2023-06-29 14:11:34
Launched in the city of Zacatecas, Mexico, gatherings of gay “vaqueros” are now spreading on both sides of the Mexican-American border. They allow their participants to live their homosexuality in broad daylight, while reconnecting with their Mexican roots, as the “Los Angeles Times” tells it.
From Zacatecas (Mexico)
The cowboys parade through the crowded nightclub until dawn, proudly sporting their shiny boots, skinny jeans and wide-brimmed hats.
They came to sip tequila and beer, sing along with the bands [ensembles musicaux] and dance together – chest to chest, legs intertwined.
Every spring, several hundred Mexicans and Americans come on pilgrimage to the city of Zacatecas, with its colorful colonial-style facades, for the annual gathering of Cowboys (“cowboys”) gay. For a weekend, they share roast meat [viande grillée] et traditional dances and crown the king of cowboys.
Stetson et boots en python
The R-15 Band in full concert at the Juana Gayo club in Zacatecas. PhotoGary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS
Here, no pop music, but bands who play for hours. The musicians string together the hits of cumbia and of northern while a tide of Stetson takes over the dance floor.
For Mariano Escobar, a lanky fifty-year-old, it’s paradise. He was the one who organized the very first gathering of gay cowboys in Zacatecas eighteen years ago.
The process was simple – and a little self-serving: “I love dressing up as a cowboy”, confides this bar manager, who is wearing python boots and an open checkered shirt that day, from which a superb tuft of graying hair protrudes. “And I like guys who dress like that.”
Since the first edition, the event has grown in size, and the subculture of gay cowboys has become popular. Today, more than a dozen towns on either side of the Mexico-US border are holding their own rallies. These have become refuges for homosexuals wishing to reconnect with themselves, but also with the Mexican identity.
mexican pride
Because in addition to the real cowboys – with tanned skin from long days tending the herds – they also attract accountants, lawyers and other city dwellers, for whom donning a cowboy outfit is both a fantasy and a gateway to their country’s rural past.
“When you come here, you can’t help but feel a certain pride at the idea of being Mexican”, slips Emmanuel Fernández, a 29-year-old lawyer from Mexico City, who discovered the world of Cowboys gay when he lived in Atlanta, USA.
There, the young man felt very alone. He worked a lot, didn’t speak a word of English, and felt like Americans lived like robots, too obsessed with their work and routine to enjoy life.
And then he discovered the Sanctuary, a Latino nightclub that hosted parties featuring gay cowboys. The nights spent there dancing the huapango reminded him of his youth. “It reconnected me to my roots”, he remembers.
The founding myth of cowboy
Cowboy culture is deeply rooted in the minds of Mexicans: most of the country’s great figures – from revolutionary Francisco “Pancho” Villa to singer Pedro Infante and drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán – are known for their rustic style.
And it is not a hazard.
After the terrible revolution of 1910, Mexican leaders set out to create a sense of national identity in hopes of easing tensions. Films and songs then painted an idyllic portrait of “ranch” culture and represented the cowboywith his horse and his bottle of tequila, like the quintessential Mexican man.
Today, that image is a far cry from the life that most Mexicans lead, who have migrated en masse to cities and suburbs, whether in Mexico or the United States.
Many participants in the gathering of gay “vaqueros” came to terms with their homosexuality late in life. Photo Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS
These gatherings of cowboys therefore allow certain men, driven by a common nostalgia – most of them have left the countryside for one or two generations – to find themselves, analyzes Angel Villalobos, a 53-year-old dance teacher. “Here, people share a story.”
It is also an opportunity for gay Mexicans to assert their rights on a facet of Mexican culture, which “[leur] also belongs”, Angel points out.
The Marlboro cow-boy society
When he was 4 years old, his parents left the family farm, where they grew cotton, to settle in Monterrey, a sprawling industrial city in northern Mexico, a few hours drive from Texas. While his father worked in the factory, young Angel roamed the crowded streets selling newspapers and candy apples. But he never gave up the cowboy style and was already begging his mother to buy him boots. He already knew he liked men, and hoped that the apparent harshness of his style of dress would shield him from a culture known for its machismo and homophobia.
With his prominent chin and square shoulders, Angel Villalobos vaguely resembles the cowboy from Marlboro commercials. On the first day of the Zacatecas rally, he posted himself at the entrance to a downtown bar to greet customers with shots of tequila and lighters bearing the image of his look-alike. Other participants, who were also seeking the title of cowboy face [le roi des cow-boys]did the same.
Jesus Rubalcava, of Gila Bend, Arizona, proudly displays his name-engraved belt buckle in Zacatecas, April 7, 2023. Photo Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS
The election of cowboy face is a snub to the festivals organized in the Mexican countryside, during which richly dressed young women compete for the crown of “princess” or “queen” of the event.
Zacatecas’ version is more than just a beauty pageant. Beyond charisma and style, contestants are also evaluated on their engagement with the community.
The taboo of homosexuality
Angel Villalobos, for example, teaches traditional dance. One of his rivals, a policeman named Eros Herrera, recently opened a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen for the gay, lesbian and transgender community in the city of San Luis Potosí.
Because if the rights of LGBTQI people have progressed a lot in recent years in Mexico – marriage for all, for example, is now legal throughout the country –, homophobia and transphobia still claimed 87 victims last year. . And Mexican soccer fans remain infamous for the homophobic slurs they hurl at opposing teams.
Outside the capital, Mexico City, being homosexual remains unquestionably a taboo subject. In Zacatecas, a small conservative town with dozens of Baroque churches and a small handful of gay bars, few dare to show affection in public.
“In the street, I remain very discreet, says Daniel Renteria, a 56-year-old agave farmer from a small town an hour and a half away. I don’t like to hug or kiss in front of everyone.”
Daniel Renteria and his partner during the “pool party”. Photo Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS
But at the gay cowboy rally, Daniel and his companion, a 36-year-old fruit vendor named Ramiro Garcia, are glued to each other.
Dressed almost identically, with their black hats, their fitted jeans, their shiny shirts and their mobile phones hanging from their belts, they watch hand in hand a famous banda play a cumbia.
Come out of the closet
A little later, when the DJ starts the black door, a frenzied ballad of Los Tigres del Norte evoking a forbidden love, Ramiro leads Daniel on the dance floor. Intertwined, each with one hand in the crook of the other’s back, they sway to the rhythm of the music.
When they met a few years ago, Ramiro, who lives in Zacatecas, was more into shorts and flip flops. It was his companion who made him a real cowboy. “You don’t need to have grown up on a ranch to be a cowboy”, assure Daniel.
Like many other participants, Daniel took many years to come to terms with his homosexuality. The trigger? A cerebral aneurysm that almost cost him his life.
At the time, Daniel had lived for twenty-five years with his wife and five children in Paramount, Los Angeles County. He had worked in a T-shirt factory for several decades, then in an oil refinery. And then one day, he got homesick. His aneurysm prompted him to return to Mexico, where he joined his brother’s farm and fell in love with a cowboy.
Daniel Renteria dancing at the Juana VIP Club Mix, during the annual gay cowboy convention, on April 6, 2023, in Zacatecas, Mexico. PHOTO Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS
His children support him in this new life, but not his 85-year-old father or his former partner, who remained in California.
In Mexico, men who love men often live in solitude, cut off from each other and from their own desires, explains Daniel Renteria. “It’s hard to have to hide. These kinds of conventions bring us together.”
His journey is not an isolated case.
The King of Cowboys
Jesus Rubalcava grew up in a rural town in Arizona, among many other Mexican immigrants. “I don’t know if I’ve ever really been understood”, slips the forty-year-old, college principal and former elected member of the local Parliament.
His family does not understand why he spends so much time and money on these conventions. Last year he spent $5,000 [plus de 4 600 euros] in T-shirts, beer coolers and other gifts, which allowed him to win the title of cowboy face.
But it’s worth it, he says. In addition to the traditional silver-engraved belt buckle awarded to all winners, he won friends, and even love. He met his boyfriend at the Zacatecas convention a few years ago.
The Zacatecas gathering gave rise to several marriages, welcomes Mariano Escobar, the founder of the event. “And many more one-night stands”, he adds with a smile.
A moment to yourself
It is past midnight, and the organizers are counting the votes to designate the king of the cowboys. It is finally Eros Herrera, the policeman, who inherits the belt buckle and a multicolored scarf adorned with the inscription “Rostro Vaquero Zacatecas”, while part of the crowd chants his first name.
Enrique Palacio, 34 years old, lords of the concert of La Sonora Dinamita. PhotoGary Coronado/Los Angeles Times/TNS
The rally is coming to an end, and a feeling of sadness grips the nightclub. Soon, the participants will take off their boots, put away their hats, and return, for a while, to their daily lives.
Most won’t meet once more for a month – at another gathering of Cowboys, in San Luis Potosí perhaps, or at the big convention in Los Angeles in July, for those who can make it to the United States.
Between two gatherings, Fernando Jairo Medrano, a hairdresser by trade, works overtime and goes out very little, in order to save for the next trip.
His family does not understand this obsession with weekends between Cowboys. But it doesn’t matter, he smiles: “This is my moment.”
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