CHARROS AND ESCARAMUZAS SAME SPORT, DIFFERENT PERFORMANCES

Probably a lot of people believe that regarding Charreria, men and women do the same thing, but this is an incorrect belief, the activities they perform are completely different; men are more involved with physical strength, ability and luck,  while with women is mostly and intelligence, control of emotions and elegance matter. These lines will compare several aspects and differences and similarities between men and women referring to the national sport.

One of the main differences between men and women in charrería is that a charros team does many different things in a performance; they call this things “suertes” ( for example take down bulls and mares, etc.) they perform a number of nine suertes and this performances take from two to four hours(. And an escaramuzas´ team only does one thing, a routine made of twelve different exercises and they only need the horse they`re riding to perform this routine which only lasts from eight to eleven minutes.

One similarity between charros and escaramuzas is that they have to follow an special regulation, there are rules for almost everything, for example the way they have or can dress up, the colors they can use, the kind of boots, how many people can be in a team, how their performances will be qualified, the highest score they can get, even what it takes to be part of a team or to be a judge and many things more; if they don´t obey this rules they will get  a sanction or even get disqualified.

Another similarity is that they both women and men, who perform this sport, they do it for one reason: passion for Mexican culture and tradition. All the people involved in this beautiful sport it is because of love for the country, this means that they are trying to maintain all of its traditions, whether a man or a woman. And as an evidence of this, no team gets paid for a performance it´s just for the satisfaction of entertaining people by showing them this county`s culture although it is a very dangerous sport.

In conclusion charreria is a sport that includes both, women and men from all ages, we cannot say that one is better than the other and even though it`s only one sport, escaramuzas and charros are very different women try to express elegance and grace but in the other hand men try to transmit energy, strength and force. But still they are together because that is what charreria is all about, bringing the people of this country together through our culture.