Introduction: Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home

Escaramuza, the Poetics of Home considers the Mexican tradition of all-women precision horse riding teams who execute exacting maneuvers while riding sidesaddle at high speed and wearing traditional Mexican attire. Widespread in Mexico, escaramuza is becoming increasingly established in the United States. This folio pairs my photographic portraits of US-based escaramuzas with commissioned poetry by the Mexican American poets ire’ne lara silva and Angelina Sáenz. It is a collaborative work between myself, the escaramuzas, and the poets. Angelina and ire’ne used my photographs and recorded interviews with the riders, as well as research papers and their own research, to write their poems. Their contributions amplify the voices of the women I’ve photographed, contextualizing their experiences through poetic language.

Charrería, the predominantly male national sport of Mexico, emerged from early Mexican cattle-ranching activities and was eventually refined and formalized during the post-revolutionary era as a romantic, nationalist expression of lo mexicano (Mexicanness). My interviews with the escaramuzas give a sense of their experiences as women in charrería culture. Many are second-, third-, or fourth-generation Americans. They speak of the sometimes frustrating machismo that they have to navigate within their sport.

In my photographs I seek to respond to this frustration, to capture the grace and dignity of these women, while reckoning with the gendered complexities of escaramuza within the charrería tradition. All the women are photographed in formal escaramuza dress—ornate and handcrafted garments that are in many ways emblematic of the social and cultural dimensions, as well as tensions, in their stories. They present themselves formally, and in this sense suggest a certain rigidity and strictness within the tradition. But this formality also describes the escaramuzas’ immense discipline, skill, and precision as riders. Moreover, the beauty of their garments is celebratory and expressive, speaking to the individual and their subjectivity, as well as to the profound sense of belonging that the tradition of escaramuza collectively holds for its practitioners.

My portraits seek to amplify the riders’ empowerment, and I believe the subjects’ gaze to be central to this. The women confront the camera and own the spaces that they occupy. These choices are significant, as I’ve photographed the escaramuzas within the “American West,” a rural landscape of the United States that, historically, has been the privileged domain of white men. Escaramuza may be said to represent women’s reclamation of that space and of their right to coexist within it. For all its tradition and formality, I believe that escaramuza is a feminist project—a powerful force for the disruption of established gender roles in charrería.