Mexican-American cultural theorist and poet Gloria Anzald¨²a explored what she called ¡°life in the borderlands¡± ¨C the complex mix of race, gender and sexuality trapped on the margins of white patriarchy. Capturing a sense of defiance in the face of racial and cultural imperialism, she observed: ¡°When other races have given up their tongue, we¡¯ve kept ours. We know what it is to live under the hammer blow of the dominant norteamericano culture.¡± There are many paths of defiance, from radical challenge to subtle assertion of selfhood and cultural pride.

Laura Barraclough¡¯s Charros focuses on the latter: the way in which the Mexican-American landowning middle class deployed the image of the charro ¨C the ¡°Mexican cowboy¡± of her subtitle ¨C to subtly assert their dignity. In doing so, charros distinguished themselves from the stereotype of the lazy immigrant and ingratiated themselves with middle-class whites sufficiently to achieve political and economic gains.

After the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, many Mexican-Americans went from being landed gentry in Spanish-colonised Mexico to a landless minority in a white-majority United States. The American cowboy became ¡°the symbol of working-class, white, rugged manhood¡±, writes Barraclough, divinely ordained and guiding Americans towards western expansion. In contrast, for Mexican-Americans, the charro became a distinctly more majestic symbol of nationalism whose elegant ceremonial dress, trajes de charro, signalled what the author describes as ¡°dignity, skill, and cultural pride¡±. The skills on display in the traditional ³¦³ó²¹°ù°ù±ð°ù¨ª²¹ arguably surpass any seen at a Western rodeo in terms of physicality and performance.

This compelling cultural history complicates stereotypes of race and class. In the 1940s, for example, the Mexican-American sheriff of Los Angeles, Eugene Biscailuz, regularly donned the charro regalia, which, suggests Barraclough, ¡°allowed him to claim legitimacy¡± among the city¡¯s (white) elite and simultaneously established him as a cultural token for the immigrant population. Other Mexican-Americans in pursuit of upward mobility followed his lead by reclaiming charro culture as a symbol of pride and a counterpoint to zoot-suited working-class Mexican-Americans.

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Barraclough expertly highlights the complexities of race and class as she explains that Biscailuz used the charro identity as cover while he repatriated 2?million poor Mexicans and drove a class wedge between dignified charros and what he called the ¡°wolf packs¡± of ethnic Mexican youth. With his retirement, the Los Angeles Police Department embraced white, professionalised, modern policing and unleashed these race and class tensions.

When San Antonio, Texas faced significant post-war economic decline, reports Barraclough, the Anglo business elite found a ¡°special kinship¡± with ¡°middle-class charro-businessmen who shared their ideologies of profit and progress¡±. City officials capitalised on charro culture to expand the tourist industry, placing mariachi bands along the new River Walk of restaurants and bars ¨C and charro-businessmen rose quickly up the economic ladder. Just as the Professional Rodeo Association governs the sport of rodeo, regional and national charro associations govern the ³¦³ó²¹°ù°ù±ð°ù¨ª²¹ and have established strategic political alliances to lobby legislators, assert their centrality to American history and subtly challenge the whitewashing of the American cowboy.

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Anzald¨²a did not live to witness today¡¯s horrific scenes of those trapped in the borderlands. But alongside Barraclough¡¯s compelling account of pride and strategic politics in Charros, her words aptly capture Mexican-American defiance against those who continue to assert white superiority: ¡°stubborn, persevering, impenetrable as stone, yet possessing a malleability that renders us unbreakable, we, the mestizos and mestizas, will remain.¡±

Angelia R. Wilson is professor of politics at the University of Manchester.

Charros: How Mexican Cowboys Are Remapping Race and American Identity
By Laura R. Barraclough
University of California Press, 304pp, ?66.00 and ?24.00
ISBN 9780520289116 and 9780520289123
Published 16 April 2019