"We all have one thing in common and that's our love for horses which is heavily weaved into our culture," Cabral says.Įscaramuzas circle the round pen at Pico Rivera. Since founding Charra Internacional in 2017, Cabral and her students have traveled to Havana, Cuba, Santiago, Chile, Hebei and Beijing, China. It was that performance that inspired Cabral to become an escaramuza herself and later start Charra Internacional de las Americas, a cultural exchange program exclusively for charras to explore and learn about equestrian disciplines from other cultures and promote the sport of escaramuza. "I was like, 'Whoa, these girls are on horses.' Then the music started and they started galloping - it was the most amazing and beautiful thing I'd ever seen." "My dad was charreando and I was playing somewhere in the stands when all of the sudden, these women came into the arena wearing these beautiful white dresses, with red rebozos (a shawl worn around the waist)," says the 44-year-old.
"And their strategy worked."Ĭhristina Cabral, who grew up going to the Pico Rivera Sports Arena, recalls the first time she witnessed the Escaramuzas Las Angelinas de California perform. "The conceptualization of the Sports Arena from the very beginning when they started talking about this facility in the 1970s, is that they wanted to make Pico Rivera a suburb and a place that would be known even in Mexico," Barraclough says. Charros, charrería and associated practices of rural Mexican ranch life were integral to this vision. Laura Barraclough, an author and professor of American Studies at Yale University, says Terrazas and others on the Pico Rivera City Council angled to situate suburban Pico Rivera as an American center of Mexican culture. As a result, the City of Pico Rivera signed a contract with Charros La Alteña granting them primary use of the new facility with a separate agreement allowing the charro association to use the stables at nearby Bicentennial Park. of Charros La Alteña for playing a major role in influencing Pico Rivera city councilman, Frank Terrazas to approve the construction of the Pico Rivera Sports Arena. He attributes Mario Arteaga, Marcelino Rodriguez, Carlos Coronel and Alfonso Chavez Sr.
"I couldn't believe they were really building a lienzo charro for us."Ī sign that says "Ciudad de Charros" declares Pico Rivera's role in the continued flourishing of Mexican ranch life in Los Angeles. "I would sit there and watch them build the arena," says the 64-year-old veteran charro. Located less than three miles away from his home, Abedoy remembers riding horseback from his house to the Whittier Narrows parcel where the Pico Rivera Sports Arena was being constructed. They're dressed in traje de charro - embroidered jackets fastened with big crimson red silk bows, fitted pants, leather chaps, belts with arabesque designs and wide-brimmed felt hats - and ready to compete in their first charrería competition at the Pico Rivera Sports Arena.
#PICO RIVERA SPORTS ARENA FULL#
The photo shows Abedoy, along with several other men, youthful faces full of pride, lined up on horseback outside of a dusty arena.
"Believe it or not," Abedoy explains as he holds the photo up to the light, "That's me right there on the right." Armando Abedoy sits on the couch in his living room flipping through an album full of yellowing photographs before he stops to pull one out.
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