Crystal Wise
She’s an escaramuza. That’s how they say it when referring to each other. Before mother, sister, wife, girlfriend, she’s an escaramuza. It’s her primary identity. Why wouldn’t it be? These women train on horseback several days a week all year, and after long days at work, some drive hours to practice with their horses in tow, all to preserve their heritage dating back to the Mexican Revolution. But few outside of the male-dominated charrería world know about these women, their athletic abilities, horsemanship, and their history. That is all changing.
The term “escaramuza” is a call back to the early 1900s Mexico when the women would ride alongside the men in battle, the adelitas or “women of the revolution,” often acting as the decoy distracting the enemy by riding in circles. Or when an enemy would come to the camps, the women would huddle the children together and ride around them at high speeds kicking up a dirt shield. The English translation for escaramuza is skirmish — kicking up dirt to create a charade.
The escaramuza charra is a team consisting of eight women riding sidesaddle on horses in a synchronized fashion while wearing traditional Mexican dresses. It is the only female event in the charreada — think rodeo in the U.S. — and the charrería became Mexico’s national sport in the 1950s. It tells a story of ranch life, heritage, and the Mexican Revolution while also displaying skilled horsemanship. It is usually a weekend event where six to 12 teams of charros, the cowboys, compete for two days, and the escaramuza charras get either 20 minutes on Sunday afternoon as a finale performance or they are allotted a moment entertaining the dwindled lunchtime crowds while the charros rest.
These skilled horsewomen accomplish rigorous feats on horseback that require horsemanship and athleticism that few outside their world could comprehend — and all while staying in sync with their mirroring team members. One tiny mistake could mean disaster. One second off could lead to horses colliding, dirt flying, injury, or worse. And these women do it all in dresses, following a rulebook the size of the Bible. “The women involved in the escaramuza are exceptional riders,” Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo horse show director Lauren Lovelace Murray says. “Riding sidesaddle is very difficult and almost unheard of in contemporary horsemanship in the United States. Being able to perform maneuvers that require that level of precision and teamwork while riding sidesaddle is certainly remarkable and is made even more remarkable by the level of horsemanship these women possess.”
Crystal Wise
Practice Makes Perfect
It’s 9:30 on a 40-degree morning the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The team Las Coronelas has practice at their usual spot in Northside Fort Worth. While they have history in Fort Worth dating back to 2006, they were inactive for three years starting in 2019 as their team captain Mirna Carrasco endured a difficult divorce. They came back full force in January 2022 when the sport that has defined and healed her called her back. “Because you can only stay away for so long. It lives in you, the competition and the adrenaline. You miss it after being gone for so long,” Carrasco says. They currently compete in independent competitions all over Texas because Carrasco says this offers her team more opportunities to participate as they are not limited to three federated state competitions, one U.S. national and one Mexico National. But they have big plans to one day make it back to the big competition in Mexico where the best of the best are invited to compete.
Lily Castañeda and her two daughters — Clarisa Castañeda, 21, and Alejandra Castañeda,17 — are already at practice. Clarisa is on one side of the arena training a horse new to the escaramuza charra competition as most horses are not used to having to work so close to other horses. These women are judged on the amount of equal and close distance they keep between the horses when riding.
“Shit,” a teammate swears in practice. It's scary. It’s hard. That’s usually the moment they realize they messed up, and it will take a lot to correct it. And if they mess up, it’s on them. It’s only their fault, Carrasco explains. Because it is a team sport, and they have to constantly make sure they are focusing on the escaramuza they mirror. There are a million things going on at any given time when riding with a team in this way — the coordination, the courage, the physical strength. They are a part of something bigger than themselves — the giant creature they are on top of, and the team that depends on them.
Horses can weigh 1,000 pounds on average and have the power to run at 55 mph. A lot of personalities are at play, horses included. The rider’s energy becomes the horse’s energy, so they’re careful getting too nervous around these magnanimous animals. It is mental, emotional, and even spiritual. These women must stay confident when achieving complex choreography, weaving in and out of their teammates at full speed. Team captain Carrasco brings in coaches to help the girls channel those nerves into positive excitement.
“Suave!” one girl yells at her eager horse. “Punto! Punto!” another yells. This means to point. The ring is divided up in a pie of eight slices for eight team members, Carrasco explains. They yell “point” to remind the team to focus on where they are going and where their next move is.
“Uno. Dos. Tres. Quatro.” The girls on horses run circles around their mirroring teammate. “Use more left leg! Your circle is too big!” Carrasco yells in a firm tone of a team captain, of a mother.
Carrasco, 35, is a first-generation escaramuza and has been riding since she was 11. Nearly 10 years later, she formed the team Las Coronelas. Coronelas is plural for Coronela, which is the female plural for a high-ranking officer, a name inspired by Carrasco’s mother. “She wanted something with a meaning we could embody something powerful to represent us as a whole,” Carrasco says. “Coronelas is plural because we are a team.” Carrasco’s 17-year-old daughter, Naydalyn Rios, rides with her and has been an escaramuza since she could walk. The team is federated through Rios’ father’s team, Los 3 Rios.
Part of their practice that morning is training the horses new to escaramuza. Horses are used to being preyed upon in the wild; they sense everything including the horse inches away from them and even the smallest shift in their rider’s energy. “If you ever watch a horse and a fly lands on them, they shake their skin. They feel everything on a very small level,” team member Lupita Chavez says. “They can sense if you’re scared, if you're having a bad day, if you're happy. They can sense every little movement. If you’re scared, they are looking for what you’re scared of,” Carrasco adds, standing tall on the back of her horse with her team. Horsemanship is so much more than athleticism; confidence, strength, and calm are necessary for not only success but for survival.
Crystal Wise
Upholding Traditions of the Adelitas
Carrasco loves the tradition and history of the sport because it brings her Mexican heritage to life. “How our ancestors did things and lived things that we have absolutely no idea of what they went through, and just seeing how we hold a little piece of that history, it just fascinates me,” she says. Everything on the saddle has a purpose — the attire, the earrings, and the sash they wear around their waist, which was also used as a sweater or small blanket when riding in the cold during the Mexican Revolution. “It isn’t just there to make the dress look pretty; there is a reason it's there,” she says.
The escaramuza charra event is tightly regulated and steeped in traditions that haven’t changed since the turn of the 20th century. The women must wear traditional metal earrings that are often handmade to meet the rulebook standards. The petticoats, or crinolina, and leggings must be made out of an antiquated and heavily starched canvas-like material that can weigh what feels like 10 pounds under their dresses. No tattoos can be visible. Dresses and hats must match and meet strict regulations, too, like the shoulder puff must be one inch and the sashes have to be tied just so in the back. They do not get a leather whip like the charros but have a wooden stick not unlike what you may pick up to toss out with the other twigs when cleaning up the yard. The tiniest infraction could lead to disqualification. And these are just a few of the rules.
Amber Alcalá is the captain of another local escaramuza charra team called Tierra Azteca and says it is a way for her to be closer to their parents and grandparents. “It is hard to explain that. It is a pride thing, and we want our parents to be proud of us. That pride of where you came from. Because for me, I am not like other captains of teams because I am not fluent in Spanish. I am half white and half Hispanic,” she says.
Alcalá’s mother, Christina Morrison, known in the charrería circles as “La Güera" or “the white lady,” was an escaramuza creating one of the first teams in North Texas. She got into sport because her single mother trained racehorses in California. Her mother got with a Mexican gentleman who was involved in the charrería when Morrison was a baby. Morrison got a team of girls together to present but not compete as they were not given the space then to compete. Morrison remembers in these early days her team didn’t have its own name but was with the Charros of Dallas, so it was called the Escaramuza Charros de Dallas. “As far as I knew, we were the only team. This was 1985 or ’86,” Morrison says. Alcalá’s father Jose “Alfredo” Alcala grew up in Zacatecas, the birthplace of the charreada, and has been a charro his whole life. They met at a charrería in Dallas.
“I think really overall, the reason why most of us girls do ride in the U.S. is to keep in touch with that Hispanic side of that culture,” Alcalá says.
Carrasco upholds the traditions passed down from her mother. She presents the dresses, the sashes, and bows and makes sure they are washed and folded. “It is pretty, everything is intact.” But the moment they get on the horse, the dirt and mud fly. Just days before their practice on that cold Sunday morning, Ana “Barbie” Gomez was thrown from a horse and landed in the mud. Her bright red dress tore. They embrace their femininity, but underneath those petticoats and dresses are strong legs and an even stronger spirit.
While they wouldn’t trade their dresses for pants, they seek their rightful place as athletes among the men, the charros, beyond the halftime show.
Crystal Wise
Leading the Way for the Charrería in the U.S. Among the Men
“The charros always have something to say,” one girl says with a coy smile at the Las Coronelas practice among the group. “They think it’s easy compared to what they are doing and that the women are getting in their way,” another team member continues. The escaramuzas can’t form a team or qualify for an event unless federated by the charros. “It is like back in the day when you had to be escorted somewhere,” Chavez says.
Alcalá’s team Tierra Azteca is federated with a team over an hour and a half away, and she makes it her job to be diligent about reaching out to the charros as she said it is imperative for the success of her team. “I try to stay in contact with the charros so we can get put out there and be included in their events. [The escaramuza charras] can’t do anything on their own. They have to be involved with the guys to do anything,” Alcalá says.
But she says they’re lucky. They have been friends with these charros since 2015, and they care about their success as escaramuzas. “Out of all the charros out of DFW area, they actually care about the girls and what we are doing. That is rarely the case. Not everyone treats us like this [takes them seriously]. The only inconvenience is that when they [the charros] have an event going on there, we are their team; we feel it is right to go present for them at their place because they are federating for us, so out of respect we have to present for them,” Alcalá says.
Chavez of Las Coronelas says a vulnerable charro may say, “We can do everything you are doing, but we couldn’t do it in those dresses riding sidesaddle. “It’s a whole other level [of horsemanship],” she says. In addition to using the reins, having your legs wrapped around a horse is where a lot of the ability to control and communicate with your horse comes from. Want them to go faster? Squeeze them with your inner thighs and gently push your heel into the horse’s girth. Even faster? Maybe a little kick … on both sides. Need them to turn left? Push them with your inner left leg. They can’t do that when their legs are off to the side and they have 10 pounds of formal wear between them and the horse. You get the point — with both of their legs on one side, the ability to communicate with their horse, and the ability to stay on, is a lot more challenging.
“One of the things that sets this sport apart from other sports is how feminine yet masculine it is. You have to have the strength of a man to ride and to control and to dominate an animal this big. At the same time, we are very delicate. We are in dresses. We have our old school undergarments. We don’t lose the feminine aspect because we are in the dirt and in the sun,” Carrasco says. To never lose her femininity is something her mother ingrained in her and something she passes onto the team. “The girls know, your hair needs to be done, your makeup needs to be done, your earrings need to be presentable at all times,” she says.
FWSSR charro events producer Dora Tovar says, historically, the escaramuza charras have always been undermarketed and undervalued, and their show was a hidden gem because in Mexico, they are a halftime show, an afterthought. She says that sometimes they aren’t even mentioned on the charreada’s promotional flyers. “They are kind of left at the end and undervalued [next to the charros]. Let’s level the competition and only have the escaramuzas. This is the U.S., and we get to change the rules,” Tovar says.
Once people got to see them in the U.S., Tovar says audiences loved them.
For FWSSR president Bradford Barnes, it was love at first sight. He decided that they needed to produce an escaramuza competition after he spent some time in Zacatecas, Mexico, the charreada capital. “When I first saw them, I was blown away by the skills displayed by the riders and their horses. They needed their own place where they could be highlighted, and I felt our historical and authentic Will Rogers Coliseum was the perfect venue,” he says.
They introduced the Escaramuza Charra Competition in 2020 to intentionally draw the family while bringing visibility to these female horse riders, Tovar later wrote in an email. “He saw that women were the draw, and he wanted to support them. He saw how little attention they got in Mexico,” Tovar says.
Together Tovar and Barnes with their board members and committees, made sure it became more than a mere halftime show and made it a competition among the rest of the rodeo athletes. In 2020, Tovar says the FWSSR became the first rodeo in the U.S. Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association to create a competition for the escaramuza charra. The team that wins gets a performance in The Best of Mexico night in front of a huge audience the following year, and Alcalá’s Tierra Azteca won the Escaramuza Charra Competition at the 2022 FWSSR. “We push and push. We have a goal. We don’t compete with the other teams. We compete with ourselves,” Alcalá says.
Tovar realized she was creating change. “[It] was the first escaramuza competition. They were on their own. No charros. No, it is not about you. It is about escaramuzas,” Tovar says. The conversation went something like this:
Charros says to Tovar, “Hey, why are you only focused on women?
“You've had 200 years to be in the spotlight, and you have all day Saturday and Sunday and throw these girls at the end,” Tovar says.
“So, when are you going to do something for men?”
“Maybe next year,” Tovar says.
That the escaramuzas were first to make their way into a rodeo as old and as legendary as the FWSSR is a big deal for the entire sport of the charrería. And the women are leading the way for the men by bringing recognition of the charrería as a sport to the U.S. “That is where we are changing the rules. They’ve been given a platform now to showcase their horsemanship skills. The dresses cover up the most challenging aspect, the sidesaddle. If the audience could see all of their maneuvers in jeans, they would really see how difficult it is,” Tovar says.
Barnes agrees that the women’s horsemanship is as good as a man’s, but with this reference, maybe he thinks they’re even better.
“Didn’t someone say something about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did except backwards and in high heels? Well, it’s pretty much the same with these women riding sidesaddle and performing horseback maneuvers that a man would be doing riding in a traditional saddle,” Barnes says.
The expression goes, there is power in numbers. But it seems that when those numbers involve a team of eight women who train together, ride together, cry together, laugh together, eat dirt together, and bleed together, they’re finding power in leading the way for others in a world where women will no longer stand to be the halftime show or an understated afterthought while still nodding to the heritage that brought them here.
You can see the escaramuza perform at this year’s Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo on Saturday, Jan. 28 at the Will Rogers Coliseum.
