Riders Take Center Stage for Mexican Rodeo

By the time the girls parade into the riding ring, their petticoats will be primped to starchy perfection. Their wide-brimmed sombreros will be firmly anchored over their long, dark hair and their horses will be brushed to a glossy sheen.

But at the moment, in a dusty parking lot behind the arena, bedlam reigns.

“I don’t have a hat!” a girl wails from atop her horse at anyone who will listen. “None of them fit! I guess I have a big head.”

Another rider has dropped her earring in the dirt. Her horse paws the ground, hopelessly burying the silver hoop.

Then, as mothers bustle around smoothing their teenage daughters’ skirts, a bull charges by. Women scream as the animal bolts from a nearby pen where the men are preparing for their rodeo.

None of this backstage chaos is apparent to the dozens of fans clomping up the creaky wooden stairs into bleachers at Hansen Dam Equestrian Center on a recent Saturday morning. They are here for a classic Mexican rodeo, or charreada, a lavish display of horsemanship whose roots stretch back four centuries to the Spanish haciendas of colonial Mexico.

While the men known as charros excel at macho feats such as riding bucking bulls and leaping from one galloping horse onto another, the women and girls perform more of an equestrian ballet.

Riding sidesaddle in squads of eight, they expertly weave their horses across the ring. The female teams, called escaramuzas, light up the drab corral with bright dresses adorned with ribbons or lace.

When their horses prance in a graceful row, the escaramuzas resemble silk fans brushing over the gritty arena floor. But a moment’s inattention can be perilous, leading to equine collisions that make the performance look more like a game of bumper cars than an artful dance.

The girls, whose group is named Charras de la Noria after a town in Mexico, train twice a week, year round.

They will perform at noon Sunday at the San Fernando Valley Fair, at Hansen Dam Equestrian Center, 11127 Orcas Ave., in Lake View Terrace.

For a recent exhibition, the girls get up at 5:30 a.m. for an early-morning practice. It does not go well.

“It was a terrible practice,” 14-year-old Gabby Gandara laments. “We were going too fast. People weren’t watching each other. This is a very dangerous sport, and if you don’t look, you can crash.”

But a few minutes later, when the girls on horseback gallop into the arena in their cornflower-blue dresses, all the messy rehearsals and behind-the-scenes mishaps are forgotten.

Mexican music blares from the loudspeakers, the audience cheers and boys in pint-sized Wranglers and cowboy boots scramble to the front of the bleachers.

“Que bonita! Que bonita!” the announcer shouts merrily.