Fun History Fact: The overwhelming majority of cowboys in the U.S. were Indigenous, Black, and/or Mexican persons. The omnipresent white cowboy is a Hollywood studio concoction meant to uphold the mythology of white masculinity.
Thank you.
I will always re-blog this
I think it was high school when i overheard some white girl put on her best semi-disgusted and confused voice and go “why do so many Mexicans dress up like cowboys?” and I had to be the person to tell her.
Why do you think the whites say buckero? Cause they couldn’t say vaquero.
I dunno if I reblogged this before but fuck it, y'all gon learn today.
Teach the children.
also, cowboy culture was hella gay. like, write-poems-about-your-cowboy-partner gay.
IF people acknowledge it, they play the necessity card– there weren’t any women out on the range, so they had to “resort to men.” this claim completely erases 1) the romantic (not just sexual) writings of actual cowboys, 2) the acknowledgement of cowboys’ potential homosexual activity by writers at the time, and 3) the possibility that some men would deliberately become cowboys with the intent to seek out homosexual encounters.
no one wants to admit it, but cowboy culture was just. so inherently gay.
Im here for the gay POC cowboys
Guys: “vamoose,” “hoosegow,” “calaboose” it’s all Spanish.
South American cowboys formed the majority of the cavalry in the wars of independence in the 1810s-20s when the the colonies broke off from Spain. The Llaneros of modern day Venezuela/Colombia were so effective that whoever they were aligned to basically decided the fate of the war in that region.
These dudes were actual stone cold badasses that fought Spain’s armies from the Napoleonic wars with literally nothing more than horses and spears, and won.
check this shit out:
I know I’m going off on a tangent but: Pedro Camejo
He was one of Páez’s lieutenants, nicknamed el Negro Primero due to his great skills but also bc he was supposedly the first one to ride to battle. (Also the only black high ranking soldier apparently)
He died in battle, but famously returned to Páez before his death to utter the words “General vengo a decirle adiós porque estoy muerto” (General, I come to say goodbye because I’m dead) (there’s even a famous song about this)
He’s one of the few prominent black figures in Venezuelan history
Yeah! There’s a lot of awesome history to be found with some digging that not enough people know about imo.
In the Río de la Plata region, many gauchos(cowboys of the pampas) served similarly under San Martín as the llaneros did under Páez and Bolívar. Both gaucho and llanero cavalries would actually meet and join forces in the final stages of the conflict in the Peruvian Andes (because you know, this story couldn’t end with just one cowboy cavalry).
On a more serious note, many regions of Latin America have their own unique traditions of cattle-ranching frontier culture and history depending on where you wanna look. There’s a wealth of cool stuff to learn beyond what someone would typically think of when one talk about cowboys.
