Los Charros

Skilled, daring horsemen practice a tradition that dates back to Moorish Spain.

The rope was once alive, and now it is again. Tony Sosa's lariat is 200 feet of twisted agave fibers, and in his gifted hands one end of it becomes a loop that grows round and wide like an exclamation of astonishment. Tony, however, impeccably turned out in a brown suede waistcoat, a butterfly necktie, a hat of plush jackrabbit felt, em-broidered pants, ankle boots, and silver spurs, is the definition of nonchalance. Of course, there's no real reason for him to be excited, unless you count the four speeding horses bearing down on him. Or consider that one of them is a trapped wild mare, and that she is aiming directly for the low, circular wooden barrier separating her from alfalfa fields all the way to the horizon. And that Tony, all alone, is in her way.

To further complicate matters, aboard the three straining saddle-mounts are riders pushing that mare to the limit while trying to keep her inside the perimeter of the circle, and among them is Tony's little brother Jorge. Underneath all that goldthreaded finery, Tony's lithe body bears scar tissue testifying to three similar occasions when Jorge ran right over him. They are getting nearer. Tony's loop, now as tall as he is, is visibly etching concentric waves of energy in the dusty atmosphere. As if the mare didn't have enough provocation, a 12-piece brass band up from Sinaloa, Mexico, is driving the tempo, volume, and crowd to a frenetic pitch as she flies by. From an adjacent stock pen, anxious cattle bellow along with the cornets, valve trombones, and sousaphone-and suddenly Tony's wrist flicks.

Weightless as a ghost, the big loop floats left, and he jumps through it so fast that it seems he hasn't touched down when it comes back the other way and clears him again and....

You missed it. So did the mare. A message from Tony's brain to the lariat, which must possess a nervous system, directed that loop straight through the grit and wind to just where she was stepping. As the big brown creature keeps going, still unaware that something is tightening around her forelegs, Tony manages to belay the rope-now screaming through his callused hands around his rump, giving him the leverage to abruptly change her mind and direction.

She is down. He is still up. A good thing, too: a split-second more and that result would've been reversed, and not very pretty-because the other end of the lariat, which has just subdued a thousand pounds of fleeing quadruped, was tied around Tony Sosa's neck. This is el aborcado (the hanged man): the boldest and, when tallying points, the most remunerative variation of the mangana a pie (standing trick roping), one of the classic events in the flashy Mexican national equine sport known as Charrería-which, like tortillas and the Spanish language, is not entirely foreign to Arizona. Not all charros attempt the ahorcado, but then not all were U.S. allaround national champion at the ripe age of 19 like Phoenix's Tony Sosa. Yet even to consider participating in charrería requires a level of skill and horse manship combining the daring of rodeo and the discipline of dressage. Charrería is, in fact, sometimes mistakenly called the Mexican version of American rodeo, but the distinction is emblematic of the difference between the two neighboring countries that produced them. To be a charro means invoking a heritage dating back hundreds of years to Moorish Spain, one in which aesthetics, not obsession with a clock, determine one's fortune. "American society with its fax machines

and convenience foods rushes so fast," sighs Silvia Sosa, Tony's sister-in-law and captain of Las Valentinas, Arizona's top escaramuza (women's drill team). But when she dons her heavily-crinolined, high-necked dress and climbs into the traditional women's sidesaddle, something timeless takes over. "Here," she says-indicating the keyhole-shaped lienzo (charro arena) in south Phoenix where her fatherin-law Gumaro, husband Jaime, and his brothers Tony, Jesús, and Jorge are gathered on horseback, conferring over the next event-"you relive your past for a little while. You say 'whoa' and slow down." Then she grins, knowing that the next event, el paso de la muerte (the death leap), will find Tony springing from the bare back of a galloping horse onto yet another running wild mare. Not exactly slowing down-but certainly reaffirming a legacy of generations of proud horsemen from another land, a legacy that still surges through him.

Horses aren't animals: they are mystique. When the Spaniards first appeared, mounted on such magical beasts, that was proof enough for many Indians that they were dealing with gods. Only after much sorrow did they learn the truth, and it did not escape their conquerors that to maintain dominion they must never

Los Charros

Allow Indians to ride horses. But Columbus and Coronado also brought cattle to their New World, and eventually the Spanish grandees realized that for their peons to contain cows on the great colonial Mexican haciendas, they had to be able to catch them. Back then, that's what they literally did, riding down a bull and upending him by grabbing and twisting his tail on a dead run. Later, when la reata (lariat) came into use, Mexican riders invented a dazzling array of lasso stunts aimed at subduing various portions of a contrary bovine's anatomy-and both coleadores and terna (bull-tailing and fancy team roping) have become staple charrería events. And the dreaded prophecy proved true: intrepid horsemen, descended from Indians as well as Spaniards, have been fundamental to every Mexican war and insurrection. As the French discovered to their shock in the 1862 Battle of Puebla (the triumph commemorated every cinco de mayo), Mexican ropers could immobilize cavalrymen and cannon with their deadeye lariats just as easily as they snared cows. By then the term charro had come into use, borrowed from the Spanish province of Salamanca, famed for its fighting bulls; there charro was originally a vulgar form for "peasant." In time the word's meaning transformed to denote "horseman and patriot." And gradually in Mexico it came to distinguish those who owned the finest horses, tack, and riding apparel from the vaqueros, or just plain cowboys. Usurped by the wealthy, char-rería evolved into an elaborate showcase of technique and elegant trappings. As rev-olution and land reform broke up Mexico's lavish haciendas, charrería ironically became an urban sport, performed mainly in gleaming Guadalajara and Mexico City lienzos by the doctors and lawyers who can best afford it.

Gumaro Sosa, Tony's dad, wasn't one of them. He was born on a ranchito in Chihuahua, where no one had much money. But his vaquero father taught him to do everything a city charro could, and husky Gumaro became particularly brilliant at a breathtaking maneuver called el centenario, roping wild critters while standing atop the saddle. But such a talent didn't pay the bills, so to support his family he ended up in El Paso, working in the con-struction trade. In 1970, a tight year, he loaded them into a pickup and headed for California. Passing through Phoenix, he happened to hear a Spanish-language radio announcer mourn the lack of good charrería in Arizona.

"Maybe we'll stay here," Gumaro said to his wife.

Gumaro Sosa had seen that in the United States even poor immigrants could save up to realize their dreams, such as owning fine horses and equipment. Within two years, he was giving exhibitions in portable lienzos and taking Arizonans to Mexico to purchase proper charro gear. Before long an application from the new Arizona charro association arrived in Mexico City, seeking admission to the offi-cial Federación de Charros.

In an exacting sport where inviolable rules decree everything down to the color of neckties, such a request is not handled lightly. To make sure the Arizonans were doing things right, Mexico sent its 1972 allaround charro grand champion, Fernando Rivero, on a two-year mission to Phoenix to instruct both horses and humans in such intricacies as calas (precision reining) and floreo (rope flourishes). Son of a former Mexican national champion and stuntman who trained horses for motion pictures like The Magnificent Seven, Fernando Rivero has probably worked at least half the quarter horses, Arabians, and aztecas (an Andalusian-quarter horse cross) that compete today in Phoenix's Lienzo y Casino Charro El Herradero. Rivero himself is still around, having succumbed to the charms of an Arizona señorita and settled here, and is a local star attraction riding his friend Connie Sousa's fine, trigger-reined bay stallion. But now he has plenty of competition. In Casa Reynoso, the Tempe incarnation of his mother's original, venerable Arizona restaurant, Antonio Reynoso studies videotapes of jineteo de novillos-an event which, unlike the bull riding in gringo rodeo, involves not staying on for a mere eight seconds, but riding the animal to a complete standstill. With its walls and display cases filled with saddles, sombreros, and extravagantly engraved spurs and bits, and with charrería on the television monitor over the bar, Reynoso's is a veritable charro museum. Antonio Reynoso has sacrificed a thumb to his love of this sport (caught between the reata and the saddle horn one day during team roping); recently, his son Xavier, a multiple national champ in various individual events, took a hoof in the jaw while seconding his brother, Antonio Junior, in mare-roping, and for the next few weeks will be chewing hamburger instead of steak. Like the Sosas and the Coronas, who operate Lienzo El Herradero, the Reynoso family forms the nucleus of a charro team, or association. Phoenix now has four asociaciones (and others are organizing in Tucson and Yuma); 81 more are scattered from California to Chicago, and often their top charros appear in town to challenge the arizonenses. They meet in the farthest southwestern corner of Phoenix, the last vestige from when this was still a desert town of mesquite and cottonwoods growing along irrigation ditches, with horses outnumbering people. In the lienzo, families fill the bleachers, munching barbecued meat tacos and applauding the opening parade of handsome, ornately-attired charros, resplendent on their fine sorrels, bays, and buckskins.Over the next two hours, they bring these horses to sliding stops from full gallops, then put them through sequences demanding exquisite control and finesse. They ride alongside running bulls and drop them by wrapping their tails around their own outstretched legs. On foot and on horseback, they befuddle livestock with a complicated language written in rope. And they stay aboard untamed animals until they quit bucking. As her son Jaime, having a great day, beats out Fernando Rivero in the bull-tailing, Eugenia Sosa beams proudly. Her boys Jorge, Jesús, and Tony have been United States champions in the death leap, bull-riding, and overall charro completo, respectively, and husband Gumaro has dominated the mangana a caballo and led his association to the national team crown. The purses in U.S. charrería hardly cover the inevitable medical bills, let alone equipment and travel costs. But to Eugenia, all the danger, cracked ribs, and dislocations have had their compensations. "There's danger everywhere. I'd rather have them in charrería than in the cantina. At least I know that they're together." She bore her children in Mexico, then

WHEN YOU GO...

Getting there: Charreadas take place throughout the year on alternate weekends at Lienzo y Casino Charro El Herradero, 29th Avenue and Baseline Road in southwest Phoenix. For specific times, call (602) 237-3303 and ask for a member of the Corona family. Competitions are sometimes held 7/10ths of a mile farther south, just west of 29th Avenue in Laveen, at the Sosa family lienzo. These too are open to the public. For information, call (602) 276-3745. While charreadas are traditionally announced in Spanish, many of the spectators are bilingual and will be quite willing to translate.

The charro events: Individual charro events are known as suertes, which means luck. They are:

Los Charros

brought them to a new land. Her granddaughter Lorena-who's been executing flying sidesaddle figure-8s with the escaramuza since she turned six-is Arizonabred. Through the lienzo pass superb athletes bearing family names as old as Spain itself, names now established in the United States. During the week, they work jobs where they speak English to be able to afford performing in this sunny arena, where the official language is still Spanish. "One day," Dr. Rafael Guevara, a surgeon from Mexico, predicts after losing to Arizonans in the coleadores, "one of these U. S. charros is going to carry off our national trophy." He shakes his head, a gesture mixing concern and admiration. Mostly though, he is pleased to know that there are some things, like charros and what they accomplish on horses, that mere borders will never deny.

Scoring points: Charro events are scored by technique as much as successful completion of a task. Thus the points a coleador rider earns will depend not just on tailing and throwing a bull, but on whether he remembers to salute, then tap the running animal first; by how far the bull travels before he is down; what side he lands on; and whether the charro's quirt and blanket roll are correctly positioned and his attire is in order. Invariably, a spectator sitting near you will take great pains to explain the fine details. Soon you, along with the rest, will be arguing with judges' decisions like an aficionado veterano de los charros.