This work considers the Mexican tradition of escaramuza, all-female 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.
While photographing teams across the US, I extensively interviewed the riders. The interviews give a broader sense of the escaramuzas’ experiences as women in charrería culture, and as immigrants, or as first-, second-, or third-generation Americans. The predominantly male national sport of Mexico, charrería emerged from early Mexican cattle ranching activities and was eventually refined and formalized during as a romantic, nationalist expression of lo mexicano (Mexicanness). The escaramuzas speak of the sometimes-frustrating machismo that they must 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. 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.
