid cattle rustler. As a frontier society with centuries-long

171 Katz, Pancho Villa, 70.

172 Ibid, 66.

92 traditions of hard-scrabble ranching and of fighting semi-nomadic Indians, Chihuahua’s residents

were long accustomed to taking order and justice into their own hands. They were also used to

earning a living without the aid or intervention of the Mexican state.173

For years, Chihuahua’s rich grazing lands had been open territory with herds of wild

livestock remaining free for the taking by any individual willing to invest the time and the effort.

However, this began to change in the mid-19th century. At that time, hacendados led by the powerful Terrazas and Creel clan began to partition the land and to claim most of the wild livestock for themselves, all while also preventing the access of smaller ranchers.174

Before long then, working cowboys and laborers began to engage in cattle-rustling.

Having stolen branded livestock from the isolated reaches of some local hacienda, cattle rustlers

would sell the meat illegally in neighboring markets or else run the cattle north into the United

States. Chihuahuans generally frowned upon banditry, but cattle-rustling was viewed as a fully

legitimate exercise by the lower classes because they considered the activity to be a much-

desired restoration of their historic open access to the range.175

In the years Pancho Villa resided in Durango and Chihuahua prior to the outbreak of

revolution, he engaged regularly in both banditry and cattle-rustling. Along the way, he gained

not immediate glory but certainly a reputation for the kinds of exploits and daring that could gain

a man a great measure of respect and power in his part of the world.176

173 Caballero, Orozco, 17. For an extended study of Chihuahua’s soldier-settlers through the colonial and early post- independence eras, see Ana María Alonso, Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico’s Northern Frontier (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995).

174 Caballero, Orozco, 45-50.

175 Katz, Pancho Villa, 70.

176 In a 1920 interview with Elías Torres, Villa declared on the subject of cattle-rustling: “Every year, Terrazas sent many peons to collect the wild cattle that had been born there and to put his mark on them…My brothers and I, as

93 As an outlaw, Villa demonstrated personality traits and skills that allowed him to fit a number of highly culturally significant roles among the working peoples of his home territories.

His acts of banditry and cattle rustling demonstrated an audacious, fearless, and highly independent personality that overlapped considerably with the qualities of an exemplar macho, caudillo, and frontier fighter.177 Villa was also a prodigious horseman and gunfighter.178 His equestrian and fighting skills facilitated the actual work of robbery and cattle theft, but overall, those qualities also allowed him to appear the kind of hyper-masculine frontier leader that working class Chihuahuans keenly understood and admired. 179 When revolutionary insurgency began to break out in northern Chihuahua, Villa was well placed to begin earning substantial loyalty, respect, and prestige among Chihuahua’s lower classes and even among some of the members of the more prosperous sectors of the region. His subsequent ability to meld charismatic frontier leadership with keen organizational skills and a string of astounding

well as all of those who followed me and were as poor as we were had the same right to collect whatever cattle we could and mark them under our brand. Why should only rich old men have these rights?” See the quotation in Katz, 70.

177 For extended discussions of Villa’s character see Manuel A. Machado Jr., Centaur of the North: Francisco Villa, the Mexican Revolution, and Northern Mexico (Austin: Eakin Press, 1988), 177-180. On Villa’s caudillo characteristics, see also Katz, Pancho Villa, 103, 239, and 807.

178 On Villa’s superb gun skills and prodigious horsemanship, see the testimonies of Edwin Emerson and Silvestre Terrazas quoted in Katz, 75-76.

179 In detailing the origins of Villa’s co-revolutionary for a time, Pascual Orozco, Raymond Caballero has described the generally “contrarian” character of the ranchers and working peoples among whom Pancho Villa circulated and who would ultimately become the nucleus of the first Maderista uprisings against Porfirio Díaz and the hacendado oligarchy his administration enabled: “Serranos developed a resentment of the oligarchy and its privileges and a readiness to oppose the establishment in many ways. Their Apache, Reform War, and French invasion resistance heritage and their independent, tight-knit communities made them a uniquely historic military region. Their armed, muleteer occupation and history of organizing and running long-range, armed caravans made them a war-ready cavalry… Serranos, for the most part, did not experience the patron-peon relationship; rather, they were independent, small ranchers and farmers who had no special regard for the wealthy or landed elite. That natural independence from and opposition to establishment institutions led several to become Protestants and to support radical anti-government forces, such as the Liberal Party. Serranos were leaders of the revolution, because they felt the sting of land seizures and [Enrique C.] Creel’s oppressive politics perhaps more than any did, and they were armed, trained, and motivated to do something about it.” See Caballero, Orozco, 78.

94 victories on the battlefield rendered Villa a revolutionary hero, and so the epic celebration of his person became possible.

In a variety of platforms and popular traditions, Villa’s adherents offered a deeply loyalist counter statement to the portrayals of savagery emanating from the mainstream Mexico City press and other outlets. Villa’s more educated and middle-class supporters were given to organizing triumphant ceremonies at which a visibly embarrassed Villa was festooned with medals.180 Additionally, official Villista news outlets like the publication Vida Nueva tracked the exploits of Villa’s forces and delivered a stream of paeans to the tenor of:

The great general, the invincible general, the all-powerful warrior who began to fight with nine men, with nine candidates for suicide, now heads the greatest army that this republic has ever seen in its history, [A republic ] which never believed that one man would be able to lead 25,000 soldiers.181

Vida Nueva’s writers essentially took the lead in fostering a dedicated Villa personality cult.

Villa’s popular class followers, however, gave shape to their own epics. Numerous men and women whose names were never recorded composed popular ballads, corridos, in honor of their supreme leader.

Villista corridos – improvised, modified endlessly, and transmitted orally for years before being captured in print, afforded listeners with everything they might desire to know about Villa.

They offered an origin story for their hero, with one classic describing Villa’s birth as an outlaw:

Camino real of Durango cactus adorns the road Doroteo Arango flees Pursued by the rurales

They seek him to take him to prison;

180 See Katz, Pancho Villa, 424-425.

181 Cited in Katz, Pancho Villa, 423.

95 He has injured the patron of the rancho Gogojito.

The patrón with ill intentions desired a woman; He thought to choose among Villa’s sisters!182

In the view of this loyal balladeer, Villa’s career as an outlaw had begun not arbitrarily or maliciously but because he had been pushed into a life of crime by the injustices of the Porfirian system.183

Corridos also detailed various daring escapes from prison, and they recreated (and jeered at) the horror of Porfirian authorities expecting Villa’s imminent arrival:

The rich with all their money Have already got their lashing, As the soldiers of Urbina Can tell, and those of Maclovio Herrera. Fly, fly away, little dove, Fly over all the prairies, And say that Villa has come To drive them out forever! Ambition will ruin itself And justice will be the winner, For Villa has reached Torreón To punish the avaricious.184

To this balladeer, Villa was social justice incarnate.

Villista corridos further captured the immense pride and loyalty that the most devout of

Villa’s followers felt about their forming part of the División del Norte. In one composition, corridistas defiantly sang:

182 The “Corrido grande de Pancho Villa” as recorded in Armando de María y Campos, La Revolución Mexicana a través de los corridos populares (México: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1962), 361.

183 For more on Villista corridos, see Machado’s analysis in Centaur of the North, 170-175.

184 Excerpt from “La ‘mañanitas’ de Pancho Villa” as quoted in Katz, Pancho Villa, 229.

96 I am a soldier of Pancho Villa, Of the Dorados, I am the most loyal, I care nothing about losing my life, It is the duty of men to die for him.185

In this balladeer’s imaginary, Villa was the sort of man who drew the utmost displays of fierce loyal manliness. Other corridos explained as well why Villa inspired such deep pride and loyalty:

Riding his chestnut stallion With a pistol in his hand He rides to the worst of the fighting. To the soldier he is a brother. Breaking barriers, crushing people, He defies, roars, blasphemes, Until finally he shouts, ‘Enough! We’ve won! Signal the victory, Chema! 186

Armed, mounted on one of his famously swift horses, and ferociously waging battle alongside his soldiers, the Villa of these revolutionary corridos evoked a brand of manly equestrian heroism that uplifted and promised redemption for Chihuahua’s (and the greater Mexico’s) underclasses.187

185 Excerpt from the Corrido Villista also known as Los Dorados as quoted in Katz, 287.

186 Excerpt from “Corrido de Pancho Villa” in de María y Campos, Corridos, 359-360.

187 Francisco Gil Pinon, a protégé of Villa, recalled decades after the revolution ended that Villa had had a passion for swift horses. According to Gil Pinon, Villa had kept a stable of ten or more of his most favored mounts in Ciudad Chihuahua where the horses were showered with “all manner of attentions.” The horses had also served as one of Villa’s preferred stratagems for currying favor or showing respect and admiration to others. Gil Pinon recalled that Villa had gifted beloved steeds such as El Chato, Siete Leguas (a mare who had a famous corrido named after her), and La Gacela to important figures like the generals Felipe Angeles and Adolfo de la Huerta (who would be instrumental in working out the amnesty that allowed Villa to live in peace at Canutillo during the last years of his life). Villa was even said to have projected a wry sense of humor onto his four-legged companions, naming a favorite cart mule he frequently used at Canutillo, El Wilson, because the animal was stubborn, had been born in the United States, and had fallen into Villa’s hands after it had entered Mexico with Pershing’s Punitive Expedition. See “Los caballos del General Villa. Francisco Gil Piñón as interviewed by Carlos Méndez Villa,” Archivo Histórico Instituto Chihuahuense de Cultura, accessed January 2018, https://archivoshistoricoschihuahua.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/2117/

97 In real life, the possibility that Villa might actually accomplish great things for his

popular class adherents was strongest through 1914. Events such as the retreat of constitutionalist

representatives from the Convention of Aguascalientes in November 1914 and then the widely

reported union between Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa at Xochimilco near Mexico City in

December of 1914, had domestic and foreign observers speculating that Villa was on the verge

of completely overturning Venustiano Carranza’s claims to the supreme leadership of Mexico’s

revolution.188 But within months of Villa parting ways with the constitutionalists, the fortunes of his movement underwent a vast change.189

The turning point came in April 1915. That spring, Villa engaged Carranza’s primary

military tactician, Álvaro Obregón, in two devastating battles near the city of Celaya,

Guanajuato. Obregón, a brilliant and ruthless leader in his own right, was familiar with Villa’s

preferred tactic of unleashing massive, frequently uncoordinated, cavalry attacks on his

adversaries. He prepared for the impending encounter with Villa’s División del Norte by

adapting the trench warfare being waged by European general staffs on the various fronts of

World War I. Having nested infantrymen in irrigation ditches outfitted with barbed wire and

machine guns, Obregón had his troops mow down the once seemingly-invincible Villista cavalry

as it charged head-long onto the enemy fire in wave after wave of relentless frontal assaults.

Villa’s forces suffered crippling losses during the first encounter with Obregón’s army on April

6, 1915, and since Villa, for reasons unknown, chose to rely on the same frontal cavalry charges

during a second encounter on April 13, the famed División del Norte was nearly wiped out.

188 The famous encounter between the two revolutionary leaders has been discussed at length by scholars of the revolution. See Katz, Pancho Villa, 434-437. See also Samuel Brunk, The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata: Myth, Memory, and Mexico’s 20th Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 21-22 and Paul Hart, Emiliano Zapata: Mexico’s Social Revolutionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 188-192.

189 For an account of Villa and Carranza’s personal and political differences see, Machado, Centaur of the North, 87- 88.

98 Three thousand Villistas lay dead after Celaya, and Obregón’s troops marched another 6,000

men away to prison.190

Villa managed to escape the devastating aftermath of Celaya (on the back of his most

loyal steed, El Grano de Oro, balladeers sang), but the defeat placed him in a downward spiral.

In the year that followed, Villa’s movement gradually fell apart, with troops surrendering or

defecting to the Carrancistas. Villa was reduced to hiding out in the mountains of Chihuahua,

with only a few hundred of his most loyal men at his side. After 1915, Villa would never again

command the power or resources that had been at his disposal prior to his major defeats in

central Mexico.

Moreover, in the final two years that Villa battled to stay out of the hands of Carranza, he

also experienced a substantial transformation in the hearts and minds of poor Chihuahuans. He

began losing some of the popular support his movement had once enjoyed, not least because he

and his remaining troops perpetrated cruelties on villagers and ranchers they suspected of

betrayal or of alliance with Villa’s enemies.191 Those were dark years, resonant of the reality that

Mexico and its revolution seemed to be charting paths that Villa could not (or would not) follow.

The age of Mexican horsemen as supreme fighters and military actors was coming to an end.192 This did not mean, however, that Villa’s personal legend of power and defiance had

reached its end as well. After his old nemesis Venustiano Carranza fell to an assassination plot in

190 Katz, Pancho Villa, 488-494.

191 Katz, Pancho Villa, 538-539 and the detailed discussion in the chapter “Villa’s Darkest Years.”

192 Mexican military historian Leopoldo Martínez Caraza notes that the arrival of new kinds of battle technology generally changed the nature of warfare on Mexican soil: “En esa época, poco antes de la Primera Guerra Mundial, la Caballería era todavía el arma de la victoria. Muy pocos se habían dado cuenta para entonces que el combate a caballo lo iba a reemplazar el transporte motorizado y los ingenios blindados como el tanque; muchos menos pudieron anticipar la utilidad de la naciente aviación…” See La Caballeria en Mexico (Mexico: Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional, 1980), 236.

99 1920, Villa was able to negotiate a few years of peace with the revolutionary governments of

Adolfo de la Huerta and Álvaro Obregón. In 1923, however, Villa too was felled by assassins. 193

His murder sparked a wave of popular commemorations that emphasized the great attachment some Mexicans still felt for the fallen revolutionary.

Corridistas began singing, “Pancho Villa, I carry you in my mind and in my heart….”194

Others used their craft to indict the Sonoran revolutionaries holding sway in Mexico City.195

Still, others reflected on the tragedy of Villa’s death by drawing upon his well-known love of horses. In a corrido about Villa’s horse Grano de Oro, for example, balladeers intoned:

When Villa was killed in Hidalgo del Parral, in Canutillo the horse waited for him.

Waiting for the general He died, still wearing his saddle.196

The affective image of Grano de Oro faithfully awaiting the return of Villa long after his assassination no doubt served to powerful effect in the frontier cowboy societies of Villa’s life.

In a land where horses could factor as some of the most necessary and noble companions a rural working man could have in his life, the still-waiting Grano de Oro helped anonymous balladeers convey (what was to them) the true depths of Villa’s worth and legitimacy. If the noble beast kept a devoted vigil and remembrance, then Villa’s surviving compatriots could hardly do less.

193 For a detailed description of Villa’s assassination see Machado, Centaur, 1-9. See also the chapter “The End and the Survival of Villa” in Katz, Pancho Villa.

194 Excerpt from the corrido “El mayor de los Dorados” as recorded in “El Mayor de los Dorados,” Centauro del Norte, accessed January 2018, https://centaurodelnorte.com/el-mayor-de-los-dorados/.

195 Machado, Centaur, 8-9.

196 Excerpts from the traditional corrido “Grano de Oro” as recorded in “Corridos Villistas: el Grano de Oro,” Centauro del Norte, accessed January 2018, https://centaurodelnorte.com/el-grano-de-oro/.

100 In life, Pancho Villa embodied just the perfect combination of character traits, fighting

abilities and personal history to strike both positive and negative chords with the general

Mexican population. He was the son of impoverished sharecroppers, a man who had fought for a

living through legal and illegal means, and one who with a combination of cowboy audacity,

shrewdness, loyalty, and determination managed for a time to build one of the most relevant and

powerful armed movements of the revolution. For all of those reasons, Villa became an

unquestionably redemptive and respected icon for underclass Mexicans in the north. Those same

traits, however, as well as the image of a superb gunfighter and horseman defiantly and

determinedly at the head of an army of even more skilled gunfighters and horsemen were the

stuff of nightmares for middle and upper class Mexicans. Villa vividly and terrifyingly

personified a defiant, uncontrollable, unafraid underclass bent on turning the Porfirian social

order on its head. To the south, in the state of Morelos, the charro-clad Emiliano Zapata stoked

exactly the same kinds of expectations and fear.

The Charro Emiliano Zapata

Indisputably the most (in)famous charro of his revolutionary times, Emiliano Zapata conveyed volumes about his person and the movement he represented via his choice of equestrian raiment. Zapata’s large felt sombreros, fitted short jackets with silken butterfly ties,

and the button-lined trousers all communicated the unmistakably rural and popular nature of his

movement. They also gave Zapata a southern regional identity that contrasted markedly with that

of other major revolutionary leaders. Moreover, depending on where they stood on issues of

social reform and national development, Mexicans gazing upon his form were likely to draw

specific negative and positive cues. As a charro, Zapata could either evoke the rising tide of

underclass savagery that the country’s most ‘respectable’ citizens believed was on the verge of

101 overtaking the country, or he could conjure a sense of dignity and legitimacy for the Zapatistas’

revolution.

Ultimately, in a time when a war of images and representation consumed the attention of

Mexicans as much as news about the armed encounters fought between competing factions,

Emiliano Zapata’s choice and deployment of charro dress provides yet another example of how

the image and customs of rural men on horseback resonated deeply among Mexicans looking for

ways to interpret and influence the revolutionary process unfolding about them.

When and why did Emiliano Zapata dress charro? These basic questions merit

consideration because though numerous revolutionary photographs and post-war

commemorations (statues, art pieces, and testimonials) have inextricably linked Zapata’s myth to

the image of an unflinching charro horseman, in day to day life, Zapata appeared as another man

entirely. Historian Paul Hart has noted that for a substantial part of his revolutionary career,

Zapata was virtually indistinguishable from the average Morelos campesino.197 When on the

move across the country sides of Morelos, Puebla, and Guerrero; while relaxing or working away

from campaign headquarters; and when engaged in military action on the field, Zapata’s

everyday appearance was composed of white cotton work shirts, trousers, straw hats, and

huaraches.198 Zapata, in fact, chose to dress charro only for very select occasions, mainly when

the likelihood of public scrutiny and exposure was great. His selective use of the costume

197 Paul Hart, Emiliano Zapata: Mexico’s Social Revolutionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 130.

198 See the candid photograph taken of Zapata during travel across the countryside in Hart, Social Revolutionary, 131.

102 suggests that charro regalia formed part of a deliberate strategy to impress specific cultural and social cues on the people who gazed upon his charro-clad form.199

It is not possible to determine exactly what motivated Emiliano Zapata to dress charro when he did. But the evolution of rural equestrian customs and representations discussed in previous chapters certainly suggests the constellation of cultural meanings that might have informed his sartorial choices and reasoning. The costume, for one, would have helped Zapata convey a basic message of country elegance and modest prosperity. By the waning years of the

Porfiriato, charro regalia had ceased to be the primary choice of attire for urban dandies and genteel horsemen desirous of being seen elegantly and richly dressed as they promenaded through the fashionable thoroughfares of the metropolitan capital and other major provincial centers. However, as demonstrated by the case of the fabulously wealthy and debonair Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, it was also not the case that charro clothing was entirely eschewed by hacendados or other cosmopolitan men about town.200 Certainly among rural and working class

Mexicans (especially those who partook of the national bullfighting entertainment scene), charro attire remained a popular fashion choice. In the south central communities of Morelos where

Emiliano Zapata came of age, charro attire was the signature raiment of prosperous rancheros and rural working men, and indeed it was through charro suits and ornate saddles that Zapata—

199 This assessment is inspired in part by Paul Friedrich’s reflections on the leadership the peasant leader Primo Tapia communicated through his clothing. See Paul Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village (Chicago: University of Chicago), 1979.

200 See Chapter Two.

103 an enterprising mule train leader, ejido farmer, and livestock trader—often showcased his modest

economic success.201

Charro attire would also have helped Zapata convey macho virility and his reputation as a

superb horseman and cowboy. Daredevil rural sport entertainers of the Porfirian era like

Ponciano Díaz had enforced an inextricable link between charro costume and mastery of cowboy

skills like lassoing, bull-tailing, and horse-breaking. Any man (or woman, as in the case of the fearless Alejandro) who donned charro gear projected at least the possibility that they were dominant and virile actors within the bullring. In the case of Zapata, reality matched the possibilities implied by the costume.

A chief source of Zapata’s local fame prior to the Mexican revolution were his skills as a horse trainer and handler. Zapata was such a prodigious horseman that his skills and services had been in great demand by rancheros throughout Morelos and western Puebla.202 His skills as a

horse handler had even created for him the briefly lucrative opportunity of serving as lead

caretaker of Ignacio de la Torre y Mier’s Mexico City racing stable in the early months of

1910.203 And even years after his death, former subordinates continued to recall Zapata’s equestrian supremacy. In interviews, the Zapatista general Serafín Robles reminisced, for example, that “there was no other cowboy like Don Emiliano Zapata. He was a bull-rider, a roper, a horse-breaker and a trouble-maker—as are all cowboys.” 204 Zapata’s prowess with

horses and livestock was further matched by a considerable affinity for drinking, smoking, and

201 See the descriptions of Zapata’s charro appearance in John Womack, Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1972), 6-7. See also the description offered by Samuel Brunk, Emiliano Zapata!, 22-23.

202 Womack, Zapata, 6.

203 Brunk, Emiliano Zapata!, 26.

204 Robles is quoted in Hart, Social Revolutionary, 38.

104 womanizing – macho traits also evoked by charro attire.205 So as a successful and capable

smallholder, rancher, and horseman it makes sense that Zapata developed an affinity for dressing

and equipping himself as a charro.

A third possibility bears consideration, though it suggests a comparison that Emiliano

Zapata might have refuted outright had it been communicated to him. In the context of turn-of-

the-century Morelos, villagers and campesinos gazing upon the charro Zapata could very well

have been reminded of the popular equestrian insurgency and defiance most famously embodied

by the daredevil Plateados of the Reform era.

During the years of Benito Juarez’s embattled and itinerant presidencies, the Morelos

countryside had been overrun by groups of as many as one hundred bandit horsemen. The

bandits had thrived from various daring and criminal pursuits—cattle-rustling, protection rackets,

kidnappings of local notables and hacienda administrators, murders-for-hire, extortion, and much

more.206 The widespread presence of banditry in the region was symptomatic of much the same

kind of popular disaffection with the power of the haciendas that was felt by many poor

Morelenses in the lead up to 1910. Absent fair opportunities for employment and land tenure or

just treatment from hacendados and their administrators, men from hacienda settlements and

neighboring villages resorted to a banditry that was frequently social in nature but still violent

and disruptive of the local peace.207 The most famous of Reform-era bandits in Morelos were los

Plateados, “the men in silver,” so named because of the heavy silver adornments on their clothing, equipment, and horses.

205 On Zapata’s drinking and womanizing ways, see Brunk, Emiliano Zapata!, 25; Womack, Zapata, 107 and 342.

206 Paul Hart, Bitter Harvest: the social transformation of Morelos, Mexico, and the origins of the Zapatista revolution, 1840-1910 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 100.

207 Hart, Bitter Harvest, 101.

105 Paul Hart has noted that the Plateados “represented a counter-statement” to the refined

authority of hacendados.208 The Plateados, often of humble rural origin, expressed their own

brand of popular authority and power via ornate silver accessories and their defiant ownership of

weapons and fast horses.209 In other words, everything about the Plateados’ dress and

comportment communicated that they were not helpless peasants who could be crushed by the

wanton labor and land demands of hacienda elites.210 That the bandits frequently counted on the

complicity of friends and family in their municipalities further enhanced their counter-statement of power and impunity. By the time Zapata came of age, half a century had passed since the heyday of the Plateados, yet residents of the municipality of Villa de Ayala where Zapata resided could hardly have ignored the parallels between the daring and defiance of their young community leader and the bandit horsemen of decades past.

Critics of Zapata certainly picked up on the comparison. In 1912, with the first upheavals of the revolution past and Francisco Madero installed as president of Mexico, the educator and minor public servant, Lamberto Popoca y Palacios, published a burning indictment of Zapata and his movement. Popoca’s work, a short fictionalized history titled Historia del vandalismo en el estado de Morelos. Ayer como Ahora! 1860! “Plateados!”1911! “Zapatistas!”, offered a basic premise: the Zapatistas of Popoca’s times were a nefarious plague on the innocent citizens of

208 Hart, 138.

209 Ibid, 138.

210 The Plateados’ dominance in Morelos was so pronounced that on two occasions the administration of Benito Juarez reached out to the gang for military support. Plateados were recruited to fight for the liberal cause during the fratricidal conflicts of the Reforma, and they were again recruited as a volunteer cavalry in Juarez’s defensive war against the French Intervention. But far from acting in the spirit of patriotic duty, the Plateados instead used the cover of their alliance with the Juarista state to expand their criminal operations into the states of Puebla, Veracruz, and Guerrero. The gang’s refusal to place itself entirely under the authority of the national government became plainly evident when in 1862 the bandit chief Salome Plasencia dueled and killed a man that state authorities had sent to replace him as the political prefect of the community of Yautepec, Morelos. Hart, Bitter Harvest, 103.

106 Morelos.211 Working from eyewitness accounts, family lore, and likely a great deal of

imagination, Popoca y Palacios made his case by depicting the Plateados, particularly their

famous chief Salome Plascencia, as noble, masculine icons. The Zapatistas of 1910s Morelos, in contrast, were portrayed as morbidly stunted, lawless savages.

Popoca y Palacios’ pamphlet appeared at a time when Emiliano Zapata was badly losing

the battle for respect and support of his agrarian cause at a national level. Through the summer

and fall of 1911, Francisco Madero, though initially sympathetic to the plight of Morelos

villagers, was allowing himself to be swayed to support the interests of the hacendados whose

immense wealth and land-grabbing had sparked Zapata’s popular uprising in the first place.

Additionally, the interim president of Mexico and staunch Díaz loyalist, Francisco León de la

Barra, was taking all opportunities possible to sabotage communication and accord between

Madero and Zapata. And perhaps, most ominously, the equally reactionary Porfirian Brigadier

General Victoriano Huerta occupied Morelos with federal soldiers, intent on menacing Zapata

and his men into unarmed submission. 212 In sum, the closer Madero came to assuming powers as

president, the more Zapata could see that the leader he and his fighters had helped champion was

bent on retaining much of the old Porfirian model of governance.

It was in the midst of these tensions that a nefarious new national identity for Emiliano

Zapata emerged. Refusing to be bullied by federal government officials, in June of 1911, Zapata

seized a cache of weapons at the federal armory in the city of Cuernavaca.213 The mainstream

211 See biographical introduction by Carlos Barreto Zamudio in Lamberto Popoca y Palacios, Historia del vandalismo en el estado de Morelos. ¡Ayer como ahora! 1860! ¡Plateados! 1911! ¡Zapatistas! (Cuernavaca: Secretaria de Información y Comunicación, Gobierno del Estado de Morelos, 2014).

212 See Brunk’s discussion of this time in the chapter “The Birth of Zapatismo” in Brunk, Emiliano Zapata! Revolution and Betrayal in Mexico, 1995.

213 See Womack, Zapata, 99-100.

107 press of the day immediately cried foul, with the conservative newspaper El Imparcial of Mexico

City circulating an edition which famously articulated a savage new moniker for the southern revolutionary. “Zapata is the Modern Attila,” El Imparcial’s front pages screamed to the reading public.214 Though the Cuernavaca armory incident did not immediately result in violence, the hyperbolic staff of El Imparcial stoked public fears of looming disaster, equating Zapata with the savage and relentless Hun invader of ancient Rome and asserting that Zapata had issued the fearsome declaration: “The only government I respect is my guns.”215 A Black Legend of

Zapatismo was thus brewing, one in which Emiliano Zapata, at the head of Indian bandit hordes, was bent on unleashing barbarism upon civilized and respectable Mexican society. By the time that Popoca y Palacios’ Historia del vandalismo appeared in 1912, Zapata was on the run with his men, thoroughly vilified by the mainstream press and viciously hunted by the federal armies of his former ally President Madero.

Popoca y Palacios’ pamphlet is a vivid example of the Zapatista Black Legends circulating in Mexico during the early 1910s. But Historia del vandalismo is interesting as well because it charts yet another turn in the national narrative associated with rural men on horseback. The text again shows how Mexican cultural producers oscillated between representations of horsemen as national icons and national villains. As previous chapters have discussed, at mid-century, rancheros and rural horsemen were often the topic of romantic and celebratory costumbrista sketches produced by young nationalist intellectuals who desired to establish the sources and characteristics of Mexico’s unique national identity. By the time a new authoritarian government began to implement Porfirio Díaz’s vision of a modern Mexican nation

214 El Imparcial, June 29, 1911.

215 El Imparcial, June 29, 1911.

108 ruled by order and progress, the earlier romanticism had given sway to literary depictions of

charros and bandit horsemen who were meant to embody the years of chaotic political

changeovers, civil wars, and foreign invasions suffered by Mexicans in earlier decades. Charro

villains like those featured in Ignacio Manuel Altamirano’s El Zarco represented the backwards

and savage old world that a new generation of Porfirian leaders and citizens were meant to leave

behind.216 With Historia del vandalismo, however, Lamberto Popoca y Palacios, using the same

bandits—los Plateados—of Altamirano’s magnum opus, rerouted the course of Porfirian

narratives on horsemen once again towards the romantic tendencies of mid-19th century

costumbristas.

Popoca y Palacios made this shift particularly evident through his purification of the

Plateados’ fearsome reputation. Eschewing the rumors and official accounts to the contrary,

Popoca y Palacios argued that the Plateados had never carried out senseless reprisals or terrifying

acts of murder and betrayal.217 He also conjured a noble character for the Plateados’ most

famous leader, arguing that the bandit chieftain Salome Plascencia “was a generous character”

who “in another life and environment and surrounded by other sorts of men would have stood among the great generals that fought the empire of Maximilian.” 218 Of the fact that the Plateados

had irrefutably committed many great crimes, Popoca y Palacios argued: “It was the custom! The

tradition of warfare, tradition of well-mounted charros, and tradition among soldiers lacking any

216 For a comprehensive discussion of how bandit literature reflected and informed the nation-building impulses and anxieties of 19th century statesmen and lettered men, see Juan Pablo Dabove, Nightmares of the Lettered City: Banditry and Literature in Latin America 1816-1929 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007).

217 Popoca y Palacios, Vandalismo, 172.

218 Popoca y Palacios, 128.

109 education.”219 The criminal activities of the Plateados could be at least partially excused, Popoca y Palacios seemed to want his readers to believe, because they had been the last resort of men facing very limited options.

On the other hand, nothing could excuse the Zapatistas. To Popoca y Palacios, the

Zapatistas were the “morbid seedlings” of previous generations of honorable men. 220 His loathing stemmed from the chaos he believed the Zapatistas to have wrought upon a once peaceful and orderly Porfirian Morelos. Popoca y Palacios claimed to have seen Zapatista men wantonly pillaging and murdering defenseless citizens, including wounded soldiers recuperating in hospital wards, and he loathed Zapata quite especially for ordering his men to raze the city of

Cuautla in the spring of 1911.221 Calling on the legacy of earlier honorable fighting men

(including an esteemed Zapata ancestor), Popoca y Palacios impugned Zapata’s standing as a man and as a leader:

D. Emiliano Zapata should remember . . . that his uncle D. Cristino Zapata was one of those men in whom the cowardice of murdering the defenseless was never known. He should know that among the men of those times, personal duels took place only when the enemy was equally armed; ‘face to face’… and when fighting as revolutionaries, they only killed their enemies during combat… never were the defenseless or peaceful citizens murdered, nor homes and property set ablaze, or reprisals meted out on entire towns and individuals, not even by the bandits.222

His own fortunes tied to the influence of bureaucrats in the dying Porfirian administration,

Popoca y Palacios clearly felt a great degree of grievance against the Zapatistas who so

219 Ibid, 170.

220 In Popoca y Palacios’ own words: “Han pasado cincuenta años, repetimos, y gérmenes morbosos de aquellos hombres; idiosincrasia pervertida de aquellos bandidos; revueltos fangos de las enterradas cloacas de aquellos facinerosos han surgido rabiosos con los semblantes descompuestos de caínes y ¡la ferocidad salvaje de chacales!” Ibid, 170.

221 Ibid, 171.

222 Ibid, 174-175.

110 extensively overturned the order of his home state. Nostalgic depictions of noble Plateados against whom he could compare the Zapatistas so unfavorably provided an avenue for Popoca y

Palacios to give piercing expression to his rage and frustration about the rise of los de abajo.

Emiliano Zapata, were he to have gotten wind of the comparisons to the Plateados

(whether positive or negative), seems unlikely to have appreciated them. He had uncles who were known to have fought and participated in the capture of bandits in the early years of the

Porfiriato.223 Zapata also vociferously denounced banditry throughout the early years of his movement, understanding that the murk of criminality affected the reputation of his fighters and his cause as a whole.224 In a December 1911 proclamation, for example, Zapata warned all criminals operating under the name of his movement that if caught they would be treated as his personal enemies, and he defended villagers’ agrarian struggle, arguing “one cannot call a person a bandit who, weak and helpless, was despoiled of his property by someone strong and powerful, and now that he cannot tolerate more, makes a superhuman effort to regain control over that which he used to own.” 225 As Chris Frazer notes, Zapata “redirected” criminal discourse at hacendados and other Porfirian elites. He also had the movement’s leadership police the abuses of Zapatista recruits.226

And yet Zapata, though the costume remained a signature marker of bandits like the

Plateados, still dressed charro for crucial moments of public exposure. His reasoning was undoubtedly local and strategic. In the face of unyielding accusations of barbarism, criminality,

223 Brunk, Emiliano Zapata!, 8.

224 Hart, Social Revolutionary, 94-95 and 139.

225 Frazer, Bandit Nation, 192.

226 For a detailed discussion of the Zapatista leadership’s responses to banditry see, Samuel Brunk, “‘The Sad Situation of Civilians and Soldiers’”: The Banditry of Zapatismo in the Mexican Revolution,” American Historical Review (101) 2 (April 1996).

111 and cowardice, charro costume likely served as Zapata’s most obvious choice for making a

counter-statement that he could stomach as a man of profoundly deep loyalties and identification

with his local surroundings. For him there would be no dandying up in the European-style

fashions of urban catrines and lagartijos who showcased their modernity and civilized gentility by following the cues of men in other great nations.227 Zapata dressed charro because that was

what rural Morelenses did to convey wealth and property. He dressed charro because that was

the custom of mestizo propertied men in his locality, something that might have mattered to him

all the more during the years of revolutionary conflict because the reactionary press and gente de

bien viewed him and his fighters as nothing less than backwards Indians.228 Zapata dressed

charro as well because in his world, the attire was the raiment of virile and forthright men, the

type who were more likely to challenge rather than wilt before accusations of cowardice.

Ultimately, Zapata dressed charro because it was the public guise that best communicated his

leadership credentials and character to the locals with whom he most desired to maintain trust

and legitimacy.229

Charro costume might have coded in precisely the opposite way to urban, middle-class,

and northern opponents of Zapata’s revolution in Morelos. It was after all inextricably linked to

powerful equestrian figures of dubious moral character and extralegal behavior. The costume

also recalled the heavily rural, lawless, and undeveloped Mexico of decades past that the

227 For more on the refined tastes of bourgeois Porfirian men see “The bathhouse and male homosexuality in Porfirian Mexico” by Victor M. Macias-González in Victor M. Macias-González and Anne Rubenstein, Masculinity and Sexuality in modern Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012).

228 Contrary to their Black Legend, the Zapatistas were neither primarily Indian nor were they mostly bandits. Frazer, Bandit Nation, 192.

229 According to Samuel Brunk, balancing the need to compete for national power while holding on to local support and not seeming like he was a politician was one of the biggest challenges of Zapata's revolutionary career. The charro costume helped him navigate this challenge. See Samuel Brunk, The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata: Myth, Memory, and Mexico’s Twentieth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 22.

112 Porfiriato had battled to leave behind. But overall, Zapata’s choice to purposefully craft a charro

public image reflects the enduring resonance and strength of men on horseback in the Mexican

popular imagination. Whether considered a savage villain or a heroic leader, as a charro, Zapata could navigate the storm of public controversies about his movement much more successfully.

The costume gave him a clearer guise of power and legitimacy than would have been possible had he presented as a work-worn, cotton-clad peasant, the kind of individual more typically expected to bow down before the prerogatives of his social superiors.

The charro strategy did not particularly improve Zapata’s actual ability to win the

revolution for agrarian justice during his lifetime. He and his fighters spent Francisco Madero’s

short-lived presidency and then years of enmity against the usurper Victoriano Huerta and the

single-mindedly ambitious Constitutionalist chief, Venustiano Carranza, being severely

outgunned and constrained to the type of guerrilla warfare that rarely afforded the capture of

strategic territories or resources.230 Zapata and his generals were also not able to secure the

powerful allies—the U.S. government under Wilson nor any of the better-armed Mexican federal

army generals—who might have helped them secure control of Mexico’s federal government.231

Yet, Zapata’s charro image still mattered in one crucial way. It undoubtedly helped him

and his movement survive through the long years of violence and uphill battles between 1911

and 1919. Zapata and his generals never seem to have lost the ability to recruit new soldiers or to

retain the support of the general peasantry. Indeed, many of his adherents continued to express

deep loyalty and appreciation for Zapata decades after his assassination in 1919.232

230 Hart, Social Revolutionary, 132-133.

231 Hart, Social Revolutionary, 178-179 and 255-256.

232 Hart, 121-126.

113 In his guise as a stalwart and defiant charro leader, Zapata connected with the rural

populace of his home territories in a way that was entirely legible and worthy of their adherence,

and in charro regalia, Zapata offered a convincing point upon which Morelos’s agrarian struggle

could crystallize and attract further support. His movement was better able to limp on, fueled in

part by campesinos’ sense that their leader was not the sort of man to ever back down from the

struggle. That image of charro strength and defiance was evocative enough that it outlived the

actual man, to be called upon years after Zapata’s death by both his own fighters and his former

enemies as they negotiated one of the few major land reforms conducted under the presidency of

the Sonoran caudillo Álvaro Obregón.233 Decades after Zapata’s death, elements of his charro image—his horse, for example—have continued to be used by new generations of defiant

Mexicans to articulate and legitimize various struggles for social justice.234

In the end, however, Zapata was not the only revolutionary era figure to imbue charro

regalia with special social meaning for the 20th century. Hacendados, the primary villains denounced by Zapatistas, also made use of charro customs to construct a vision of the kind of world they believed Mexico should be. The following section will discuss the emergence of a reactionary and conservative charro nostalgia that was the product of hacendados’ struggle to cope with the displacement and violence many of them experienced during the long decade of the revolution. Through the charro-themed oeuvre of the hacendado ingénue, Ernesto Icaza, in particular, it becomes possible to see why after the end of the revolution, images and memories of the radical and defiant charro Zapata would coexist, indeed at times be eclipsed, by a more

233 See the chapter “Forging a National Zapata” in Brunk, The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata, 2008.

234 Samuel Brunk discusses the several manifestations of Zapata’s white horse in 20th century art, popular culture, and political imagery. See The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata, 2008.

114 romantic and conservative tradition of charros, real and symbolic, that honored an imagined pre- revolutionary utopia of peaceful haciendas ruled by benevolent charro patriarchs.

Hacendados and Charro Nostalgia

On November 15, 1913, a somber party of friends and relatives waited at the Buena Vista train station for the arrival of the earthly remains of Francisco Rincón Gallardo. Francisco, son- in-law of Porfirio Díaz (by marriage to the youngest Díaz daughter, Luz), had been murdered by horse thieves while reviewing his properties at the hacienda of Santa María de Gallardo in

Aguascalientes. Shocking, though perhaps not completely surprising given the rumors of popular violence and chaos in the more northerly provinces, Francisco’s death forced a reckoning on the

Díaz family and the other remaining luminaries of the Porfiriato. As Carlos Tello Díaz described it, “in him [Francisco], like a prophecy, the aristocracy caught a terrifying glimpse of their demise.”235 Devastating to his immediate family and terrifying to the larger circle of elites still

remaining in the country, Francisco Rincón Gallardo’s death helps illustrate some of the

conditions under which landholders’ charro nostalgia began to take root in the midst of a bloody

social revolution. The same nostalgia began also to be vividly represented in the canvases of the

Porfirian rural dandy, Ernesto Icaza.

In life, Francisco Rincón Gallardo had been an exemplar of the strategic navigation

between “new” and “old” that was common among members of the Porfirian elite. He was the

son of a very renowned landowning family with a titled lineage that stretched back to the 17th

century. Though less economically and politically influential than in earlier eras, the Rincón

Gallardo family name still commanded a great deal of respect among the upper echelons of

Porfirian society. Francisco along with the other young scions of his esteemed family enjoyed a

235 Tello Díaz, El Exilio, 144.

115 cultured upbringing and schooling abroad, extensive travel, and a comfortable income from

investments in the Banco Central Mexicano. 236 When the marriage of Francisco Rincón

Gallardo and Luz Díaz took place under the blessing of the archbishop of Mexico City, those in

their immediate circles likely understood and accepted the union as a matter of consolidating the

politically influential new Porfirian leadership with the gentility and respectability of old

Mexican nobility.

Francisco Rincón Gallardo had also had a passion for horses that had played out across

both the modern and traditional landscapes of his country. On the one hand, he had been a

consummate English-style sportsman and participant of the derbies held at the various new race tracks of Porfirian Mexico City. His uncle, Pedro Rincón Gallardo, had been one of the original founders of the Mexico City Jockey Club, and Francisco was a familiar sight on the thoroughbred circuit, betting on and raking in huge winnings from prizewinners such as Shooting

Star, a thoroughbred raised and nurtured in Rincón Gallardo’s own stables.237

On the other hand, Francisco Rincón Gallardo took a great deal of pride and interest in his duties as a charro hacendado. In partnership with his cousin, Carlos (heir to the family’s titles and a future player in the post-revolutionary charro sporting world), Francisco owned a stud farm

236 According to Carlos Tello Díaz, “Las familias que blasonaron títulos en la colonia, los Rincón Gallardo, los Fagoaga, los Romero de Terreros - no tuvieron jamás una influencia de consideración en la vida del Porfiriato.” See Tello Díaz, El Exilio, 107. For more details on the Rincón Gallardo family and their land tenure see José Fernando Alcaide Aguilar, La hacienda ‘Ciénega de Mata’ de los Rincón Gallardo: un modelo excepcional de latifundio novohispano durante los siglos XVII y XVIII (Sevilla: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, Escuela de estudios hispano americanos, 2004). See also Jesús Gómez Serrano and Francisco Javier Delgado Aguilar, Un mayorazgo sin fundación: la familia Rincón Gallardo y su latifundio de Ciénega de Mata, 1593-1740 (Aguascalientes, Ags.: MX: Instituto Cultural de Aguascalientes, 2006).

237 Beezley, Judas at the Jockey Club, 27-30 and Tello Díaz, El exilio, 120.

116 for race horses at the hacienda of Santa María de Gallardo in Aguascalientes. He was a common

sight at Santa María, touring his properties on horseback in full charro regalia.238

It was Francisco’s concern for his horses at Santa María de Gallardo that ultimately got

him killed. Receiving reports of revolutionary unrest near the hacienda and determined to

personally ascertain the wellbeing of his holdings, Francisco boarded a train to Aguascalientes in

early November of 1913. Shortly after arriving at Santa María de Gallardo, Francisco set out on

horseback with a lone assistant (mozo de estribo) to check on his thoroughbreds at a nearby

rancho, ignoring the accounts of employees who reported banditry in the area and perhaps

feeling confident that his family connections remained more than sufficient protection in the

event of trouble. As it happened, upon arrival at the rancho, Francisco and his mozo were met by

a pair of strangers who demanded they be sold his racehorses. Francisco refused and offered

other horses as options, but before any transaction could begin, one of the pair pulled out a

carbine and shot the hacendado off his horse. The men then proceeded to tie up Francisco’s mozo

(who at a later moment provided the account of Francisco’s death to authorities) and steal a pair

of horses, leaving Francisco bleeding to death on the ground. The assailants were never

identified. 239

The reasons for Rincón Gallardo’s death remained ambiguous after the fact. Who had his

assailants really been? Why had he ignored all warnings and traveled only in the company of a

single mozo? Given the mozo’s survival, was it possible that he had been involved in the attack against his patrón? With few clear answers and a stream of horror stories pouring in from the provinces, terror swirled in the stomachs of affluent metropolitanos, the gente de bien. Not too

238 Tello Díaz, El exilio, 119 and 143-144.

239 Tello Díaz, 143-144.

117 many years earlier, it would have been unthinkable that the son-in-law of the most powerful man

in the country could be assaulted and murdered with such impunity (on his own property no

less). But with the idealistic Madero having fallen victim to treachery during the decena trágica

and his successor, the widely despised Victoriano Huerta, busily waging vicious defensive

campaigns against revolutionaries in the north and south, incidents of violence against former

Porfirian power-holders had been escalating.

Alan Knight has detailed that in the midst of the revolutionary turmoil that resulted in the

deaths, imprisonment, and public humiliation of luminaries like Francisco Rincón Gallardo,

landowning elites were left with three options. Particularly as the revolution moved south and

northern jefes entered “terra incognita”, enterprising landowners willing to put their personal

affinities and politics aside opted for becoming last minute “allies” of northern leaders like

Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza. Acting as contacts within the local political networks,

these hacendados “colonized” the revolution in order to safeguard their holdings and ensure the

survival of their patrimonies.240 For other rancheros and landholders, however, capitulating to

outsider interventions and abuses was deemed impossible. Particularly after 1915, rancheros and

hacendados in parts of west-central Mexico (Tepic and the Bajío), Veracruz, and the southeast

(Tabasco, Yucatán, Chiapas) organized multi-class counter-revolutionary defensas that engaged

viciously with the forces of Carranza, Villa, and Zapata.241

For the majority, however, the main resort became simply to flee. Rural exiles might flee from smaller provincial centers like Tepic and San Luis Potosí to the relative safety of larger

240 Knight, The Mexican Revolution vol. 2, 199-200.

241 Knight, 200-202.

118 cities like Guadalajara and Mexico City. Others would leave the country entirely.242 Common destinations for Porfirian and Huertista exiles included New Orleans, Havana, New York, and

Paris. In these conditions of landowner displacement, incarcerations, violence, and reaction,

Ernesto Icaza, an itinerant charro dandy and hacendado, created a series of paintings and murals that memorialized in bucolic detail the basic ranching activities of central Mexican landed estates, most of which were threatened by the changing social order around him.

Ernesto Icaza spent the majority of his young adulthood during the Porfiriato vagabonding between haciendas and ranchos.243 Content to live, work, and play among rancheros and cowboys, Icaza never seemed to hold steady employment or a profession, living instead on a family inheritance and the generosity of numerous hacendado friends. By the early

1900s, however, Icaza’s finances appeared to have reached a critical point because he began painting specifically to generate income.244 Icaza’s clientele were the same hacendado friends who had so indulgently hosted his rural wanderings over the years, and they proved highly influential on the themes and execution of his oeuvre.

242 Knight, 178-179. Julie M. Weise has discussed affluent Mexican emigres in New Orleans during the revolution in the chapter “Mexicans as Europeans: Mexican nationalism and assimilation in New Orleans, 1910-1939.” See Julie M. Weise, Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (Chapel Hill, NC.: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

243 Icaza was the son of an old-name family with ties to various illustrious clergymen, titled nobility, intellectuals, and hacendados. Though very genteel, by the time Icaza was born in 1866, the family fortune had been reduced to the point that his father and siblings had to work as gentlemen professionals – they were all lawyers. According to biographers, however, Icaza himself was not the least bit interested in learning a profession. From an early age, Icaza demonstrated a passion for horsemanship and ranchero activities which led him to skip first school lessons and then, as an adult, a profession and family responsibilities, in favor of lengthy sojourns at the country estates of his family and friends. Described as a tall, blue-eyed man of lordly bearing but also work-roughened hands and deeply- tanned skin, he always dressed in elegant but functional charro outfits that allowed him to participate in roundups, coleaderos, and herraderos and to match equestrian skills with the cowboys and ranchers of his company. For more details about Icaza’s life, see Luis Ortiz Macedo, Ernesto Icaza: El Charro Pintor (México: Domecq y Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 1995) and Alfonso de Icaza, “Biografía del pintor charro Ernesto de Icaza y Sánchez,” Charrería, October 1959. See also Alfonso de Icaza, Así era aquello (México: Ediciones Botas, 1957).

244 Ortiz Macedo, Ernesto Icaza, 37.

119 Icaza, christened by admirers in the years after his death as the Charro Pintor, would choose to render in obsessive detail, scenes of charrería – the costumes, horses, labor, and physical artistry of central Mexican horsemen.245 Icaza is considered an ingénue by art historians, an autodidact whose formal skills with scale and depth were poor and whose execution could really suffer at times due to the cheap quality of the pigments and canvasses he used. He has nonetheless gained praise over the years for the sheer degree of movement captured in his paintings and for the highly-detailed record of pre-revolutionary pastoral traditions he left for posterity.246 As Roberto Yslas Frangos, grandson of one of the charros depicted in Icaza’s paintings has stated:

Icaza’s paintings have become a visual encyclopedia of the basic elements of charrería. They describe in detail the different accoutrements; the great variety and appearance of the saddles; the work, semi-gala, and gala attire… [He] painted with strict focus on the traditional ways, the customs and methods of charros…making clear the specific protocols that should be followed and the rigorous nature of charro activities. 247

It was particularly after his death in 1929 that Icaza gained value as a source on charro customs and rural life. With the revolutionary fighting at an end and a new revolutionary elite guiding the country along expansive social and economic reforms, Icaza’s paintings evoked a nostalgia for

“times that were past” and “traditions that were irredeemably lost.”248 Nostalgia led post- revolutionary charro aficionados and art scholars to rescue Icaza’s work from oblivion. Nostalgia had guided Icasa’s brush, and it made his artwork valuable long after his death.

245 For an example of Ernesto Icaza’s memorialization by post-revolutionary charro sportsmen, see Leovigildo Islas Escárcega and Rodolfo García-Bravo y Olivera, Iconografía charra (México, D.F.: Ediciones Charras, 1969).

246 Islas Escárcega and García-Bravo y Olivera, Iconografía, 93-95.

247 Lupina Lara Elizondo, Edgar Degas, Ernesto Icaza (México, D.F.: Quálitas Compañía de Seguros: Promoción de Arte Mexicano, 2012), 227-228.

248 Ortiz Macedo, Ernesto Icaza, 94-95. See for example: “Honrar Honra,” México Charro, February 1936.

120 Art historian Lupina Lara Elizondo has noted that as the revolution spread throughout

Mexico, Ernesto Icaza continued to visit his ranchero and cowboy friends. As the hacendados of

his acquaintance took refuge in cities or in exile and as revolution and upheaval spread in the

rural world around him, Icaza hung on to the way of life on haciendas, “even if it was only via

his memories and his creations.”249 Icaza left no written accounts of his life or experiences

during the Mexican Revolution. Only some of his paintings and a series of murals at the

haciendas of La Cofradía and Ciénega de Mata remain.250 What these remnants of his life do

communicate, however, is a fond vision of rural productivity, patriarchal social relations, and

charro customs in spite of the vicious social revolution that was tearing the country apart at the

time of the paintings’ creation.

For example, the paintings “Autoretrato de Ernesto Icaza coleando” and “Juan Saldívar

manganeando sobre Vulcano” both dated 1900, depict Icaza and his friend, the hacendado Juan

Saldívar, in the act of assertively working their livestock. These were not “effete” dandies of the

sort excoriated by the press in Porfirian Mexico City, but instead, virile, capable men who both

enjoyed and excelled at the “bloodsports” of the countryside.

The 1910 painting “Alfonso Yslas Escandón montando el Viento” paid homage to both

the hacendado’s skill with the lasso and to his powerful mount. Yslas Escandón was captured

precisely at the moment of lassoing a wild, fleeing mare.

The trio of paintings “Patrón bajando del caballo” (1913), “Dando ordenes” (1916), and

“El patrón dando ordenes” (1919), in turn, illustrate Icaza’s memory of (or desire for?) the

249 Lara Elizondo, Degas y Icaza, 148.

250 The murals at La Cofradía were commissioned by Macario Pérez, father-in-law of Francisco Madero. The murals at Ciénega de Mata were commissioned by members of the Rincón Gallardo family. See Ortiz Macedo, Ernesto Icaza, 52-53.

121 continuity of landowner authority even in the midst of the revolution. In each painting, the

stentorian, mounted figure of a patrón issued directives to subordinates in various positions of

acquiescence.

Though accounts of the period between 1913 and 1918 indicate that landholders and

elites had almost completely cleared out from country estates and communities in the north and

center of the country, in Icaza’s paintings, the patrones remained in the saddle.251

Finally, in the 1925 painting, “Lazando a puerta de corral,” Icaza once again depicted an

hacendado in the process of expertly roping a wild mare much as he had in the paintings of Juan

Saldívar (1900) and Alfonso Yslas Escandón (1910).

All of these paintings, produced over a 25-year period that encompassed a wildly

destructive revolution, nonetheless, maintained great continuity in themes, colors (predominantly

earthy brown, red, and green hues), and equestrian animation. The Mexican Revolution,

however, is completely absent from the paintings. The landed estates and charro traditions of

Icaza’s painting are rendered in a spirit of enduring rural vitality and camaraderie. Collectively,

the paintings communicate as much as any written autobiographical account, this former

hacendado’s struggle to come to terms with the changing fortunes of his class and their way of

life in the Mexico of the 1910s. As upcoming chapters will demonstrate, Ernesto Icaza was far

from being alone in his charro hacendado nostalgia.

Conclusion

The revolutionary decade was a time of considerable contradictions for Mexico’s horsemen and equestrian customs. On the one hand, the revolution seemed to herald an end to the supremacy of rural horsemen and their ways of life. Though horsemen were crucial military

251 Knight, The Mexican Revolution vol. 2, 178.

122 actors at the start of the decade, the devastating defeat of cavalries by infantrymen given major

offensive advantages through trench warfare and new weapons technology signaled their decline

by mid-decade. The revolution also took its toll on the country’s ranching economy. Cowboys

and ranchers were swept into the factional warfare abandoning livestock populations decimated

by the war-time demands of fighters on all sides of the conflict. By the end of the decade, war chiefs had to be more considerate about the way they used their horses on campaign because it

had become an increasingly difficult feat to find replacements for horses killed or taken in

battle.252

On the other hand, horsemen galloped ahead through realms of cultural symbolism and

the popular imagination. As the previous sections have discussed, horsemanship and equestrian

imagery remained appealing to Mexicans searching for ways to interpret the events taking place

around them. Understanding this ongoing cultural relevance of equestrian figures will help us

explain the reemergence of the charro, as a premiere post-revolutionary national icon.

By 1920, a decade of war and economic turmoil had left great swathes of the Mexican

population in poverty and more divided than ever. And as the revolutionary conflict began

tapering to an end, Mexican leaders had to devise strategies for the nation’s reconstruction.

Cultural nationalism would prove to be part of their solution, and the deployment of the charro as

a state-endorsed (or at least state-adjacent) national icon after 1921 shows that the country’s

cultural and political leaders had come to understand that rural horsemen could resonate deeply

and widely with the general populace in both war and peace.

252 In 1919, for example, General Felipe Angeles informed Pancho Villa that, “The situation is very different now from what it was five years ago, when after hundreds of horses had been killed, we were able to replenish our supplies within hours from the haciendas. But now, General, you will see that there are no horses in all of Chihuahua, and that soon we will have to go into Coahuila or Nuevo León to obtain them, for the supplies in Chihuahua are not sufficient for a revolution.” See Katz, Pancho Villa, 704.

123 PART II: THE RISE OF ORGANIZED CHARRERÍA, 1920-1960

The period between 1910-20 presented Mexicans with a series of privations and difficulties from which most would struggle greatly to recover. With various revolutionary factions and “weekend” governments printing currencies and limiting the circulation of coinage, hyper-inflation set in, followed soon after by massive bankruptcies, hampered commerce, and mass unemployment. Pensions and fixed incomes collapsed, and whatever savings people had were soon wiped out.253 Key agricultural and livestock producing regions were overcome by war, and so food shortages inevitably resulted as well.254 Cities and towns already crowded with exiles from the countryside saw their public services taxed even further when epidemics of typhus, smallpox, and the dreaded “Spanish” influenza tore through the population in 1916-

18.255

By 1919, however, affairs gradually began to take a turn. In the north, Pancho Villa struggled for survival at the head of a dwindling, starving guerrilla band, and Emiliano Zapata, having fought capture and total defeat for several years, succumbed to an assassination plot in the spring of that year. With his two greatest regional rivals nearly vanquished, Venustiano

Carranza, leader of the constitutionalist faction of the revolution was able to more fully strengthen his control of the national government. He quickly set about forging an administration that was receptive to property claims and reparations which encouraged many exiles and

253 Knight, The Mexican Revolution vol 2, 407-411.

254 Ibid, 412-415.

255 Ibid, 422.

124 merchants to return to Mexico and which helped give the metropolitan capital at least, an aura of

prosperity “underway”. 256 Carranza would end up being overthrown and assassinated by his

former subordinate Álvaro Obregón in the summer of 1920, but the process of pacification and

restoration that had gained momentum in the last two years of his presidency continued.

In this fragile peace at the turn of the decade, the remaining members of the Porfirian

ancien régime took stock of their losses and undoubtedly despaired. Not all of them had made it

through the turbulence of the last decade. Ignacio de la Torre y Mier, for example, held prisoner

for four years by Carranza and then Zapata, had managed to escape his captors in the spring of

1918 and to flee to New York City only to die shortly after his arrival of a surgical procedure.257

For those who had survived and returned to the country, the path back to prosperity would not be

easy. Though many were able to recuperate lands and possessions lost in the chaos of the earlier

years, those properties could be quickly lost again in the process of settling outstanding debts and

legal issues.258 And as a new revolutionary (predominantly northern and middle-class) elite took form around them, the Porfirian “old guard” understood that, politically, they were likely to be marginalized as well.

Before such circumstances, escapism and nostalgia unsurprisingly gained force. The following chapters will now turn to a discussion of charrería organizada – an equestrian sport community that served as a haven for Mexicans with traditionalist sensibilities and a deep longing for an imagined charro utopia of the pre-revolutionary past.

256 See Leander Jan de Bekker, The Plot against Mexico (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919), 119. See also Tello Díaz, El exilio, 407-409.

257Tello Díaz, El exilio, 214-215.

258 Tello Díaz, 413-414.

125 The concrete beginnings of organized charrería are disputed. Organized charros,

practitioners of charrería as well as members of the social organizations that champion the sport,

generally trace the roots of their sport community to one of two historic charro associations. The

Asociación de Charros de Jalisco began holding gatherings near Guadalajara, Jalisco in 1919,

and the Asociación Nacional de Charros first recruited members and created a formal club

charter in Mexico City in 1921.

Regardless of the exact geographic origins of the first charro association, community members generally agree on the reasoning behind the emergence of these early organizations.

Reeling from the economic and social trauma of a destructive social revolution and fearing that

charro equestrian customs would fall into obscurity due to the ravages of war; displaced

landowners, ranchers, and sympathetic white collar professionals residing in the relative safety of

Guadalajara and the metropolitan capital decided to organize themselves into fraternal

collectives devoted to the performance and revitalization of charrería.259 These early organized

charros then proceeded to recruit new aficionados and to construct a thriving network of social

organizations based around the performance of charrería. 260

There were two facets to the development of organized charrería in the years that

followed. On the one hand, organized charros developed a new competitive equestrian sport.

Between 1920 and 1970, charro sportsmen, drawing upon and debating a great variety of

equestrian practices and cowboy skills, gradually defined the contours of Mexican charro

authenticity. Among many basic tasks, they detailed the specific components of proper charro

259 José Álvarez del Villar, Orígenes del charro mexicano (México, D.F.: Librería A. Pola, 1968), 146-147.

260 Aficionados and admirers of organized charrería have produced several books about the sport, its traditions, and its most important figures. Some of the most recent include: José Valero Silva, El Libro de la Charrería, 1987; Octavio Chávez, Charrería: arte y tradición, 2008; and Silviano Hernández G., Ser Charro es Ser Mexicano, 2010.

126 costume and equipment. They determined the precise cowboy skills that an authentic charro was supposed to master, and they ruled on how those skills were to be judged in competitions between charro athletes. They defined construction and sizing parameters for charro lienzos, the

keyhole-shaped arenas in which charros would perform their sport, and they established in 1933

a national oversight organization, the Federación Nacional de Charros, to govern all organized

charros and lead the complicated process of expanding and streamlining their sport.261

Through the first decades of the post-revolution, however, organized charrería also

developed as a constellation of deeply patriotic and traditionalist social clubs. Organized charros

created special community headquarters known as ranchos charros in which spaces and social

relationships were modeled on the landowning estates, haciendas, of bygone years.262 They afforded great honors and centrality to distinguished and senior men known as charros de la vieja guardia, “old guard” aficionados with personal experience and knowledge of how charrería had been performed before the Mexican revolution.263 They accepted and encouraged

traditionalists roles for charro women and children, with beauty and grace especially serving as

the guiding principles that defined the experience of women in organized charrería.264 The

organized charro community thus evolved to function as a haven for individuals who appreciated

261 For a detailed study of the emergence of organized charrería as a 20th century equestrian sport community, see Kathleen Mullen Sands, Charrería mexicana: an equestrian folk tradition (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993).

262 See Mullen Sands’ extended discussion of ranchos charros and the competitive charreada as extended reenactments of the festivities on classic haciendas in Charrería mexicana, 190-195.

263 On the charros de la vieja guardia see Rafael Alamán Vidaure’s interview with Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, “Como se charreaba en México antes de 1921,” Charrería Nacional, April 1, 1965. See also José Álvarez del Villar, “La Influencia de Ernesto Icaza en las Costumbres Charras Actuales,” Charrería: Revista informativa, July 1959, 16.

264 See Beatriz Aldana Marquez, “The Effects of Hacienda Culture on the Gendered Division of Labor within the Charro Community,” Gender Issues 34, no. 1 (March 2017): 3-22. See also Olga Najera Ramirez, “Mounting Traditions: The Origin and Evolution of La Escaramuza Charra,” in Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change, eds. Norma Cantu and Olga Nájera-Ramírez (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).

127 an environment of unquestionably conservative social values and the tacit reinforcement of a

patriarchal order.265

Organized charros were far from being the only practitioners of charrería active in post- revolutionary Mexico. They did distinguish themselves, however, by transforming what had previously been a series of unclassified and heterogeneous ranching skills and customs into a streamlined competitive sport with associated craft traditions and governing bodies. Organized charros also distinguished themselves as conservative “grassroots nationalists” who melded an understanding of the historic cultural relevance of men on horseback with the nationalist discourses that predominated in post-revolutionary Mexico to posit themselves as living symbols

of Mexican national identity.266 In this manner, organized charros did their level best to place

themselves and their traditionalist equestrian community at the heart of post-revolutionary

national culture and life.

265 For a very detailed reading of the gender and class politics implicit in the relationships and activities of organized charros, see Cristina Palomar Verea, En cada charro, un hermano: la charrería en el estado de Jalisco (Guadalajara, Jalisco, MX: Secretaría de Cultura, Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco, 2004).

266 The members of charro organizations illustrate and extend historian Paul Gillingham’s concept of everyday nationalists-- individuals suffering from “material and political poverty” who understood and used “cultural nationalism as a tool for self-promotion.” See Paul Gillingham, Cuauhtémoc’s bones: forging national identity in modern Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011), 8-9, 148-149, 168, 214.

128 CHAPTER 4: THE WRITINGS OF AN OLD GUARD CHARRO

Introduction

Through the summer of 1921, exuberant crowds gathered in Mexico City to partake of the lavish state-sponsored celebrations that would mark the Centennial of the Consummation of

Mexican Independence. A final military coup and rebellion had recently brought the Sonoran caudillo, Álvaro Obregón, to power over his former constitutionalist chief, Venustiano Carranza, and for most Mexicans, it was not yet clear that the revolutionary fighting of the previous decade had finally reached a conclusion.267 But in the weeks leading to the Centennial at least, a spirit of optimism and festivity permeated the metropolitan capital.

Mexicans found various colorful and patriotic ways to convey their hopes for the country at the start of the new decade. Recently returned artists and intellectuals used the opportunity of the Centennial to begin conceiving a new revolutionary national culture that would signal the arrival of peace in the war-torn country. Visitors and residents of the capital were thus presented with their choice of vernacular craft art showcases, folk music recitals, and glamorous Noches mexicanas in which folk dances such as the jarabe tapatío were lauded. At every event organized for the Centennial, visitors absorbed a celebration of local arts and customs,

267 See Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution: A Very Short Introduction for a succinct discussion of the rebellion that brought Álvaro Obregón and the Sonorans to power in 1920.

129 particularly those associated with the country’s historically marginalized indigenous communities.268

To help showcase the country’s revolutionary and egalitarian spirit, organizers from the metropolitan daily El Universal even staged an India Bonita contest as part of the Centennial festivities. The winner of the contest, María Bibiana Uribe was paraded triumphantly through the streets of the capital, showered with gifts and accolades, and feted lavishly. Uribe, as an unassuming beauty enthroned atop a brightly decorated parade float, was meant to convey the unsung glories of Mexico’s Indian peoples.269

Yet, even as festival organizers put together celebrations of a more inclusive, indigenous vision of Mexican society, other participants in the festivities made clear that they wished to maintain the charro, a mestizo and gala-clad rancher usually associated with the center-west of

Mexico, at the center of the Centennial’s patriotic celebrations.

Three months prior to the India Bonita’s colorful debut, a brief “Notice for Mexican

Charros” had appeared in the June 2, 1921 issue of the metropolitan daily, Excélsior. “With the objective of promoting the National Equestrian Sport,” the patrons of the announcement called for interested parties to participate in the creation of a new club. The club, the announcement declared, would “admit all sports aficionados, regardless of class or hierarchies,” and it would be defined by its founders’ interest in “popularizing charrería.”270 Several aficionados heeded the

268 For detailed discussions of the rising nationalist sentiment of the 1920s-1950s see, Alicia Azuela, Arte y poder: renacimiento artístico y revolución social México, 1910-1945 (Zamora, Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2005). See also Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis, The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).

269 See the discussion of the India Bonita contest in Rick López, “The India Bonita Contest of 1921 and the Ethnicization of Mexican National Culture,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 2 (May 2002).

270 “Aviso a los charros mexicanos,” Excélsior, June 2, 1921.

130 notice, and upon attending the meeting, they launched a new equestrian sport organization, the

Asociación Nacional de Charros.271

In the weeks that followed, the fledgling Asociación Nacional de Charros made its

presence known in the metropolitan capital. Its members invited the public and members of the

diplomatic corps to a coleadero or bull-tailing showcase. They participated in numerous parades

throughout the city. And on the day of the India Bonita’s celebratory parade, the Asociación

Nacional de Charros secured a central role. Invited by El Universal to join the celebrations,

charros from the new organization rode escort around María Bibiana Uribe’s parade float,

serving as her equestrian honor guard.272 In the midst of the wildly popular and patriotic celebrations of Indian authenticity of 1921, a new breed of “organized” charros thus made its inaugural bid to ensure that gala-clad rancheros and their customs would (literally) remain center stage alongside indigenismo in the post-revolutionary popular imagination.

As this chapter will begin to show, the formation of charrería organizada, a patriotic

charro sports community, showcases the enduring cultural utility and resonance of vernacular

horsemanship in the post-revolution. After 1921, a growing population of equestrian aficionados

led by a small cadre of charros de la vieja guardia—nostalgic Porfirian loyalists, landowners,

and their closest sympathizers—were able to demonstrate inconformity with (if not outright

rejection of) the Mexican revolution while simultaneously embedding themselves into the

271 “Quedo instalada la Asociación Nacional de Charros,” Excélsior, June 5, 1921.

272 Details of the ANCh’s inaugural activities are described in “Breves apuntes históricos de la fundación de la Asociación Nacional de Charros: Extracto de los apuntes inéditos del señor don Ramón Cosío González (q.e.p.),” Charrería nacional, no. 1 (June 1963): 6-7. See also Fidel L. González, “Historia de la Asociación Nacional de Charros y sus Miembros más Distinguidos,” Charrería nacional, no. 8 (January 1964). Most recent, the Asociación Nacional de Charros recounted the story of its founding in Síntesis Histórica (México, D.F.: Asociación Nacional de Charros, 2005).

131 patriotic culture of the post-revolution by nurturing a new charro sport and community of dedicated charro sportsmen.273

The following sections will begin outlining the emergence of organized charrería by examining the central role of the former Porfirian luminary, Carlos Rincón Gallardo y Romero de Terreros, cousin of Francisco Rincón Gallardo, discussed in Chapter 3. Between 1921 and

1950, Rincón Gallardo deployed his reputation as a knowledgeable Porfirian charro to position himself as an authority on post-revolutionary charro horsemanship and to articulate for organized charros a patriotic narrative about the heroism and nationalist significance of Mexican horsemen.

Rincón Gallardo’s teachings and example show that organized charrería provided a haven for

Mexicans with traditionalist sensibilities and a deep longing for an imagined rural utopia of the not so distant Porfirian past. As Chapter 3 has discussed, the Maderista uprisings of 1910-11 struck terror in the hearts of the landowning and entrepreneurial gentes de bien who had most benefitted from the economic and social policies of the authoritarian Porfirian state, and the subsequent decade of economic loss, displacement, violence, and death made clear to hacendados, most especially, that their era of greatest strength and prosperity had come to an end. As Mexicans began a new decade under an equally new and untested revolutionary leadership, sympathizers and beneficiaries of the Porfirian ancien regime remained fearful and uncertain of what the future would hold. After 1919, however, some of them would begin to find a form of stability in organized charrería. In the spirit of many popular class and elite actors before them, “old guard” luminaries like Carlos Rincón Gallardo (Duke of Regla and Marquis of

273 This chapter takes inspiration from and extends the propositions made by Ricardo Pérez Montfort in “Una región inventada desde el centro. La consolidación del cuadro estereotípico nacional, 1921-1937” in the essay collection Estampas de nacionalismo popular mexicano: diez ensayos sobre la cultura popular y nacionalismo (México, D.F.: CIESAS, CIDHEM, 2003).

132 Guadalupe) would use rural equestrian customs and performances to (re)build relevance in post- revolutionary Mexico.

The Marquis and his Background

Carlos Rincón Gallardo was the head of a distinguished landowning family and a man who still made use of the aristocratic titles bestowed by the Spanish crown on an early 18th century family patriarch. He had been involved with the formation of organized charrería from nearly the beginning. In 1921, Rincón Gallardo had helped the founders of Mexico City’s

Asociación Nacional de Charros draft their first club constitution, a document which had articulated the new organization’s mission to revive and propagate the “national sport” of charrería.274 Two years after the debut of the Asociación Nacional de Charros, Rincón Gallardo had also launched a very productive career as a charro escritor, a charrería enthusiast who via weekly newspaper columns, magazine editorials, and book-length studies taught aficionados and the general public about the intricacies of charro horsemanship.

Rincón Gallardo’s career of charro performance and writings ultimately stretched over nearly thirty years (1923 to 1950), and during that time, organized charros felt his influence profoundly. As another charro escritor, the amateur historian José Álvarez del Villar, declared some years after Rincón Gallardo’s death:

The tenacious efforts of the Marquis of Guadalupe—his performances and his Cervantes- like aptitude for writing and producing weekly newspaper articles—shaped the figure of the modern charro along a plan informed by the memory and guidelines of an era in which his social class had prospered.275

274 “Breves apuntes históricos,” 6 and González, “Historia.”

275 Álvarez del Villar, Orígenes, 150.

133 Álvarez del Villar overstated Rincón Gallardo’s legacy somewhat by suggesting that the Marquis

had single-handedly authored the standards that post-revolutionary charros followed.276 A much wider cast of community scholars, charro club leaders, and aficionados were also involved in defining the parameters of modern charrería. Rincón Gallardo was also not universally embraced as the definitive voice on charro matters. However, José Álvarez del Villar was far from being alone in thinking extremely highly of Rincón Gallardo’s role and contributions within the organized charro community, and just as important, his assessment of Rincón Gallardo’s impact on charrería explicitly acknowledged the roots of the conservative world view and values that pervaded the community. Post-revolutionary charros had been mentored and encouraged by men who belonged or felt sympathetic to a sector of the country’s population, aggrieved hacendados, who passionately and fixedly reminisced about the pre-revolutionary times in which their fortunes (literal and symbolic) had been at their greatest. For Carlos Rincón Gallardo, most definitely, the emerging sporting world of organized charrería offered a clear opportunity to regain some of the stability and influence that he had lost following the onset of the Mexican revolution.

The principle source of difficulties for an individual like Carlos Rincón Gallardo was that a virulent social revolution had overthrown the Porfirian regime in which individuals of his class and influence, wealthy landowning elites or hacendados, had prospered like never before in the country’s history. A decade of revolutionary violence had led to the death of hacendados like

Carlos’s first cousin, Francisco, and the exile and displacement of hundreds of others.

276 José Álvarez del Villar was a native of Michoacán who moved to Mexico City in the 1920s. He was a member of the Asociación Nacional de Charros and a handful of other metropolitan charro organizations. He made his daily living as an agricultural engineer but also kept himself greatly occupied studying and writing about charrería in a number of magazines and publications including his own short-lived newsletter, El Chamberín, and the sports newspaper, La Afición. His was particularly interested in understanding the history of charrería, and his studies resulted in several books, most notably Historia de la charrería (1941) and Orígenes del Charro Mexicano (1968).

134 Revolutionary armies had occupied landed estates throughout the country, and agrarian

insurgents in the north and south had fought passionately to distribute hacienda lands to peasants

and former hacienda tenants. Though the revolutionary leaders in control of the country by 1921

would prove lax in enforcing widespread agrarian reforms anywhere but in the state of Morelos,

heartland of the land-driven Zapatista revolution, it was also not clear in the early 1920s, that the

pre-revolutionary hacienda system would not be eventually and thoroughly dismantled.277

In addition to the uncertainty surrounding the land question, the country was also now

under the control of a new group of unfamiliar and untested revolutionary leaders. Many of them

were upwardly mobile and middle-class norteños from the state of Sonora, and these new

revolutionary heads of state did not necessarily guarantee central Mexican elites the same degree

of access and alliance with the Mexican federal government which they had formerly enjoyed in

the Porfiriato.278 For Carlos Rincón Gallardo, whose family had been connected to the very epicenter of power, Porfirio Díaz himself, through the marriage of Francisco Rincón Gallardo to

Luz Díaz, the new Sonoran leadership which introduced entirely new faces into the federal

bureaucracy and which did not move too quickly to make reparations to property owners affected

by the revolution, must have seemed close to inaccessible.

277 For the Sonorans, Mexico’s “land problem” was more a question of how to increase agricultural productivity than one of resolving the issue of land inequality. Neither Obregón or Calles (at first) were against distributing land, but they did so as a carefully-calculated bargaining tool to win the support of key rural allies who might aid them in the quest to conciliate class interests and ensure the survival of their revolution-turned-into-government. See Benjamin, “Rebuilding the Nation,” 442-443. Samuel Brunk discusses the land and political negotiations between Obregón’s men and surviving Zapatista generals in “Forging a National Zapata, 1920-1934” in The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata, 2008.

278 For a thorough discussion of the imperatives of the Sonoran leaders of the 1920s, see Linda B. Hall, Álvaro Obregón: power and revolution in Mexico, 1911-1920 (College Stations: Texas A&M University Press, 1981). See also Jürgen Buchenau, Plutarco Elías Calles and the Mexican Revolution (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) and The Last Caudillo: Álvaro Obregón and the Mexican Revolution (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

135 Carlos Rincón Gallardo’s prospects in the post-revolution were tenuous as well because

of his political activities during the Mexican revolution. In an implicit display of rejection of the

short-lived Maderista movement that had upended the thirty-year rule of Porfirio Díaz, Rincón

Gallardo had served the administration of Victoriano Huerta, Francisco Madero’s betrayer during the decena trágica, as Inspector General of the Rurales.

The tenure as Inspector General had come with two bitter experiences. Rincón Gallardo’s favorite cousin and business partner, Francisco, had been murdered by horse thieves at the hacienda Santa María de Gallardo precisely at the time that Rincón Gallardo had been responsible for coordinating the federal mounted police’s counterrevolutionary response to insurgency in the countryside. Rincón Gallardo’s high-ranking government position also earned him a trip into exile in the summer of 1914 when Victoriano Huerta finally capitulated to the ferocious onslaught of northern and southern revolutionaries. Clearly expecting to face retribution for his role in conducting aspects of Huerta’s vicious counterrevolutionary strategy, military campaigns that could include the razing of country hamlets and villages and the execution of innocent town folk and peasants for the purpose of intimidating the ordinary populace into retracting support from their local revolutionaries, Rincón Gallardo fled to Havana,

Cuba and lived there for the remainder of the decade.279 He journeyed back to Mexico in 1920

only when it seemed clear that the Sonorans who had assumed control of the Mexican federal

279 For a discussion of Victoriano Huerta and his short-lived administration see William L. Sherman and Richard E. Greenleaf, Victoriano Huerta, a Reappraisal (Mexico: Centro de Estudios Mexicanos, Mexico City College Press, 1960) and Michael C. Meyer, Huerta: a political portrait (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972).

136 government were willing to welcome back Mexican political exiles without immediate or heavy reprisals.280

Deep alienation from the country’s center of power and revolution coupled with the loss of wealth and property and the likelihood of further losses to come forced a reckoning on Carlos

Rincón Gallardo and other surviving luminaries of the Porfiriato.281 Taking stock of their circumstances at the start of the 1920s, they no doubt wondered what would become of them in the Mexico of the post-revolution.

Rincón Gallardo, at least, made evident that he had determined what his path moving forward would be soon after the founding of Mexico City’s Asociación Nacional de Charros. In

1923, he released La equitación mexicana, a slim volume that offered some initial descriptions of charro customs and a brief history of horsemanship in Mexico. In the epilogue to this inaugural publication, Rincón Gallardo charted out what would be a central mission until his death in 1950:

All that is charro has for me an indescribable charm…and because so little has been written on the subject since our greatest charro celebrities have already taken their knowledge to the grave, I believe it is my patriotic duty to write what the masters of the charro arts and the experiences of all my life have taught me.282

280 In the travel memoir The Plot Against Mexico, Leander Jan de Bekker describes meeting Carlos Rincón Gallardo onboard a ship from Havana to Veracruz in 1919. Jan de Bekker learned that Rincón Gallardo was returning from several years of exile. See Jan de Bekker, The Plot Against Mexico, 122.

281 Rincón Gallardo’s friends alluded to his losses in poetic tributes such as Eduardo N. Iturbide’s poem in the 1939 handbook El Charro Mexicano (México: Librería de Porrúa Hnos. y Cía., 1939), vii-viii: “Fue rico, y ya lo dejaron bien pobre los agraristas; Y, con la risa en los labios, Va luchando por la vida; Y hasta ahora no se rinde…” The Peruvian bullfighter Conchita Cintron, who met and befriended Rincón Gallardo in the late 1930s also wrote in her memoir that, “Don Carlos pertenecía a las familias de tuvo. Quería esto decir que tuvo gran fortuna antes de la ley de reforma agraria que dividió los grandes fundos de muchas familias mejicanas distinguidas entres sus peones. Era, pues, don Carlos, una de las personas que conocimos en estas condiciones.” See Conchita Cintron, Aprendiendo a vivir (Mexico: Editorial Diana, 1979), 182-184. The historian Jesús Gómez Serrano has found that between 1927 and 1970, the hacienda Ciénega de Mata, the centerpiece estate of the Rincón Gallardo family in Aguascalientes, underwent six rounds of government-mandated land redistributions which reduced its holdings from about 35,000 hectares to about 12,000 hectares of land. Carlos Rincón Gallardo sold his stake in Ciénega de Mata to his younger brother Alfonso Rincón Gallardo in 1939. See Jesús Gómez Serrano, “La hacienda de Ciénega de Mata, desde su formación hasta el fin de la reforma agraria,” América Latina en la Historia Económica 24, no. 3 (September- December 2017): 152. 282 Carlos Rincón Gallardo, La equitación mexicana: Habana, 1917 (México: J.P. Talavera, 1923), n.p.

137

Rincón Gallardo was drawn from the uncertainty of recent exile and the changing political order

around him by the sense that he had an expertise that was needed in the emerging charro sporting

world. What was more, he seemed to understand that his service as an authoritative voice on

post-revolutionary charrería could be construed as a very respectable form of patriotic service, something which in the times of ascendant nationalist feeling of the 1920s and 1930s, was a very

considerable benefit for a man whose elite Porfirian pedigree and counterrevolutionary activities

during the 1910s otherwise opened the possibility that he might be labeled as being among the

country’s greatest national villains. Pen in hand and with a head full of nostalgic reminiscences

about the glory days before the revolution, Carlos Rincón Gallardo thus proceeded to articulate

several key ideas that would help define organized charrería for years to come.

The Marquis’ Initial Explanations of Charrería

In inaugural texts like La equitación mexicana, Rincón Gallardo began articulating for

organized charros the case for why their equestrian customs and the figure of the charro quite

specifically should be celebrated in post-revolutionary Mexico as the preeminent symbols of

Mexican national identity. La equitación mexicana had been born from Rincón Gallardo’s

concern that charro customs were being adulterated by foreign influences or else being

completely forgotten. He argued that it was the general Mexican public’s patriotic responsibility

to prevent such adulteration and erasure of the country’s national customs, and his reasoning

rested on the various ways that he believed charro customs to be connected to Mexico’s national

identity.

For one, Rincón Gallardo believed that the charro costume had long had significant cross-

class appeal. He argued that “far from being exclusive and characteristic of [the] pueblo bajo,”

the, “picturesque and manly costume of the Mexican charro” had always “seduced” members of

138 the “cultivated and affluent classes.” As Chapter Two and Three have discussed, Rincón

Gallardo was not entirely overstating the broad appeal of charro customs. Mexicans of diverse backgrounds and circumstances had found the costume useful for crafting an image of power, relevance, or independence.

He also saw evidence that Mexican horsemen had been central actors in the country’s national development. Applying the descriptor charro to generations of diverse equestrian actors in the country’s history, Rincón Gallardo argued against the erasure of charro customs because

“from our escuela charra have risen many of the heroes that form the annals of our history.”

Rincón Gallardo called on the memory of a famous Mexican founding father and ranchero to remind readers of precisely the sorts of patriot heroes on horseback he had in mind: “Who doesn’t proudly recall Don Nicolás Bravo and others who, as Juan de Dios Peza has declared, were “more kings of the prairie than soldiers, with lasso in place of scepter, jarano (hat) in place of crown, and a cowboy saddle for a throne?”283 Rincón Gallardo’s perspective on independence-era horsemen echoed the admiration that mid-19th century costumbrista writers like Manuel Payno and Domingo Revilla had expressed for their country’s powerful and majestic rural horsemen.

Rincón Gallardo was also driven by a sense that respecting and maintaining the boundaries that made Mexican national customs unique and beautiful in their own right was its own source of dignity and respectability. These feelings were implicit in the frustration he expressed at the foreign-influenced fashion choices of elite and ordinary Mexicans. He excoriated men of his own refined background for showing poor and unpatriotic fashion sense while attending charro festivities. “Is it not ridiculous as well as entirely inappropriate to see a

283 Rincón Gallardo, La equitación mexicana.

139 Mexican hacendado outfitted in the European style while attending an herradero?” he queried.284

“It is the equivalent of an English horseman presenting himself at Kerby-Gate on the first

Monday of November prepared to conduct a fox hunt while dressed in the charro fashions of our

country,” he further huffed.285

Then with a broader array of street characters and novice charros of more modest means

in mind, Rincón Gallardo again questioned rhetorically, “Is it not equally ridiculous as well as

unpatriotic and repugnant to see individuals in Texan cowboy hats, breeches, leg warmers, and

walking shoes wearing charro-style spurs and mounted on horses with Mexican cowboy saddles?

And what saddles! Such nonsense reveals a crass ignorance of the subject and deplorable

taste.”286 In Rincón Gallardo’s view, nothing good could ever be said or thought of individuals

who dressed and conducted themselves with no respect or attention to the specific characteristics

of local vernacular custom. If the haphazard treatment of national customs like charrería were

allowed to continue or, worse, if charro customs in what Rincón Gallardo considered to be their

authentic usage were forgotten by Mexicans, than the country stood to lose a unique tradition

that in his view had “always” generated admiration in citizens and in foreigners.

In La equitación mexicana, Carlos Rincón Gallardo captured many of the leading premises of post-revolutionary charrería. The cross-class appeal of charro customs, the centrality of Mexican horsemen in key moments of Mexican national history, and the admiration that

284 An herradero is a large, generally festive branding event in which rancheros and cowboys gather to mark cattle and designate the herds that will be fattened for slaughter or kept as breed stock.

285 Rincón Gallardo had a very clear and direct knowledge of equestrian practices in England and other parts of Europe. He had spent many years of his childhood and early adolescence being educated at the private Catholic boarding school, Stony Hurst College in Lancashire, England, and like many of the scions of wealthy Porfirian families, he had likely traveled and resided on the European mainland extensively prior to settling down to married life in Mexico.

286 Rincón Gallardo, La equitación mexicana.

140 charro customs could inspire when they were put into practice in a respectable and traditionalist manner would all be themes that would continue to figure prominently in the writings and cultural revitalization campaigns of subsequent charro sportsmen. Carlos Rincón Gallardo left an even more important mark on the emerging charro community by explaining and performing a basic standard of charro masculinity. He articulated for aficionados and general audiences what a charro was supposed to be.

Modeling an Ideal Charro Masculinity

From the onset, it must be understood, that Rincón Gallardo’s definition of the charro was not as clear cut as might be supposed. By 1939, he had released a much more extensive treatise on charrería, El Charro Mexicano, which provided readers with an intensely detailed review of the sport. He explained the minutiae of clothing, equipment, horses, and performance spaces. He provided another basic history of horsemanship in Mexico, and he even gave readers appendices with lists and explanations of charro proverbs and idioms. In El Charro Mexicano, he also appeared to be of two minds on the question of the kind of man the charro was.

The opening dedicatory to the volume offered the first indirect but very earnest view on the matter. There, in a loving message to his grandsons, Rincón Gallardo issued the following statements:

I hope that with this book, which has been the fruit of my constant study and practice, you will come to feel great love for our tradition . . . so you may spend, as I have spent, hours of delight practicing this cowboy sport, in the process gaining the valor and resistance that will enable you to fight with manly strength against the dangers of these contentious times. Your ancestors were charros, and you are charros as well, your tender years notwithstanding. Maintain our traditions and fond memories of your grandfather who asks of the Lord, Almighty, that you forever remain cristianos, caballeros y valientes.287

287 See “Dedicatoria” in Carlos Rincón Gallardo, El Charro Mexicano (México, D.F.: Librería Porrúa Hnos., 1939), n.p.

141 In extending his blessing for the children’s future, Rincón Gallardo indirectly defined the charro as an aristocratic stalwart—one shaped by the forces of Catholicism, noble ancestry, gentlemanliness, and valor. This description was completely in keeping with his personal background as a blue-blooded Marquis whose family wealth and gentility pre-dated Mexican

Independence by more than a century.288 As the most well-known representative of the conservative “old guard” faction of hacendados who formed part of the organized charrería community, Rincón Gallardo also seemed to be giving voice to the idea that charrería was a final bastion from where men of his lineage could confront the challenges of an era that was no longer propitious for people of their historic wealth and ancestry. At the time of El Charro Mexicano’s publication, after all, the left-leaning administration of Lázaro Cárdenas had just finished demolishing the country’s hacienda system via a massive land redistribution that dwarfed the agrarian reforms of his five predecessors combined.289

A couple of chapters into the main narrative of El Charro Mexicano, however, Rincón

Gallardo provided a second much more direct explanation of what the charro was. Perhaps recognizing that to better understand charrería, readers needed to know the kind of man who practiced and embodied charro traditions, Rincón Gallardo explained:

The charro is noble, loyal, and brave to the point of recklessness. He delights in risking his life to impress the beautiful women who have captivated him. He is hospitable and sensitive; he plays the guitar with love, sings and dances with joy and grace; he is drawn to dangerous and physical pursuits in which his life depends on his skill, strength, and serenity. The charro is a well-known gambler; he will gamble away even his shirt at the horse races and cockfights which are his preferred activities. His main delights are

288 For a discussion of the landed wealth of the Rincón Gallardo dynasty during the colony, see: José Fernando Alcaide Aguilar, La hacienda 'Ciénega de Mata' de los Rincón Gallardo: un modelo excepcional de latifundio novohispano durante los siglos XVII y XVIII, 2004. Also, Jesús Gómez Serrano, Un mayorazgo sin fundación: la familia Rincón Gallardo y su latifundio de Ciénega de Mata, 1593-1740, 2006.

289 For an in depth discussion of the agrarian reform under Lázaro Cárdenas, see Ben Fallaw, Cárdenas Compromised, 2001. For a more general overview of revolutionary land reform, see Dana Markiewicz, The Mexican Revolution and the Limits of Land Reform, 1915-1946.

142 beautiful women (with whom he is playful), quality horses, and fine pistols. He is the traditional and genuine symbol of the nation, and his dashing image has risen through history. The charro has been, is, and will always be the symbolic representation of my beloved Patria.290

The charro described in this second excerpt is most predominantly a romantic valiente, a guitar- strumming brave heart who was attracted to risk whether at work on the open range, in pursuit of a ladylove, or in a showdown at the horse races or the gambling floor of a local saloon. In this definition, Rincón Gallardo, like his costumbrista predecessors of the mid-19th century, proposed that the charro symbolized the Mexican nation because he was a figure who embodied the colorful, earthy, and homegrown lifestyle of hardy country folk.

Rincón Gallardo’s second explanation also seems to reflect an attempt to meld the characteristics of an elite and a working class horseman into one being. The risk-loving brave heart was described as enjoying the less than reputable pursuit of gambling in settings and occasions that were redolent of alcohol use and working class seediness, but Rincón Gallardo explained from the outset that this figure was also noble, sensitive, and highly romantic, particularly in regards to his engagement with women. The combination of high and low brow traits in the second definition suggests that even as Rincón Gallardo was laboring to render a definitive judgment on charro manliness, he was also having to adjust his views in relation to representations and understandings of charrería that were emanating from other dimensions of post-revolutionary life. The guitar-strumming brave heart described in the pages of El Charro

Mexicano was, if nothing else, a very similar figure to the strutting silver screen charros of post- revolutionary sound cinema.291 The parallels between Rincón Gallardo’s second definition and

290 Rincón Gallardo, Charro mexicano, 6. 291Actors who carried the image of the Mexican charro to movie-going publics throughout the Spanish-speaking world included, most famously, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Tito Guizar, Pedro Armendariz, and Javier Solis. For a discussion of the popularity of charros cantores in post-revolutionary Mexico, see Talia Magdalena Luna de

143 silver screen charros would not have been coincidental. The Marquis had a very direct connection with the emerging national film industry, having starred as a courtly charro hacendado in the 1927 rural melodrama, La Boda de Rosario. This intersection between charro- themed Mexican cinema and the charro sporting world will be further examined in a later chapter.

Ultimately, Rincón Gallardo’s physical presence and public performances also substantially augmented the force of his written teachings. He frequently served as a distinguished host at numerous charro community events of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Described as a blue-eyed man of light complexion and regular stature, Rincón Gallardo impressed many a visitor to the charreadas held by organized charros with his august appearance and fluid performances of charro skills such as bull-tailing and roping.292 His cultured gentility, in particular, was embraced by charro sportsmen who desired a commanding and respectable figure to identify as a model charro. The writers of the charro community newsletter México Charro conveyed such regard when they chose Rincón Gallardo to be one of the first community members to be extolled in their feature Honrar, Honra:

Don Carlos Rincón Gallardo y Romero de Terreros is the charro par excellence. He is the most elegant of charros and the most competent of teachers. His love of charrería, his fervent Mexicanness, and his refined and cultured education have given him a unique and independent character. The maintenance of these virtues through the course of his life has earned him the respect and consideration of his compatriots, and in charro associations, he enjoys unmatched prestige and tacit recognition of his supreme authority as an extraordinary horseman. 293

Morris, “The Charro Cantor: A Mediation Between Rural and Urban Culture” (PhD diss., King’s College, University of London, 2004). See also, Anne Rubenstein, “Bodies, Cities, Cinema: Pedro Infante's Death as Political Spectacle,” Fragments of a Golden Age: the Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940, eds. Gilbert M. Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001) and Diana Norton, “(In)visible Bodies and Cultural Imperialism: Jalisco canta en Sevilla/Jalisco Sings in Sevilla, Teatro Apolo/Apollo Theatre and the Star Discourse of Jorge Negrete in Spain,” Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas 13, no. 3 (2016).

292 Cintrón, Aprendiendo a vivir, 183. 293 See “Honrar Honra,” México Charro, February, 1936.

144 Such was Rincón Gallardo’s impact among organized charros that some among them christened

him El Gran Maestro de la Charrería.

As much as he was admired, however, Rincón Gallardo did not necessarily impress all

organized charros in the same way or to the same extent. Regionalisms affected the degree to

which some sportsmen in the provinces were willing to accept a Mexico City-based elite like

Rincón Gallardo as an ultimate authority on charrería. Organized charros in Jalisco, for example,

reticent from the earliest days of their activities about accepting any influence or authority but

their own and also heavily invested in championing the idea that the state of Jalisco, specifically,

was the original birthplace of charrería, instead lauded their own local patriarchs like the wealthy

rancher and entrepreneur Andrés Z. Barba.294

Younger charro sportsmen based in Mexico City also manifested different ideas about the

character that post-revolutionary charrería should assume. Alfredo B. Cuéllar, a young

accountant, law student, and charro writer who served as the first secretary of the Asociación

Nacional de Charros, led a “traditionalist” movement that focused on bringing back the

equestrian fashions typical of the first half of the 19th century. The specific models for Cuéllar

and his traditionalists were the rugged, bell-bottomed insurgents and rancheros of the early post-

independence years (see Chapter One).295

José I. Lepe, a young army captain and charro escritor whose family became embroiled in

a public feud with Rincón Gallardo, also made constant showings of his disaffection for the

294 For a very detailed discussion of charrería in the state of Jalisco, see Cristina Palomar Verea, En cada charro, un hermano: la charrería en el estado de Jalisco (2004). See the profile of Andrés Z. Barba in “Personajes significados para el desarrollo de la charrería” in Silviano Hernández, Ser charro es ser mexicano (Guadalajara, Jal., MX: Secretaria de Cultura, Gobierno de Jalisco, 2010). 295 See Alfredo B. Cuéllar, Charrerias (México: s.n., 1929). Details about Cuéllar’s life are in “Ha muerto un caballero de la legión de la andante charrería” Charrería Nacional, no. 8 (January 1964).

145 senior charro.296 In 1935, Lepe’s father, Filemón Lepe Soltero had been appointed commander of

a new squadron of mounted policemen in Mexico City, a public security outfit revived in the

image of the Porfirian rurales.297 Carlos Rincón Gallardo, a former Inspector General of the

Rurales, reacted to the appointment by publicly disqualifying Filemón Lepe’s experience and

appropriateness for the position.298 In the years that followed, the younger Lepe, who had

already criticized the renown that organized charros showered on men he described as

ricachones (money bags) and charros aristocratas, sharpened his opposition to Carlos Rincón

Gallardo. 299

For example, in a 1951 compendium of equestrian terms and customs, Lepe implied that

it was Carlos Rincón Gallardo who kept charrería from becoming a more modern and humane

equestrian sport. Lepe used a well-known portrait of the Marquis de Guadalupe to illustrate the

problem of a cuaco aculado, a horse that for purely aesthetic reasons had been trained to drop its

weight so far onto its hind legs that its center of gravity was destabilized and its ability to swiftly

canter forward was substantially impaired.300 Without naming specific individuals, Lepe also

claimed in a later memoir that charros, “poorly advised and influenced by unscrupulous and

296 José I. Lepe was a native of Jalisco, and he and his family likely moved to the Metropolitan capital during the late 1910s to escape troubles with revolutionary leaders in Guadalajara. Will B. Davis mentions some of the dangers faced by Lepe’s father, Filemón Lepe, in Experiences and Observations of an American Consular Officer during the Recent Mexican Revolutions, (Los Angeles, California: Wayside Press and Will B. Davis, 1920), 52-55. Lepe gained admission to the national military college, and with the sponsorship of the powerful general Joaquín Amaro, he received a scholarship to study cavalry tactics at several European military academies during the mid-1920s. Between 1930-50, Lepe was a commissioned army officer with the grade of Captain, and he worked as a cavalry instructor at the National Military College. He also owned and ran his own equestrian school in the capital. See José I. Lepe, Reflexivo hurgar en mis recuerdos (México, 1974), 28 and 53.

297 See “El cuerpo rural de policía,” México Charro, February 1936. See also Gabriel Agraz García de Alba, Filemón Lepe Soltero: Celebre Charro Mexicano (México, D.F.: G. Agraz García de Alba, 1986), 38-39.

298 Lepe, Reflexivo hurgar, 18-19.

299 Lepe, 10 and 18-19. 300 José I. Lepe, Diccionario de asuntos hípicos y ecuestres (México: Editorial ruta, 1951), 21.

146 ignorant characters” leaned on “absurd” and “irrational” precepts that often harmed their horses

and severely inhibited the equestrian capabilities of the charros themselves.301 Since Carlos

Rincón Gallardo was the most recognized charro writer up to his death in 1950, and younger

charro writers mostly deferred to Rincón Gallardo’s authority, there was likely little doubt for

readers of Lepe who the target of his criticism really was. Unconvinced provincial charros and

detractors notwithstanding, Carlos Rincón Gallardo’s example largely prevailed.

Conclusion

In the early 1920s, the equestrian sports community of organized charrería began to take

shape, dedicated to revitalizing the customs and attire of the central-western horseman, the charro, and shaped by the preponderant influence of nostalgic former Porfirian luminaries known as charros de la vieja guardia. Between 1921 and 1950, Carlos Rincón Gallardo y Romero de

Terreros particularly played a role in defining charro traditions and their nationalist significance for his fellow charro sportsmen and also in setting the organized charro community down a path of devising a conservative and nostalgic alternative to post-revolutionary indigenismo. The following chapter will discuss how organized charros extended the Marquis’ ideas about charrería. It will demonstrate that whatever they opined of Rincón Gallardo’s personal qualifications or expertise, organized charros on the whole had no conflict with his views on the overall patriotic significance of charros or with the conservative social vision and noble masculinity that he and other “old guard” charros cherished and embodied. These standards afforded all charro sportsmen the opportunity to claim an implicit respectability and a position of leading national relevance during a time when Mexicans from all walks of life were busy exploring the question of what precisely it meant to be “Mexican.” And for those who so desired,

301 Lepe, Reflexivo hurgar, 8 and 13-15.

147 the mission to propagate and celebrate charrería also made it possible to reject the Mexican revolution and the racial egalitarianism of the cultural discourse of indigenismo without seeming deeply unpatriotic or completely outside of the cultural trend of ascendant nationalist feeling.

148 CHAPTER 5: THE VISION OF CHARRO NATIONALISTS

Introduction

In January of 1936, the inaugural issue of the organized charro publication México

Charro began to circulate among the members of the growing organized charro community.302

The issue’s opening editorial defined a mission of conservation and celebration of charrería, arguing that no national character had proved to be more enduringly heroic or representative of

Mexico than the charro:

Long before Mexico had a political character, in the midst of the colony, the charro appeared as the symbol and synthesis of the native, creole or indigenous, and he has endured the years, the invasions, both from external and internal threats, all without losing his unique personality, his typical characteristics, his potent and essential Mexican attributes. For the Mexican, generally speaking, the charro as a symbol, is the Patria, in all of its pain and glory. This is why we say that exalting the charro is a major patriotic duty.303

In bold, passionate notes, México Charro thus verbalized the central tenets of a conservative patriotic discourse that nationalists within the world of organized charrería had been gradually shaping in the post-revolution.

Charro-centered patriotic narratives were both old and new in post-revolutionary Mexico.

As a discourse that exalted the customs and figures of rancheros, patriotic charro discourse bore strong similarities with the admiring sketches and illustrations of mid-19th century costumbrista intellectuals. In rancheros, the nationalist writers of the 19th century had seen the spirit of a

302 The Federación Nacional de Charros (FNCh) began operations in January 1934, its main task, to “govern” organized charrería. The FNCh’s mission was to oversee the continued expansion of charro organizations and to act as steward of charro traditions. See “Estatuto de la Federación Mexicana de Charrería, A.C.,” Federación Mexicana de Charrería, accessed May 2016, http://fmcharreria.com/reglamentos-oficiales/.

303 “Nuestros propósitos,” México Charro, January 1936, 3.

149 mestizo, rural, and fiercely independent nation most vividly contained. And when searching for

materials to help support their descriptions of charros’ cultural legacy and significance, post- revolutionary charro nationalists frequently drew on the work of earlier ranchero admirers such as Manuel Payno, Domingo Revilla, and Luis G. Inclan. Charro patriotism was thus an extension of a long-standing discourse of admiration for Mexican horsemen that had been expressed by post-independence writers and others dating even further back into the colony.304

What made the patriotic discourse of charro nationalists specific to post-revolutionary

Mexico, however, was its character and functions as a fundamentally reactionary counter

discourse. Charro nationalists—the writers, amateur scholars, athletes, and charro organization

leaders who were the most dedicated and impassioned connoisseurs of post-revolutionary charrería—devoted their lives to the task of championing the figure of the charro as the most transcendent symbol of Mexican national identity. In the process, however, they created narratives and espoused community values that echoed many of the themes present in the discourse of right-wing hispanista intellectuals and political actors who had become increasingly active in the era of the left-leaning administration of Lázaro Cárdenas.305

As an ideology, hispanismo generally focused on celebrating the wealth of traditions and

values that Spain had imparted on its colony. Devotion to the patria chica; the importance of

304 Among the colonial era writers identified by José Álvarez del Villar are Fray Alonso de Ponce, Fray Jerónimo de Mendieta, Bernardo de Balbuena, and Rafael Landívar. See Álvarez del Villar, Historia de la charrería.

305 For a discussion of right wing political organizing during the Cárdenas administration, see Jean Meyer, El sinarquismo: un fascismo mexicano? 1937-1947 (México: Editorial Joaquín Mortiz, 1979) and Ricardo Pérez Montfort, “Por la patria y por la raza”: la derecha secular en el sexenio de Lázaro Cárdenas (México, D.F.: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM, 1993). On right wing youth and student organizations, see David Espinosa, Jesuit student groups, the Universidad Iberoamericana, and political resistance in Mexico, 1913-1979 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014) and Keith Brewster and Claire Brewster, “‘Patria, Honor, y Fuerza’: A Study of a Right Wing Youth Movement in Mexico during the 1930s-1960s,” Journal of Latin American Studies 46, no. 4 (August 2014): 691-721. For a discussion of what constitutes right wing political activity in post- revolutionary Mexico, see Víctor Manuel Muñoz Patraca, “La derecha en el México post-revolucionario: una propuesta de caracterización,” Estudios Políticos 9, no. 24 (October 2011).

150 family and family ties; respect for Catholicism, tradition, order, and hierarchy; praise for the

Spanish ‘race’; hidalguía and a deep concern for sustaining and defending an honorable manliness—all were common themes in the discourses of conservative, hispanophile

Mexicans.306 Narratives that celebrated Mexico’s cultural ties and debt to the Spanish empire and that evoked the country’s membership in a global Hispanic family had had a notable presence in literary and intellectual circles since before (and in spite of) Mexican independence.307

In the early 20th century, however, hispanista ideology generally attracted individuals who harbored a strong disaffection for the revolutionary administrations that took power after

1920. Hispanismo also attracted individuals who rejected the growing influence of North

American material culture and ideologies, and those who refused to accept the post-revolutionary

Mexican state’s overall interest in transforming Mexico into a more secular, egalitarian, and industrial country. Grounded as it was in the celebration of Mexico’s European heritage and civilization, post-revolutionary hispanismo also offered a clear alternative to the indigenous social uplift and Indian-centered national creation myths of revolutionary indigenismo.308

306 For discussions of the characteristics of hispanismo in Mexico and in the broader American context see, Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Hispanismo y Falange: los sueños de la derecha española y México (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992) and Isidro Sepúlveda Muñoz, El sueño de la madre patria: hispanoamericanismo y nacionalismo (Madrid: Fundación Carolina, Centro de Estudios Hispánicos e Iberoamericanos, 2005). See also Fredrick B. Pike, Hispanismo, 1898-1936: Spanish Conservatives and Liberals and their Relations with Spanish America (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971) and Mark J. Van Aken, Pan-Hispanism: It's Origins and Development to 1866 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959).

307 See D.A. Brading, Los orígenes del nacionalismo mexicano (México, D.F.: Ediciones Era, 2009).

308 Indigenismo, México’s most signature (and studied) revolutionary discourse posited a reformist vision in which the country’s marginalized indigenous peoples were socially redeemed and honored for their historic contributions to Mexican society. Indigenismo reflected the more transformative tendencies of the new revolutionary elite in power as it gave honors and recognition to the many indigenous civilians who had taken up arms during the Mexican Revolution to fight for greater land rights, social justice, and opportunities for mobility. By embracing indigenismo as official policy and enacting it through dedicated government agencies, land redistribution, educational projects, and state-commissioned works of artistic propaganda; revolutionary leaders (particularly the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas) demonstrated their commitment to constructing a nation that was markedly different from the one that had existed prior to the Mexican Revolution. For an overview of indigenismo in the post- revolution, see Alan Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo – México, 1910-1940,” The Idea of Race in

151 The writings and themes of charro nationalists showed strong affinities with hispanismo,

but charro nationalists were also not hispanista purists. Charro nationalists, unlike the most

heightened hispanista ideologues of the post-revolution, acknowledged and accepted the role of

mestizaje, the blending of European and Indian peoples and cultures, in the formation of folk

traditions like charrería and in the development of a unique Mexican culture and society.309 And

though they celebrated values, social practices, and cultural traditions that had been introduced to

Mexico by Spain, when it came to charrería, charro nationalists developed passionate arguments

for the idea that charro customs had originated solely in Mexico. Ultimately, charro nationalists

celebrated charrería for its “Mexicanness” and not because it showcased their country’s inclusion

in a global and highly civilized Hispanic family.

Sources produced by organized charros provide no clear political or ideological statement

that outlines why charro nationalists were motivated to issue their proclamations of the charro’s

national significance or the necessity of celebrating a nostalgic view of Mexico’s rural past. But

the writings of charro nationalists’ do reveal that they understood that if their claims for

nationalist relevance were to be more broadly persuasive and appealing within a context of

national healing and widespread curiosity about the essential characteristics of Mexican national

identity, they could not (and ultimately did not desire to) place Spain and its cultural

contributions at the center of their narratives. In the end, charro patriotic discourse offered an

alternative to both hispanismo and indigenismo. Charro patriotism encapsulated the ideas of

Latin America,1870-1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990). For two monographs published in the last decade that closely examine the ideology and activities of both state-level and grassroots indigenista actors, see Rick López, Crafting Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010) and Paul Gillingham, Cuauhtémoc’s Bones: forging national identity in modern Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011).

309 For discussions of mestizaje in national discourse, see Carrie C. Chorba, México, from Mestizo to Multicultural: National Identity and Recent Representations of the Conquest (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2007) and Marilyn Grace Miller, The Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009).

152 individuals who felt either alienated or unmoved by the Mexican revolution and its more

reformative impulses but who simultaneously wished to remain clearly within and at the center

of mainstream national culture in the post-revolution.

The basic premise at the heart of charro patriotic discourse was that the figure of the

charro was the patria or nation incarnate.310 As México Charro proclaimed to its inaugural audience in 1936, “the charro—as a symbol—is the nation itself, with all of its pains and glories.” This bold claim rested in turn on three supporting arguments: First, the charro and his customs were purely of Mexican origin, with Mexico imagined as a country that had long before ceased to be either purely Spanish or purely Indian. Second, charros had a lengthy record of patriotic service to the nation, with horsemen having been central military actors in all of the central wars of Mexican history. Third, the charro was a stalwart defender and sustainer of tradition, his own personal nobility and superior manly qualities having remained unchanged through the centuries. Collectively, these arguments formed the backbone of a narrative in which charros were unquestionably the leading actors, defenders, and representatives of the Mexican nation. However, these were also ideas that charro nationalists had to continually debate, extend, and adapt in order to maintain the logic of their claims.

Debating the Charro’s Origins

The question of the charro’s origins (and of the geopolitical region that he thus could be claimed to symbolize) was one that organized charros did not initially agree on. In the two

310 Studies that have addressed the emergence of the charro as a Mexican national icon include Ricardo Pérez Montfort in his seminal collection of essays Estampas de nacionalismo popular mexicano: diez ensayos sobre la cultura popular y nacionalismo (2003) and the monograph by the Mexican scholar Tania Carreño King, El charro: la construcción de un estereotipo nacional, 1920-1940 (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 2000). The doctoral thesis by Gary Moreno, “Charro: The Transnational History of a Cultural Icon” (PhD diss., University of Oklahoma, 2014) extends the examination of the charro’s cultural meanings in Mexico to include the symbol’s manifestations and functions in the popular entertainment and performance of Mexican-descended peoples in the United States.

153 earliest post-revolutionary works of organized charro literature, the Marquis of Guadalupe,

Carlos Rincón Gallardo and the founding secretary of the Asociación Nacional de Charros,

Alfredo B. Cuéllar had posited that the origins of Mexican charrería lay in the equestrian customs of charros salmantinos, the rural men on horseback of the Spanish province of

Salamanca. Their propositions stemmed from the belief that the horsemanship of charros and other rural Mexican actors would not have developed without the introduction of horses by

Spanish conquerors in the early 16th century.311

The theory of Spanish provincial origins, however, did not long satisfy other members of the organized charrería community. Charro writers devoted years of research to establish that the charro was authentically “Mexican.” As the community historian José Álvarez del Villar declared,

the more information I find, the more confident I feel that the idea that the Mexican charro, known as a ranchero or payo until the last third of the previous century and present day symbol of the nation, did not have his origins in any foreign sources. Neither the Salamancan, the Andalusian, nor any of the other picturesque and interesting characters from the provinces of Spain are the origin or inspiration for the Mexican charro. 312

Álvarez del Villar and another amateur charro scholar, José Ramón Ballesteros, eventually published treatises, Orígenes del charro mexicano (1968) and Origen y evolución del charro mexicano (1972) devoted specifically to arguing for the charro’s solely Mexican origins.313

311 Rincón Gallardo, Charro mexicano, 2 and Cuéllar, Charrerias, 88-89.

312 Álvarez del Villar, Orígenes, 8.

313 José Álvarez del Villar, a native of Michoacán, made his daily living as an agricultural engineer and writer. José Ramón Ballesteros was the son of an hacienda-owning family in the state of Mexico, and he was employed for many years during the post-revolution by the Secretariat of Communications and Public Works. Both men attended training workshops and were contributing members of several folklore research associations based in Mexico City. These included the Sociedad Costumbrista Mexicana and the Agrupación Folklorica de Mexico which had its member meetings and presentations profiled in the ANCh publication Charrería Nacional. Ballesteros left record of having met and trained briefly under the visiting American folklorist Ralph Steele Boggs who in the 1950s chaired the Department of Folklore (later American Studies) at UNC Chapel Hill. José Álvarez del Villar attended historical

154 Much of the case for Mexican origins rested on the supposed isolation and ingenuity of

mixed race colonial-era cowboys and ranchers. José Álvarez del Villar detailed that the ranchero,

a figure who he described as being “a mixture of conquerors and the conquered” and who lived

“in isolation from society” had been the creator of clothing and accoutrements that were

completely “distinct and typical”. In Álvarez del Villar’s view, the ranchero’s inventiveness was

due to a constant habit of self-sufficiency: “He manufactured his saddles, pieced together his

saddle tree, and hunted the deer that would provide the skins for his outfit.”314 Living far from

the centers of colonial power and settlement, mestizo rancheros engineered their necessities from

the raw materials and animals of their rugged surroundings, resulting in fashions, equipment, and

riding customs that progressively became very different from the practices introduced by the first

Spanish horsemen on the colony.

In a similar vein, José Ramón Ballesteros made the case that Mexican charro costumes

had been developed by an isolated and highly independent colonial population of cuerudos (so

named because of the clothing they fashioned from cow hides). By the start of the 17th century,

Ballesteros maintained, cuerudos, “strong harsh men” who “lived in inseparable duality with horses” were inaugurating distinct cowboy fashions, equipment, and skills that would meet their unique needs on the Mexican open range. Having less material, cuerudos developed pant legs of narrower cut, and they gradually developed large straw hats that could provide additional protection from the sun and the elements. With time, they continued adding “a thousand and one details, in the majority representative of their regional and personal circumstances” and

“accessories of an artistic flair and invention that was purely local.” It was because of the

methods seminars taught by the diplomat and historian Jesús Romero Flores at the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Historia y Etnografía.

314 José Álvarez del Villar, Historia, 282-283.

155 emergence and sartorial creativity of cuerudos that the charro outfit was “authentically Mexican,

untouched by influence from Salamanca as some would sustain.”315 Mexico’s hardy cowboys

and rancheros had changed their riding fashions and customs so much as to render them wholly

distinct from the original Spanish models.

The writings of nationalists like José Álvarez del Villar and José Ramón Ballesteros show that the most basic characteristics of charrería were being continually discussed and debated within the organized charro community. The desire of these two nationalists to continue researching and establishing a more definitively ‘Mexican’ source for their charro customs shows that the word of senior old guard charros like Carlos Rincón Gallardo was not final or irrevocable. Álvarez del Villar and Ballesteros’ ideas also marked some of the nationalists within the community as a distinct breed of conservative thinker. Their writings about the unique evolution of charro dress in the colony and of the inventiveness of racially-blended colonial

rancheros did not neatly align with the writings of other intellectuals, hispanistas, who in the

post-revolution also adopted the figures of charros, specifically those from the Los Altos region of the center-west state of Jalisco, as their preferred symbols of Mexican national identity.

Mexicans were exposed to some very contrasting narratives on their national identity in

the post-revolution. Through the 1920s and 30s, indigenismo, a nationalist ideology that

imagined a socially-redeemed, more egalitarian, and culturally unique country via the uplift and

celebration of Indian peoples and traditions, was promoted by the country’s new revolutionary

leaders, their supporters, and numerous state-funded or affiliated cultural producers and

intellectuals.316 For a key minority of hispanophile intellectuals, however, revolutionary

315 José Ramón Ballesteros, Origen y evolución del charro mexicano (México: Librería de M. Porrúa, 1972), 18-19.

316 See Rick López, “The Postrevolutionary Cultural Project, 1916-1938” in Crafting Mexico, 127-150.

156 indigenismo was anathema. It was an ideology that centered on peoples that they fully regarded

to be biologically, culturally, and spiritually inferior to the civilization and glories of the colonial

mother country, Spain. These hispanista intellectuals—among them high profile writers and

politicians like José Vasconcelos, Miguel Alessio Robles, and Antonio Caso—sought and found

their ideal representations of an indigenous (though not Indian) people and culture in the

industrious ranching folk, the charros, of Los Altos de Jalisco.317

Alteños were admired by hispanistas because they were perceived to be the most Spanish-

like people in Mexico. Described as blonde, blue-eyed, and endowed with character traits that hispanistas believed to be distinctly European—independence, productivity, small-property

ownership, and a willingness to fight for the defense of rights and privileges—Alteños were

envisioned as a racial and cultural antidote to Mexico’s national problems. With their superior

racial ‘stock,’ Alteños could regenerate the rest of Mexico’s biologically and culturally inferior

population, and Alteños’ fierce independence and work ethic, if nurtured in the rest of the

country as well, promised to help leaders build a modern and distinct nation that was at the same

time maintained free of the taint of North American and other foreign material cultures and

ideologies.318

To make sense of how Alteños had remained a racially and culturally pure Spanish enclave, however, post-revolutionary hispanista intellectuals had to devise a myth of “Alteño

317 Vasconcelos’ race and nationalist thinking has particularly been given scholarly attention. In English, see Mauricio Tenorio, “A Tropical Cuauhtémoc: Celebrating the Cosmic Race at the Guanabara Bay,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 16, no. 65 (August 6, 1994). In Spanish, see Claude Fell, José Vasconcelos, los años del aguila, 1920-1925: educación, cultura e iberoamericanismo en el México postrevolucionario (México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1989) and Fernando Viscaíno, “Repensando el nacionalismo en Vasconcelos,” Argumentos 26, no. 72 (May-August 2013).

318 For discussion of hispanista concerns about the degrading cultural influence of the United States, see Sebastián Pineda Buitrago, “Entre el desprecio y la admiración: visión de Estados Unidos en Ulises Criollo de José Vasconcelos,” Latinoamérica. Revista de estudios Latinoamericanos (February 2013): 125-151, http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1665-85742013000200006&lng=es&nrm=iso

157 Exceptionalism” that rested on a historical cleansing of Jalisco’s indigenous peoples and history.

For example, promoters of the Alteño myth devised accounts in which the Mixtón War of 1540-

42, an episode in which Spanish soldier settlers had battled against an alliance of ‘Chichimec’

Indians, had ended with the slaughter of most Indians and the subsequent erasure of their cultural

influence in the area of Nueva Galicia, the colonial territory from which the modern state of

Jalisco would be carved after Mexican independence. The victorious Spanish ranchers and

settlers of Los Altos had thus been able to grow, defend, and pass down their small properties to

descendants, free of the taint of racial and cultural miscegenation.319

Charro nationalists similarly touted the hardiness, independence, and enterprise of

colonial and post-independence era ranchers. But their vision of Mexico’s social development

since the conquest was manifestly not one of static Spanish cultural traditions passed down

between generations of pure-blooded Spanish descended (though Mexican born) ranching folk.

Charro patriotic discourse, despite the initial proposition of Spanish origins issued by Carlos

Rincón Gallardo and Alfredo B. Cuéllar, evolved to acknowledge mestizaje, the blending of

European and Indian peoples and cultural forms, as one of the reasons for why charros and charrería were authentically Mexican.

References to mestizaje in the writings of charro nationalists were usually very brief and vague, and mestizaje was often construed as a single process or event that had taken place solely in the distant colonial past. For example, when the writers of México Charro’s inaugural issue declared that “long before Mexico had a political character . . . the charro appeared as the symbol and synthesis of the native, criollo or indigena, and he has endured the years…without losing his

319 For a more detailed discussion of hispanistas’ interest in the peoples of Los Altos de Jalisco and of the myth of Alteño exceptionalism, see “And Then There Were None” in José Orozco, "'Esos Altos de Jalisco!': Emigration and the Idea of Alteño Exceptionalism, 1926-1952" (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1998), 22-83.

158 unique personality, his typical characteristics, his potent and essential Mexican attributes,” it

remains unclear, whether México Charro’s writers understood the ‘synthesis’ of the charro to be

one that involved the blending of biologies, or cultures, or “spiritual” characteristics, or of all of

those possibilities. And whatever the precise characteristics of that “synthesis” were, once that

initial blending of European and Indian took place in the colony, the charro (as a symbol and as a

class of rural men) was imagined to never again have changed even though he was rooted in, by

the admission of México Charro’s writers, a society that suffered numerous invasions and

moments of contact with the foreign.

Charro nationalists were also very clear that Mexican and their customs had only two

sources. As José Ramón Ballesteros proclaimed in Origen y evolución del Charro Mexicano,

“Charrería, which is at once strength and harmony, grace and majesty, conveys to us that from two races and the clash of love and of pain, emerged the miracle of flesh and spirit that is the

Mexican people.”320 The mention of only “two races” illustrates that whatever the precise

character of mestizaje charro nationalists had in mind, it was a process that did not involve the

wider constellation of ethnic actors such African and Asian and Afro and Asian-descended

peoples that since the colony had also formed a part of the country’s population.321

Mestizaje then, in the view of these charro nationalists, was an undeniable characteristic

of Mexican society. But it was a limited event, specific to the colonial past, and it was a

conception of miscegenation that accepted only Spanish and indigenous peoples as “roots” for

Mexican society. With such a framework for charro origins in place, charro nationalists

320 Ballesteros, Origen, 5.

321 On the colonial African presence see Lolita Gutierrez Brockington, The Leverage of Labor: Managing the Cortes haciendas in Tehuantepec (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989) and Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). On the colonial Asian presence, see Tatiana Seijas, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians (New York: Cambridge University Press), 2014.

159 illustrated what they believed the reality of their society to be. Mexico was a country of Indian-

Spanish mestizo peoples. If charro nationalists had any personal exposure to African or Asian

migrants or Afro and Asian-descended Mexicans, they followed a centuries-old pattern of the erasure of the presence of such peoples from official records and cultural reckonings of Mexican society.322

Moreover, if mestizo Mexicans were not fully White-Spanish, they were also, crucially, not fully Indian and on the whole, much better for not being so. Charro nationalists were developing their case for the charro’s symbolic importance not too many years after the organizers of Mexico’s first India Bonita contest had found themselves forced to provide the comfortably middle class (and presumably white-mestizo identified) readership of the newspaper

El Universal with a careful explanation of the traits to search for in a true india bonita. Readers had been submitting photographs and nominations for white-mestiza women dressed as chinas poblanas, showing that their understanding of beauty had never before been stretched to include indigenous peoples.323

On the main, public views about Indians during the post-revolution were not very

flattering. Many Mexicans fluctuated between seeing Indians as simple and stoic or as backwards

and degenerate.324 This was a spectrum of lackluster traits that charro nationalists most certainly

did not associate with themselves and other practitioners of charrería. Therefore, charro

322 See Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas, “The Erasure of the Afro Element of Mestizaje in Modern México: The coding of visibly black mestizos according to a white aesthetic in and through the discourse on nation during the cultural phase of the Mexican Revolution, 1920-1968” (PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2001), ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Christina A. Sue, Land of the of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in México (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

323 López, Crafting Mexico, 35-38.

324 López, 37.

160 nationalists constrained the Indian contribution to the formation of Mexican society and national

customs to the distant past.

By doing this, however, charro nationalists also showed that unlike the hispanista

proponents of white-Spanish Alteño exceptionalism, they lacked a complete or utter aversion to

the basic truth of the country’s indigenous heritage. Alteñistas had exerted themselves to devise a

remotely coherent explanation for why the rancheros of Los Altos could claim an untainted

Spanish heritage despite the centuries of cultural and racial miscegenation that took place

elsewhere in the country. Charro nationalists proved willing to evade that arduous task of

revisionist history entirely. Perhaps this was because, like some of their indigenista

contemporaries, charro nationalists believed that Mexico’s Indians had clearly been capable of

cultural glories and accomplishments in the past even if, in the post-revolution, they seemed

capable of only the opposite.325 Charro nationalists thus proved adjacent to hispanismo and

indigenismo while also rejecting crucial elements of the two ideologies.

Overall, charro nationalists did not fully agree with each other about the charro’s exact

geographic, racial, or cultural origins. However, that some among them began to consistently

allude to the ideas of racial and cultural blending, suggests that charro nationalists grew to

believe that it was necessary to operate more clearly within the general nationalist impulse of the

post-revolution to celebrate the country’s mixed racial and cultural roots. By acknowledging mestizaje, charro nationalists could improve their odds of convincing a wider post-revolutionary public of the charro’s (and their own community’s) nationalist relevance. They appeared to understand that in times of intense curiosity about the essential characteristics of mexicanidad or

Mexicanness, there needed to be a clearer understanding that the charro, a Spanish racial and

325 Ibid, 2 and 30.

161 equestrian legacy notwithstanding, had developed into a uniquely Mexican actor with uniquely

Mexican material and equestrian traditions. Charro nationalists would additionally strengthen the

association between charros and Mexican national identity by developing a supporting narrative

of charro military service and sacrifice to the nation.

Charro Patriotic Service

The first half century after Mexican Independence had been riven by political conflict

and civil wars. Charro nationalists thus had an abundant supply of episodes of warfare to claim

as examples of how “charros” had always been present as leading actors and defenders of the

nation. Carlos Rincón Gallardo launched the community’s account of charro patriotic service

when in the 1923 publication La equitación mexicana he identified Independence-era caudillos

such as Nicolas Bravo as the early 19th century forefathers of post-revolutionary charrería. In the

1928 volume of prose and poetry, Charrerias, Alfredo B. Cuéllar, the first secretary of Mexico

City’s Asociación Nacional de Charros, expanded Rincón Gallardo’s incipient descriptions of charro patriotic service to include actors and events from the era of the French Intervention and

Second Empire. It was during the ill-fated Hapsburg monarchy of 1863-1866, he argued, that an

Andante Charrería (a phrase Cuéllar used to denote a chivalrous Mexican equestrian order)

reached the greatest patriotic apogee: “Corps of chinacos led by valiant generals, gentiles, and

poets defended the national territory. This has been the era most touched of color, enthusiasm,

and joy for our Mexican charros. The achievements of our ranchers have been sung by all of our

poets.”326

Cuéllar’s description of charro military exploits in Charrerias eschewed any in-depth

discussions of the political or social driving forces behind the wars fought by Mexican horsemen.

326 Alfredo B. Cuéllar, Charrerias, 1928, 98.

162 He enfolded a variety of rural actors, variously referred to as chinacos, hombres del campo, and payos, under the title of charros.327 He also evaded the suggestion that the various “charros” of his account came to blows with each other during the numerous wars of the emergent Mexican nation-state. Instead, Cuéllar focused his readers’ attention on the heroism and colorful glory of horsemen through one military debacle after another. Notably as well, Cuéllar halted his record of charro heroism in the period just prior to the rise of the Porfirian regime that would eventually culminate in one of the bloodiest social revolutions of the 20th century. Cuéllar had composed and published his volume in the late 1920s, a time during which the new revolutionary elite still fought to transition the country away from the previous decade of internecine warfare. The absence of a discussion of horsemen’s martial exploits in the last decades of the 19th century or of the start of the 20th century, suggests that Cuéllar felt it was still too soon or too challenging to define how precisely organized charros should write themselves into those momentous years.

Through the 1930s, charro nationalists remained hesitant to claim the Mexican

Revolution as part of their narratives of patriotic charro heroism, but by the early 1940s, this changed. Perhaps bolstered by the obvious moderation of the “revolution” after the left-leaning administration of Lázaro Cárdenas came to an end, charro writers began to include revolutionaries in their accounts.328 The charro writer Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, for example,

327 These were terms that referenced predominantly rural underclass actors. Charro, on the other hand, was a term that through the 19th century, evolved to be attached more particularly to elite rural horsemen or at least those men who dressed in the finery of wealthy horsemen. See José María Muria, Orígenes de la charrería y de su nombre. México, DF: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2010.

328 For studies that consider the conservative political and state consolidation of the 1940s administrations of Manuel Ávila Camacho and Miguel Alemán Valdés, see Michael Nelson Miller, Red, White, and Green: the Maturing of Mexicanidad, 1940-1946 (El Paso, TX: Texas Western Press, 1998) and Stephen Niblo, Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics and Corruption (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999) and Halbert Jones, The War has Brought Peace to Mexico: World War II and the Consolidation of the Post-Revolutionary State (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014). See also Alan Knight, “The end of the Mexican Revolution? From Cárdenas to Ávila Camacho, 1937-1941” in Dictablanda: politics, work, and culture in Mexico, 1938-1968, eds. Paul Gillingham and Benjamin T. Smith (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).

163 extended the script while presenting at a conference organized by the amateur folklore society,

the Agrupación folklorica de México.329 Having led his audience through an account of the

heroic deeds of horsemen in the 19th century, Islas Escárcega then informed his audience that

“charros” had played a leading and courageous role in the military conflicts of the revolution:

In all of the factions that warred during the heated internal contests that recently shook the country, whether in the disciplined cavalries of Lucio Blanco, the mounted contingents of Calixto Contreras and Zapata, the overwhelming forces of general Francisco Villa, or the indefatigable and numerous centaurs of general Marcial Cavazos, the charro has always been the key factor, who has given irrefutable evidence of great ability, incomparable audacity, and fearless daring.

With the distance of two decades and a more conservative political culture predominating in the

nation’s capital, charro nationalists showed that they felt more secure in claiming that the

Mexican Revolution, like Independence, the wars of the Second Empire, and the wars of the

Reform, had been “made on horseback”.

In general, when developing their accounts of charro patriotic and military service, post-

revolutionary charro writers deviated very little from the lines established by Carlos Rincón

Gallardo and Alfredo B. Cuéllar in the 1920s. Charro writers highlighted and identified as

charros, a rotating cast of distinguished as well as anonymous working class horsemen. They

downplayed the wide diversity of political and social affiliations which divided historical

horsemen and often brought them into conflict with each other. Once the Mexican Revolution

was a more distant memory and the revolutionary elite governing the country retrenched from

329 Leovigildo Islas Escárcega was a native of Hidalgo and came from a family of hacienda administrators. During and after the revolution, he seems to have kept himself employed by working as a ranch and hacienda foreman before moving to Mexico City where he was employed for some time as the chief foreman of the horse stables at the National Military College. He wrote on wide variety of topics pertaining to charrería, but for some years, he distinguished himself particularly for focusing on putting together collections of charro semi-fictional short stories and idioms such as Anecdotario Charro (1943), Narraciones Vaquerizas (1943), and Vocabulario Campesino Nacional (1945). He was also one of the more social reform-minded of the charros escritores, taking it upon himself to help organize the working class charros profesionales of the community into a labor union that would help establish some basic health benefits for its members and writing about the problems facing aging and infirm charros profesionales.

164 the more reformist policies of the Cárdenas era, charro writers more confidently began to enfold

the actors and complexity of that process into their epic of charro heroism. The vague (or

nonexistent) explanation of the causes of conflict, the appropriation of a diverse cast of

equestrian actors as charros, and the gradual inclusion of the Mexican Revolution in the narrative

made charros unquestionably the Patria incarnate. The final crucial element of their claims to

national symbolism and relevance lay in their construction of the charro as a supreme exemplar

of Mexican masculinity.

The Charro’s Iconic Masculinity

As the previous chapter has discussed, Carlos Rincón Gallardo, a central authority on

post-revolutionary charrería, had two perspectives on the sort of man the charro was supposed to be. On the one hand, Rincón Gallardo envisioned charros as genteel and stalwart men. They were the “Christian and courageous gentlemen” that he encouraged his young grandsons to become in

the preface of the 1939 charro handbook, El Charro Mexicano. However, Rincón Gallardo also

viewed the charro as a romantic rake who excelled at working class pursuits such cockfights and

horse races, and who, though of noble spirit, was also “brave to the point of recklessness.”

Rincón Gallardo’s descriptions blended the best traits of two sorts of men—one an elite

gentleman, the other a folk braveheart—and thus he conceived the ideal charro as a figure who

exuded respectability (of spirit and of deportment if not of lineage) but also indomitable courage

and raw physical prowess and vitality.330 The charro was therefore, in spiritual and physical

330 In previous scholarship, charro masculinity has been discussed primarily in the context of Golden Age Mexican cinema and as embodied by contemporary popular entertainers like the ranchero singer Vicente Fernandez. There has also been a pronounced focus on manifestations of homosexuality and queerness in performances of charro masculinity. See Jeffrey M. Pilcher, “The gay caballero: machismo, homosexuality, and the nation in Golden Age film” and Mary Lee Mulholland, “Mariachis machos and charros gays: masculinities in Guadalajara” in Masculinity and Sexuality in Modern Mexico, eds. Victor M. Macias-González and Anne Rubenstein (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012). See also Sergio de la Mora’s application of a queer and sexuality studies perspective to

165 terms, the pinnacle of Mexican manhood. Through the rest of the mid-century, charro

nationalists would continue to emphasize the charro’s qualities as a striking and eminently

distinguished man.

In some cases, nationalists evoked the charro’s personal qualities in order to make him a

believable representative of Mexican identity. For example, in an editorial that discussed the

importance of protecting Mexico’s national traditions, the editors of the September 1945 issue of

México Charro signaled the charro symbol’s source in real horsemen as one of the main reasons

he was a more authentic national emblem than the country’s indigenous peoples:

Aside from the flag, which is the purest symbol of the nation, citizens have other symbols that communicate to outsiders the characteristics of their spirit and of their history . . . . In the case of Mexico, these characteristics are not visible in the country’s aboriginal roots but rather in the handsome figure of the splendid and eloquent charro, because this symbol is not the product of fantasy and has not risen from historic hieroglyphs. In fact, it [the charro symbol] has its origin in reality, in the charro of flesh and blood; and this is appropriate because in truth, the charro symbol is a faithful rendering of the courageous Mexican spirit.331

In this case, the charro was distinguished by an attractive profile, a magnificent demeanor, and a

way with words that marked him as a unique and admirable man. Those qualities, in turn, were

envisioned by the writers of México Charro as being much more real than whatever traits other

nationalists were producing from their imaginations or the study of historic indigenous sources.

There were living charros, magnificent and eloquent characters, upon whom the symbolic charro

was based. The writers’ remarks about symbols produced from “fantasy” and the study of

“hieroglyphs” also referenced and carried an implicit criticism of a tendency among indigenista

thinkers to elaborate the ancient glories of the Indian past over the qualities or contributions of

the work of Golden Age charro actors in “Pedro Infante Unveiled: Masculinities in the Mexican ‘Buddy Movie,’” Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006).

331 See “Por el decoro de todos,” México Charro, September-November, 1945, 1.

166 post-revolutionary actors. The editors of México Charro also made clear that they did not view

Indians, whether historic or contemporary, as acceptable or convincing national icons.

In other cases, charro nationalists referenced the physical and spiritual attributes of the charro in order to make the case that charros continued to serve the nation even when it was not enmeshed in wars or revolution. As the Hidalgo-based charro writer Ricardo González C. expressed in the regional charro newsletter, El Charro in 1949:

Now in a time of peace, with their graciousness and profound respect for the nation, morality, and society and with the manly sport that distinguishes them, they [charros] give splendor to our grand Mexican fiestas. How satisfying is a jaripeo! How satisfying is a coleadero! How satisfying it is to partake of any amusement that manifests the spirit of that which is ours, of Mexicanness, of those sentiments which our nation inspires and which I know only Mexican charros can provide.332

According to González C., by providing Mexicans with a taste of their own “Mexicanness” via

the gracious and respectful performance of local equestrian traditions, charros provided a service

that was equally as important as military defense and heroism.333

The recourse to highlighting the charro’s supreme personal qualities also took place when

charro nationalists issued reminders to the general public and to their own fellows in the charro

sporting world that Mexican national customs, and more specifically charrería, deserved to be

treated with greater respect. For example, in a 1959 editorial for the Asociación Nacional de

Charros publication, Charrería, nationalists reflected on the responsibility that organized charros

and the larger national population had in the erosion of Mexico’s folk traditions. They noted that

the country was undergoing a period of heightened “malinchismo” in which Mexican children

preferred to dress as “authentic Texas cowboys” and “Red Skins” and in which adolescents were

332 Ricardo González C., “El Chinaco como uno de los orígenes de la Charrería Mexicana,” El Charro: revista mensual, November 13, 1949.

333 Sources do not reveal any biographical data about Ricardo González C. other than he was a member of the Asociación de Charros de Tulancingo which was active in the 1940s.

167 “experts of ‘rock and roll’ and of ‘merengue’ but do not attend a jaripeo, ignoring or disdaining

the charro and charrería, likely because they are Mexican.” Charros, too, the editors of Charrería

further noted, were part of the problem. Organized charros sometimes forgot their abolengo or

illustrious heritage and turned a blind eye to the activities of “ridiculous charro poseurs.” At

other times, they also presented the public with ignominious scandals and displays of appalling

behavior.

The solution proposed by Charrería was for Mexicans to look to the past. By doing so,

they would be reminded that it was to rancheros that they owed the “glorious events that made

possible the patria” in which they had been born. And in looking back, the editors of Charrería also fully expected their readers to remember that charros deserved the honors and respect afforded to patriotic martyrs:

The heroic Mexican centaurs have been, are, and will always be stoic and valiant ‘Crusaders for the sacred liberty of Mexico’. The charro bears an innate character of sacrifice and heroism—a sacred cult to the Patria, the noble duty to always honor her, and the supreme courage to die for her. For this reason, it has been said that the charro, in his idealism, is a genteel knight of the chivalrous order of charrería. At all times and in all of the eras of history, all patriotic peoples have dignified and honored their heroes and have exalted and respected their heroes’ traditions. The noble institution of the andante charrería should be respectfully exalted and should be viewed with consummate pride by all good Mexicans.334

Endowed with a noble and sacrificial spirit and an unmatched heritage of martial heroism, the

charro was deserving of the highest honors. The language that the writers of Charrería used here

to describe a chivalrous order of charrería (an andante charrería) echoed the discourse of

hispanistas who extolled the holy conquest and civilizing missions of aristocratic Catholic

crusaders, hidalgos. The editors of Charrería also appeared motivated by disgust over Mexican’s fascination with North American material and popular culture, the same kind of disgust that had

334 “La mística de la charrería,” Charrería: revista informativa, August 1959.

168 motivated some post-revolutionary hispanistas to devise a pro-Catholic, pro-white Spanish myth

of Alteño exceptionalism. If nothing else, however, the recourse to describing the sacrificial

heroism of chivalrous charros was a frustrated appeal for relevance by nationalists who could not

understand why charrería was being disdained or denigrated when it seemed so clear to them that

charro customs were superior and that charros, peerless heroes, had been indispensable to the

creation and national reputation of Mexico. The fact that organized charros had to be

reprimanded alongside the more general public for ignoring or dishonoring the symbolic charro

will be discussed at length in Chapter 8. Overall, however, the repeated references to the charro’s

manliness, so comprehensive and superior as to make him iconic and unsurpassable, operated (if

not always successfully) to strengthen the case for his nationalist relevance.

Ultimately, by positing that the charro was the nation incarnate, charro nationalists were

making a case for their own self-importance in post-revolutionary Mexico. Their brand of charro patriotism reinforced the centrality of traditionalist, conservative men. They were also rejecting the Mexican Revolution and progressive change in the most patriotic terms possible during their times. Whether characterized as a patriotic hero, a folk braveheart, or an aristocratic caballero, the charro was a figure who remained unyielding before the forces of change and revolution, and as a symbol, the charro operated with, and promoted a cultural logic within which women were rendered mostly invisible, indigenous and respectable non-white actors were erased or pushed back into the obscure days of a distant colonial society, and a Christian, hierarchical, rural world shaped by the prerogatives of benevolent patriarchs was the standard of Mexican greatness.

The charro symbol and patriotic charro discourse provided organized charros with the language and arguments they needed to claim respectability and relevance in the post-revolution.

With these nationalist constructions in place, organized charros could claim a prestigious

169 historical legacy and an honorable patriotic mission for the rest of the 20th century without also risking the taint of national betrayal or being forced to compromise their conservative social vision and nostalgia for the Porfirian past.

Conclusion

As this chapter has discussed, vernacular horsemanship and ranchero icons remained deeply important and resonant after the Mexican Revolution. With the formation of charro sporting associations like the Asociación Nacional de Charros in 1921, equestrian aficionados who followed the model of nostalgic Porfirian loyalists, were able to demonstrate inconformity with the Mexican Revolution while also embedding themselves into the nationalist culture of the post-revolution. Organized charros developed patriotic narratives that championed the supremely masculine white-mestizo charro as the truest emblem of Mexican identity. In doing this, organized charros defined for themselves and the public at large, a reason for being and retaining relevance in post-revolutionary Mexico. The following chapter will now show that organized charros’ patriotic discourses and mission were appealing and convincing enough to earn them several powerful and crucial allies. Shortly after they commenced their activities in the early

1920s, organized charros began engaging with revolutionary political elites. They also began constructing an uneven (though ultimately beneficial) client relationship with the revolutionary

Mexican state.

170 CHAPTER 6: CHARRERÍA AND MANLY POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

Introduction

In a missive dated December 21, 1934, two leaders of the Asociación Nacional de

Charros, Carlos Rincón Gallardo and Crisóforo B. Peralta, directed an invitation to the recently inaugurated President of the nation, General Lázaro Cárdenas. A week from the 21st, the ANCh was going to host a lavish “Mexican Fiesta” in honor of the international diplomatic corps residing in Mexico City. Because the fiesta was to be “an absolutely charro festival” and the president was “a charro de corazón,” Rincón Gallardo and Peralta ventured to “beg in the most respectful and attentive manner” that Cárdenas “honor” the charros with his presence at the fiesta. “If you join us,” they added, “the result will be utterly brilliant, and we charros will feel morally supported as we pursue the work of sustaining our traditional customs.” Concluding with the hope that they would soon be able to host the “first Charro President Mexico has ever had,” Rincón Gallardo and Peralta signed off, assuring President Cárdenas of their “most pronounced esteem.”335

Carlos Rincón Gallardo and Lázaro Cárdenas are among the many individuals in post- revolutionary Mexico who might have least been expected to engage with each other. The former, known among organized charros as the “Grand Master of Charrería,” was the scion of an aristocratic landowning family greatly diminished by the Mexican Revolution. The latter was a revolutionary and political leader whose commitment to enacting a widespread land reform

335 Lázaro Cárdenas, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 135.2/64 12/24/1934.

171 would put a definitive end to the hacienda system that had once enriched families like the Rincón

Gallardo. Yet as the December 1934 missive suggests, Carlos Rincón Gallardo, by then president

of the Asociación Nacional de Charros, gamely courted the attention of Cárdenas. Rincón

Gallardo represented an “old guard” of Porfirian loyalists within the organized charro

community who fondly reminisced about the glory days of haciendas and charrería in the

Porfiriato, but the letter to Cárdenas demonstrates that by the mid-1930s, organized charros

including the Marquis of Guadalupe had reasons to believe that members of the new

revolutionary elite in power needed to be celebrated and embraced.

The following two chapters will delve into the relationship that developed between

organized charros and representatives of the new revolutionary state in construction between

1921 and 1960. Organized charro accounts of the 1920s note clear interest on the part of military

men to participate in and take positions of leadership in organized charrería, and they make clear

that organizations like the Asociación Nacional de Charros, though definite havens for nostalgic

Porfirian loyalists, also became social hubs for influential revolutionary chieftains and military

personnel who participated in the construction of a new revolutionary state government.

Scholars of political hegemony and state formation have urged researchers to recognize

that hegemonic social orders are usually constructed upon common material and discursive

frameworks which provide the dominant and dominated alike with a language and blueprint for

“working through, talking about, and acting upon” social relationships characterized by

domination.336 Organizational records and historical accounts reveal that far from being alienated from the revolutionary state, organized charros were able to secure a greater measure of stability

336 See William Roseberry, “Hegemony and the Language of Contention,” Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, eds. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 360-361. See also “Bringing the State Back in Without Leaving the People Out” and “State Formation” in Joseph and Nugent, Everyday Forms, 12-15 and 18-23.

172 and prosperity because of intimate connections they built with influential operators within the revolutionary apparatus. And if charros were able to connect with state representatives, it was because charros and their revolutionary patrons shared a concern for performing leading manliness—behavioral codes, social obligations, and appearances that allowed a man to project power, influence, and greatness and that functioned at the heart of the patriarchal political culture of the era.337

Caciquismo and Leadership in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Scholars have indicated that revolutionary leaders had state political hegemony as their central motivation for a charro-state relationship. Studies by Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Tania

Carreño King, and Cristina Palomar Verea have noted that state leaders, suspecting that charro organizations were hotbeds of reactionary discontent, co-opted organized charrería in the 1930s, by issuing patriotic recognitions such as awarding charros their own national holiday, El Día del

Charro and featuring charros as patriotic performers at events of state political pageantry.338

Through these actions, state leaders won charros’ loyalty and neutralized any threat they might present. By co-opting and deploying charrería, state officials also conveyed to the public at large

337 A sampling of scholarship on the manliness of political leadership: Jeff Hearn, Men in the public eye: the construction and deconstruction of public men and public patriarchies (London; New York: Routledge, 1992); Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Sarah Lyons Watts, Rough Rider in the White House : Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Matthew McCormack, Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); K. Cuordileone, Manhood and American Political Culture in the Cold War. (New York: Routledge, 2005); Pablo Dominguez Anderson, Masculinities and the Nation in the Modern World: Between Hegemony and Marginalization (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Samuel Brunk, ed., Heroes & Hero Cults in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006).

338 See Tania Carreño King, El Charro: la construcción de un estereotipo nacional, 1920-1940 (México D.F.: INEHRM; FNCh, 2000), 13 and 24, and Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Estampas de nacionalismo popular mexicano: diez ensayos sobre la cultura popular y nacionalismo (México, D.F.: CIESAS; Cuernavaca: CIDHEM, 2003), 137-138. See also Cristina Palomar Verea, En cada charro, un hermano: la charrería en el estado de Jalisco (Guadalajara, Jalisco: Secretaria de Cultura, Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco, 2004), 103.

173 that they had successfully unified a fragmented, war-torn nation. 339 It is also worth

remembering, however, that the new revolutionary elite in power was composed of individual

men who were deeply (if not solely) concerned with the consolidation of their own personal

power and influence.

An extensive literature on post-revolutionary caciquismo (boss politics) has detailed how

in the aftermath of the revolution a large number of revolutionary leaders, “secured personal

control of substantial territories and were reluctant to relinquish their hegemony to federal

authorities.”340 This literature has also noted the durability and adaptability of cacical structures,

with caciques brokering political activity at the national, state, regional, municipal, and local

levels and cacicazgos taking shape in settings as distinct as mass organizations and

universities.341 As widespread and diverse as cacicazgos were in 20th century Mexico, they

tended to be uniformly defined by the leadership of bosses whose authority generally depended

on the strategic use of factionalism, violence, and patronage.342

In a political playing field crowded with ambitious bosses, it was crucial for men to

demonstrate they had “don de mando” (the ability to command through a combination of fear,

loyalty, and strength) and that they were capable paternalists (that is, not too negligent caretakers

339 Pérez Montfort, Estampas, 147.

340 Alejandro Quintana, Maximino Ávila Camacho and the One-party State: the Taming of Caudillismo and Caciquismo in Post-revolutionary Mexico (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010), 2-3. A sampling of the literature on boss politics during and after the Mexican revolution include: D. Brading, Caudillo and Peasant in the Mexican Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Enrique Krauze, Biografía del Poder: Caudillos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1910-1940 (Barcelona: Tusquets, 1997); Alan Knight and Wil Pansters, eds., Caciquismo in Twentieth-century Mexico (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2005); Jürgen Buchenau and William H. Beezley, eds., State Governors in the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1952: Portraits in Conflict, Courage, and Corruption (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009).

341See Alan Knight, “Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico” in Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico, eds. Alan Knight and Wil Pansters (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2005), 1-48.

342 Ibid.

174 and protectors). In other words, the way that aspiring politicos and bosses enacted “leading

manliness” was closely implicated with their chances of attaining (and retaining) the highest

positions of political power in post-revolutionary Mexico.

Revolutionary power-holders resorted to no single variant of leading manliness. There was too much diversity of socioeconomic and regional background, personal histories, and individual personalities among the new elite for power and leadership to be performed in the same way. The anthropologist, Claudio Lomnitz has also made the case that political strongmen consolidated power and leadership by performing a very tactical and effective “bricolage” of different cultural tactics and manly subjectivities. By his account, the legitimacy of caciques with a presence in both regional and national politics was “a complex construct that depends on at least two and frequently three poles of cultural coherence.” 343 Nonetheless, scholars of gender

have increasingly raised the importance of analyzing how notions of manliness operate in

political cultures, noting that the historical workings of masculinity can reveal the complex

relationships and negotiations between social actors.344 By looking at charro-ranchero

performances as a form of leading manliness that aspiring revolutionary power-holders enacted

in their pursuit of political upward mobility, it becomes possible to more fully piece together the

343 Lomnitz looks particularly closely at the case of the San Luis Potosi cacique, Gonzalo Santos. He notes that Santos exerted influence over the mestizo cowboys and ranchers of the huasteca potosina by wielding a ranchero liberalism in which the valorization of the economically self-made man was wedded to an ethos of courage; manliness; and knowledge of weapons, horses, and the countryside. To be dominant over his fellows, Santos had to be a master of cowboy culture and points of view. He would then use his knowledge of this cowboy culture to position himself as a leader among ranchers and cowboys. With the Indians of his locality, on the other hand, Santos behaved as a more traditional paternalistic cacique. He acted as a patron for religious festivals and benevolently oversaw the care of health emergencies, baptisms, and weddings. See Claudio Lomnitz-Adler, Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in the Mexican National Space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 304-305.

344 See Kevin P. Murphy, Political Manhood: Red Bloods, Mollycoddles, & the Politics of Progressive Era Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 4.

175 motives and decisions that contributed to the process by which organized charros forged an alliance with the rising revolutionary state.

General Roberto Cruz, a veteran of the Mexican Revolution who developed close ties with organized charrería in 1920s Mexico City will help illustrate these points. Cruz, one of many northern revolutionaries who took up residence in the metropolitan capital after the rise of a new Sonoran led state regime in 1920, gave several indications that he was interested in exploring new profiles of masculine potency. He had arrived to Mexico City with a reputation for commanding and coexisting with Yaqui Indian fighters, but as his career in the capital progressed, Cruz became further and further involved with organized charrería, a move that reflected that he had perhaps judged it necessary to reduce his association with Indianness.

Mexico City was the cultural and political hub of a region where white-mestizo ranchers and not

Indians had a deeper resonance as figures of courage, independence, and relevance. Roberto

Cruz adapted accordingly.

Roberto Cruz in the World of Organized Charrería

In the mid-1920s, Roberto Cruz (born in Chihuahua in 1888) was a young veteran of the revolution in the north who was wending his way through the corridors of power in Mexico City.

The son of a prosperous mining and landholding family based in Sonora, Cruz had joined the forces of Álvaro Obregón shortly after the decena trágica of 1913. During his years of service,

Cruz became an especially trusted subordinate of Obregón’s right hand man, Plutarco Elías

Calles, and in the aftermath of Obregón’s rise to the presidency Cruz was rewarded with a series of increasingly important military posts and responsibilities. When Cruz’s chief patron, Calles,

176 reached the presidency of Mexico in 1924, Cruz received an especially important appointment as

the Mexico City chief of public security and police. 345

In between his many political and professional responsibilities, Cruz also became an organized charro. He developed the habit of socializing at the Asociación Nacional de Charros

(ANCh), keeping Sunday appointments to bull-tail and ride with other aficionados at the ANCh’s rancho in Chapultepec forest.346 In 1925, Cruz accompanied the ANCh ambassador Manuel

Paredes Arroyo on a mission to establish an ANCh affiliate organization in the city of Querétaro.

Then for a nearly three year period between 1925 and 1928, Cruz served as president of the

organization, demonstrating a commitment to the ANCh’s growth and stability by leading

fundraising campaigns and securing a permanent home for the organization, investing some of

his personal fortune into the purchase of the land upon which the ANCh constructed a new

rancho where its members could train and perform charrería.347

On top of his participation in ANCh activities, Cruz also showed signs of simply

enjoying presenting himself in public as a charro. About town—at bullfights, boxing matches,

wrestling, the theater, and even during meetings with his superior, Plutarco Elías Calles—Cruz

proudly wore charro costume.348 On one occasion, his preference for charro attire even nearly

brought him to blows with another key figure in the capital, the Undersecretary of War, General

Joaquín Amaro.

345 Biographical details come from Roberto Cruz, Roberto Cruz en la revolución mexicana (México: Editorial Diana, 1976), 11.

346 Julio Scherer García, El Indio que mato al Padre Pro (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005), 51.

347 See “Breves apuntes históricos de la fundación de la Asociación Nacional de Charros,” Charrería nacional, June 1963, 7.

348 See Cruz, Roberto Cruz, 133 and Scherer García, El Indio, 41 and 43.

177 Cruz recounted in the memoir, Roberto Cruz en la revolución mexicana, that once, while

paying a visit to the Ministry of War, Amaro had nearly attacked him for flaunting his outfit.

Taking in the sight of Cruz sitting before him in charro attire, Amaro, infuriated, had seized a

riding crop and advanced with the intention of striking his visitor.349Amaro had apparently been angered by Cruz’s disregard for military dress policies. Facing a violent reprisal, Cruz recalled that he simply put his hand on his pistol and warned Amaro with, “Be very careful General. That is dangerous.” Amaro halted his assault, and the two men continued their meeting. Presumably the two had understood that if one man struck with his riding crop the other intended to shoot and kill.350

The incident, if it happened, served to showcase to readers of Cruz’s memoir that he was

a proud and confident man who brooked no abuses or indignities. That the encounter was

described as having taken place while and because Cruz was dressed as a charro also suggests

that during his time in metropolitan capital, charrería and charro dress had become an important

dimension of Cruz’s identity as a leading man.

In his memoir, Cruz never revealed any explicit reasons for embracing charrería in the

midst of his ambitious post-revolutionary career. A possibility includes, however, that the

connection emerged in part because of the Calles presidential administration’s desire to oversee

the political activities of the Asociación Nacional de Charros. Rumors circulated that one of the

founding members of the organization, Ricardo Mondragón, had provided funding, weapons, and

men to the cause of Adolfo de la Huerta, a Sonoran revolutionary and politician who in 1923 had

349Amaro was notorious for a volatile temper and the habit of striking subordinates in bouts of displeasure. See Martha Beatriz Loyo Camacho, Joaquín Amaro y el proceso de institucionalización del Ejército Mexicano, 1917- 1931 (México D.F.: UNAM, IIH, 2003), 126.

350 Cruz, Roberto Cruz, 133 and Loyo Camacho, Joaquín Amaro, 126.

178 denounced the leadership of Álvaro Obregón and had led a short rebellion against the national government.351 As Calles’ chief intelligence and police officer, Cruz might have connected with the ANCh in order to make clear that the organization had the attention of the nation’s head of state. The ANCh, in turn, might have accepted or even invited the participation of Cruz as a sign of goodwill and loyalty. Whatever the case, Cruz was rapidly appointed to a position of leadership in the organization, appearing in the ANCh’s photograph of its board of directors for

1925.

There is evidence as well, however, that Cruz was interested in developing a new profile of leadership and power. For one, the photograph of Cruz’s first term on the board of directors of the Asociación Nacional de Charros suggests that Cruz had to learn precisely what it meant to present himself as a charro leader. In the photograph, Cruz sits with the cabinet of elected officers who oversaw the ANCh’s activities as an organization, and he is outfitted in an austere dark business suit with the only obvious symbol of a charro identity being a broad-winged hat propped on his knees. His companions on the other hand, were clad in the button-lined trousers, butterfly ties, and short jackets, the staples of charro attire. Perhaps Cruz had simply been caught unprepared for the photography session. As a native of northwestern Mexico, however, where local variants of horsemanship and equestrian attire differed from those in central Mexico, its stands to reason that Cruz, though a skilled cavalry officer and son of a wealthy cattleman, had to learn how to present himself specifically as a charro horseman.

More importantly, by learning how to present himself as a charro, Cruz also accomplished the task of projecting an alternative to his other significant public identity. Cruz had arrived to the Metropolitan capital with the moniker El Indio attached to his person because

351 Information about Ricardo Mondragón’s activities cited in Moreno, “Charro,” 156.

179 of his close association with the Yaqui peoples of Sonora.352 He had spent his formative years in the Yaqui settlements of Torin and Pótam, becoming fluent in the language of his indigenous neighbors, and during the revolution, he had commanded a battalion of Yaqui fighters who had negotiated alliances with Sonoran revolutionary leaders.353

As a child and adolescent, Cruz had embraced Yaqui culture and language extensively, but in his ascent to positions of growing importance and prestige in the capital, he showed signs of distancing himself from his Yaqui ties. For example, Cruz recounts in his memoir that during his time serving as sub-secretary of War and Navy in 1922, he would frequently receive visits from former Yaqui soldiers, and he would greet the visitors by speaking to them solely in

Spanish. One group of veterans finally became so frustrated that they rebuked him with: “Why do you speak to us in Spanish if you are Yaqui like us?” 354 Cruz qualified the encounter as an episode of an officer humorously entertaining himself at the mild expense of his former subordinates, but the episode does inspire some consideration in light of Cruz’s subsequent involvement with organized charrería even as hostilities erupted between the Yaqui in Sonora and the government of Plutarco Elías Calles.

During the 1910s, Yaqui had enlisted as revolutionaries, lured by promises of land restoration and respect for their communal autonomy.355 However, in the 1920s, these promises

352 Scherer García, El Indio, 9.

353 Sonora's Yaqui Indians had a history of mobilizing to protect their lands that stretched into the colonial era. Throughout the 19th century, the Yaquis conducted intermittent rebellions against the Mexican state to retain control of their lands which during the Porfiriato, in particular, resulted in Yaqui insurgents being incarcerated and then shipped to the distant henequen fields of Yucatan to neutralize the restiveness of their communities. See Evelyn Hu- Dehart, Yaqui resistance and survival: the struggle for land and autonomy, 1821-1910 (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984).

354 Cruz, Roberto Cruz, 84.

355 See Nicolás Cárdenas García, "'Lo que queremos es que salgan los blancos y las tropas'. Yaquis y mexicanos en tiempos de revolución (1910-1920)," Historia Mexicana, 66, no. 4 (April-June 2017): 1863-1921.

180 would yield poor returns. From Mexico City, the administrations of Álvaro Obregón and

Plutarco Elías Calles both promoted the growth of commercial farming in the Yaqui River

Valley, and Yaqui settlements faced considerable government pressure to abandon control of their lands. Between 1926-27, the Yaqui made clear their inconformity with the state of affairs, staging a rebellion to defend their lands and freedoms, but they were dealt brutal losses by the federal government which used poisonous gases and air bombardments to quell the fighting.356

Roberto Cruz remained in Mexico City, participating in the social life of organized charros and

presiding as a wealthy and well-connected president of the Asociación Nacional de Charros as

forces sent by his direct superior, Plutarco Elías Calles, dealt with the insubordination of their

former Yaqui allies.

It is possible that Cruz’s former relationship with the Yaqui had nothing to do with his

decision to become involved with charrería. He might have developed an interest in the charro

community of Mexico City and its equestrian traditions purely through the course of adjusting to

life in the capital and performing his duties as an agent of the Mexican state. Moreover, as the

son of a prosperous northern landholding family and an accomplished horseman in his own right,

Cruz likely did not have the same negative connotations with organized charrería and its “old

guard” practitioners that say a Zapatista revolutionary from the south might have felt.

But it is also the case that once he was established in the capital, Cruz no doubt

encountered a configuration of relationships between Indians and white-mestizo Mexicans that led him to consider the wisdom or utility of leaving his profile as a leader with close Indian ties unchanged. In Sonora, the Yaqui were known to be a fiercely independent and warring people with a long history of stubbornly and violently defending their rights to land and communal

356 Ignacio Almada Bay, "De regidores porfiristas a presidentes de la república en el periodo revolucionario. Explorando el ascenso y la caída del 'Sonorismo,'" Historia Mexicana 60, no. 2 (October-December 2010), 774.

181 autonomy. They had never succumbed fully to the might of the Spanish colonial apparatus or to

the 19th century Mexican state. In the context of war during the 1910s, an association with the

fierce Yaqui might have been a benefit as the Sonoran revolutionaries battled for supremacy in

the region and eventual control over the political future of the country.357

In the Mexico City of the start of the 1920s, however, an association with Indians might

have been problematic for Cruz in two regards. On the one hand, for many of the respectable

Mexicans of the metropolitan capital and its environs (the sort that Cruz would have had to

consort with as a rising political operator), the revolution had conjured fears and then the reality

of armed Indian “hordes” who under the leadership of revolutionaries like Emiliano Zapata had

seemed to promise the country’s descent into barbarism and chaos. For other more progress-

minded Mexicans, Indians were the long-suffering descendants of ancient native kingdoms that

had fallen to colonial invaders and whose civilizations had been plundered and rendered

marginal to the mainstream of national life. These Indians required rescue and redemption by

reform-oriented artists, activists, politicians, and intellectuals in order for them to be integrated

into post-revolutionary society.358

By positioning himself as a member, benefactor, and leader of a community of white-

mestizo charro sportsmen and by keeping his distance from the conflict and hostilities that broke

out between the Sonoran led Mexican state of the mid 1920s and former Yaqui revolutionaries,

Roberto Cruz demonstrated that he was not interested in perpetuating his association with

Indianness, whether it be a fierce rebellious sort or the kind that invited celebration and

357 Almada Bay indicates that Sonoran revolutionaries learned many warfare tactics from their Yaqui allies, and white-mestizo Sonorans adopted a variety of cultural and warfare traditions from the Yaqui as a result of the decades of fighting that had taken place between the Yaqui and non-Indian communities in Sonora. See Almada Bay, Sonorismo, 776.

358 Alan Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940,” The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940, ed. Richard Graham (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 77.

182 redemption. As a charro aficionado and president of the Asociación Nacional de Charros in the mid-1920s, Roberto Cruz appeared poised to transcend his former identity as El Indio.

The organized charro community enshrined social values and a nostalgia for the Porfirian past that ran directly counter to some of the political and social issues that had driven many revolutionaries to take up arms against the Porfirian state (and then against each other), but the cultural and ideological boundaries between organized charros and revolutionaries were also porous and ambiguous. The relationship that developed between the Asociación Nacional de

Charros and General Roberto Cruz in the mid-1920s suggests that charros and revolutionary elites were able to collaborate because they shared at least one chief characteristic in common, and this was that they understood that charrería could be useful for performing power, influence, and greatness—the leading manliness that functioned at the heart of the patriarchal political culture of the era.

However, such relationships also carried risks. Had its members not been tactful in retrenching before state leaders, the Asociación Nacional de Charros could very well have met its demise in 1929 when General Roberto Cruz, facing a change in political fortunes, decided to join a military rebellion against the Calles-backed administration of Emilio Portes Gil.

The ANCh and Roberto Cruz in Rebellion

For the majority of the 1920s, Roberto Cruz successfully pursued power and influence in

Mexico City. By the end of 1928, however, Cruz’s fortunes had taken a turn for the worse. He had lost his position as chief of police in the tense political negotiations that followed the assassination of Álvaro Obregón (barely beginning his second term as president) in July of 1928.

He generated much public ire by extra-judicially executing a popular Mexico City priest in full

183 view of reporters.359 And then he further lost Calles’s trust when Emilio Portes Gil, Calles’ chosen successor to the recently assassinated Obregón, accused Cruz of being disloyal and disrespectful to the presidency.360 With his connections to the highest authorities severed and his political career under threat, Cruz left the capital for his properties in Sonora in late December

1928. From there in March of 1929, he chose to join the estimated 30,000 troops who took up arms with General Francisco R. Manzo, one of the leaders of what would become known as the rebelión escobarista.361

With his departure from Mexico City at the end of 1928, Roberto Cruz’s leadership and involvement with the Asociación Nacional de Charros (ANCh) effectively came to an end. Yet, when Cruz took up arms against Calles and Portes Gil in the spring of 1929, his decision put the

ANCh in the highly precarious position of having a strong connection with an enemy of the state.

Cruz had been slated to lead the organization as president through the end of 1929, and he had purchased a portion of the land upon which the organization’s headquarters rested. Possibly concerned that their friendly connections with Cruz might produce repercussions from the federal government, ANCh charros elected to cast their loyalties unequivocally for the regime in power.

On April 25, 1929, a committee led by ANCh vice-president Marcos E. Raya and the

ANCh secretary, Brigadier General Antonio G. Velasco, were granted a meeting with President

359 Scherer García, El Indio, 61-69.

360 Cruz, Roberto Cruz, 110-113.

361 The rebelión escobarista broke out in late February and early March of 1929. Led by the Generals Gonzalo Escobar, Francisco R. Manzo, and Jesús Aguirre, the rebellion called for an end to Plutarco Elías Calles' political authority and the removal of Emilio Portes Gil as president of Mexico. Calles managed to contain the rebellion by June of 1929, and it became the final major military uprising to pose any significant threat to the central state apparatus taking shape in Mexico City. See “The Escobar Rebellion and the Last Battle of the Mexican Revolution,” Wars of Latin America, 1899-1941, ed. René de La Pedraja Tomán (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2006), 298- 304.

184 Emilio Portes Gil. The charros approached Portes Gil to discuss the fate of the tract of land upon which the ANCh’s rancho charro rested. The land was still partially owned by “the ex-general”

Roberto Cruz, and the ANCh was clearly concerned that it would be left homeless as a result of

Cruz’s military rebellion. The ANCh missive to Portes Gil which records the basic details of the

April 25th encounter does not reveal the precise content of the meeting. It does, however, reveal that the charros walked away from the appointment with Portes Gil’s reassurances that he would support the ANCh in the legal process of retaining ownership of the land in question.362

At the time of the meeting between ANCh leaders and Emilio Portes Gil, the Escobar rebellion continued to develop in parts of Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Monterrey, and Veracruz.

That the ANCh chose to send emissaries to the president in the midst of the federal government’s military response to the rebellion, demonstrates that the ANCh’s loyalties as an organization lay wherever its best chances for success and survival might be guaranteed. When it became clear that their leader was determined to challenge Emilio Portes Gil (and Plutarco E. Calles as well who still directed government policy behind the scenes), the ANCh, regardless of the extent of

Cruz’s prior contributions to the organization or of how individual members might have felt regarding the rising post-revolutionary regime, clearly determined that it could not allow itself to become trapped between two warring sides. ANCh leaders appealed directly to one of the targets of Cruz’s ire, Emilio Portes Gil, in order to make clear to government officials that the ANCh’s fealty lay firmly with the regime in power. In its handling of Roberto Cruz’s defection to a rebel cause, the ANCh thus demonstrated that more than a simple bastion of anti-revolutionary reaction, the organization was an adept interpreter of the tumultuous political culture of the era.

The organization also demonstrated that it was capable of marshaling what resources and

362 Emilio Portes Gil, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 4/593 [9201], 5/6/1929.

185 connections remained at its disposal to cast its lot with whichever patrons were best placed to

help assure its continued existence.363

The ANCh followed up its overture of adhesion to the Portes Gil administration with

alliances to military officials whose loyalty to the revolutionary state was not in question. The

organization was led for the remainder of 1929 by Brigadier General Antonio G. Velasco, the

man who had been originally slated to serve as ANCh Secretary had Roberto Cruz finished his

1929 presidential term. Then in 1930 and 1931, the organization was led by General Jesús Jaime

Quiñónes. According to the memoirs of Fidel L. González, president of the ANCh in the 1950s,

Velasco and Quiñones had helped the ANCh maintain a very good standing with the federal

government due to their close connections with revolutionary statesmen.364

Ultimately, in the longer term, the choices the ANCh made after the rebellion of its erstwhile leader Roberto Cruz contributed to the firmer interlacing of charrería with state and political power. As one of the most senior charro organizations in the country, the ANCh’s decision to decisively ally itself with the Mexican state set an important precedent for other charro organizations to similarly foster beneficial relationships with the most influential politicos and statesmen in their localities.

In return for support from influential local and national government leaders, organized charros provided a variety of displays of patriotic loyalty. Through the 1930s, for example, it would become the norm for organized charros to be visible participants in pro-government rallies, riding, for instance, in parades celebrating the 1938 Cardenista expropriation of foreign

363 When the ANCh approached Portes Gil, it undoubtedly helped that the organizations secretary, the Brigadier General Gómez Velasco was a rising military figure who remained in good standing with the federal government. Portes Gil, for his part, might have proven obliging to the ANCh’s request for help in retaining Cruz’s property because he needed to shore up as much public support as possible for his presidency.

364 See Gonzales, “Historia de la Asociación Nacional de Charros,” Charrería nacional, May 1964, 20 and González, “Historia,” Charrería nacional, January, 1965, 20.

186 oil and the creation of the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM).365 Mexico City-based

organizations such as the Asociación Nacional de Charros and the Asociación Metropolitana de

Charros also developed traditions of hosting and feting national presidents, members of the

national cabinet, and a rotating list of visiting foreign dignitaries.366 And as organized charrería continued to grow in popularity and new organizations were inaugurated in communities around the country, charros adopted the practice of sending formal declarations of their loyalty to the presidency as well as announcements declaring their chiefs of state to have been named honorary presidents of their organizations.367 Yet, as the ANCh proved when it negotiated Emilio Portes

Gil’s support of their legal process to retain the land owned by their ex-leader Roberto Cruz,

organized charros would also prove to be determined to transform their adhesion to the Mexican

state into a source of material benefit.

Conclusion

The collaboration that developed between organized charros and military men affiliated

with the victorious revolutionary factions of the north could have its risks, as the Asociación

Nacional de Charros found when their erstwhile leader Roberto Cruz decided to rebel against his

former superiors in the revolutionary national government. Overall, however, the relationship

with state representatives would prove crucial for the survival and success of the organized

charro community. The relationship provided organized charros with some of the wealthiest and

365 Carreño King, El Charro, 34.

366 See for example México Charro, February 1946, 6-7 and “Agasajo a la misiones sudamericanas en ‘La Tapatía’ de la Asociación Metropolitana,” México Charro, December 1946, 20-21. See also, “Fiesta Charra en honor de la República Argentina en ocasión de las Fiestas de su Independencia. Rancho ‘La Tapatío,’” México Charro, September 1951. See also the various invitations directed by the ANCh to the office of the President in Manuel Ávila Camacho, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 532/38.

367 See for example: Lázaro Cárdenas, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 130/701 and Miguel Alemán, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 437.3/23.

187 most powerful patrons to be found in post-revolutionary Mexico, and the relationship gave organized charros a chance at greater social legitimacy, their traditionalist sport and community values being so clearly connected to and endorsed by representatives of the new political elite in power.

The following chapter will continue examining the exchanges between charros and the

Mexican state. As the chapter will show, the early ties between charros at organizations such as the Asociación Nacional de Charros of Mexico City and influential military go-betweens gave

rise to a charro-state relationship of mutual if unequal benefit built upon a lexicon of patriotic

duty, service, and honorable manliness. Though the state was never as responsive as they might

have desired, a wider cast of organized charros proved empowered by this lexicon and able to

approach state officials for important material incentives on more balanced footing.

188 CHAPTER 7: CHARROS ENGAGE THE REVOLUTIONARY STATE

Introduction

The post-revolutionary Mexican state issued several important patriotic honors to organized charros in the early 1930s. In 1931, President Pascual Ortiz Rubio decreed that the charro and the charro costume were symbols of Mexicanness.368 Ortiz Rubio, one of the few

Mexican presidents to be photographed in charro costume, also issued permission for one of the metropolitan charro organizations, the Asociación Nacional de Charros (ANCh) to house its club offices at the Casa de la Hormiga in Chapultepec forest, a government-owned hacienda.369

Abelardo Rodríguez, who succeeded Pascual Ortiz Rubio in 1932, also issued honors. He decreed September 14th to be the national holiday, Día del Charro, and he declared charrería to

be an official “national sport.”370 As Juan de Dios Bojorquez, a representative of the newly created Confederación Deportiva Mexicana (CODEME), proclaimed in August of 1933:

The honorable President of the Republic, in his decisive quest to promote all sports [and] in an act of justice and supreme patriotism, has decided to recognize charrería as a genuinely national sport, and he has offered all of the support and moral aid necessary to revive the authentic customs passed on to us by our ancestors. 371

368 Palomar Verea, En cada charro, 102. As a side note: Pascual Ortiz Rubio was the second of three presidents who would attempt to govern Mexico from behind the shadow of Plutarco Elías Calles.

369 Palomar Verea, 105. Beginning with the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas, the Rancho la Hormiga would become known as Los Pinos, the main residence of Mexico’s sitting president.

370 Carreño King, El charro, 32.

371 “Acuerdo presidencial- México, D.F. agosto 29, 1933” issued by Abelardo L. Rodríguez via Ing. Juan de Dios Bojórquez, President of the Consejo Nacional de Cultura Física reproduced in Asociación Nacional de Charros, Síntesis Histórica, 2005, 15.

189 The declaration that charrería was a “genuinely national sport” and the promise of presidential

“support and moral aid” were issued to organized charros as they were being incorporated along

with other sportsmen and athletic traditions into the CODEME, a national agency which had

been established by state officials to promote and regulate sports and physical education

programs in the country. Less than a year later, the promise of state patronage for charrería

seemed to be holding true. Organized charros had fallen under the care and leadership of Silvano

Barba González, who in 1934 assumed duties as the first President of the CODEME-affiliated

charro governing body, the Federación Nacional de Charros, even as he began diplomatic

functions as secretario de gobernación under a newly-installed President Lázaro Cárdenas.

The honors that issued forth from the presidential administrations of the early 1930s were

the result of two processes. On the one hand, state officials, facing the possibility of a return to

the social chaos of the 1910s due to crises that included the protracted and violent conflict with

cristero militants, rebellions by ambitious military strongmen, and the 1929 economic

depression, determined to use nationalism to soothe public anxieties and marshal cross-class support for the Mexican economy. Creating an alliance with organized charros by bestowing patriotic honors on charrería allowed government officials to neutralize a potential hotbed of anti-government activity while simultaneously recruiting a community of deeply Mexicanist advocates who would give patriotic luster to the state’s nation-building endeavors.372

At the same time, however, the charro-state consensus that began to take concrete shape

in 1930s Mexico also resulted from the agency of organized charros. As the previous chapter has

discussed, the actions of the senior Mexico City organization, the Asociación Nacional de

Charros, during a moment of crisis in 1929 illustrate that organized charros took a very proactive

372 See “La campaña nacionalista y la supremacía de la figura del charro” in Carreño King, El Charro, 29-37.

190 role in tying their fortunes and communal well-being to the post-revolutionary Mexican state.

Following such early instances of astute reading and navigation of the political climate in which they existed, organized charros more generally forged ahead in creating a client relationship with the Mexican state.

As clients of the revolutionary state, organized charros gained the single most powerful patron to be found in post-revolutionary Mexico. They also received a much desired official endorsement for their traditionalist lifestyles and customs. From a historical perspective, however, the organized charro-state relationship also proves interesting for presenting a continuity with the pre-revolutionary past. Through its battalions of mounted rurales, the

Porfirian state had coopted and deployed the image of rancheros to illustrate its authority and

transcendence, and in the early post-revolution, state officials followed suit, deploying organized

charrería as well as state-compliant labor union bosses who also came to be known as charros to illustrate the power and transcendence of the new revolutionary state.

Charro Petitions to the State

Officials representing Abelardo L. Rodríguez had in 1933 proclaimed that the president intended to offer the “support and moral aid necessary to revive national customs.” In the years following this proclamation, charro organizations took Rodríguez’s promise to heart, generating a steady stream of petitions to the presidential administrations of the post-revolution. They peppered the presidential offices with countless invitations to charro competitions, charity events, holiday parades, and charro board induction ceremonies in hopes that the presence of the nation’s highest functionary would enhance the public’s recognition of charros’ folk labor.373

373 See for example, Lázaro Cárdenas, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 135.2/152 and Exp. 562.4/88. See also Manuel Ávila Camacho, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones,

191 The invitation discussed at the beginning of Chapter 6 was one of many attempts by organized charros to boast of having hosted a Mexican president for lunch and a charreada. President

Lázaro Cárdenas was unable to accept the December 1934 invitation sent by the ANCh and its leaders, Carlos Rincón Gallardo and Crisóforo B. Peralta. He did accept later invitations.374 But if it was true that charros were sustainers of a “genuinely national sport” and that the state wished to promote the resurgence of the nation’s authentic “national customs,” then charros expected the state to offer more than just “moral” aid.

Petitions spanning the early 1930s to the late 1950s entreated the Presidents Abelardo L.

Rodríguez, Lázaro Cárdenas, Manuel Ávila Camacho, Miguel Alemán, and Adolfo Ruiz

Cortines to help subsidize the expense of making charrería happen. Many of the petitions came from local Mexico City charro groups. For example, in 1935, the Asociación Nacional de

Charros solicited $25,000 pesos in monetary aid from the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas to offset the cost of a new and expanded training facility following the sale of their Rancho del

Charro to the Secretariat of Defense (which was looking to build a Ciudad Militar on the property).375 Representatives from the Asociación Metropolitana de Charros sent requests for funds with which to publish a charro newsletter, México Charro.376 The Metropolitana de

Charros also sought President Cárdenas’ aid in locating a source of transportation with which

Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 130/101 and Exp. 532/38. See Miguel Alemán, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 135.2/144.

374 See “Agasajo al Gral. Lázaro Cárdenas en el Rancho del Charro,” México Charro, January 1945, 24-25. Leovigildo Islas Escárcega also describes arranging special bulltailing events for Cárdenas and his inner circle in Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, Anecdotario Charro (Mexico: Tip. J. G. Villanueva, 1943), 23-27.

375 Lázaro Cárdenas, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 135.2/64, 11/3/1939.

376 Lázaro Cárdenas, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 135.2/152, 1/5/1937.

192 charro organizations from the provinces might be conveyed to Mexico City to compete against

Mexico City charros in a series of charreadas.377

However, provincial organizations also stepped forward to request aid for their projects.

The Cárdenas, Ávila Camacho, and Alemán administrations fielded petitions for land, animals,

equipment, and construction materials from places as varied as Durango and Sinaloa in the north,

the western state of Michoacán, and the central coastal states of Hidalgo and Veracruz.378 By the

mid-1940s, charrería had clearly spread to regions far from its mythical site of origin in the

center-west of the country.379

More importantly, requests from the provinces reflected membership by individuals of

more varied socioeconomic background than seemed to be the case for the wealthier charro

establishments in Mexico City. Charros from the association in Tulancingo, Hidalgo, for

example, courteously explained to President Manuel Ávila Camacho that they were compelled to

request his help in completing their charro lienzo because of their condition as members of the

“proletarian sector.”380 And in another missive to Ávila Camacho, written in prose that reflected

the writer’s shaky literacy, charros from an association in Zacatepec, Morelos petitioned the

president for a gift of hats which they could not afford due to their limited socioeconomic means:

377 Lázaro Cárdenas, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 135.2/152, 5/4/1937.

378Lázaro Cárdenas, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 415.14/7, 10/31/1936 and Exp. 562.4/258, 11/12/1936 and Exp. 532/40, 1/19/1937. For the Manuel Ávila Camacho administration, see: Manuel Ávila Camacho, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 120-170, 1/18-19/1941 and Exp. 120-1766, 3/16/1943 and Exp. 120-1944, 8/2/1943. For the Miguel Alemán Valdés administration, see: Miguel Alemán, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 532.4/228, 4/28/1949.

379 Charros from Jalisco claim that charrería originated specifically in their state. Their claims are countered by charros in the states of Hidalgo and Mexico. See “En defensa de la originalidad” in José M. Muria, Orígenes de la charrería y de su nombre (México, D.F.: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2010), 87-96.

380See Manuel Ávila Camacho, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 120-1944, 8/2/1943.

193 Envista que los componentes de esta Agrupación somos todos de secasos (sic) recurso, y aunque no sencontramos (sic) en la mayor dispocición de hacer floreser nuestro deporte que es al más nacionalde (sic) tos los que se ensallan en nuestro territorio, emos resuelto pedir a usted una alluda consistiendo esta en que nos haga favor de regalarnos unos sombreros de Charro, ya que todos los esfuerzos que emos hecho para obtenerlos nos an fallado, por lo que nos bemos presisados a hacerle a usted esta molestia, rogándole nos perdone.

In light of the fact that the members of this group are of limited resources and even though we have the utmost willingness to make flourish our sport which is the most national of all the ones that are performed in our territory, we have resolved to request some aid from you consisting of the favor of gifting us some charro hats since all of our efforts to obtain them have not succeeded which is why we find ourselves forced to bother you, we plead you excuse us.381

Highly deferential, apologetic, only a step away from complete abasement, these provincial charros made it clear that, in the relationship between state and organized charrería, charros occupied a subordinate position. No matter how obsequious in their approach, however, charros, whether provincial “proletarians” or urban professionals, never abandoned the language and imagery of patriotic duty and loyalty to the nation which required state leaders to provide at least nominal interest in meeting the demands of their supplicants.

For instance, the charros of Zacatepec, Morelos made clear that their request for the hats was tied to their project to make “flourish” the most “national” of sports in the country. In a later missive petitioning for help with their unfinished lienzo, the charros of Zacatepec were also careful to tap into the military defense prerogatives of the Ávila Camacho administration: “With no more to offer than to place ourselves at your service not only as charros but also as soldiers

(emphasis my own) should the patria ever need our humble services.” 382

381See Manuel Ávila Camacho, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 120-179, 1/18/1941.

382 Manuel Ávila Camacho, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 120- 179, 1/19/1941.

194 In the early 1940s, the Ávila Camacho administration espoused a political doctrine of

“National Unity” aimed at creating national support for Mexico’s entry into World War II on behalf of the Allied Cause.383 One of the more interesting manifestations of popular support for the war against the Axis powers came from charros. In response to President Ávila Camacho’s call for a civilian reserve to defend the country against a potential Nazi invasion, charro organizations mobilized into a Legión de guerrilleros mexicanos, rumored to be 100,000 members strong and distributed at points throughout the country.384 The charros of Zacatepec likely had these national prerogatives in mind when they reminded the president that they had military skills to offer in return for his aid, and though ultimately it is unknown whether Ávila

Camacho resolved the Zacatepec charros’ requests, their petitions still demonstrate that organized charros could be skillful users of the language of patriotic duty in order to remind government leaders of their obligations as patrons and caretakers of charrería.

Organized charros also made use of the imagery of male, fraternal loyalty and honor to pose their requests for state aid and interventions. Robert McKee Irwin has argued that ideals of

“national brotherhood” and male homosocial bonding came to “symbolize national coherence” in modern Mexican literature and society.385 Charros in the post-revolutionary era exemplified this

383 On the political panorama of the Ávila Camacho administration see Stephen Niblo, Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption (New York: Herman & Littlefield, 2000) and Thomas Benjamin, “Rebuilding the Nation,” The Oxford History of Mexico, 468-470.

384 This is a very little known occurrence in the history of modern charrería. Recently, however, a documentary film has generated interest in the Legión de guerrilleros mexicanos. See Matria (Mexico 2014) directed by Fernando Llanos and Fernando Llanos, Matria (México: Ediciones Necias, 2016). The AGN does contain traces of the Legión in its records. For instance, the archive holds a letter sent by charros in the state of Coahuila informing president Manuel Ávila Camacho of their organization into a local troop of legionarios and pledging their loyalty to his administration and their nation. See Manuel Ávila Camacho, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 550/44-20-4, 9/23/ 1942. For preparations undertaken by the Asociación Nacional de Charros in Mexico City, see Manuel Ávila Camacho, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 551.2/102, 8/4/1943.

385 Robert McKee Irwin, Mexican Masculinities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), xxix.

195 fraternal, masculine nationalist paradigm. For example, when the professor Luis Tijerina

Almaguer, a respected charro poet and organizer within the Federación Nacional de Charros lost

his day job as a senior administrative assistant in the Secretariat of Public Education, the FNCh

immediately fired off a letter of protest to President Abelardo L. Rodríguez in May of 1934. The

FNCh argued that Tijerina Almaguer had been the victim of a bureaucratic tug-of-war within the

Secretariat, and they asked Rodríguez to have Tijerina’s resignation be refused on the grounds that he was a man of known “faultless conduct” and “integrity” who had been highly respected by previous secretaries of education.386 The FNCh advocated for Tijerina Almaguer’s qualities

as a respectable man while simultaneously making clear charros’ bonds of fraternal loyalty and

unity in the face of crisis. The message to Rodríguez, it seemed, was that men of integrity

required an equally forthright response from the Mexican state.

The idea that the nation’s political leaders were bound by the bonds of male fraternity

and duty to protect the honor of charros is much more explicit in a petition that charros sent to

the office of President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. In 1957, the Asociación de Charros de Chihuahua

based in Ciudad Juarez asked Ruiz Cortines to intervene in their favor by ensuring the continued

incarceration of a man who had been convicted of murdering one of their members. The charros

claimed that their deceased colleague, the 36-year-old engineer Carlos B. Austin, had been an

“honorable person” and a charro of “lineage” endowed with a character and morality that

“dignified the race.” They decried the tragedy of his life having been taken by “an exploiter of

vices” (Austin’s murderer had owned a tavern) that “offered nothing but shame to the patria.”

Though the charros claimed they trusted the legal system to do justice to the case, they were still

386 See Abelardo Rodríguez, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 139.1/6-1, 5/11/1934.

196 concerned that the murderer might be soon released as he was in the midst of appealing his case

before a court of justice. The charros had thus elected to voice their concerns to Ruiz Cortines.

In the process, they issued a pointed reminder to the president. Reminding Ruiz Cortines

that he had once declared to organized charros that “if the authorities do not care for or

appreciate the charro as I value and care for him, they are not authorities,” the charros of Ciudad

Juarez made clear to the president that if he did not ensure that Austin’s murderer remained

behind bars, he would fall substantially short of his presidential duties.387 Charros strongly

suggested that Ruiz Cortines’ reputation as a patron and leading man would (at least in the eyes

of these charros) be substantially damaged.

Charros had a very wide variety of requests, small and large, to make of presidential

patrons. Correspondingly, the tone of their requests ranged from earnest and deeply deferential to

(still deferential) but more pointed reminders of state leaders’ obligations to render swift or

comprehensive aid. Ultimately, however, the Mexican state was never a particularly reliable or fair benefactor.

The Mexican State: An Unreliable Patron

It is difficult to ascertain precisely how invested state functionaries were in the cause of organized charrería because few records of their responses remain. The archival paper trail indicates that most petitions to the office of the president were delegated to subordinates working in the various tangled bureaucracies that formed the national government, and traces of further

developments were usually lost (or remain inaccessibly filed away). Still, because charros wrote

continuously to the presidencia, it is possible to detect snippets of outcomes.

387 See Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 542.1/1099, 9/30/1957.

197 Generally it appears that when charros’ requests were limited to small material concessions such as autographed photograph to hang in their meeting halls or a national flag that could be bragged about as a presidential gift, the petitions were fulfilled.388 Occasionally, an individual charro’s personal connections with a powerful state leader could also take him a long way. For example, Andrés Z. Barba, a landowner and rancher from Tepatitlán, Jalisco and one of the founding fathers of the Asociación de Charros de Jalisco based in Guadalajara, received the option of purchasing nearly 70,000 hectares of prime grazing land in Coahuila through a personal appeal to President Manuel Ávila Camacho.389 Barba’s situation, however, was more the exception than the norm among organized charros, and most charro organizations did not enjoy the same kind of close personal leverage with the nation’s presidents. For this reason, whenever charros’ requests ballooned into the realm of land for charro training grounds, the completion of lienzos, money, or other major subsidies, most presidents of the post-revolution seemed to exercise their beneficence mainly with the charro groups in the capital or in their own home states. 390

388 See for example, the exchange revealed in Pascual Ortiz Rubio, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 41 (1930) 12894. On 10/24/1930, the charros of Orizaba asked for a flag from Ortiz Rubio. On 11/5/1930, Ortiz Rubio’s secretary writes to say the flag was enclosed. Then in Pascual Ortiz Rubio, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 16 (1931) 5715, the charros of Orizaba write on 9/21/1931 to request monetary aid for a trip they want to take to Mexico City for purposes of joining in on a patriotic parade, and on 9/24/1931, Ortiz Rubio’s secretary writes again to inform them that the president regretfully cannot help them because of the poor state of the national treasury.

389 Through the revolution and the 1920s, Barba had retained ownership of several haciendas and ranchos in Jalisco, but he suffered major losses with an agrarian redistribution that took place in 1931, leaving him with only one of his ranches. By the start of the next decade, however, Barba found the opportunity to reverse his losses. With the rise of Ávila Camacho, a close personal friend, Barba was able to use his connections to the president to secure a prime real estate deal on very advantageous terms. See Silviano Hernández G., Ser charro es ser mexicano (Guadalajara, Jalisco, México: Secretaría de Cultura, 2010) 90-91 and Palomar Verea, En cada charro, 135-136.

390 Lázaro Cárdenas’ interactions with charros are interesting because they were about as friendly (if not friendlier) than those of other more ‘conservative’ presidents that followed him. Though Cárdenas was the bogeyman who might have potentially deprived charro landowners of their land during the agrarian reforms of his administration, charros in Mexico City and the provinces appeared to have a very positive relationship with him. Mexico City charros wrote glowingly of his generosity, and provincial charros also directed numerous admissions of admirations

198 The unevenness of the Mexican state’s delivery on organized charros’ requests is

corroborated by organized charros’ own testimonies. The charro publication, México Charro,

noted at different times that Mexico City-based organizations had enjoyed substantial

government support for the construction of new lienzos. In its February 1946 issue, the magazine

praised General Manuel Ávila Camacho and Lic. Javier Rojo Gómez as “two grand Mexicans”

and “devotees of charrería” for having “generously funded” the construction of new homes for

the Asociación Nacional de Charros and the Asociación Metropolitana de Charros (both located

in the capital). Rojo Gómez, as governor of the Federal District, had sponsored the ANCh’s new

Rancho del Charro, and Ávila Camacho, as president of the nation, had personally inaugurated

the Metropolitana’s brand new Rancho “La Tapatía.”391

A decade later, México Charro resumed its praise of major national leaders. The list

included Manuel Ávila Camacho, Miguel Alemán Valdés (Ávila Camacho’s successor to the

presidency), Fernando Casas Alemán (the Alemanista governor of the Federal District), Salvador

Sánchez Colín (the Alemanista governor of the state of Mexico), and Rafael Ávila Camacho (the

youngest Ávila Camacho brother and governor of the state of Puebla). These five men were among the “exemplary Mexicans who while in power and outside of it” had “labored stubbornly”

and loyalty (though always in the context of a material petition). Cárdenas, himself, was a bit more expansive in his response to charro petitioners. His generosity could range from small financial subsidies that allowed the editors of the charro newsletter México Charro to put out new issues in times of economic hardship to the construction of new lienzos in provincial districts of Morelos and Veracruz. He also promised small sums of money and donations of stallions and cattle for breeding purposes. His administration did not always respond favorably, but he appeared to be more broadly willing (provincial and Mexico City charros benefited about the same) to exercise the beneficence of the state than the later administrations of Manuel Ávila Camacho and Miguel Alemán. This attitude toward charro constituents is in line with revisionist historians’ characterization of the Cárdenas era as populism built on the president’s careful balancing and compromise between varied, often conflicting constituents. See Ben Fallaw, Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Post-Revolutionary Yucatan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).

391 See “Editorial” in México Charro, December-February 1946.

199 for the nation’s “traditional fiesta par excellence.”392 With the exception of the magnificent lienzo expanded by Rafael Ávila Camacho for the charros of Puebla, however, the accomplishments of the state functionaries praised by the magazine seemed limited to the

Federal District and the state of Mexico. As the magazine noted: “those monuments known as

‘Rancho del Charro’ and ‘La Tapatía,’ and ‘Rancho Grande de la Villa’ and ‘El Hormiguero’ and

‘Rancho Charro de Puebla’ and many more in distant communities of the state of Mexico, solid and sturdy, will let future generations know the identity and heights attained by their illustrious builders.”393 The ranchos ‘Grande de la Villa’ and ‘El Hormiguero’ were, along with ‘La

Tapatía’ and ‘Rancho del Charro,’ all located in distinct barrios of Mexico City.

México Charro concluded its praise by thanking its subjects for having “restored the charro to the center of society and inserted him into the heart of the pueblo,” but though the editors of the magazine clearly felt pleased by the generosity of select powerful statesmen, not all organized charros felt the same.394

The noted charro escritor Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, for example, indicated that a more systematic and regular government response was preferable for charros though far from being the reality. As he observed grimly in a 1952 essay for Lienzo magazine:

Who, outside of the Government could give charrería a ‘necessary and appropriate’ structure in all of the Republic? The Government has not done this and will not do anything since with a few exceptions, mostly the actions of a few understanding functionaries, the Government has demonstrated complete disdain, if not a real aversion for the sport of all Mexicans, in conserving it let alone fomenting or giving it official promotion.” 395

392 See “Editorial,” México Charro, February 1956, 3.

393 “Editorial,” México Charro, 3.

394 Ibid.

395 Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, “La charrería como deporte lucrativo,” El Lienzo, September 30, 1952.

200 The state, in his perspective, was content to let charrería die from benign neglect. The insights of

both Islas Escárcega and México Charro generally indicate that if charros desired aid from the state, they had to wait for a particularly enthusiastic aficionado, usually an individual with regional or personal ties to the sport, to come into a position of power.

Some provincial charros demonstrated awareness of these circumstances by using the expectation of regional favoritism to corral a sitting president into acting in their favor. For instance, representatives of the Asociación Veracruzana de Charros addressed a petition for the gift of 20 hectares of abandoned ejido land to President Miguel Alemán noting that it was unjust to deprive his own regional fellows of the benefits given to charro organizations in other states:

In the capital of our nation, the government awarded territory and provided aid for the construction of the ‘Rancho del Charro,’ in Jalisco there is another magnificent rancho, in Puebla and in many other places there is an exemplar of our authentic national sport, charrería. Is it possible that now that we have a native son as President of the republic, we will not receive land of our own and the assistance necessary to build our own rancho del charro in the historic Veracruz? 396

Shortly after this petition was received in his office, Alemán appointed his Agrarian Department chief to see what could be done for the charros of Veracruz, but again, it remains unclear whether the land request was eventually resolved favorably for the organization.

Due to strategic choices and simple necessity on both ends, organized charros and

representatives of the consolidating revolutionary state formed a close working relationship in

the post-revolution. The charro-state alliance proved uneven and not always clearly beneficial to

the parties involved, but it did permit both state leaders and charros to move forward with their

respective imperatives. State leaders were able to further ensure the legitimacy and authority of

the revolutionary state as well as burnish their personal credentials as patrons and leading men.

396 See Manuel Ávila Camacho, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 532.4/228, 4/28/1949.

201 Organized charros secured a powerful (infrequently attentive) ally in their quest to make charro

traditions shine and endure. Once the pattern of regular charro-state engagement was established

in the late 1920s and early 1930s, it would prove long-lasting, with Mexican presidents through

the start of the 21st century taking the time to honor the role of organized charrería in modern

Mexican society.

The national government’s connection with organized charrería was not the only form of

“charro-state” relations to take shape in the post-revolution, however. In the 1940s, the term

“charro” developed an unsavory new connotation—that of a corrupt labor boss imposed upon a union by the Mexican state—which would also endure for the rest of the 20th century. The

following and final section will offer a brief consideration of the connections between organized

charrería and charrismo to reflect on the enduring ambiguity of ranchero-charro leading

manliness as well as the pervasive theme of the modern Mexican state’s consolidation at the

price of the curtailment of individual leading men’s ambitions and passion for self-rule.

Charrismo, Charrería, and Independent Leaders’ Subjection to the Mexican State

At a glance it would appear that the worlds of post-revolutionary labor organizing and charrería had very little to connect them. In the 1930s and 40s, Mexico was home to one of the most radical and militant labor traditions in the western hemisphere, with worker’s unions gaining significant autonomy during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas and retaining political strength under the conciliatory, World War II-era Ávila Camacho administration. Charrería, on

the other hand, as represented in the patriotic public performances and folk life of charro

organizations, exuded rural and social conservatism. Ultimately, where labor organizing and

charrería dovetailed was in their similar processes of subjection to a paternalistic (when

necessary, forceful) Mexican state. Like organized charros in late 1920s Mexico, the new breed

202 of labor union bosses known as “charros” that began to appear after 1948 obtained support and

political relevance by offering their loyalty and services to the Mexican state.

“El Charro” Díaz de León

By most accounts, the reason that state-imposed union bosses began to become known as

“charros” during the post-revolution was the rise to power of the railroad union boss Jesus Díaz de León in the fall of 1948. Following years of union-led strikes and boycotts under the administration of his predecessor Manuel Ávila Camacho, the newly-inaugurated Miguel

Alemán Valdés made public in 1947 that his government would no longer permit labor militancy to obstruct his plans for industry-backed economic growth. The first major proof of the Alemán government’s willingness to curtail labor activism came when it took the opportunity to intervene in an internal power struggle that developed between factions of the national railroad workers union, the Sindicato de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros de la República Mexicana or

STRFM.397

In the fall of 1948, an STRFM operative known as “El Charro” for his fondness for

charrería and charro dress used the aid of the Alemán government to take over the union.398

Seeking to reduce the influence and credibility of a rival leader within the organization, Jesús

Díaz de León, “El Charro,” called for a government investigation of fraud within the STRFM.

This action led the executive committee of the STRFM to oust Díaz de León from his position as

397 On Charrismo, see: Marcos Aguila and Jeffrey Bortz in W. Pansters ,“The Rise of Gangsterism and Charrismo: Labor Violence and the Postrevolutionary Mexican State,” Violence, Coercion, and State-making in Twentieth- century Mexico: the Other Half of the Centaur, ed., Wil G. Pansters (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2012) and Michael Snodgrass, “The Golden Age of charrismo: workers, braceros, and the political machinery of postrevolutionary Mexico,” Dictablanda : politics, work, and culture in Mexico, 1938-1968, eds. Paul Gillingham and Benjamin T. Smith (Durham : Duke University Press, 2014).

398 Aguila and Bortz, “Gangsterism and Charrismo,” 200.

203 Secretary General of the union.399 Far from capitulating, however, Díaz de León stormed the

union’s offices on October 14, 1948 with the aid of loyal union followers as well as federal

troops, policemen, and secret agents that figures within the ministries of labor and gobernación

were rumored to have assigned to Díaz de León.400

The violent takeover of the STRFM proved beneficial for the Alemán government. In the

immediate aftermath, Díaz de León set about purging his union’s ranks of suspected communist

sympathizers. He cut back on wages and benefits, and he reduced the number of work positions

offered by the union. On the whole, Díaz de León implemented measures that when pursued on a

nation-wide scale by other state-backed union bosses, facilitated the Alemán administration’s

pursuit of economic development via industrial growth.401

Díaz de León’s nickname also almost immediately gave rise to a new vocabulary for

understanding the rise of state-compliant labor bosses. His coup over other leaders in the

STRFM was soon being dubbed El Charrazo in the press.402 In the eighteen months that

followed Díaz de León’s takeover of the national railroad workers union, the Alemán

government participated in the overthrow of militant and left-leaning leaders in the national petroleum and mine unions and their replacement with state-approved bosses such as Jesús

Carrasco, alias El Charrasco, whose style of leadership—non-confrontational before the

399 Aguila and Bortz, 201.

400 Ibid, 201.

401 Snodgrass, “The Golden Age,” 180-181.

402 Aguila and Bortz, “Gangsterism and Charrismo,” 201.

204 imperatives of the Mexican state, anticommunist, paternalistic, deeply corrupt, and frequently

violent—soon became known overall as charrismo.403

The rise of union “charros” and of “charrismo” in the late 1940s merits consideration alongside organized charrería given the fact that the first state-backed labor boss, Jesus Díaz de

León was reputedly a dedicated charrería aficionado. Organized charro community sources are silent on the phenomena of labor-union charrismo. Were organized charros to have been aware of charrismo, however, especially those most passionate of charro nationalists, it is unlikely that they would have expressed much enthusiasm about “charro” bosses like Díaz de León.404 Union

charros were notorious for ruthlessness, corruption, the employment of union thugs, and a taste for luxurious excess, all traits that ran counter to the genteel, honorable, and patriotic charro ideal that organized charros of the 1940s were busily championing as the most transcendent symbol of

Mexican national identity.405 At the same time, however, though organized charros and labor

charros seemed to enact opposing versions of potent manliness (honorable, patriotic, and genteel

vs. aggressive, authoritarian, and corrupt), in the era of post-revolutionary regime consolidation,

the two kinds of charros shared the definitive similarity of having surrendered their loyalties and

autonomy to state rule and imperatives.

Organized charros, as the previous sections have discussed, offered deference, service,

and adhesion to representatives of the Mexican state in a bid to flourish unimpeded by the

403 Snodgrass, “The Golden Age” in Gillingham, Dictablanda, 180.

404 The charrería aficionado and historian José M. Muria discusses three possibilities for why state-compliant labor bosses began to be known as charros. One is that labor bosses like Jesús Díaz de León preferred to dress in ranchero style clothing to better identify with their workers. The second is that the term alluded to the “Charrito Pemex,” a promotional cartoon of a round-bellied, bow-legged charro that figured as the mascot of Petroleos Mexicanos and the national government. The third is that the term alluded to the charros citadinos or city charros who betrayed their rural roots and connections by maintaining an appearance of rural manliness but who never actually left the comforts and luxuries of city life. See José M. Muria, “Origen de las palabras,” Orígenes de la charrería, 34-35.

405 Snodgrass, “The Golden Age,” 184.

205 suspicions or enmity of the new revolutionary elite in power. And certain observers of charrismo in post-revolution seemed to believe that labor union charros were “charros” precisely because they were men who had submitted to the more potent forces of the government and corporations.

As a steel union boss interviewed by historian Michael Snodgrass reminisced “those of us chosen to lead the union in those years [the 1950s] were called charros by the people who opposed us, and charro in our language means servile, being the company’s errand boy.”406 The sense that the term “charro” was synonymous with servility and subjection has some grounding in

Mexico’s pre-revolutionary history.

When viewed from the lens of the longer term process of Mexico’s formation as an independent nation-state, the situation of organized and labor charros vis a vis the Mexican state was yet another manifestation of the struggle to (re)establish structures of centralized government. In the mid-1870s, the most enduring caudillo of the 19th century, Porfirio Díaz, began constructing economic stability and peace in a war torn nation by coercing and enticing the cooperation of military warlords and political bosses. On a fundamental level, the Porfirian state endured for so many years because it successfully reined in the ambitions and autonomy of power-hungry men at all levels of Mexican society. And in a particular and pointed display of dominance over rural men on horseback—actors who had earned a place in the popular imagination as fiercely independent bandits, contrabandists, war leaders, and rancheros—the

Porfirian state outfitted the rural policemen who were its most visible symbol of control and authority in the countryside, the rurales, in charro attire modeled on the signature raiment of the independent rancheros who the rurales were supposed to help coopt and contain.407 Porfirian

406 Snodgrass, “The Golden Age,” 185.

407 See Chapter Two.

206 statesmen seemed to be operating with the logic that few things communicated power as much as the loyalty and subordination of other powerful men.

Demonstrating an overarching focus on continuing (and intensifying) the centralization schemes of the Porfirian leadership, post-revolutionary statesmen not coincidentally secured their own charro subordinates (whether in labor unions or organized charrería) as well.

Conclusion

Organized charros and revolutionary politicos, as the introduction to the previous chapter discussed, were not the most obvious allies to be presumed in the tense aftermath to the 1910s.

Organized charros were men whose gazes were locked on the romantic glories of a mythic pax porfiriana. Revolutionaries were the men who had shattered that mythic agrarian world and who were willing to give impetus to rural and sociopolitical transformations if these accrued support for the new regime in construction. However, as the previous sections have discussed, charros and revolutionaries did indeed form early and unevenly beneficial alliances in a process fueled by the needs of regime consolidation and political survival and facilitated by the gender and cultural logic of patriarchal political leadership.

In post-revolutionary Mexico, revolutionary leaders could be (and sometimes were) charros, and organized charros, though never of a “revolutionary” spirit, could find reasons to be loyal and respectful of a national government led by revolutionaries. As Carlos Rincón Gallardo, the aristocratic patriarch of organized charrería admitted to a magazine columnist in 1947, “Even though I was firmly against the revolution, I have to say that I have received nothing but attentions from the revolutionary governments.”408 Charros and revolutionaries thus reached a consensus largely from a keen understanding that they had valuable favors to offer each other.

408 Cartel, 3/13/ 1947 as quoted in Carreño King, El charro, 34.

207 With the official endorsement of the new revolutionary political elite of the country, by mid- century, organized charros were seemingly poised to completely realize their goals of growing the charro sport, sustaining charro traditions, and earning widespread nationalist respectability.

Yet, two considerable obstacles remained in their way. One was that organized charros were continually compelled to police their own ranks in order to ensure that their many and varied community members were performing charrería in an honorable and respectable way.

Charro nationalists and other dedicated aficionados within the community had very clear ideas about the most appropriate and respectable ways to dress and behave as a charro, but this did not mean that all organized charros exerted themselves to conform to an honorable code of charro conduct and appearance. The second was that organized charros, no matter the extent or the thoroughness of their efforts to define charro authenticity, could never control the way charrería was performed or imagined by other cultural producers and popular entertainment industries with a much more massive influence on everyday Mexican life. The next and final chapter will discuss how organized charros attempted to resolve these dilemmas.

208 CHAPTER 8: CHARRERÍA AND CHARRO RESPECTABILITY, CONTESTED

Introduction

In March of 1948, organized charros launched a repudiation campaign against Mexican filmmakers. Lino Anguiano and Luis Pérez Ávila, two leaders and representatives of charrería’s national governing body, the Federación Nacional de Charros (FNCh), wrote to President

Miguel Alemán Valdés on behalf of seventy charro organizations operating throughout the country. They petitioned for presidential action against a film industry which they accused of profiting from the denigration of Mexico’s premiere national symbol, the charro. As their missive claimed:

When the National Cinema depicts a charro, it frequently gives him the character of a vicious and murderous bandit. This is damaging to the good reputation of organized charrería which is actually composed of people for whom morality and propriety are the norm. 409

The charros appealed to their President’s sense of patriotic responsibility, asking that he

“recommend to whoever is responsible that any further staining of the living symbol of Mexico be avoided.” Anguiano and Pérez Ávila concluded their missive by reassuring Alemán that his attentions to the matter would result in the continued well-being of their patria.410

At the time of the FNCh petition to Miguel Alemán, organized charros were living through a “Golden Age” of growth and great public exposure for charrería. Charros cantores,

409 Miguel Alemán Valdés, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 523.3/28, 3/29/1948. The Mexican Secretario de Gobernación is a government functionary somewhat equivalent to the U.S. Secretary of State.

410 Ibid.

209 gallant singing cowboy actors, and charro-clad mariachi performers were dazzling thousands of cinema patrons throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Charro sportsmen had successfully replicated the club community model of senior charro organizations like the Asociación Nacional de Charros in nearly all of the states of the Mexican republic, and several of these regional and metropolitan clubs were recruiting growing numbers of sportsmen and building expanded rancho charro complexes under the patronage of well-connected public and political figures.411

Yet as the letter to Alemán indicates, nearly thirty years after the appearance of the first charro organizations, organized charros were still struggling to resolve one of the basic issues at the heart of their sport community’s founding. Despite charro nationalists many claims of historic patriotic service and significance, charrería continued to be subjected to what they considered to be degrading treatment. The relevance and respectability of the organized charro community was not yet truly secured.

Nationalists within organized charrería considered the popular entertainment industries, particularly the national film industry to be a central source of their community’s respectability problem. Silver screen charro characters were continually evolving and subject to subversive and morally ambiguous rewrites, and filmmakers’ penchant for character experimentation inspired criticism and outright rejection by organized charros. Overall, however, the single greatest challenge to organized charros’ respectability lay in their own high and very idealistic standards for the performance of the charro sport and charro respectability.

Because organized charros identified and performed as the iconic central-western ranchero who figured at the heart of their patriotic narratives, they considered the charro to be a

411 See for example, “La Asociación de Charros de Puebla,” México Charro, January, 15, 1945, 13-15 and “Fiesta en el Rancho ‘La Tapatía,’ con que la Asociación Metropolitana de Charros celebro, jubilosa, la entrega que el señor Presidente de la Republica le hizo del casino del rancho,” México Charro, December 1945-February 1946, 6-7.

210 “living” symbol of Mexico. When organized charros declared the charro to be symbolic of the nation, they were also claiming recognition as paragons of Mexican culture and character, and they considered this national symbolism to be a source of implicit and unassailable respectability.

In practical terms, however, the claim to national symbolism placed upon organized charros an unending responsibility and burden. The charro, as imagined by the most passionate members of the organized charrería community, was a supreme cowboy, horseman, and gentleman. It was extremely difficult to transform those manly ideals into reality, and so organized charros had to continually police their own ranks for respectable behavior. They also found themselves laboring almost futilely against culture producers like filmmakers who made use of the figure of the charro outside of the sport of charrería. For their claims of national symbolism to ring true, organized charros had to be prepared to constantly defend their reputations even if this meant transforming the Mexican film industry into their Goliath, even if it meant attempting to compel the President of the Mexico to come to their defense.

The Troubles with Maintaining Charro Respectability

A tension between an idealized charro respectability and a far more disorderly and undignified reality characterized the organized charro community from its earliest moments. On the one hand, passionate sportsmen and authorities within the community championed charrería as the pursuit of preeminent and patriotic men and as a tradition that Mexicans were obligated to display and honor for its exceeding qualifications as a proud national tradition. It was for these motives that during a trip to the World Exposition of Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1922,

Alfredo B. Cuéllar, secretary of the recently founded Asociación Nacional de Charros, took every opportunity possible to display his charro pride.

211 That summer Cuéllar was a member of the Mexican delegation appointed by President

Álvaro Obregón to travel to Brazil for the Exposition.412 Seeing an opportunity for promotion,

Cuéllar conducted his duties for the delegation dressed in complete charro costume. Drawing curiosity and questions wherever he went, Cuéllar rushed to explain the particulars of the tradition he was representing. When faced with tittering Brazilian ladies who confused his attire with the “California style” bandit costumes featured in Tom Mix films, Cuéllar explained that his costume was “typical of skilled Mexican horsemen” and that he was not in fact “clothed in the dress of bandits.”413 When journalists from El Correio da Manha inquired what a “charro” was,

Cuéllar explained that “fiestas charras nurture in the men of my land the sentiments of ferocity,

calm in the face of danger, and boldness that are or should be, I believe, the most beautiful

characteristics of the strongest races.” 414 Cuéllar wanted his Brazilian public to know that

charros were respectable men.

In reality, the members of the nascent charro sporting community that Cuéllar belonged

to could be far from impressive. Charros escritores frequently observed in the first decades of

organized charrería that many organized charros lacked even the most basic ranchero skills.

Aficionados frequently missed their targets when roping.415 They handled livestock in clumsy and dangerous ways.416 They fell off their horses while attempting to bulltail, and were often

412 Mauricio Tenorio discusses the Obregón government’s interest in promoting the idea of a once again stable and recovering Mexican nation at the Rio Exposition. See “The 1922 Rio de Janeiro Fair,” Mexico at the World’s Fair: Crafting a Modern Nation (1996).

413 Alfredo B. Cuéllar, Impresiones y anécdotas de mi viaje al Brasil en 1922 (México: La Helvetia-Cipsa, 1947), 9.

414 Cuéllar, Impresiones, 21.

415 See Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, “La urbanidad en la charrería” and “La apeada forzosa” in Anecdotario charro, 23-27 and 29-32.

416 See an example in “Platicas Charras,” El Universal, June 15, 1949.

212 unable to distinguish whether or not their mounts were correctly saddled and cared for.417 In fact, the absence of a sufficiently large contingent of expert horsemen and cowboys forced the

Asociación Nacional de Charros and other early charro clubs to hire talented working-class cowboys to make their first charro festivals sufficiently entertaining and impressive to the public.418 These hired expert performers and charro teachers would eventually become known as charros profesionales within the organized charro community.

The behavior of charro aficionados also called into question their commitment to nobility and respectability. In addition to lack of cowboy expertise, organized charros committed behavioral and sartorial transgressions that left authorities and other concerned charros recoiling with disgust. For example, in the August 10, 1936 issue of the charro community magazine El

Chamberín, the charro escritor José Álvarez del Villar excoriated the attendees of a gala hosted by the prestigious Asociación Nacional de Charros for devolving into drunken conflict. As

Álvarez del Villar told it, there had been an “abundance” of carelessly and vulgarly dressed charros in attendance at the gala. Far worse, liquor had been flowing abundantly, and so

“arguments proliferated.” The evening of drunken revelry had culminated with such a

“scandalously undignified scene” that Álvarez del Villar could not (unfortunately for us readers)

417 See Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, “El charro se hace en el campo,” Lienzo, February 29, 1952.

418 Accounts of the ANCh’s first charreada (charro fiesta) in the summer of 1921 note that club organizers had had to hire five men to conduct the central athletic showcases of the festivities. See “Breves apuntes históricos de la fundación de la Asociación Nacional de Charros: Extracto de los apuntes inéditos del señor don Ramón Cosió González (q.e.p. d),” Charrería nacional, June 1963. Leovigildo Islas Escárcega discusses the history and role of profesionales in “La charrería profesional,” El Lienzo, August 31, 1952 and in “La Charrería profesional: Postergada,” Charrería nacional, April 1, 1964.

213 bring himself to describe it.419 He did, however, take the opportunity to issue a stern rebuke to

the leadership of the Asociación Nacional de Charros:

The Asociación Nacional de Charros should be a MODEL for others to follow. The past gala had nothing worthy of emulation. 420

At the time of Álvarez del Villar’s writing, the Asociación Nacional de Charros was recognized

as the home of some of the most prestigious, well-connected, and wealthy charro sportsmen in the country. That it had been charros from that senior organization who had demonstrated such outrageous misbehavior no doubt seemed like a sure and ominous sign to Álvarez del Villar that the newly born world of organized charrería was already imploding.

At the heart of the community’s struggle with cowboy ineptitude and unsavory public comportment seemed to be the fact that early charro organizations had opened their doors to aficionados with a very wide spectrum of interests and investment in charrería. The charro sporting world had come into being due to the efforts of devoted aficionados who, like José

Álvarez del Villar, felt a passionate connection to charro customs and who dedicated a significant portion of their lives to pursuing charrería-related activities. These aficionados assumed leadership positions in charro organizations, and they participated in the planning and execution of charro competitions and festivities. They taught or eagerly sought instruction in charrería performance, and they studied charro folklore. For these deeply invested charro nationalists, charrería was not to be taken lightly.

From their inception, however, charro organizations had also been accommodating to aficionados with only the slightest experience or interest in charrería. Club membership

419 “El mal comportamiento de algunos socios y la falta de dirección deslucen las fiestas y la labor de la Nacional” in El Chamberín, August 15, 1936.

420 “El mal comportamiento,” El Chamberín, 1936.

214 categories reflected this openness. Charro organizations usually distinguished between two types

of members who paid monthly quotas for varying access to organization spaces, events, and

resources. Socios activos typically paid double (or more) the fees of socios suscriptores for the

right to train and perform (charrear) in their club’s lienzos. Socios suscriptores paid lower fees

mainly for the right to socialize and form part of a charro organization’s community. They could

partake of free seating and admission to events on the organization’s social calendar and to

community eating areas.421 Suscriptores rarely pursued athletic or equestrian training nor did

they represent their organizations in charro competitions or tournaments. Nonetheless, charro

organizations usually welcomed large numbers of suscriptores because their dues formed a

significant portion of clubs’ yearly earnings, and their money helped to defray the cost of

property mortgages or rental fees, maintenance, and livestock. For newly established and less

wealthy organizations, the quotas collected from generally supportive but athletically-disinclined suscriptores were the only way they could remain viable and functioning.422

The differing levels of equestrian expertise, cowboy skills, and commitment to

performing charrería virtually guaranteed conflict and controversy. The stern condemnation that

José Álvarez del Villar delivered in response to the scandalous behavior he had observed among

ANCh charros reflected the deep frustration of aficionados who cared deeply and labored to

increase charrería’s respectability in post-revolutionary Mexico but who also felt that their efforts were being sabotaged by their own fellows. “Organized charros have been fighting to dignify the figure of the charro. They have been making enormous sacrifices in order to secure for their fellows the esteem that charros deserve,” Álvarez del Villar claimed. “They desire all of

421 “Los socios activos y los suscriptores de las asociaciones de charros – unos pagan y otros gozan” in La Afición, February 9, 1939.

422 “Los socios activos” in La Afición.

215 their horsemen to be ‘gentlemen,’ and yet,” he further lamented, “when those great efforts finally

result in some small achievement, a shameful occurrence will take place, undermining the work

of the well-intentioned.”423 The organized charros who inspired Álvarez del Villar’s criticisms likely figured in his mind at the time of his writing as thoughtless, thankless, and damaging to the larger community for the bad image they created of charrería. The saboteurs in turn, aficionados who clearly had been enjoying their time at the ANCh gala that Álvarez del Villar had attended more for the opportunity it provided to enjoy food, abundant drink, and the company of friends rather than for any sense of obligation or commitment to the noble and respectable performance of charrería, had likely remained cheerfully unaware and impervious to the glowering and condemnatory gaze of their more invested fellow sportsman. The problem of members of the community conducting themselves in ways that more dedicated charro sportsmen considered to be undignified, embarrassing, or even outrageous would remain an ongoing source of tension for decades after the first charro organizations’ founding.424

For their part, charro community leaders recognized that something had to be done.

Cognizant that organized charros could hardly claim to be exemplars of a proud charro national

tradition when their absent ranchero athleticism, distorted interpretation of charro dress, and

undignified public behavior suggested otherwise, authorities such as the elected officials of

charro organizations and the small collective of community intellectuals, the charros escritores,

all set into motion projects to standardize the charro sport and to regulate the behavior of

423 “El mal comportamiento,” El Chamberín, 1936.

424 See “Actos vergonzosos de dos jovenzuelos” in El Charro: Publicación Mensual, September 14, 1948 and “La mística de la charrería” in Charrería: revista informativa, August 3, 1959.

216 organized charros.425 Some charro leaders, for example, experimented with the creation of charro

schools and training curriculums that would transform the members of their charro organizations

into functioning horsemen and cowboys.426 At the same time, charro writers including the

Marquis of Guadalupe developed a corpus of literature, essays, and news columns that defined and taught about charro customs.427 And most ambitious of all, sportsmen representing charro

organizations from several states of the republic met in Mexico City in 1933 to create a national

governing body which was to have the principle purpose of ruling on all matters related to the

charro sport and charro performance.428

For their efforts to succeed, however, charro authorities had to negotiate several

difficulties. A fundamental issue was a simple lack of agreement about what “charro” customs

actually were.

The differences of opinion often corresponded with regional and “local” understandings

of what counted as “traditional” horsemanship. Men from the Tierra caliente (Pacific coast

lowlands) might be accustomed to outfits formed mainly (and sometimes only) of thin deerskin

breeches or cueras. Horsemen from northern Mexico might sport attire and gear that closely

resembled that of cowboys throughout the U.S. southwest. Horsemen from Veracruz in turn were

425 Leovigildo Islas Escárcega expressed this sentiment pretty plainly in an essay for Lienzo magazine: “¿Cómo se pueden formar expertos jinetes de personas ajenas por completo a estas actividades…? Hágaseles cabalgar en pelo, en silla, sin estribos; ensillar y desensillar violentamente; conducir en forma adecuada a sus caballerías a los distintos aires usuales; saltar obstáculos fijos; ascender y descender pendientes, etc., y entonces se habrá hecho una labor efectivamente benéfica para la charrería. De lo contrario no se justifica en forma absoluta la existencia y el funcionamiento de las agrupaciones charras.” See “El Charro se hace en el campo,” El Lienzo, February 1952.

426 See J. Jesús Barajas de León, “Notas históricas y graficas de la ‘Asociación Metropolitana de Charros’ y su Rancho ‘La Tapatía’” in Charrería: Revista Informativa. No. 5 October 1959. See also and José I. Lepe, Reflexivo hurgar, 37.

427 See Chapters Four and Five.

428 Álvarez del Villar, Historia, 381-387. See also, Silviano Hernández G., Ser charro es ser mexicano (Guadalajara, Jalisco: Secretaria de Cultura, Gobierno de Jalisco, 2010), 96-97. José Valero Silva, El Libro de la Charrería, 145- 146 and see Octavio Chávez, Charrería: arte y tradición, 109 and 116.

217 used to light demi-saddles, baggy pants, and white palm hats. The horsemen of the central

Mexican plateau (a landmass that includes the modern states of Jalisco, Guanajuato, Queretaro,

Hidalgo, and Mexico) for their part had been involved in the formation of the distinctly rich and silvered charro accoutrements.429 Within the context of charro associations, horsemen of varying provincial origins adopted the central Mexican charro costume, but the process was gradual and marked by experiments with hybrid attire and equipment.

Class background and experience with rural cowboy labor created additional differences of opinion. The stately Marquis of Guadalupe and other “old guard” charros encouraged aficionados to model their charro fashions and mannerisms on the tradition of lavishly attired and equipped central-western Porfirian hacendados.430 At the same time, other voices within the community counseled aficionados to curb their enthusiasm for elaborate or excessive accessorizing and to present themselves instead in the sober and functional attire of working cowboys. As José Álvarez del Villar counseled his fellows in a 1936 essay, “If we are guided by the idea that the charro is a rural horseman and that all his gear is designed for ranch work, then we must understand that anything that is unnecessary or inappropriate for ranch work is unjustifiable.”431 True charros were to actually practice the lassoing, bull-tailing, and reining skills that formed their sport. They were also to wear only attire and gear that was appropriate for rigorous and physical ranch work.

The consolidation of organized charrería was also stymied by the absence of a single predominant authority or body of authorities who exerted sufficient legitimacy and respect to

429 See José Álvarez del Villar, “Son charros los trajes regionales?,” El Chamberín, July 4, 1936.

430 See “Arreos charros, nomenclaturas de la silla vaquera y de sus accesorios” and “El traje charro” in Carlos Rincón Gallardo, El charro mexicano (México: Porrúa, 1939).

431 “Saltapurrichismo Imperante,” El Chamberín, March 1936.

218 rule definitively on community issues. Organized charros united in 1933 to plan for and elect the first officials of the Federación Nacional de Charros (FNCh), a national charro governing body which would steward charros through the continuing growth of their charro sport.432 However, the FNCh almost immediately struggled to maintain credibility and authority over its members.

Organized charros complained that FNCh officials remained disconnected from the needs of ordinary sportsmen, and that they failed to promote charrería sufficiently or appropriately before the general public.433 Critics also accused FNCh officials of lacking any qualifications as horsemen and cowboys or of having any clear vision for the future of charrería.434

Sufficient disagreement and tension developed within the ranks of FNCh member organizations that some among them elected to leave the organization. Notably, in 1948, FNCh president Lino Anguiano reported to FNCh members that the Asociación Nacional de Charros of

Mexico City had chosen to become an autonomous charro organization and that the separation had occurred as a result of the ANCh’s “predisposition to systematically disobey the agreements reached during assemblies.”435 Anguiano did not reveal the nature of the resolutions and projects that the charro officials had disagreed on, but the departure of the ANCh indicates that the path

432 Organized charros already had a governing federation of sorts when plans for the Federación Nacional de Charros (FNCh) were developed in 1933. The Asociación Nacional de Charros and its affiliate chapters in the provinces had been operating as a Confederación Nacional de Charros since 1923. Led by elected charro officials from the ANCh in Mexico City, the Confederación had mainly served to coordinate friendly exchanges and competitions between distinct charro associations. Its administrative operations reduced some of the “spontaneity” and “romance” of the ANCh’s first charro showcases by scheduling encounters between groups of competitive charro sportsmen, locating competition judges, and providing some basic ground rules for bull tailing, roping, and riding contests. On the founding of the Federación, see Fidel L. González, “Historia de la Asociación Nacional de Charros y sus miembros más distinguidos,” Charrería nacional, February 1964.

433 “Un concurso sin bases” in El Chamberín, April 1936.

434 “¿Hasta cuándo la Federación Nacional de Charros va a dar señales de vida?,” El Chamberín, August, 1936.

435 See Miguel Alemán Valdés, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nacion,437.3/158, 10/8/1948. Tensions between the ANCh and FNCh were still evident in the early 1980s as noted by Kathleen Mullen Sands. See Mullen Sands, Charrería mexicana, 308-309.

219 to a uniform governance of post-revolutionary charrería was fraught with disagreements and

competing visions. With such internal disagreements and varying levels of investment in

charrería, organized charros, on the whole, found it very difficult to ensure that their community

members consistently lived up to the manly respectability and supremacy of the charros conjured

in charro nationalists’ narratives of patriotic service and national symbolism.

Their efforts would be rendered even more laborious with the proliferation of competing

charro images and performances that would be given massive exposure by the popular music and

film industries of the post-revolutionary “Golden Age.”

The Problem of Popular Charro Entertainers

Two decades after the appearance of the first charro organizations, very few Mexicans

and residents of the larger Spanish-speaking world remained unfamiliar with the figure of the

charro. With nationalist sentiments running high due to grand events of political and economic

independence such as the 1938 Cardenista expropriation of foreign-owned oil companies and a

continuing interest on the part of intellectuals, artists, and reformers to continue defining (and

harnessing the political potential) of mexicanidad, local traditions like charrería were receiving

wide diffusion across various dimensions of everyday life.436 Advertising agencies and

businesses used charro images to sell a variety of products and services.437 Popular historietas or

comic books centered on the adventures of charro characters, and charros dominated the subject

matter of early nationalist sound cinema.438 In fact, charro-themed films helped launch a

436 For a wide ranging and thorough discussion of post-revolutionary national culture see The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1960 (2006).

437 See “El amo de los caminos,” Excélsior, July 1, 1936.

438 Charro-themed historietas include “Charros del bajío” (1937), “Juan sin miedo” (1939), “El alacrán” (1939-41), “El charro misterioso” (1939-41),“Chicho Duran el ranchero” (1940-42), “Espuelas de Oro” (1947), and “Vivac” (1947) all published by Pepín.

220 “Golden Age” of Mexican film between 1936 and 1956. Domestic filmmakers achieved their

first major box office successes and won millions of Spanish-speaking admirers around the

world with colorful, romantic rural comedies and melodramas that starred singing charros and

featured ensembles of charro-clad musicians known as mariachis.

The growing ubiquity of charrería in mass entertainment and popular culture proved a

boon and then a burden for the leaders and nationalists of organized charrería. Through the 1930s

and 40s, charro leaders had been continuing their efforts to standardize the charro sport and to

increase the basic ranchero expertise of their fellows, concerned ultimately with improving the

respectability and recognition of their community. However, denigrating and disrespectful uses

of charrería by popular entertainers operating beyond their reach soon showed charro nationalists

that unruliness and indignities from within their own ranks were not the only threats to their

respectability with which they had to contend.

Initially, the relationship between organized charros and popular entertainers such as the

personnel of the national film industry had actually been characterized by collaboration. Charro

nationalists, no doubt suspecting the important role that mass media technology could have in the

dissemination of national traditions such as their own, proactively collaborated in some of the

first post-revolutionary charro film productions.

Organized charros made their first incursion into film several years before “talkies” were premiered in Mexico. In 1927, the film director Gustavo Saenz de Sicilia, scion of a prestigious

Porfirian family (and founder of the short-lived Mexican Fascist Party), screened La boda de

Rosario, a romantic melodrama that featured as its leading man, the “Grand Master” of organized charrería, Carlos Rincón Gallardo. The film was lost many years ago, but reviews from the period described Rincón Gallardo’s role as that of “The Hacendado,” a man led by

221 honor and chivalry to rescue his love, Rosario, from the nefarious intentions of a villain identified simply as “El Canalla.” 439 Set on a distant country estate with characters in winsome folk costumes, La boda de Rosario was praised by the weekly leisure publication, Revista de

Revistas for being a “graceful exponent of the local color and the beauty that our country possesses.” 440

Rincón Gallardo remained silent in his many charro publications about the extent of his role in shaping the aesthetic of the film or the values represented by his character. By joining the production and allowing his name and image to feature in the related press coverage, however, he tacitly approved the film’s formula of bucolic, pre-revolutionary nostalgia.441

The chivalrous hacendado that Rincón Gallardo personified in La boda de Rosario also inaugurated the tradition of courtly charro characters that would gain a broader audience with the arrival of sound in the early 1930s. Film historian Aurelio de los Reyes has argued that there exists a clear line of influence between Saenz de Sicilia’s silent charro romance of 1927 and the

1936 blockbuster Allá en el rancho grande. 442

439 Emilio García Riera, Historia documental del cine mexicano: 1929-1937, 1992, 15. See also Gabriel Ramírez, Crónica del Cine Mudo Mexicano, 251-253.

440 Revista de Revistas, February 17, 1920 quoted in Gabriel Ramírez, Crónica del cine mudo mexicano, 251.

441 The presence of hacendado notables like Rincón Gallardo in the film and the production’s celebration of a “traditional” and rural old Mexico was far less convincing for the writer Alfonso Junco who judged that La Boda de Rosario was "presented and executed with abundant intelligence, art and love ...” but that it was also “fundamentally affected by a flimsy and scabrous argument that is not representative of our social realities and is slightly clouded by the tendency to present an illusory Mexico of charros and chinas poblanas, an exaggeration that when authorized by a film of Mexican origin, ends up definitively reinforcing the 'Mexican curio box' image that is already circulating abroad ...." See El Universal, June 1, 1929 quoted in Gabriel Ramírez, Crónica del cine mudo mexicano, 252.

442“El nacionalismo en el cine, 1920-1930. Búsqueda de una nueva simbología” in El nacionalismo y el arte mexicana: IX coloquio de Historia del Arte (México, D.F.: Universidad Autónoma de México, Dirección General de Publicaciones, 1987), 288-289. See also “De la china a la charra y el charro cinematográfico a partir del símbolo nacionalista del charro y la china bailando un jarabe tapatío” in Miradas disidentes: géneros y sexo en la historia del arte (México, D.F.: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM, 2007), 180-181.

222 Written and directed by Fernando de Fuentes, Allá en el rancho grande centered on the

story of two gentlemanly charros, the first, an hacendado, and the second, his loyal foreman, who

come perilously close to destroying their fraternal bond when they both fall in love with the same

delicate maiden.443 In the spirit of its silent era predecessor, La boda de Rosario, de Fuentes’

film exalted an idealized pre-revolutionary rural society in which benevolent hacendados

watched over an adoring (or at least respectful) population of dependents such as females,

children, and day laborers. The film also centered on the prerogatives of courtly charros,

particularly their responsibility to gallantly woo and defend the honor of a maiden. Its two

leading men, Felipe and José Francisco were, moreover, essentially the silver screen equivalents

of the Aristocratic Caballero and the Guitar-strumming Braveheart, charro ideals that Carlos

Rincón Gallardo had defined for the readers of his 1939 manual, El charro mexicano (see

Chapter Four).

The publication of Rincón Gallardo’s book, El charro mexicano, only two years after

Allá en el rancho grande became the first commercial blockbuster in the history of Mexican

cinema, suggests that his definitions of the charro were heavily influenced by the charro

characters he and thousands of other Mexicans had recently viewed on theater screens. But the

similarities that Allá en el rancho grande shared with its 1927 silent era predecessor also suggest that Carlos Rincón Gallardo had perhaps instead been publishing descriptions of characters that he had helped craft and project widely through his starring role in La boda de Rosario.

443 Allá en el Rancho Grande was actually a conservative rewrite of an incendiary anti-establishment operetta premiered by the playwright Federico Carlos Kegel in 1907. Kegel’s original work, En la hacienda, had indicted the power and abuses committed by hacendados, but in the hands of Fernando de Fuentes, a young director and screenwriter who felt personally betrayed by the Mexican Revolution, the operetta became a film that reinforced the patriarchal land tenure system. See Jeffrey M. Pilcher, “The Gay Caballero: Machismo, Homosexuality, and the Nation in Golden Age Film,” Macias-González and Rubenstein, Masculinity and Sexuality, 164 (e-book) and 218 (hard copy). Zuzana M. Pick further discusses Fernando de Fuentes’ use of charreria imagery to criticize the revolution in “Pancho Villa on Two Sides of the Border” in Constructing the Image of the Mexican Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 84-96.

223 In any case, pleased by the treatment domestic filmmakers were giving to charrería,

authorities within the organized charro community made sure to express their support of charro-

themed cinema. México Charro, the official publication of the Federación Nacional de Charros

released a review of Allá en el rancho grande in 1937 that was suffused with pride and

exaltations. According to the magazine’s reviewer, the film deserved accolades for its depiction

of “popular customs” and its dissemination of “the charro sport.” But what México Charro found

most laudable about the film was the degree to which it had faithfully captured the “charro soul.”

Allá en el rancho grande had “inflamed the hearts of Mexicans” and with good reason, México

Charro declared, for the film let Mexicans see “an admirable human profile, compendium of

native virtues and vices…exposed with complete fidelity and accuracy.”444

Allá en el rancho grande, with its courtly charro formula and picturesque conservatism,

gave charro nationalists concrete affirmation that their values and traditions remained important

even as “radical” Cardenismo demolished the traditional system of haciendas through an

accelerated land redistribution program.445 The fact that Allá en el rancho grande was followed

by nearly thirty imitations no doubt reassured them as well that the domestic film industry, the

single most prominent source of widely-consumed depictions of lo mexicano, valued charrería for what charro nationalists believed it was, the most transcendent expression of the Mexican national spirit.446 Unfortunately, for charro nationalists, this satisfaction and confidence in the

Golden Age entertainment complex would last a scant few years.

444 “La película nacional “Allá en el rancho grande” es la exaltación de nuestro charro,” México Charro, March 1937.

445 On the Cardenista reform see Dana Markiewicz, The Mexican Revolution and the Limits of Land Reform: 1915- 1946, 1993.

446 For discussion of the film’s impact, see Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro, “Allá en el rancho grande / Over There on the Big Ranch,” The Cinema of Latin America, eds. Alberto Elena and Marina Díaz López (London, New York:

224 The central problem for charro nationalists was that the popular entertainers and the

music and film industries that most widely diffused charro culture were undergoing their own

processes of evolution and transformation. The rise of charro mariachis provides a clear

example.

Charro-clad mariachis were an innovation of the post-revolution. The trumpet-blaring,

charro troubadours of Golden Age rural comedies and melodramas were in fact an updated and

re-costumed variant of various older provincial musical traditions that had originated in Nayarit,

Guerrero, Michoacán, and southern Jalisco. 447 The earliest documented mariachis had actually

been ensembles of string and harp musicians who wore white manta shirts and trousers and who

usually enlivened the festivities at weddings and village celebrations. Following the Mexican

Revolution, mariachis like so many other rural Mexicans migrated to the nation’s capital, and

there, musicians struggling to gain an edge on the competition began experimenting with new

ways of performing before metropolitan audiences. 448

Between 1920 and 1940, a new kind of mariachi tradition coalesced. Musicians began to replace harps and string arrangements with trumpets to deliver a more robust and unique sound while they performed in the busy thoroughfares and public spaces of the capital. To reflect their support and participation in the celebration of a distinctive Mexican national identity, mariachis began to adopt charro costumes as standard performance attire. 449 Enterprising band leaders

such as José Marmolejo and Silvestre Vargas began courting and marketing their work to film

Wallflower, 2003). See also Emilio García Riera, “The Impact of Rancho Grande,” Mexican Cinema, ed. Paulo Antonio Paranagua and trans. Ana M. López (London: British Film Institute, 1995).

447 Jesús Jáuregui, El Mariachi: símbolo musical de México (México, D.F.: Editorial Taurus, Instituto Nacional de Antropología 2007), 30.

448 Jáuregui, El mariachi, 90-91.

449 Jáuregui, 94.

225 producers for opportunities to feature their mariachi bands as backdrop musicians in the

productions of the nascent sound film industry. Within the span of a few years, the innovations in

costuming and musical arrangements became the vogue among the general population of

mariachi musicians competing for an audience in the capital, and by the mid-1940s, México City was home to hundreds of bands of roving charro-clad mariachis who entertained pedestrians on street corners and neighborhood plazas or who serenaded audiences at restaurants and night clubs.450 The explosion of “singing charro” films that followed the commercial success of Allá en el Rancho Grande also made it customary for filmmakers to feature mariachi ensembles in

their rural-themed productions. Movie patrons soon came to expect that whenever the leading

man of a charro film entered the scene for the first time, he would be shadowed by a loyal posse

of charro mariachis, cheerfully strumming and trumpeting in support of their leader’s

preeminence.451

For charro nationalists, the ubiquity of charro mariachis and singing charros in both film and in everyday life was not inherently problematic. Instead, ire and frustration began to set in once it became evident that charro entertainers, in the course of experimenting with new forms of presentation and performance, became careless or inattentive to how they were performing a charro identity to the public. A furious denunciation published in México Charro shows how frustrated charro nationalists had become with the course of charro-themed entertainment by the fall of 1945. The magazine opened its September 1945 issue with an editorial proclaiming the patriotic need for public authorities in Mexico City to pass city regulations that would correct the

“shameful spectacle” created by hordes of charro-like mariachi in the metropolitan capital.

450 Ibid, 94-95.

451 “Como se inventó el género ‘mariachi’: el surgimiento del mariachi moderno,” in Jáuregui, El mariachi, 112-121.

226 In the view of México Charro’s editors, two classes of musicians particularly

“dishonored” the Mexican capital and the public decency of “the entire country”. The first, street troubadours described as being generally “uncultivated people,” raised the ire of the nationalists at the helm of the magazine for presenting themselves in public attired in “the most lamentable state, adorned with terrible, blackened supposedly ‘charro’ hats, clothed in denim overalls, dirty and shabby….” The second class of mariachi, those who performed in night clubs and restaurants, were accused of “sinning on the opposing extreme.” The magazine described night club mariachis as favoring “exaggerated” and “ridiculous” outfits that were “crammed with blinding arabesques that far from giving harmony and elegance to the figure [of the charro] instead transformed it into a vulgar being, jarring and disenchanting.”452

For the editors of México Charro, the chief issue with the extremes in mariachi costuming they described was that they created serious public misconceptions about charrería.

The editors lamented, for example, that foreign tourists who also roamed in large numbers throughout the capital to “observe our customs” and to see “an authentic charro,” often formed their first opinions about Mexico and its national traditions from their encounters with shabby and carelessly attired street mariachis.453

The magazine had similar criticisms to give about charros in cinema. “Ever since the charro’s appearance in the first Mexican films, we have observed the absolute lack of propriety and deficiency of his presentation,” México Charro declared, perhaps counting on their readers to have forgotten (or missed) that years earlier, the magazine had praised the charros of Allá en el rancho grande. The editorial further noted that although “the most renowned artist of the genre,”

452 “Por el Decoro de Todos,” México Charro, September-November 1945.

453 Ibid.

227 the famous singing charro Jorge Negrete, had gradually corrected the deficiencies of his

costume, “from the impulse of his appreciation for the figure [of the charro] and a patriotic

sentiment,” other actors had failed to do the same. Since film was a medium that had the capacity

to “reach distant lands,” the “desecrations” were that much more “profound and grave.” With a

final call for the governor of the Federal District to release laws enforcing the respectful use and

treatment of the charro costume, the magazine evoked the importance of patriotic responsibility,

noting that through decisive actions to protect the good image of charrería, public officials would

secure “prestige for the government, the reputation of Mexico and the dignity of us all.”454

To the editors of México Charro, the vulgar and careless use of charro costume by charro entertainers was nothing short of an act of disrespect to the nation, and so they repudiated the exposure popular charro entertainers lent to charrería. The transformation in the sentiments conveyed by the magazine reflected charro nationalists’ gradual realization of the full ramifications of charrería’s wider acceptance as a post-revolutionary national tradition. On the one hand, the ubiquity of charro customs and images in mass entertainment and popular culture suggested for charro nationalists that they had been successful in promoting their charro sport and culture. On the other hand, they were receiving ample evidence that massive exposure and popular acceptance of charro customs did not at all guarantee that the general public and other cultural producers would also conform to their specific vision or standards for how charrería should be used or represented.

Organized charros had continued to participate in film productions through support roles as equestrian teachers, stuntmen, or on-set advisers. Overall, however, charro film production had far outpaced their involvement in the industry since the days of the Marquis de Guadalupe’s

454 Ibid.

228 performance as the leading man of La boda de Rosario. Since film was a medium that had the

capacity to spread undignified representations of charrería further than anything accomplished by

organized charros at their community festivals and athletic competitions, the charros at the helm

of México Charro reacted with a clear sense that the honor of the nation was at stake but also with the presentiment that the respectability of “true” charros like themselves might also suffer if

the haphazard and careless habits of popular entertainers were not somehow reined in.455

Unfortunately, for organized charros, by the mid-1940s, the threat to charro respectability had grown to entail more than just the costumes of their film counterparts or street cancioneros.

On film; the essential morality, dignity, and goodness of charros was no longer secure either.

Contesting Depictions of Charrería on Film

Film depictions of charros evolved considerably between 1936 and 1956. The genteel and fraternal charros of Allá en el rancho grande were monumentally popular throughout the

Spanish-speaking world of the late 1930s, but by the start of the new decade, audiences were flagging. Noting that movie patrons seemed to have become wearied by the ceaseless repetition of the courtly charro formula, producers responded with a grittier, darker approach to the genre.

This shift was marked by the 1941 debut of Ay Jalisco, no te rajes!, the film that proved to be the making of Mexico’s most famous singing charro, Jorge Negrete.

Ay Jalisco, no te rajes! shared important basic similarities with its predecessor charro films. It featured characteristic set pieces such as bar carousing, festive horse races and cockfights, and romantic serenade scenes. It celebrated Mexico’s white Spanish cultural heritage by featuring a plot that developed in the mythic Spanish-descended ranchero homeland of Los

Altos of Jalisco, assigning a Spanish immigrant as the father-figure and mentor of the charro

455 Ibid.

229 leading man. The film also celebrated the bonds of loyalty that developed between honorable

men in a hacienda-dotted rural landscape.

What set Ay Jalisco, no te rajes! apart was the fundamentally ambivalent spirit of its charro characters. Unlike the deeply moral and respectable charro protagonists of Allá en el rancho grande, the character of Sebastian “Chava” Pérez Gómez (Jorge Negrete) was an antihero consumed by the desire for vengeance. Having witnessed the murder of his parents as a child, Chava embarks on a years-long quest to assassinate the killers, defiantly refusing to allow any power but his own to render justice on the criminals. Under the tutelage of “Radilla,” an embittered Spanish saloon-owner who teaches Chava to “have a steady hand, a hard gaze, and no hesitation because that will cost you your life,” Chava grows up consumed by the need for vengeance and highly distrustful of anyone but a very small circle of friends. He also becomes so adept with firearms that in a pivotal cockfighting scene, he kills five men with a single round of bullets from his pistol. The exploit earns him a fearsome reputation as El Ametralladora or “The

Machine Gunner.” Chava is no courtly Felipe or José Francisco (the leading men of Allá en el

rancho grande). His brazen courage and extralegal acts of violence mark him as a different kind

of film charro standard, the macho bravío.456

The character of Chava was not the only one through which the producers of Ay Jalisco,

no te rajes! were straying from traditionalist boundaries. The filmmakers had Negrete’s cast

mates engage in comic hijinks that offset the male lead’s aggressive masculinity with

suggestions of homoeroticism and male passivity. In a humorous cantina scene, Chava’s

sidekicks “Mala Suerte” and “Chaflán” drunkenly fall into each other’s arms, simulating a

456 See Pilcher, “The Gay Caballero,” 219. For discussions of the macho ideal in literature and cinema see “Pedro Infante Unveiled: Masculinities in the Mexican ‘Buddy Movie’” in Sergio de la Mora, Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006) and Robert McKee Irwin, Mexican Masculinities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

230 lover’s embrace. Following a shootout, Chaflán nurses Mala Suerte with the tenderness of a

wife, petting and fussing at his charge. At the end of the film, before the impending death of

Mala Suerte from another injury, Chaflán cradles his partner close, plaintively crying “What am I

going to do without you… Don’t leave me….”457 The film thus affirmed an alpha macho

masculinity as much as it seemed to question and subvert the idea that all charro and macho men

were strictly aggressive and heterosexual in their emotional and intimate lives.458

Ay Jalisco, no te rajes! became yet another box office success and it “rejuvenated” the

charro film genre.459 As had been the case with Allá en el rancho grande, numerous sequels and

imitations followed the 1941 release. Jorge Negrete and other famous Golden Age actors

including Pedro Infante, Javier Solís, and Antonio Badu all went on to perform various iterations

of the strutting macho. Notably, these ranchero films also continued to gleefully subvert the

heterosexual potency of leading charro men.460

This pattern of evolution in film charro depictions was not tied to a single industry imperative. For one, the practice of blurring gender (and other forms of social boundaries) was a

well-established comedic strategy that had been customary in itinerant and penny theaters

(teatros de carpa). Most of the writers, directors, and actors of early sound cinema had made

their start with popular theater, so to them, the comic subversion of charro manliness was likely

an obvious tool for titillating, drawing nervous laughter, and continuing to lure patrons. 461

457 Pilcher, “The Gay Caballero,” 220-221.

458 Pilcher, 221 and De la Mora, Cinemachismo, 70.

459 Emilio García Riera, Historia documental del cine mexicano, vol. 2, 204.

460 De la Mora, Cinemachismo, 98-103.

461 Pilcher discusses the carpa origins of Mario Moreno “Cantinflas” in Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2001). See also Socorro Merlín, Vida y milagros de las carpas:

231 Moreover in a market where domestic film productions faced considerable competition from glamorous Hollywood star vehicles, risqué comedy with localist themes was one way to keep domestic films viable at the box office.462

It is also possible that the rise of the new macho charro was tied to filmmakers’ careful balancing act between political and ideological loyalties. On the one hand, charro films came loaded with cultural references that communicated deep sympathies with hispanismo and anti- revolutionary conservatism.463 However, through film charros’ choice of less than scrupulous company and through their onscreen preference for working men’s drinks like tequila, filmmakers also appeared to be subtly coding the charro as a working class figure and linking the figure to an aggressive, dysfunctional masculinity. Historian Jeffrey Pilcher has thus argued that the makers of charro films seemed to be communicating their support of the Mexican state’s hegemonic project of “sublimating” the pockets of revolutionary violence and dissent that still remained in the country.464 Either way, the Golden Age film industry produced depictions of charros whose manly respectability and sexuality was absolutely left open to debate, and charro nationalists, in frank disgust with what they were witnessing in theaters, were galvanized.

la carpa en México, 1930-1950 (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Centro Nacional de Investigación y Documentación Teatral R. Usigli, 1995).

462 For an overview of the interrelatedness of the Mexican and U.S. film industries of the 1940s see Seth Fein, “From Collaboration and Containment: Hollywood and the International Political Economy of Mexican Cinema after the Second World War,” Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of Film and Filmmakers, eds. Joanne Hershfield and David R. Maciel (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1999) and “Myths of Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism in Golden Age Mexican Cinema,” Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940, eds. Gilbert M. Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

463 See Joanne Hershfield, “Screening the Nation,” The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico: 1920-1940, eds., Mary Kay Vaughn and Stephen E. Lewis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 275. See also Joanne Hershfield, “Race and Ethnicity in the Classical Cinema,” in Hershfield and Maciel, Mexico’s Cinema, 82.

464 Pilcher, “The Gay Caballero,” 222. For extended discussions of the role and influence of the Mexican state on the national film industry see Rosario Vidal Bonifaz, Surgimiento de la industria cinematográfica y el papel del estado mexicano (1895-1940) (Mexico, D.F.: M.A. Porrúa, 2010).

232 The leadership of the Federación Nacional de Charros mobilized in the spring of 1948 to make their repudiation of the film industry’s work widely known. A key part of their strategy involved appealing to a very powerful benefactor, President Miguel Alemán Valdés. The FNCh called on Alemán’s presidential responsibility to love and protect the customs of his nation in the hopes that this would help them obtain an intervention that would permit organized charros to protect their reputations as individuals of “morality and propriety.” Their petition to Alemán expressed fear that the respectability of the nation and of their charro sporting community was at stake.465

Interestingly, in stating their discontent about the “vilification” of charros in film, the charro nationalists at the Federación Nacional de Charros also conveyed their steadfast commitment to a specifically heterosexual charro manliness. When they presented their complaints to Alemán, the FNCh charros remained conspicuously silent about the homoerotic hijinks that were plainly evident in charro films like Ay Jalisco, no te rajes! They only acknowledged the depictions of charros behaving as “vicious” and “murderous” bandits. Charros clearly rejected being associated with men loosed of all social compunction and respect for order, but at least those kinds of men were given the benefit of existing by serving as examples of what organized charros were not. Homosexual men and charros behaving in homoerotic ways, however, were not even countenanced by organized charros. Whether this was because they sincerely did not detect the homoeroticism or they willingly refused to acknowledge it, organized

465Miguel Alemán Valdés, Confederaciones, Uniones y Organizaciones, Archivo General de la Nación, Exp. 523.3/28, 3/29/1948.

233 charros ultimately made clear that in their eyes a respectable and dignified charro could only be a

straight man.466

In addition to sending a petition to Miguel Alemán, FNCh charros also appealed to

sympathetic pressmen for help in stirring public awareness of their cause. Organized charros

shared news of their presidential petition with members of the metropolitan press and won the

support of notable figures such as Xavier Sorondo (columnist for the conservative daily,

Excélsior and its weekend magazine, Revista de Revistas) and the film critic Jorge Mendoza

“Lumiere” (regular columnist for El Universal). The provincial charro magazine El Charro also reported that metropolitan charros had gotten news of their petition on the radio.467

Before long, organized charros began to face sore feelings and misunderstandings. As

news of their request for presidential aid spread, some charro entertainers and professionals who

conducted charro-related work in the film industry came under the mistaken impression that the

FNCh petition had accused them of unpatriotic behavior. The March 1948 issue of México

Charro reported that the organized charrería community had nearly lost its friendly rapport with

the screen titan, Jorge Negrete, because an unnamed film insider had “nefariously” insinuated to

the actor that the FNCh had been referring to his work in their petition. Made aware of Negrete’s

belief that he was being unfairly attacked, FNCh representatives rushed to hold a “friendly”

conversation with the actor to reassure him that their comments had referred solely to

“unscrupulous producers who generated exploitative and facile film scenarios without any

466 Discussions of the homoeroticism and subversion of strictly heterosexual macho charro masculinity have been the prevailing trend in the most recent scholarly studies of popular charro entertainment. See Sergio de la Mora, Cinemachismo (2006) and Jeffrey M. Pilcher, “The Gay Caballero” and Mary Lee Mulholland, “Mariachis machos and charros gays: masculinities in Guadalajara” both in Macías-González and Rubenstein, Masculinity and sexuality in modern México.

467 “Cuestión de dignidad,” México Charro, March 1948. See also “El Charro Mexicano,” El Charro, May 5, 1948.

234 concern for the nation’s loss of prestige.”468 Driven by a sense of patriotic urgency, charro nationalists set into motion a feud that had them tangling with the most famous and influential of their counterparts on the silver screen.

Ultimately, the FNCh’s petition and publicity campaign of 1948 had no effect. Miguel

Alemán responded to the FNCh petition by forwarding it to the office of the Secretario de

Gobernación, a move that organized charros viewed as a sure sign that Alemán meant to “nip the evil in the bud.”469 But nothing happened. Film producers continued unchecked.470

Early 1950s productions went on rousing laughter (and horror) via pronounced incidents

of gender and genre subversion. In the devastating charro parody El Siete Machos (1951), for

example, Mario Moreno “Cantinflas,” who was a box office titan and much-loved actor in his

own right, relentlessly tamed the macho charro ideal in scene after scene. Memorably, viewers

were treated to a scene in which Cantinflas’ trademark pelado character, Margarito, disguises

himself as a dashing charro bandit and attempts to serenade his lady love on a moonlit night.

Unfortunately, Margarito discovers that he has the wrong voice for this customary charro film

ritual. Instead of belting out his passion in a deep-chested, potent baritone (the voice register of

Jorge Negrete’s singing charro characters), Margarito finds to his chagrin that he can only

deliver his love song in the lyrical high notes of a female soprano. Needless to say, his nighttime

courtship comes to an abrupt end.471

468 “Cuestión de dignidad,” México Charro, March 1948.

469 Ibid.

470 This might have been due to the fact that Alemán enjoyed very friendly ties with industry figures. He was even given a cameo in the highly praised 1948 film Rio Escondido starring María Felix (who was rumored to be Alemán’s mistress). See Stephen R. Niblo, México in the 1940s: Modernity, politics, and corruption (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 50. See also Fein, “Collaboration to Containment,” 124-128.

471 See El Siete Machos (1951).

235 The 1952 production, Dos tipos de cuidado, in turn, is in film historian Jorge Ayala

Blanco’s estimation, the “masterpiece” of the new wave of sardonic and irreverent ranchero

films that began to appear after 1950.472 Starring the off-screen friends and rival megastars, Jorge

Negrete and Pedro Infante, the film concerned two charros who were more obsessed with each other and with maintaining the primacy of their friendship than in settling into a sedate married life. At one point, the two charro friends serenade each other with: “When a woman betrays us, we forgive her, and that’s it because she’s just a woman, but when the treachery comes from our best friend…how it hurts!” The charro friends in this film have fueled scholars’ arguments that

Golden Age filmmakers had a penchant for placing the homoerotic (or at least masculinities that occupied an ambiguous place between homo- and heterosexuality) at the center of their projections of Mexican national culture and identity.473

Whatever filmmakers and charro entertainer’s reasons for straying from more traditionalist and conservative standards of charro appearance, manliness, and sexuality, they managed to thoroughly alienate the nationalists of organized charrería. In subsequent years, film charros and popular entertainers would become the standard of everything an authentic charro should not be in the eyes of organized charro authorities, who searched for ways to articulate to their fellow aficionados how one was supposed to go about successfully projecting charro dignity and respectability. Through the 1950s, the charro writer Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, for example, regularly urged his fellows to avoid purchasing or commissioning attire that was excessively embroidered, too heavily studded with silver buttons, or dyed in flashy colors because such outfits exposed authentic charros to the possibility of being confused with the much

472 Jorge Ayala Blanco, Aventura del Cine Mexicano (México: Ediciones Era, 1968), 77-79.

473 Translation by Pilcher, “The Gay Caballero,” 222. See also Sergio de la Mora’s analisis of “Dos tipos de Cuidado” in Cinemachismo, 98-104.

236 loathed mariachi hordes of the metropolitan capital and other charro-like entertainers. Islas

Escárcega also repeated the call for Mexico City municipal officials and government leaders to protect authentic charros’ respectability by issuing laws that regulated how entertainers used charro costume. As he noted,

the greatest insult for a charro is to be confused with a mariachi, and unless he is the reincarnation of St. Francis of Assis, no man can tolerate the humiliation because the figure of the charro, as representative of an honorable tradition and symbol of Mexican nationality, carries an implicit respectability which should protect him from vilifying comparisons or confusions.474

Ultimately, the struggle to regulate charro respectability and manliness within the ranks

of charro sportsmen and in the popular charro entertainment of the Golden Age illustrates the

force of nationalism in the lives of individuals within organized charrería. Following the

establishment of the first charro associations in early 1920s Mexico, charro nationalists

developed patriotic discourses that helped them explain to the public at large why charros

deserved an important place in post-revolutionary society. A mythic record of service to the nation was supposed to secure their reputation as major historic actors, and it was supposed to grant them an honorable reputation that they could use to position themselves as “living symbols” of Mexican national identity. However, those same narratives of heroism and service also compelled organized charros to attempt to police and safeguard their manly respectability from threats both internal and external to their community. In the face of aficionados who simply wanted to have a good time and popular entertainers who carelessly or creatively enacted charrería in the course of conducting their work, charro leaders and nationalists found themselves fighting a thoroughly uphill battle. They grasped for ways to “dignify” the charro image and customs on their own strictly conservative and highly idealistic terms even as charrería became

474 Leovigildo Islas Escárcega, “Charros y Mariachis, ”El Lienzo, March 31, 1953. See also “Charro no Mariachi!,” El Lienzo, February 28, 1954.

237 one of the most popular, recognizable, and accepted markers of post-revolutionary Mexican national identity.

Conclusion

Nationalists within organized charrería had a very clear notion of the sort of man the charro was supposed to be even if they did not immediately agree on the particulars of the charro costume or the precise ranching skills that could rightly be understood as authentically “charro”.

The charro was to be an exemplar of Mexican manliness and culture–-a gentlemanly, brave, fearlessly patriotic, and expert horseman. Yet between responding to the antics and divisions of their own fellow sportsmen and the careless and denigrating ways that charro-like entertainers outside of their community enacted charrería, charro nationalists often found themselves feeling like they were “plowing the sea.” Living up to and widely enforcing the exemplary qualities of a

“living symbol” was tough if not entirely impossible work. Charro nationalists’ struggle to consolidate the sport of charrería and to contain the charro image to one specific standard of manly nobility and ranchero expertise also resulted from longer patterns in the way Mexicans connected to equestrian symbols and traditions. Ranchero symbols and equestrian customs like those of charros had never been the property of any single group of Mexicans. Charro nationalists lived by the axiom that “Mexico is charro and the charro is Mexico,” but when charro culture actually began to be more widely embraced as a marker of post-revolutionary national identity, charro nationalists found to their dismay that their fellow Mexicans could and would develop varied, creative, and haphazard approaches to deploying charrería in their lives.

238 EPILOGUE: ORGANIZED CHARRERÍA AFTER 1950

The first organized charros did not feel particularly welcome in an early post-

revolutionary society filled with ardent advocates of revolutionary modernization and social

redemption. But far from allowing the traditionalist equestrian ideal and customs they cherished

to fade into obscurity, organized charrería’s founding fathers set into motion an ambitious project

of cultural invention and revitalization.

Fifty years after the establishment of the first charro associations, charrería had evolved into an elaborate and deeply patriotic equestrian sport. Thousands of skilled and carefully- costumed organized charros competed in teams and as independent athletes in hundreds of local,

regional, and national-level tournaments. Competitive charreadas allowed charro athletes to

display their talents in one or more of nine officially-mandated charro equestrian events (known

as suertes).475 Organized charros were being steered through the complexities of their sport by a

national governing Federación, that issued guidelines on matters ranging from the selection and

handling of the livestock and horses used during competitions to sports medicine to the training

and equipping of new charro athletes to the handling of legal issues. Charros were being

prepared for their sport by a host of specialists and artisans– horse breeders and riding teachers,

leatherworkers, saddle makers, hat makers, and charro tailors. Above all, organized charros were

demanding recognition as individuals who were authentically charro, numerous guidelines and

475 FNCh-affiliated charros perform nine suertes during competitive charreadas: the Cala de caballo (reining), Piales en el lienzo (roping of wild mares), Coleadero (bull-tailing), Terna en el ruedo (Team roping), Jineteo de yeguas (wild mare riding), Jineteo de toros (bull riding), Manganas a pie (Roping on foot), Manganas a caballo (Roping on horseback), and Paso de la Muerte (the Death Leap). See Mullen Sands, Charrería Mexicana, 120.

239 definitions of their sport and equestrian traditions having been drafted to distinguish them from

other equestrian athletes and horsemen operating outside the formal purview of their national

charro federation.

The patriotic community and sport-building efforts of the first organized charros also

continue to show results in other ways. For one, charrería has resonated sufficiently with the

general Mexican population to the degree that it has been carried along by the Mexican diaspora

to the United States.

Mexican immigrants and Mexican-descended peoples residing north of the border showed an interest in the processes and community model of organized charrería as early as the mid-1940s. Enthusiasts established a charro association in San Antonio, Texas in 1947, and their activities were soon being profiled in the pages of charro magazines.476 Enthusiasts in the city of

Chicago founded an association in 1958, and another association based in Los Angeles,

California was inducted by the Federación Nacional de Charros in 1962.477 Through the rest of

the 1960s and 70s, charrería gained momentum in the United States with competitive charro

teams (not always affiliated with a charro social organization) appearing throughout

communities in the southwestern part of the country.

Indeed, competitive charrería has gained sufficient prevalence and popularity among

Mexicans and Mexican-descendants in the United States that U.S. news and entertainment

outlets have taken notice. Escaramuzas, the all-female side-saddle precision riding teams which

frequently perform within the all-men’s competitive charreada, have inspired media focus for

476 José I. Lepe. “La charrería en el extranjero,” Charrería: revista informativa, October, 1959, 12-13.

477 See “Asociación Mexicana de Charros de Chicago,” Charrería nacional, August, 1961, 28. See also, Moreno, “Charro,” 179.

240 their dazzling equestrian choreographies and colorful folk fashion.478 In 2015, the media and online streaming company Hulu, also commissioned a ten-episode reality television show, Los

Cowboys, profiling a team of Los Angeles-based charrería enthusiasts as they trained to qualify for the national charrería championships held in Guadalajara, Jalisco. 479 In 2016, the Spanish language network Univision offered viewers a second season of the reality show.480

As the premise of Los Cowboys suggests, US charro teams and sportsmen have made an effort to incorporate themselves into the larger network and community of charros in Mexico.

They have sought memberships with the Federación Nacional de Charros, and they have conducted their charreadas in the United States according to the regulations of the FNCh. US teams also send students to be trained in Mexican charro schools, and some particularly successful enthusiasts have even become financial sponsors for competition teams in their

Mexican home states.481

Still, despite US charros’ efforts to practice charrería in the likeness of their Mexican counterparts, charrería in the United States has developed a key difference. The sport has a more

478 See Vanessa Rancano, “With Sombreros and Sidesaddles, Virginia Women Renew a Mexican Tradition,” NPR, November 8, 2015, accessed November 2015, https://www.npr.org/2015/11/08/455243894/with-sombreros-and- sidesaddle-virginian-women-reclaim-a-mexican-tradition and Mariel Cruz, “Riding High,” Vogue, May 25, 2018, accessed May 2018, https://www.vogue.com/projects/13540751/escaramuza-women-costumes-charreria-style- mexico-arizona-mexican-equestrian-sport/.

479 Abel Salas, “L.A. Urban Cowboys Train for the Mexican Rodeo Championship in a New Hulu Series,” LA Weekly, January 26, 2015, http://www.laweekly.com/arts/la-urban-cowboys-train-for-the-mexican-rodeo- championship-in-a-new-hulu-series-5336254.

480 Armando Tinoco, ‘Los Cowboys’ Season 2: Danny Trejo, William Valdés to be featured on Univision Digital Series,” Latin Times, June 7, 2016, https://www.latintimes.com/los-cowboys-season-2-danny-trejo-william-valdes- be-featured-univision-digital-series-389301.

481 For discussions of organized charrería in the United States, see Olga Najera-Ramirez, "The Racialization of a Debate: The Charreada as Tradition or Torture," American Anthropologist 98, no. 3 (September 1996): 505-11 and "Haciendo Patria: Charrería and the Formation of a Transnational Mexican Community," Chicano Latino Research Center (CLCR) (University of California, Santa Cruz, 1997). Sarah Lynn López also discusses several Illinois-based immigrant aficionados of charrería in The Remittance Landscape: Spaces of Migration in Rural Mexico and Urban USA (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

241 distinctly working class character north of the border. In Mexico, charrería remains possible mostly to more affluent individuals with the leisure time and wealth to invest in the purchase and upkeep of costly charro costumes, equipment, and horses (not to mention the expenses associated with travel to competitions and participation in the social life of a charro organization).482 In the

United States, on the other hand, charrería has been embraced by working class men and women who carve out limited evening hours during the work week or on the weekends to practice the sport.483 Often driven by the desire to enjoy the fruits of a very hard-earned greater prosperity while also fostering family unity and a positive image of Mexican immigrants, US charros suffuse their practice of the sport with an earnestness inspired by the desire to remain linked to their Mexican heritage and homeland. 484 That charrería has become the preferred vehicle for many immigrants to showcase their rising social mobility and national pride is further evidence of the success of early post-revolutionary charros’ grassroots project for everyday nationalist significance.

The early alliance that organized charros forged with leaders of the Mexican state also proved highly successful, enduring well beyond the hegemony of the PRI (formerly PNR and

482 The pervasive eliteness of charrería has generated some criticism given that organized charros promote charrería as being a sport and tradition of the people. See for example: Francisco Ponce, “La charrería, tradición en manos de ricos,” Proceso (February 5, 1983), https://www.proceso.com.mx/135362/la-charreria-tradicion-en-manos-de-ricos and Judith Amador Tello, “El lujo de ser charro,” Proceso (December 11, 2016), https://www.proceso.com.mx/465628/el-lujo-de-ser-charro.

483 Liz Johnstone, “How Charrería is More than a Rodeo,” D Magazine, July 2013, accessed June 2015, https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2013/july/how-the-charrería-is-more-than-a-rodeo/.

484López, Remittance Landscape, 227-230. According to Sarah Lynn López, migrants were organizing informal charreadas-style events in the suburbs of Chicago as early as the late 1960s. Through the 1980s and 90s, López’s subjects channeled the economic fruits of their migrant labor into an elite equestrian tradition that had previously been impossible for them to afford. As Raul Muñoz, a successful migrant and charro ranch owner in Joliet, Illinois explained to López, “I started to be a charro here. There (Mexico) I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have money… I can do more in Mexico now than if I had always lived in Mexico… I do charrería a lot at the national level- I go wherever they invite me.” Taking up charrería was for López’s subjects, a sign of economic mobility and a sign that their identities were not circumscribed to that of impoverished, alien laborers. López, Remittance Landscape, 227- 230.

242 PRM) political party. Through the turn of the 20th century, organized charros remained loyal

adherents of each new presidential administration and enthusiastic folk patriotic performers

during official state events and rallies. State leaders, in turn, continued to help ensure the survival

of charrería, providing the FNCh with a steady subsidy (via the Confederación Deportiva

Mexicana or CODEME) for its various cultural activities and intervening whenever necessary to

smooth out conflicts affecting the charrería community.

For example, in the mid-1980s, state representatives prevented organized charros from

permanently splintering. In 1981, the Federación Nacional de Charros split into two competing

charro federations because factions within the governing body disagreed on the decisions and

attitudes of the FNCh’s executive committee.485 For a time, an alternative Federación Mexicana de Charros established its own executive committee and organized an alternative roster of state and national level charro tournaments and events. The divisions came to an end, however, when

CODEME officials under the encouragement of President Miguel de la Madrid finally orchestrated a reunion of the competing federations, perhaps acting from the sense that fracture and tensions were bad form within a community that claimed to safeguard and honor the nation’s

most emblematic cultural traditions.486 The FNCh thus resumed functions as a reunited body in

1984, this time rechristened as the Federación de Charros, A.C.487

Despite its internal community tensions, charrería still ultimately managed to secure a

place for itself in the basic repertoire of leadership rituals and ceremonies performed by state

leaders regardless of their political and ideological affiliations. This became quite manifest with

485 Mullen Sands, Charrería, 308.

486 Valero Silva, Libro de la Charrería, 156.

487 Not all charros were encouraged by this development, however, and continuing tensions resulted in the Federación undergoing another restructuring and renaming in 1994 after which it assumed its current name, the Federación Mexicana de Charrería. Chávez, Charrería, 116-117.

243 the rise of Vicente Fox in the early 2000s. The first president to break the PRI’s half-century long dominance over the central government, Fox continued the alliance with charro organizations begun by his PRI predecessors. In October 2004, for example, Fox made an appearance as organized charros’ guest of honor at their 60th annual national charrería tournament. Clad in a dignified charro costume, Fox stood before a massive audience of sportsmen at the tournament’s opening ceremony and solemnly declared:

Charrería thoroughly conveys our ties to the land, to the traditions and customs that identify us as inhabitants of this great country. It is the symbol of a society that does not forget its roots, of a people who know how to combine happiness and fearlessness, ability and talent. This is why we are so proud of charrería. 488

Scholars have noted the irony of Fox, a politician who won great popularity by cultivating a brash cowboy image that echoed the macho bluster of Golden Age film charros, successfully displacing the official revolutionary party which had consolidated its power in the post- revolution by participating in the nationalist consecration of the virile charro icon.489 By the time

Vicente Fox emerged on the political scene, however, the PRI was no longer the PRI of the early post-revolution, and as this dissertation has shown, the charro-ranchero image and customs never belonged or appealed to any single community or class of Mexicans.490 In all probability, Fox

(and/or his advisers) understood that the charro-ranchero icon has a long history of associations with independent, assertive, and competent leadership as well as a reputation for being a folk

488 “La charrería es el símbolo de un pueblo que sabe conjugar la alegría y el arrojo, la habilidad y el talento,” Presidencia de la Republica, México, accessed June 2013, http://fox.presidencia.gob.mx/actividades/?contenido=15520&imprimir=true

489 See Macias González and Rubenstein, Masculinity and Sexuality, 16-17.

490 Fox’s PAN party got its start during the 1930s and early 40s as the party of urban middle and upper class Catholics who opposed the leftist impulses of the Cardenista administration. The PAN in its earliest form aligned more neatly with the social conservatism that the charro icon represented than the PRI (in its earlier incarnations as the PRM and PRN). In a way, Fox celebrating and deploying a conservative cowboy image was like the PAN reclaiming a cultural symbol that slipped from its purview due to the hegemonic impulses of the consolidating revolutionary leadership.

244 leader with close ties to the common people. Whatever the inspiration behind it, Fox’s cowboy

image helped him present himself as a working man’s leader, and he was able to marshal that

appeal into the electoral favor of millions of Mexicans who were ready to shake off the grip of a

PRI party long considered to have grown decadent and alienated from the needs of ordinary

Mexicans. 491

As this dissertation has also discussed, however, the charro-ranchero image was never

solely (or even principally) the domain of law-abiding, conventionally respectable men. Bandits, contrabandists, and renegade warlords who explicitly challenged the authority and laws of the

Mexican state were among the most famous and evocative ranchero icons of the early to mid-19th

century. The charro costume also enhanced the fearsome reputation of revolutionary-era war

chiefs and guerrilla fighters believed by gentes decentes to be loosed from all moral

compunction. In the 1940s, organized charros began to decry what they considered to be the

Golden Age film industry’s penchant for villainizing the respectable image of authentic charros,

but in truth, the industry, though certainly predisposed to experiment with new character

formulas, was also quite simply drawing on an ample repertoire of extralegal and ambiguously

moral ranchero characters from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The rise of corrupt labor union

“charros” after the late 1940s further attests to the enduring association between the charro-

ranchero image and venial, extralegal power.

491 For political and biographical profile of Vicente Fox in 2000 see, “Profile: Vicente Fox,” BBC News, July 3, 2000, accessed June 2013, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/813206.stm. In practice, Fox’s cowboy persona could stray considerably from the gentlemanly demeanor preferred by organized charros. He continues to use bruising and often foul political language to this day, and recently, Fox has made news headlines for posting short comedic videos that eviscerate the Trump presidency. See Matthew Dessem, “Former Mexican President Vicente Fox is a Donald Trump Supertroll,” Slate, (September 9, 2017), accessed September 2017,http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/09/09/watch_former_mexican_president_vicente_fox_roast_donal d_trump.html.

245 It should come as no surprise then that in more contemporary times charrería has again

manifested extralegal associations, this time with the new “caudillos” of the drug-trafficking

world.492 In November 2010, for example, the Federación Mexicana de Charrería was discovered

to have had uncomfortably close ties with the illicit drug trade when it became public that one of

its wealthiest and most enthusiastic organizers, Alejandro García Treviño, had been arrested by

Mexican federal police forces for cocaine smuggling and drug-related violence. García Treviño,

whose real name was Carlos Montemayor González, had been hiding in Mexico City under the

guise of a successful businessman and charrería promoter, all while running a branch of the

Beltran-Leyva organization for his recently jailed son-in-law, Edgar “La Barbie” Valdez

Villarreal. García/Montemayor had relocated to Mexico City to protect himself from the death

threats produced by his association to “La Barbie,” but he had not exactly maintained a low

profile.

While in the capital, García/Montemayor quickly established himself as a charrería high

roller. He purchased the largest charro ranch in the state of Mexico and invested untold amounts

of money in lavish VIP charro tournaments at which the best charrería teams in the country

competed for large cash prizes and entertained powerful businessmen and politicians.

García/Montemayor’s profile in the charrería world became such that he gained important appointments within the Federación Mexicana de Charrería. At the time of his arrest,

García/Montemayor was two years into a four year term as the national coordinator of the

492 To some observers of the last two decades of drug-related violence, the narco bosses of contemporary Mexico are analogous to the region’s tradition of post-independence caudillo leadership- men who win the loyalty of small local communities and agriculturalists by fulfilling the basic economic and structural needs neglected by the Mexican federal government and who in isolated reaches of the west and northwest control institutions of public safety and order with near impunity. See Anabel Martínez, Los señores del narco (México, D.F.:, Grijalbo, 2010). See also Ioan Grillo, Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2017). Historian Alan Knight, however, discounts Mexico’s history of caudillismo as the sole (or even a major factor) behind the escalating drug-related violence of recent decades. See Alan Knight, “Narco- Violence and the State in Modern Mexico,” in Pansters, Violence, Coercion, 118-119.

246 Federación’s sports commission, the committee that schedules charrería tournaments and

enforces the athletic regulations by which charros perform their sport.493 Again, it might appear

quite ironic that an extralegal drug trafficker and cartel boss found refuge in a community

undergirded by codes of honorable and respectable masculinity. But viewed from the longer

historical record of transgressive charro-ranchero figures, the brief union between a man like

García/Montemayor and organized charros was absolutely par for the course.

In 1919 and 1921, equestrian enthusiasts in Guadalajara, Jalisco and Mexico City

founded charro organizations with the purpose of reviving a charro lifestyle and traditions they

believed were on the verge of disappearing. As organized charros grew their numbers throughout

the country and shaped charro horsemanship into a new competitive sport, their mission shifted

into a much more explicit community-based nationalist project. They mobilized to have the

figure of the charro be widely recognized as the single most transcendent expression of Mexican

national identity. By positioning themselves as custodians and practitioners of the country’s

most important nationalist customs, organized charros were able to claim an implicit

respectability and relevance in post-revolutionary life and to put themselves in the way of some

forms of political and social capital. The efforts of these first organized charros proved to be very

successful in the long term. Their equestrian sport and traditions have remained enduringly

appealing across generations, life experiences, and a very contested U.S.-Mexico border.

493 See news coverage of García/Montemayor’s capture in: “Principio y fin de ‘El Charro,’” Proceso (November 24, 2010), accessed April, 2016, http://www.proceso.com.mx/98583/principio-y-fin-de-el-charro and “Carlos Montemayor González: El narcocharro,” Vanguardia (November 27, 2010), accessed April 2016, http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/carlosmontemayorGonzálezelnarcocharro-598984.html. See also, Juan Pablo Reyes, “Suprema Corte niega amparo a suegro de ‘La Barbie,’” Excélsior (August 27, 2015), accessed April 2016, http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2015/08/27/1042445.

247 CONCLUSION

This dissertation has examined the history of horsemanship and rural equestrian traditions

in modern Mexico. It has traced varied ways that diverse Mexicans have used equestrian customs

and imagery to build power and relevance in the world around them. Because of a deep history

of associations between power, manly relevance, and rural equestrian traditions; nostalgic and

conservative charro sportsmen through the 1920s, 30s, and 40s shaped a new patriotic charrería

sport and used its customs to carve a place of significance for themselves in the increasingly

egalitarian and democratizing context of post-revolutionary Mexico.

By no means exhaustive, this dissertation presents several avenues for further analysis.

The organized charrería community is a rich subject for scholars interested in community

formation, transnational cultural movements, and studies of leadership construction and political

image-making. An intensive social network and demographic analysis of charro organizations,

whether of the earlier post-revolutionary groups or of more contemporary organizations would

no doubt yield more fascinating information about the role of culture and folk traditions in the

creation of political and economic structures of power. Historians interested in the growing field

of Latin American sports history will also find organized charrería to be a valuable case study for

considering the role of modern sports in a post-revolutionary and nation-building context as well as the formation of a vibrant transnational sports community.

As this study also suggests, there is a wealth of information to be derived from exploring communities that did not subscribe to the indigenista model of post-revolutionary cultural nationalism. Much like the peasant communities, indigenous craft artisans, and village

248 intellectuals examined by other scholars of the post-revolution, organized charros exhibited great creativity and keenness in navigating a society undergoing a massive and complex process of reconstruction. Communities like that of organized charrería should be further examined if scholars desire to better understand how and why cultural nationalism became the dominant socio-political strategy of elite and popular actors after 1920.

The history of horsemanship and of an equestrian sport community like organized charrería ultimately proves very useful for understanding diverse aspects of modern Mexican society. Through the invention and re-invention of Mexican equestrian traditions, it is possible to glimpse the contours of Mexico’s formation as a deeply agrarian, hierarchical, but also vividly dynamic colonial society. Nineteenth and twentieth century travails with independence and revolution, the challenges of nation-state formation, and the search for order, modernization, and stability all come to life in the activities, experiences, and representations of rural men on horseback—as do ongoing concerns with the construction and performance of national, gender,

sexual, and class identities. There is therefore an additional dimension to be understood from the

classic adage among organized charros that the “charro is Mexico and Mexico is charro.” To study charros and Mexico’s rich equestrian history is indeed to grapple with and tease out the many facets, twists, and contradictions of the story of Mexican nationhood.

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