The Daily

The colorful world of Mexico’s charreria is as dangerous as it is elaborate. Lizzie Wade reports:

Growing up in Zacatecas, Mexico, Martín Alamillo dreamed of becoming a charro. Sure, he lived and worked on a ranch, but being a charro isn’t just about riding horses and roping cattle. It’s about the elegance, grace and poise required to wear the ornate charro suit. It’s about owning a nice horse — not just a good horse — that is all yours. It’s about the finesse of the lasso and the precision of the horse’s footwork. A charro is much more than a common cowboy. He is a living piece of Mexico’s history and the embodiment of a refined tradition.

But being a charro takes money, and the Alamillos didn’t have much of that. The state of Zacatecas has a long tradition of sending its sons (and, increasingly, its daughters) north of the border to find work, and Martín’s family was no exception. His father had been traveling back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico for many years, and while Martín knew that this lifestyle was an economic necessity, he didn’t like to see his mother and his brothers and sisters left alone for months at a time. As the eldest son of 15 children, he began pressing his father to allow him to be the one to make the journey when he was a young teenager. His father finally consented when Martín was 15 years old.