Don't miss this Escaramuza Fair celebrating the sport's 60th anniversary, hosted by the very charro association where the discipline was founded back in 1953! It's on April 20 at 12pm at the Rancho del Charro Javier Rojo Gomez in Mexico City.
Did you know that boys rode in the first escaramuza ? In fact, the first team was evenly split between boys and girls: three girls and three boys. Who would have imagined that back in 1953 a charreria performance was co-ed. It didn't last long however, just a few years, as the boys began practicing other charreria sports, like roping and tumbling cattle over.
That left room for more girls to join and that's when the escaramuza became a female affair.
Arturo in Tepeji del Rio, Mexico. 2009
Today a professional horse trainer in Tepeji del Rio, Hidalgo, Mexico, Arturo Ruiz Loredo was just 5-yeras-old when he rode alongside his two sisters Graciela and Maria Eugenia. The three other kids were from the Camacho Elorriaga family. Arturo reflected back on how it all started, with this comment:
"The escaramuza was not something that was preconceived, it wasn't an idea that any particular person had who said we're going to do this and that, something planned. The escaramuza evolved like life."
- Arturo Ruiz Loredo
Arturo at his horse training center in Tepeji del Rio, Mexico. 2009
The following video is an audio-slide show about the Escaramuza sport, featuring an interview with Arturo, by photographer Leslie Mazoch.
The below video is a collection of historical photographs of this first team, paired with an interview of Guadalupe "Coco" Camacho, one of the three girls on the team.
Coco at
age 14 in 1957. Here she's at a charreria before dancing Jarabe
Tapatio. Just to her left is Graciela Ruiz Loredo, fellow founding
member of the first escaramuza. The girl standing second from the right
is Susana Mondragon, who joined the escaramuza after the boys left the
team.
Coco Camacho in 2009
Guadalupe Camacho Elorriaga, known by her friends as "Coco," was one of the six little kids who had no idea they were going to be part of something big back in 1953.
She and her two brothers, Antonio and Jose,
took horse riding lessons with three other kids, from the Ruiz Loredo
family, at the Rancho Charro, today's National Charro Association, in Mexico City, and performed a short choreographed version of what they had learned during a charreada, or Mexican rodeo, inadvertantly creating the first "escaramuza."
Almost 60 years later, the escaramuza is no longer co-ed, but a female discipline within charreria, officially recognized as an offical sport within traditional mexican rodeo in 1991, which hundreds of women across mexico and the U.S. proudly call their own.
"You could say it's like rain on a field that's been dry. When the escaramuza comes, it refreshes."
- Coco Camacho
The above video is made up of historical photographs of all six founding members, featuring an interview with Gudalupe "Coco" Camacho Elorriaga. Below, watch a documentary about the evolution of the sport and where it is today.
Graciela Ruiz Loredo gives a riding class in Oaxaca, Mexico in July 2012.
Graciela Ruiz Loredo was seven-years-old when destiny put her and her two siblings in the first escaramuza team.
That was back in 1953, alongside her younger sister Maria Eugenia and little brother Arturo, with three other kids from the Camacho family..
Graciela's parents also encouraged them to bullfight! The style done while mounted on horses, called "rejoneo."
Graciela is still a horse lover. In Oaxaca, Mexico, she gives private
classes to those who want to learn to ride.
Graciela, 7, left, Maria Eugenia, 6, center, and Arturo, 5, pose for photos at the Ex-Hacienda de Cuapa on the south side of Mexico City in 1953, the same year the escaramuza was invented.
Watch the following video featuring historical images
