MEXICO CITY — Few figures occupy as outstanding a distinct segment in U.S. lore because the American cowboy, that embodiment of rugged individualism celebrated in dime novels, classic radio, TV and Hollywood blockbusters.
However latest musings from Secretary of State Marco Rubio have fueled a sometimes-acrimonious debate — totally on social media — concerning the origins of the tall-hatted buckaroo who, with the assistance of a trusty steed and a six-gun, helped tame the West.
On the Munich Safety Convention this month, Rubio acknowledged that the “total romance of the cowboy archetype that grew to become synonymous with the American West” was “born in Spain.”
Hurling an indignant riposte was one of many Florida Republican’s ideological antagonists, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who declared: “I imagine that Mexicans and the descendants of African enslaved peoples want to have a phrase on that.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks with Bloomberg Tv on the Munich Safety Convention in Germany on Feb. 14.
(Alex Kraus / Bloomberg by way of Getty Pictures)
On social media, respondents weren’t hesitant to take sides.
“That custom was born in present-day Mexico and southern Texas, and it isn’t Spanish,” mentioned one individual on X.
Wrote one other: “Andalusian cowboys show Marco Rubio proper and reply to Ocasio-Cortez: ‘Even roping cattle got here from Spain.’”
In a way, specialists say, Rubio, Ocasio-Cortez and their defenders are all right — although their accounts inform solely part of the story.
It was certainly the Spanish, and Portuguese, who, within the sixteenth century, launched horses and cows, species then nonexistent within the Americas.
However the New York lawmaker can be on monitor: The cowboy custom advanced in a direct line from the singular improvements of Mexican vaqueros. Their assorted ranks included individuals of European, Indigenous and mixed-race origins.
Nonetheless, the Mexican vaquero is essentially erased from well-liked U.S. depictions of the cowboy. Conventional western dramas had been extra more likely to depict vaqueros as bandits than hard-working ranch arms whose contributions had been elementary to the American West.
“The American cowboy, our nice nationwide people hero, is acknowledged world wide as an emblem of our nation,” the late Jim Hoy, a famend cowboy historian, instructed Texas Highways journal. “Cowboys as we all know them, nevertheless, would by no means have come into existence with out the vaquero.”
However as Rubio mentioned, cowboy lineage might be traced to the Iberian Peninsula — way back to the late medieval period, earlier than Spain as a nation even existed. Moorish horse breeds had been crossed with native inventory to create a sturdy and agile beast for managing cattle. The horse additionally proved indispensable within the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521.
Nonetheless, as soon as Hernán Cortés triumphed, the conquistadors went from waging conflict — vanquishing the Aztecs — to the venture of subjugating Indigenous holdouts and constructing a self-sustaining territory loyal to the crown. Among the many many duties: managing ever-multiplying multitudes of cattle.
Nonnative livestock — not simply horses and cows but in addition donkeys, pigs and sheep — thrived within the huge grasslands, plains and deserts of the New World. The animals’ abrupt arrival remodeled total ecosystems, cultures and economies.
“You get to the Americas, and the place is massive,” mentioned Eric D. Singleton, a curator on the Nationwide Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma Metropolis. “You’ve gotten a brand new setting, and also you develop new methods and new issues inside that setting to make it hospitable.”
The topography, climate, cultures and different components had been drastically distinct from Previous World norms, so managing cattle required one thing past the ability units of Andalusian herders.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Instances)
The job of refining methods of driving and roping — whereas modifying gear and attire — largely fell to the resourceful vaqueros, from the Spanish phrase vaca for cow.
“The vaquero needed to reinvent methods and methods in a very new context,” mentioned Héctor Medina Miranda, a Mexican anthropologist and creator. “This wasn’t simply copying the Spanish. It concerned an entire new method.”
The Mexican cowboys grew to become adept at the whole lot from calving to branding to overseeing the sort of long-distance cattle drives that later grew to become a staple of the western.
It was the vaquero who developed the preliminary incarnations of the so-called Western saddle, with its distinctive “horn,” used each as a grip and for securing ropes.
Centuries later, Spanish-origin terminology persists: phrases equivalent to “corral,” “lasso,” “bronco,” “lariat” (la reata) and “chaps” (chaparreras). The time period mesteño, which means stray or wild, grew to become, in cowboy-speak, mustang — that legendary, free-roaming denizen of the excessive plains.
Even “10-gallon hat” — hardly sufficiently big to carry a gallon — most likely had Mexican origins. One concept is that the moniker emerged from a cowpoke misinterpretation of the Spanish phrase galón, for braided hat-bands. A hat with a crown giant sufficient to assist 10 bands grew to become a 10-gallon hat.
Bull-riding, nonetheless a staple on the U.S. rodeo circuit, originated within the vibrant vaquero custom of charreadas — contests showcasing contributors’ abilities with horses, ropes and livestock. Charreadas stay a mainstay all through Mexico and in Mexican American communities north of the border.
“The vaqueros didn’t cross the border,” mentioned Medina Miranda. “The border crossed on prime of them.”
El Charro, that indomitable knowledgeable horseman (or -woman) donning a wide-brimmed hat and embroidered jacket and trousers, nonetheless instructions a pivotal position in Mexican tradition. The charro is much from a modest vaquero, however a venerable caballero (gentleman) who has mastered the wrangling artistry of the frontier.
To today, charrería is Mexico’s nationwide sport. The charro determine, lengthy celebrated in cinema and music, is as a lot an embodiment of manhood and tradition in Mexico because the cowboy is in the US. The late Vicente Fernández, the beloved actor and Grammy-winning maestro of the mariachi and ranchera genres, was affectionately often known as “El Charro de Huentitán,” after his hometown in Jalisco.
Ocasio-Cortez was proper about one thing else. African Individuals and immigrants additionally helped create the cowboy custom. Including to the varied combine had been employed arms from tribes such because the Comanche, Cheyenne and Apache, who grew to become unequalled horse whisperers lengthy earlier than settlers arrived on their lands.
Like many illustrious figures, the cowboy seems to be a extra nuanced particular person than the usually one-dimensional representations of the silver display. Earlier than John Wayne and Gary Cooper, there have been the noble vaqueros of Mexico, myth-makers in their very own proper.
“I equate the cowboy with what the medieval knight is to Europe, what the samurai is to Japan,” Singleton mentioned. “It’s our mythology.”
Particular correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
