July 19, 2024 • 27 mins
Ever wondered how Mexican vaqueros shaped the American cowboy myth? Join us as Adriana Herrera and Nikki Payne shed light on the forgotten pioneers of the West. Learn how Hollywood's portrayal of Mexico as a lawless frontier served to justify American expansionism, and discover the vaquero's true legacy that dates back to the Spanish conquistadors. Prepare to challenge your understanding of cowboy skills and uncover the often-overlooked influence of vaquero culture on today's Western narratives.
We dive deep into the romanticized cowboy narrative, comparing it to the rich storytelling traditions of Mexican telenovelas. Through the lens of "Fuego en la Sangre," you'll see how themes of class struggle and the alpha hero archetype from humble beginnings are central to both cultures. Discover how notions of earned skill and valor, deeply rooted in vaquero tradition, have shaped our ideals of heroism and identity in the American West. This exploration not only bridges historical divides but also celebrates the vaquero's indelible mark on cowboy mythos.
The US-Mexico border is more than just a line on a map—it’s a powerful symbol in Western media and political rhetoric. From the early days of Texas' fight for independence to the modern-day implications, we unravel the complex narratives that have long overshadowed Mexican contributions. Dive into cowboy romances where love battles class divides, and see how stereotypical portrayals have persisted in popular media. As we wrap up our series, we invite you, our listeners, to share your thoughts and engage with us as we continue to uncover hidden histories and foster a sense of community.
Read these award-winning books from our co-hosts:
Sex, Lies and Sensibility, by Nikki Payne (Pre-Order)
In this contemporary, diverse retelling of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, two sisters find themselves and find love in the rustic beauty of Maine.
Run Darling, by New York Times best selling Author Adriana Herrera.
All Arabella Gaspar wanted was to buy some fun sexy grown-up toys for her first time leading her house’s run, but after one or two—okay, a dozen—threats from Magi who don’t think a girl should be a Toy Runner (eye-roll) her overprotective brothers have stuck her with none other than Rhyne Carrasco to be her bodyguard.
Interact with us at
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Can't get enough of Nikki Payne? Check out her website at:
https://www.nikkipaynebooks.com/
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https://adrianaherreraromance.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nikki Payne (00:00):
Ha, you thought you're getting off, didn't you?
You thought you could get outof this series without talking
about capitalism.
Adriana Herrera (00:09):
We're here with the Mexicans.
Nikki Payne (00:13):
You thought wrong.
Adriana Herrera (00:14):
We brought the vaqueros.
You're going to eat yourveggies today?
Yeah and yeah.
Welcome to another episode ofUnbound, the podcast that
explores the intersection of popculture and the steamy world of
romance literature.
I'm Adriana Herrera, anovelista who loves to write
(00:34):
about hot and horny Latinos.
Nikki Payne (00:38):
And I'm Nikki Payne , and I bring you steamy romance
inspired by high schoolclassics.
In this episode, we're headingsouth of the border, or rather
just west.
Our series right now is abouthow the West was won, and we're
examining the West through adifferent lens.
So here's a juicy factoid foryou the West is just Mexico
(01:03):
y'all.
For you, the West is justMexico y'all.
In the past, Hollywood movieshave painted Mexico as this wild
, lawless land, and it makes acase for American expansionism.
It's like, hey, let's just takeover, because it's a fucking
mess down there.
Adriana Herrera (01:19):
Or another classic that they love to throw
out there every once in a whileis they're not doing anything
with that land.
Which leads us to one of thethemes we'll be exploring in
this episode Cowboys as aproduct of capitalism and
ranching.
Because we like to keep thingslight on this podcast With a
side of land occupation andanother one is are cowboy
(01:43):
romances, or vaqueradas inMexico, just tales of class
struggle?
Again, keeping it light on thislast episode of our podcast for
the season.
Nikki Payne (01:54):
Yes, my vote is yes .
Cowboys are just the tentaclesof ranchers with better PR, and
nobody actually lays his barebetter than the Mexican media.
We're going to talk abouttelenovelas, we're going to talk
about romance novels, we'regoing to talk about the border,
ew.
And we are going to actuallyalso talk about some academic
(02:16):
work.
Again, like we said, nice andchill.
Adriana Herrera (02:20):
And you know what, Nikki?
I think this might be the rightmoment for me to break a
shocking truth to the people.
Nikki Payne (02:32):
I don't think we're ready.
Just I don't know, I don't know.
Adriana Herrera (02:37):
Book yourselves .
I think this is the rightmoment to bring up that.
Latina people.
We got white people too.
What are you talking about,girl the?
Nikki Payne (02:45):
Latina people.
We got white people too.
Adriana Herrera (02:50):
What are you talking about, girl?
I know, shocking, shocking.
Nikki Payne (02:56):
But we are.
All my life there have beenwhites, browns and blacks.
What are you doing to me?
Adriana Herrera (03:00):
I mean like now , like everything is disarrayed
now that I've said that.
But we're going to get into itand even the white Latinas are
catching some strays today.
Stick with us, because we'vegot some stories, history and
maybe even a bit of escándalo.
All right, the tease this y'all.
(03:25):
The Marlboro man is a remix,the OG is the Michoacan man.
Imagine your cowboy rounding upthe cattle, bringing down
steers, taming wild broncos issomething we all know.
But did you also know thatthese skills were first
(03:47):
perfected by vaqueros, theMexican ranch hands working for
wealthy Spanish conquistadorsand hacendados in the 16th
century?
Because you guys had to knowthat Americans didn't actually
invent white supremacy.
By the time Elizabeth the Greatfigured it out, isabella
Catolica was licensingfranchises.
Nikki Payne (04:09):
Oh, God Burn, no, okay.
No, this is true because MartinSandler in his book Vaqueros,
americans, first Cowboys, heargues that the Central American
cowherders preceded the cowboysby centuries.
So, according to Sandler, thevaquero lacked status and
remained a pretty poorly paidlaborer for hundreds of years.
But these guys were the realdeal.
(04:30):
They rode barefoot, theydeveloped the expertise needed
for the dangerous work and theywere master horsemen.
Fast forward a few hundredyears and these vaqueros shared
their know-how with theinexperienced cowboys from the
American West.
The cowboys did what theyshould and they adopted their
techniques, their distinctiveclothing, tools and even the
(04:52):
lingo.
And in American media theMexican, like capital T, capital
M, represents folks we have toclear out to make the space safe
for Manifest Destiny.
But in actuality the Westbelonged to the vaqueros.
Adriana Herrera (05:08):
Vaqueros really are as much of a myth in
telenovelas as they are inAmerican media.
The take them or leave them.
Vaquero is still very muchalive.
Fuego en la Sangre, forinstance, a Mexican remake of
Pasión de Gavilanes, one of myfavorite Colombia telenovelas.
We can have a whole season justme talking about that one.
(05:30):
That one novella revolvesaround three brothers seeking
revenge for their sister'smysterious death.
They infiltrate the hacienda ofthe wealthy and influential
family, only to fall in lovewith the three daughters Adriana
.
Nikki Payne (05:46):
The shit they start in that telenovela it is
unhinged.
Adriana Herrera (05:51):
And Juan Reyes, that cowboy, that vaquero.
Nikki Payne (05:58):
Just a moment, just a moment of breath, just a
moment of exhalations.
Just exhale as we release ourovaries.
Okay, but the real elephant inthat room for that telenovela is
actually class.
Adriana Herrera (06:13):
Exactly, and I mean it's such a theme in the
genre of vaqueradas Fue, when LaSangre shows how class divides
are navigated, with the upperclass portrayed as corrupt, lazy
and the lower class ishonorable, scrappy, resilient,
loyal.
And it mirrors the socialhistory of the vaquero who,
(06:37):
despite his skills and braveryand basically creating the skill
set and the survival skillsthat, like Americans, needed to
conquer the West, they werenever given the status that he
was never given the status thathe deserves.
This is not only an example.
This, this is not just thisexample with Paso de Gavilanes
(06:58):
or En Fuego en la Sangre, but somany Mexican telenovelas about
vaqueros focus on thatimpenetrable class divide that
there is an usurper who wantswhat the wealthy have, or evil
rich folks who want to maintainthat status quo.
Fuego en la Sangre is really acore story in the Mexican
Western the poor engaging inthat vigilante justice because
(07:22):
the system just won't serve them.
Nikki Payne (07:25):
The system won't serve them.
So there's justice, but there'salso love.
There are love stories, and wehave oftentimes in telenovelas.
There's the man from humblemeans, and this is the one who
knows the land.
There's the man from HumbleMeans, and this is the one who
knows the land best, who knowshow to do the work.
We'll come back to this becausethis is an important aspect of
the West in general.
Adriana Herrera (07:48):
The one who can actually tame the wild things
on the ranch, which brought athought to my head earlier about
domestication and domination asa through line, not only in
American westerns but inBaccarat too, like something
that is kind of a core story inromance, specifically having to
do with the west, is this manthat has, like, the ability to
(08:12):
tame right like the.
There's always these like veryinteresting symbolism and
parallels with the, with thewild cold that nobody can get
like to ride, and then the wildgirl from the big house that
nobody can get to calm down buthe can get her to ride, so that
(08:35):
there there is something veryseductive here in this narrative
.
Around the men who come from apoor background would be the
ones to kind of like, take inhand this girl who, like, is
kind of out of control andbrought to mind.
Actually, isabel Cañas saysPaqueros del Norte, which is a
(08:56):
horror kind of romance story,and it's one that really has
that trope which makes sense,because I feel like Isabel is
really trying to kind of reallywork with themes that are
classic themes of Mexicanstorytelling, and in this story
(09:17):
he is one of the farmhands andwhen they were children they
were in love, but he ends uphaving to leave because of
something that happens, and theheroine is one of the daughters
of the Esendado, so you usuallyhave this wild girl that's kind
of untamed, so to speak, thatthe cowboy takes on and uh
(09:43):
brings to heel, I don't know butlike you know, you know you get
what?
Nikki Payne (09:45):
I'm saying yeah, yeah, no, I get it and I'm
activated.
So, yes, I mean, alpha heroesare popular for a reason.
It's very interesting to thinkabout the flip side of that and
the fact that a vaquerada or awestern nepotism does happen,
but it is the man who has theskill who often wins the day.
(10:08):
So it's not just if you inherita ranch, if you inherit a
hacienda, you are actually goingto have to know how to work
that land, and the Western isone of the few genres and
storytelling modalities whereyou actually have to earn your
position.
Adriana Herrera (10:24):
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting thinking about
it in terms of a romance, right?
Because in romance, the alphahero in many contemporary
settings isn't required to doanything and in historical
settings is really not requiredto do anything because maybe you
just got to be a duke.
You don't have to come on, baby, you have to be up, upright and
(10:44):
breathing and a duke, and thatis all that is required from you
to be a hero.
Um, it's a nice um bonus if youkind of say a speech about
being an abolitionist every oncein a while.
Nikki Payne (10:56):
Yes, or, if you like, fix the roof of a of a
failing house, like everyone's aroofer.
Adriana Herrera (11:03):
That, that, that really does kind of like,
make you like in, like the, kindof like 99 percentile, but like
the, the, the Like the cowboyactually has to have more than
that.
Because if you in the cowboyromance, if you are like the son
of the big house and you'rejust lazy and don't know how to
(11:24):
like rope a horse or do a thingwith a lasso or kind of like
herd that cattle, then you'reworthless, you're not the hero.
You can't be the hero if youdon't have the skill to tame the
land Right.
And so I think that is aninteresting kind of little piece
of something to think about.
That kind of makes us, kind ofbrings us back to, like that
(11:47):
original point of the beginningof the season of.
Is the Western, thequintessential American
narrative, beautiful?
So, yeah, so through thesemedia lenses, whether it's books
, telenovelas and movies, it iskind of easier to see the clear
picture that the cowboy, as weknow it, owes a lot like in the
vaquero go hand in hand.
(12:08):
The vaquero was there before,but you know, gentrification and
everything, yes, bring itthrough, sis.
The romanticized cowboy hasovershadowed the true heroes of
the American West.
Nikki Payne (12:27):
Yeah, I love the way you say that, because the
Vaquero story is one of skill,courage and often unrecognized
contribution.
Right, and we are going tocontinue to explore some of
these bigger stories, largerthemes, and we're going to keep
in mind how these narrativesactually shape our understanding
of history and identity.
(12:48):
I mean it feels kind of big,but it's all going to loop in
together.
Trust us, ride with us.
Adriana Herrera (12:53):
Let us cook.
We're not done.
We're headed for the bordernext and it's not going to be so
.
We've seen how the vaqueroculture deeply influenced the
cowboy mythos, but I think itgoes deeper and a lot of it
revolves around the border.
Nikki Payne (13:16):
Exactly Y'all.
Let's talk about the border.
The border between Mexico andthe US has really blown itself
out of proportion.
It's become a symbolic boundarybetween the safe United States
and the threatening world beyond.
We're in an election year rightnow, so politicians and pundits
often use the border to signaltheir stance on safety and
(13:39):
security, like framing it asdefense or a line against
various supposed threatscriminals, drug traffickers,
even diseases.
Adriana Herrera (13:48):
It's the narrative of invasion, which is
a tried and true one, especiallyin the Western, but as always,
it's more complicated than that.
Nikki Payne (13:59):
Always, always, okay.
If anyone grew up in Texas, youknow that we were like stapled
to our chair and forced to learnso much Texas history.
But this is like it's allcoming back.
It's kicking in against my will, because, if we remember, in
the early years of the Republic,there wasn't really a clear
border.
It was just like, eh, vibes,right, just this amorphous
(14:21):
western frontier.
But all that shit changed in1824 when the Mexican government
enacted a colonization law.
They're enticing Anglo-Americansettlers into Texas with super
generous land grants, right.
It's like come on, white peopleto settle.
What's the worst that couldhappen?
We all know what the worst thatcould happen is.
So, like many Latin Americancountries actually did this in
(14:43):
an attempt to whiten theindigenous and African
population, so Mexico is notlike new for doing this.
And so all of these Anglosettlers come in.
We'll call them proto-Texans.
And the thing that they didn'tlike was that Mexico had already
abolished slavery and attemptedto enforce it, and they were
pissed off about this.
(15:03):
So, 1836, they revolted,declared independence from
mexico.
Adriana Herrera (15:07):
Bada boom, bada bing, we have texas I love how
you said that, um, but I mean Ithink, like the idea like this,
like the settling piece and thedivision, is so seductive, like
I mean thinking about, evenhispaniola, where I'm from, is a
very small island and even we,okay, we have a border between
(15:29):
the dominican republic and haitiin a space that small.
You still have that division,and it all comes down to race
and it all comes down tosocioeconomic conditions, um,
which is interesting, I mean, ifyou thought we were just going
to talk about romance novels andhow cute they are, no, not in
(15:51):
this episode.
You're going to learn today.
So I mean, yeah, I meanthinking about race and the idea
of the West.
It really was an attempt todefine a symbolic boundary
between English-speakingAmerican and Spanish-American
(16:12):
lands.
In the South, the vaquerostaught white settlers how to
cowboy and then they were runout of their own country.
Nikki Payne (16:19):
Boom, boom, our cowboy books, movies, television
, and that includes romance.
They rely a lot on this conceptof holding the line against
lawlessness.
We talked about the sheriff orthe cowboy who ends up having to
create order in a town.
Think of how you see theMexican capital T, capital M,
(16:40):
represented in the golden age ofWesterns.
There's always a?
A, a simple, beautifulcharacter.
I'm going to call her Maria deGuadalupe.
That she, she has large eyes,she's a brunette, often played
by a white woman who's justbrown hair.
That like needs whiteprotection.
Or the men all have guns, orthey're always running around,
(17:01):
like there's always like a canof ale, like everyone's burping
right, like everyone is alwaysthere's a sombrero tipped over
their head.
Like you understand the mediathat we are inundated with all
the time.
Adriana Herrera (17:14):
Yeah, I mean it's interesting, like that
piece of kind of like thebrowner you are in a Western,
the least likely you are to beable to have some kind of like
chance of making it in the west,even though you have been there
for hundreds of years alreadyyou know what I mean, like the,
(17:34):
the idea that in the media, howthe western has been constructed
, the maria de guadalupe, orlike the ramones or the Juan's,
are the ones most likely to notbe there by the end of the movie
, and yet they had been therefor 200 years before John Wayne
got there.
(17:55):
So I mean it is interesting andit's also something to think
about.
I thought that I I kind of saythis here in terms of how we
construct the cowboy romancenarrative and thinking about,
like the more insular it is, themore that it's a gentrified
version of how the West actuallyhas always been.
(18:17):
Yeah, and and I mean if, if, if, we have to kind of like think
about in a romance novel.
I know that there are many aromance novel that I've read
that is a cowboy romance whereBrown people are only mentioned
(18:37):
to talk about some kind of crimesome kind of crime?
Nikki Payne (18:41):
And what if I tell you that every single news story
that you hear about theinvasion you can't see me, but
I'm doing air quotes, heavy airquotes on invasion at the border
by criminals, rapists, gangleaders, etc.
It is the same cowboy narrative, y'all.
Adriana Herrera (18:59):
Yeah, the most secure border shit is John
Wayne's storytelling, and itworked.
The cowboy, the lawman whoinherited and benefited from
vaquero techniques and tools andsituational knowledge, is
celebrated for pushing out thevery people who taught them how
to do the things that they'redoing to keep the land that they
(19:20):
occupied.
Nikki Payne (19:23):
Okay, so let's bring this around.
What does the border have to dowith romance?
Rock with me for a minute,y'all.
So we've established that theborder is not just about
geography.
It's a symbol of economic,racial, cultural divides.
And in vaquero romances,interestingly enough, love
doesn't always actually conquerall.
It actually brings fuckingchaos, right, death, destruction
(19:46):
.
The class divide in many ways,particularly in Mexican media,
is stronger than love, andoftentimes, in the golden age of
Hollywood, the cowboy may lovethat Maria de Guadalupe
character in need of whiteprotection, but she is not his
ultimate stop in need of whiteprotection.
Adriana Herrera (20:05):
But she is not his ultimate stop.
No, she indeed is not.
She is the point in that hero'scharacter arc, as he earns his
heroine, who will not be Mariade Guadalupe de los Santos, de
Los Angeles.
Every time it's, let's say,save the cat, but, you know,
(20:27):
with a woman from anothercountry that speaks a different
language and so we're so used tolike seeing these borders as
these liminal spaces.
Nikki Payne (20:37):
But I'm I'm getting the feeling and you can argue
with me, argue with me in thecomments but like class and race
, divides are actually firmestsometimes in these liminal
spaces, as people try to likestretch and reach for identity
yeah, agreed, and in an essence,the border is a definition
marker that separates the herofrom the villain, those in need
(20:59):
of protection, those who give it, who is on what side of good
and evil?
Adriana Herrera (21:03):
I mean it is a literal, physical line that is,
defining where good is and whereevil is, when light is and
where darkness is, and guesswhere the lightness is and where
the darkness is?
Come on, it's always the sameone, it's always the same place,
spoiler alert, it's always.
It's always south um, and a lotof stories we read and the
(21:26):
media that we watch, love upendsthe social order if it
intersects with class and race,like I mean I again like to me,
like, and even when you thinkabout movies, like classic
movies, like the searchers withjohn wayne, I mean it is like
these, these righteous men, youknow, kind of going into like
(21:47):
that darkness to extract thatone innocent woman that was like
taken from them, into like thehands of, like savages.
I am also doing air quotes,even though you can't see me, so
I mean it is.
It is kind of like theconstruct, almost like, like, in
certain ways, like these thingshave become part of the
(22:09):
conventions of the genre.
Nikki Payne (22:11):
And in telenovelas we see this as well that line
may not be associated withsomeone from a different country
.
Oftentimes that line, that deepborder, that mark kind of
etched in stone, is class andoftentimes, when individuals go
across that line and across thatborder, all hell breaks loose
(22:33):
and it tells us a story aboutwho deserves love, who deserves
a happily ever after and whoactually deserves their
comeuppance.
Honestly, everything I need toknow about love I learned from a
telenovela.
Don't do it, girl, he willsleep with your sister and plan
to kill your father.
Adriana Herrera (22:49):
He will do it.
He will do it.
And I mean, the West is a hellof a drug.
Hell of a drug.
One thing that I would say isthat it's not comparison for the
way vaquero heritage has beenrepackaged, you know, cut,
commercialized, whitened intothe modern cowboy myth and and
(23:11):
and again, kind of going um backto point of view, and the thing
that we really talk about hereis the gaze, um, that we're
story telling stories from, andthe difference that that makes
it really comes.
I think, when you think aboutcowboy romance Like if you're
reading cowboy romance thatdoesn't deal in any kind of
(23:33):
interaction with anythingoutside whiteness and these, you
know a family that doesn't everkind of have to grapple with
occupation or the, you know theenvironment and the way the
environment has been devastated,then you're reading sanitized.
Nikki Payne (23:56):
You're reading sanitized Westerns and you are
injecting like America'sfavorite drug, like you are
telling yourself America'sfavorite bedtime story over and
over again, whether you mean toor not, even if you're reading
really widely once you like,when you consume that Western
that tells the story of movingpeople out so other folks can
(24:17):
come in, or is talking abouttaming the land and saving
someone from Native Americanraids.
Like that language, right, isall about who belongs in the
land, who deserves to be there.
So is the West just Mexico?
In many ways, yeah, the vaqueroculture laid the foundation for
(24:42):
what we now celebrate as thecowboy lifestyle.
Adriana Herrera (24:45):
I mean, they gave us music, they gave us
mariachi hats and they gave usthe chaps.
Nikki Payne (24:50):
Come on.
They gave us Peso Pluma, whichI'm very happy for.
Adriana Herrera (24:56):
Peso Pluma and Vicente Fernandez.
Come on, oh my gosh Corridas.
Nikki Payne (25:00):
Oh my gosh, did you hear the Bad Bunny?
And I think it's like BandaFrontera.
Por cierto, I'll send it to you.
It's very good, send it to meplease.
Adriana Herrera (25:12):
I am all about it.
Nikki Payne (25:14):
I never knew I needed Tejano music with Bad
Bunny in it, Like I never knewinto los buques, which is like
my favorite.
Adriana Herrera (25:23):
But let's, let's, let's, um, um.
As much as I have loved thisventure into the West, I am
ready to go back East becauseit's hot, it's summer.
Are we done with the West?
I think we are.
Nikki Payne (25:35):
Okay, look, the first thing we tackled was the
myth of the West.
What kind of political workthese myths that erase Black
bodies, brown bodies, queer folkoff the map does, because it's
doing something, y'all it'sgiving you a bedtime story about
your America right now, who ispart of the American dream, who
(25:56):
is excluded from it.
But we actually didn't touch oneverything.
What?
Adriana Herrera (26:01):
did we miss Asian folks, queer women, or is
there something else that weshould have been talking about
that we missed?
We want to know.
Tell us, is there anything thatyou want us to do in the future
?
Nikki Payne (26:18):
We want to hear from you.
What would you like to see usdo a season on?
Thank you all for joining us onthis journey through the hidden
histories of the West.
If you enjoyed today's episode,don't forget to subscribe.
Leave us a review.
We'd love to hear your thoughtson the Vaquero legacy and its
influence on the American cowboy.
We want to hear your thoughtson Beverly Jenkins.
(26:39):
We've actually already seensome hot takes, right?
Adriana Herrera (26:44):
We love communicating, engaging with
y'all, so make sure you spreadthe word, review us and
subscribe and we might have somefun stuff um for next season to
be able to keep this communitygrowing and going until then,
keep your hearts unbound.
Nikki Payne (26:58):
We did it, we did it.
We, we did it.
We did a series on the West.
We did it, joe.
Adriana Herrera (27:11):
We did it, Joe.
Oh my gosh.
Ha, you thought you're getting off, didn't you?
You thought you could get outof this series without talking
about capitalism.
Adriana Herrera (00:09):
We're here with the Mexicans.
Nikki Payne (00:13):
You thought wrong.
Adriana Herrera (00:14):
We brought the vaqueros.
You're going to eat yourveggies today?
Yeah and yeah.
Welcome to another episode ofUnbound, the podcast that
explores the intersection of popculture and the steamy world of
romance literature.
I'm Adriana Herrera, anovelista who loves to write
(00:34):
about hot and horny Latinos.
Nikki Payne (00:38):
And I'm Nikki Payne , and I bring you steamy romance
inspired by high schoolclassics.
In this episode, we're headingsouth of the border, or rather
just west.
Our series right now is abouthow the West was won, and we're
examining the West through adifferent lens.
So here's a juicy factoid foryou the West is just Mexico
(01:03):
y'all.
For you, the West is justMexico y'all.
In the past, Hollywood movieshave painted Mexico as this wild
, lawless land, and it makes acase for American expansionism.
It's like, hey, let's just takeover, because it's a fucking
mess down there.
Adriana Herrera (01:19):
Or another classic that they love to throw
out there every once in a whileis they're not doing anything
with that land.
Which leads us to one of thethemes we'll be exploring in
this episode Cowboys as aproduct of capitalism and
ranching.
Because we like to keep thingslight on this podcast With a
side of land occupation andanother one is are cowboy
(01:43):
romances, or vaqueradas inMexico, just tales of class
struggle?
Again, keeping it light on thislast episode of our podcast for
the season.
Nikki Payne (01:54):
Yes, my vote is yes .
Cowboys are just the tentaclesof ranchers with better PR, and
nobody actually lays his barebetter than the Mexican media.
We're going to talk abouttelenovelas, we're going to talk
about romance novels, we'regoing to talk about the border,
ew.
And we are going to actuallyalso talk about some academic
(02:16):
work.
Again, like we said, nice andchill.
Adriana Herrera (02:20):
And you know what, Nikki?
I think this might be the rightmoment for me to break a
shocking truth to the people.
Nikki Payne (02:32):
I don't think we're ready.
Just I don't know, I don't know.
Adriana Herrera (02:37):
Book yourselves .
I think this is the rightmoment to bring up that.
Latina people.
We got white people too.
What are you talking about,girl the?
Nikki Payne (02:45):
Latina people.
We got white people too.
Adriana Herrera (02:50):
What are you talking about, girl?
I know, shocking, shocking.
Nikki Payne (02:56):
But we are.
All my life there have beenwhites, browns and blacks.
What are you doing to me?
Adriana Herrera (03:00):
I mean like now , like everything is disarrayed
now that I've said that.
But we're going to get into itand even the white Latinas are
catching some strays today.
Stick with us, because we'vegot some stories, history and
maybe even a bit of escándalo.
All right, the tease this y'all.
(03:25):
The Marlboro man is a remix,the OG is the Michoacan man.
Imagine your cowboy rounding upthe cattle, bringing down
steers, taming wild broncos issomething we all know.
But did you also know thatthese skills were first
(03:47):
perfected by vaqueros, theMexican ranch hands working for
wealthy Spanish conquistadorsand hacendados in the 16th
century?
Because you guys had to knowthat Americans didn't actually
invent white supremacy.
By the time Elizabeth the Greatfigured it out, isabella
Catolica was licensingfranchises.
Nikki Payne (04:09):
Oh, God Burn, no, okay.
No, this is true because MartinSandler in his book Vaqueros,
americans, first Cowboys, heargues that the Central American
cowherders preceded the cowboysby centuries.
So, according to Sandler, thevaquero lacked status and
remained a pretty poorly paidlaborer for hundreds of years.
But these guys were the realdeal.
(04:30):
They rode barefoot, theydeveloped the expertise needed
for the dangerous work and theywere master horsemen.
Fast forward a few hundredyears and these vaqueros shared
their know-how with theinexperienced cowboys from the
American West.
The cowboys did what theyshould and they adopted their
techniques, their distinctiveclothing, tools and even the
(04:52):
lingo.
And in American media theMexican, like capital T, capital
M, represents folks we have toclear out to make the space safe
for Manifest Destiny.
But in actuality the Westbelonged to the vaqueros.
Adriana Herrera (05:08):
Vaqueros really are as much of a myth in
telenovelas as they are inAmerican media.
The take them or leave them.
Vaquero is still very muchalive.
Fuego en la Sangre, forinstance, a Mexican remake of
Pasión de Gavilanes, one of myfavorite Colombia telenovelas.
We can have a whole season justme talking about that one.
(05:30):
That one novella revolvesaround three brothers seeking
revenge for their sister'smysterious death.
They infiltrate the hacienda ofthe wealthy and influential
family, only to fall in lovewith the three daughters Adriana
.
Nikki Payne (05:46):
The shit they start in that telenovela it is
unhinged.
Adriana Herrera (05:51):
And Juan Reyes, that cowboy, that vaquero.
Nikki Payne (05:58):
Just a moment, just a moment of breath, just a
moment of exhalations.
Just exhale as we release ourovaries.
Okay, but the real elephant inthat room for that telenovela is
actually class.
Adriana Herrera (06:13):
Exactly, and I mean it's such a theme in the
genre of vaqueradas Fue, when LaSangre shows how class divides
are navigated, with the upperclass portrayed as corrupt, lazy
and the lower class ishonorable, scrappy, resilient,
loyal.
And it mirrors the socialhistory of the vaquero who,
(06:37):
despite his skills and braveryand basically creating the skill
set and the survival skillsthat, like Americans, needed to
conquer the West, they werenever given the status that he
was never given the status thathe deserves.
This is not only an example.
This, this is not just thisexample with Paso de Gavilanes
(06:58):
or En Fuego en la Sangre, but somany Mexican telenovelas about
vaqueros focus on thatimpenetrable class divide that
there is an usurper who wantswhat the wealthy have, or evil
rich folks who want to maintainthat status quo.
Fuego en la Sangre is really acore story in the Mexican
Western the poor engaging inthat vigilante justice because
(07:22):
the system just won't serve them.
Nikki Payne (07:25):
The system won't serve them.
So there's justice, but there'salso love.
There are love stories, and wehave oftentimes in telenovelas.
There's the man from humblemeans, and this is the one who
knows the land.
There's the man from HumbleMeans, and this is the one who
knows the land best, who knowshow to do the work.
We'll come back to this becausethis is an important aspect of
the West in general.
Adriana Herrera (07:48):
The one who can actually tame the wild things
on the ranch, which brought athought to my head earlier about
domestication and domination asa through line, not only in
American westerns but inBaccarat too, like something
that is kind of a core story inromance, specifically having to
do with the west, is this manthat has, like, the ability to
(08:12):
tame right like the.
There's always these like veryinteresting symbolism and
parallels with the, with thewild cold that nobody can get
like to ride, and then the wildgirl from the big house that
nobody can get to calm down buthe can get her to ride, so that
(08:35):
there there is something veryseductive here in this narrative
.
Around the men who come from apoor background would be the
ones to kind of like, take inhand this girl who, like, is
kind of out of control andbrought to mind.
Actually, isabel Cañas saysPaqueros del Norte, which is a
(08:56):
horror kind of romance story,and it's one that really has
that trope which makes sense,because I feel like Isabel is
really trying to kind of reallywork with themes that are
classic themes of Mexicanstorytelling, and in this story
(09:17):
he is one of the farmhands andwhen they were children they
were in love, but he ends uphaving to leave because of
something that happens, and theheroine is one of the daughters
of the Esendado, so you usuallyhave this wild girl that's kind
of untamed, so to speak, thatthe cowboy takes on and uh
(09:43):
brings to heel, I don't know butlike you know, you know you get
what?
Nikki Payne (09:45):
I'm saying yeah, yeah, no, I get it and I'm
activated.
So, yes, I mean, alpha heroesare popular for a reason.
It's very interesting to thinkabout the flip side of that and
the fact that a vaquerada or awestern nepotism does happen,
but it is the man who has theskill who often wins the day.
(10:08):
So it's not just if you inherita ranch, if you inherit a
hacienda, you are actually goingto have to know how to work
that land, and the Western isone of the few genres and
storytelling modalities whereyou actually have to earn your
position.
Adriana Herrera (10:24):
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting thinking about
it in terms of a romance, right?
Because in romance, the alphahero in many contemporary
settings isn't required to doanything and in historical
settings is really not requiredto do anything because maybe you
just got to be a duke.
You don't have to come on, baby, you have to be up, upright and
(10:44):
breathing and a duke, and thatis all that is required from you
to be a hero.
Um, it's a nice um bonus if youkind of say a speech about
being an abolitionist every oncein a while.
Nikki Payne (10:56):
Yes, or, if you like, fix the roof of a of a
failing house, like everyone's aroofer.
Adriana Herrera (11:03):
That, that, that really does kind of like,
make you like in, like the, kindof like 99 percentile, but like
the, the, the Like the cowboyactually has to have more than
that.
Because if you in the cowboyromance, if you are like the son
of the big house and you'rejust lazy and don't know how to
(11:24):
like rope a horse or do a thingwith a lasso or kind of like
herd that cattle, then you'reworthless, you're not the hero.
You can't be the hero if youdon't have the skill to tame the
land Right.
And so I think that is aninteresting kind of little piece
of something to think about.
That kind of makes us, kind ofbrings us back to, like that
(11:47):
original point of the beginningof the season of.
Is the Western, thequintessential American
narrative, beautiful?
So, yeah, so through thesemedia lenses, whether it's books
, telenovelas and movies, it iskind of easier to see the clear
picture that the cowboy, as weknow it, owes a lot like in the
vaquero go hand in hand.
(12:08):
The vaquero was there before,but you know, gentrification and
everything, yes, bring itthrough, sis.
The romanticized cowboy hasovershadowed the true heroes of
the American West.
Nikki Payne (12:27):
Yeah, I love the way you say that, because the
Vaquero story is one of skill,courage and often unrecognized
contribution.
Right, and we are going tocontinue to explore some of
these bigger stories, largerthemes, and we're going to keep
in mind how these narrativesactually shape our understanding
of history and identity.
(12:48):
I mean it feels kind of big,but it's all going to loop in
together.
Trust us, ride with us.
Adriana Herrera (12:53):
Let us cook.
We're not done.
We're headed for the bordernext and it's not going to be so
.
We've seen how the vaqueroculture deeply influenced the
cowboy mythos, but I think itgoes deeper and a lot of it
revolves around the border.
Nikki Payne (13:16):
Exactly Y'all.
Let's talk about the border.
The border between Mexico andthe US has really blown itself
out of proportion.
It's become a symbolic boundarybetween the safe United States
and the threatening world beyond.
We're in an election year rightnow, so politicians and pundits
often use the border to signaltheir stance on safety and
(13:39):
security, like framing it asdefense or a line against
various supposed threatscriminals, drug traffickers,
even diseases.
Adriana Herrera (13:48):
It's the narrative of invasion, which is
a tried and true one, especiallyin the Western, but as always,
it's more complicated than that.
Nikki Payne (13:59):
Always, always, okay.
If anyone grew up in Texas, youknow that we were like stapled
to our chair and forced to learnso much Texas history.
But this is like it's allcoming back.
It's kicking in against my will, because, if we remember, in
the early years of the Republic,there wasn't really a clear
border.
It was just like, eh, vibes,right, just this amorphous
(14:21):
western frontier.
But all that shit changed in1824 when the Mexican government
enacted a colonization law.
They're enticing Anglo-Americansettlers into Texas with super
generous land grants, right.
It's like come on, white peopleto settle.
What's the worst that couldhappen?
We all know what the worst thatcould happen is.
So, like many Latin Americancountries actually did this in
(14:43):
an attempt to whiten theindigenous and African
population, so Mexico is notlike new for doing this.
And so all of these Anglosettlers come in.
We'll call them proto-Texans.
And the thing that they didn'tlike was that Mexico had already
abolished slavery and attemptedto enforce it, and they were
pissed off about this.
(15:03):
So, 1836, they revolted,declared independence from
mexico.
Adriana Herrera (15:07):
Bada boom, bada bing, we have texas I love how
you said that, um, but I mean Ithink, like the idea like this,
like the settling piece and thedivision, is so seductive, like
I mean thinking about, evenhispaniola, where I'm from, is a
very small island and even we,okay, we have a border between
(15:29):
the dominican republic and haitiin a space that small.
You still have that division,and it all comes down to race
and it all comes down tosocioeconomic conditions, um,
which is interesting, I mean, ifyou thought we were just going
to talk about romance novels andhow cute they are, no, not in
(15:51):
this episode.
You're going to learn today.
So I mean, yeah, I meanthinking about race and the idea
of the West.
It really was an attempt todefine a symbolic boundary
between English-speakingAmerican and Spanish-American
(16:12):
lands.
In the South, the vaquerostaught white settlers how to
cowboy and then they were runout of their own country.
Nikki Payne (16:19):
Boom, boom, our cowboy books, movies, television
, and that includes romance.
They rely a lot on this conceptof holding the line against
lawlessness.
We talked about the sheriff orthe cowboy who ends up having to
create order in a town.
Think of how you see theMexican capital T, capital M,
(16:40):
represented in the golden age ofWesterns.
There's always a?
A, a simple, beautifulcharacter.
I'm going to call her Maria deGuadalupe.
That she, she has large eyes,she's a brunette, often played
by a white woman who's justbrown hair.
That like needs whiteprotection.
Or the men all have guns, orthey're always running around,
(17:01):
like there's always like a canof ale, like everyone's burping
right, like everyone is alwaysthere's a sombrero tipped over
their head.
Like you understand the mediathat we are inundated with all
the time.
Adriana Herrera (17:14):
Yeah, I mean it's interesting, like that
piece of kind of like thebrowner you are in a Western,
the least likely you are to beable to have some kind of like
chance of making it in the west,even though you have been there
for hundreds of years alreadyyou know what I mean, like the,
(17:34):
the idea that in the media, howthe western has been constructed
, the maria de guadalupe, orlike the ramones or the Juan's,
are the ones most likely to notbe there by the end of the movie
, and yet they had been therefor 200 years before John Wayne
got there.
(17:55):
So I mean it is interesting andit's also something to think
about.
I thought that I I kind of saythis here in terms of how we
construct the cowboy romancenarrative and thinking about,
like the more insular it is, themore that it's a gentrified
version of how the West actuallyhas always been.
(18:17):
Yeah, and and I mean if, if, if, we have to kind of like think
about in a romance novel.
I know that there are many aromance novel that I've read
that is a cowboy romance whereBrown people are only mentioned
(18:37):
to talk about some kind of crimesome kind of crime?
Nikki Payne (18:41):
And what if I tell you that every single news story
that you hear about theinvasion you can't see me, but
I'm doing air quotes, heavy airquotes on invasion at the border
by criminals, rapists, gangleaders, etc.
It is the same cowboy narrative, y'all.
Adriana Herrera (18:59):
Yeah, the most secure border shit is John
Wayne's storytelling, and itworked.
The cowboy, the lawman whoinherited and benefited from
vaquero techniques and tools andsituational knowledge, is
celebrated for pushing out thevery people who taught them how
to do the things that they'redoing to keep the land that they
(19:20):
occupied.
Nikki Payne (19:23):
Okay, so let's bring this around.
What does the border have to dowith romance?
Rock with me for a minute,y'all.
So we've established that theborder is not just about
geography.
It's a symbol of economic,racial, cultural divides.
And in vaquero romances,interestingly enough, love
doesn't always actually conquerall.
It actually brings fuckingchaos, right, death, destruction
(19:46):
.
The class divide in many ways,particularly in Mexican media,
is stronger than love, andoftentimes, in the golden age of
Hollywood, the cowboy may lovethat Maria de Guadalupe
character in need of whiteprotection, but she is not his
ultimate stop in need of whiteprotection.
Adriana Herrera (20:05):
But she is not his ultimate stop.
No, she indeed is not.
She is the point in that hero'scharacter arc, as he earns his
heroine, who will not be Mariade Guadalupe de los Santos, de
Los Angeles.
Every time it's, let's say,save the cat, but, you know,
(20:27):
with a woman from anothercountry that speaks a different
language and so we're so used tolike seeing these borders as
these liminal spaces.
Nikki Payne (20:37):
But I'm I'm getting the feeling and you can argue
with me, argue with me in thecomments but like class and race
, divides are actually firmestsometimes in these liminal
spaces, as people try to likestretch and reach for identity
yeah, agreed, and in an essence,the border is a definition
marker that separates the herofrom the villain, those in need
(20:59):
of protection, those who give it, who is on what side of good
and evil?
Adriana Herrera (21:03):
I mean it is a literal, physical line that is,
defining where good is and whereevil is, when light is and
where darkness is, and guesswhere the lightness is and where
the darkness is?
Come on, it's always the sameone, it's always the same place,
spoiler alert, it's always.
It's always south um, and a lotof stories we read and the
(21:26):
media that we watch, love upendsthe social order if it
intersects with class and race,like I mean I again like to me,
like, and even when you thinkabout movies, like classic
movies, like the searchers withjohn wayne, I mean it is like
these, these righteous men, youknow, kind of going into like
(21:47):
that darkness to extract thatone innocent woman that was like
taken from them, into like thehands of, like savages.
I am also doing air quotes,even though you can't see me, so
I mean it is.
It is kind of like theconstruct, almost like, like, in
certain ways, like these thingshave become part of the
(22:09):
conventions of the genre.
Nikki Payne (22:11):
And in telenovelas we see this as well that line
may not be associated withsomeone from a different country
.
Oftentimes that line, that deepborder, that mark kind of
etched in stone, is class andoftentimes, when individuals go
across that line and across thatborder, all hell breaks loose
(22:33):
and it tells us a story aboutwho deserves love, who deserves
a happily ever after and whoactually deserves their
comeuppance.
Honestly, everything I need toknow about love I learned from a
telenovela.
Don't do it, girl, he willsleep with your sister and plan
to kill your father.
Adriana Herrera (22:49):
He will do it.
He will do it.
And I mean, the West is a hellof a drug.
Hell of a drug.
One thing that I would say isthat it's not comparison for the
way vaquero heritage has beenrepackaged, you know, cut,
commercialized, whitened intothe modern cowboy myth and and
(23:11):
and again, kind of going um backto point of view, and the thing
that we really talk about hereis the gaze, um, that we're
story telling stories from, andthe difference that that makes
it really comes.
I think, when you think aboutcowboy romance Like if you're
reading cowboy romance thatdoesn't deal in any kind of
(23:33):
interaction with anythingoutside whiteness and these, you
know a family that doesn't everkind of have to grapple with
occupation or the, you know theenvironment and the way the
environment has been devastated,then you're reading sanitized.
Nikki Payne (23:56):
You're reading sanitized Westerns and you are
injecting like America'sfavorite drug, like you are
telling yourself America'sfavorite bedtime story over and
over again, whether you mean toor not, even if you're reading
really widely once you like,when you consume that Western
that tells the story of movingpeople out so other folks can
(24:17):
come in, or is talking abouttaming the land and saving
someone from Native Americanraids.
Like that language, right, isall about who belongs in the
land, who deserves to be there.
So is the West just Mexico?
In many ways, yeah, the vaqueroculture laid the foundation for
(24:42):
what we now celebrate as thecowboy lifestyle.
Adriana Herrera (24:45):
I mean, they gave us music, they gave us
mariachi hats and they gave usthe chaps.
Nikki Payne (24:50):
Come on.
They gave us Peso Pluma, whichI'm very happy for.
Adriana Herrera (24:56):
Peso Pluma and Vicente Fernandez.
Come on, oh my gosh Corridas.
Nikki Payne (25:00):
Oh my gosh, did you hear the Bad Bunny?
And I think it's like BandaFrontera.
Por cierto, I'll send it to you.
It's very good, send it to meplease.
Adriana Herrera (25:12):
I am all about it.
Nikki Payne (25:14):
I never knew I needed Tejano music with Bad
Bunny in it, Like I never knewinto los buques, which is like
my favorite.
Adriana Herrera (25:23):
But let's, let's, let's, um, um.
As much as I have loved thisventure into the West, I am
ready to go back East becauseit's hot, it's summer.
Are we done with the West?
I think we are.
Nikki Payne (25:35):
Okay, look, the first thing we tackled was the
myth of the West.
What kind of political workthese myths that erase Black
bodies, brown bodies, queer folkoff the map does, because it's
doing something, y'all it'sgiving you a bedtime story about
your America right now, who ispart of the American dream, who
(25:56):
is excluded from it.
But we actually didn't touch oneverything.
What?
Adriana Herrera (26:01):
did we miss Asian folks, queer women, or is
there something else that weshould have been talking about
that we missed?
We want to know.
Tell us, is there anything thatyou want us to do in the future
?
Nikki Payne (26:18):
We want to hear from you.
What would you like to see usdo a season on?
Thank you all for joining us onthis journey through the hidden
histories of the West.
If you enjoyed today's episode,don't forget to subscribe.
Leave us a review.
We'd love to hear your thoughtson the Vaquero legacy and its
influence on the American cowboy.
We want to hear your thoughtson Beverly Jenkins.
(26:39):
We've actually already seensome hot takes, right?
Adriana Herrera (26:44):
We love communicating, engaging with
y'all, so make sure you spreadthe word, review us and
subscribe and we might have somefun stuff um for next season to
be able to keep this communitygrowing and going until then,
keep your hearts unbound.
Nikki Payne (26:58):
We did it, we did it.
We, we did it.
We did a series on the West.
We did it, joe.
Adriana Herrera (27:11):
We did it, Joe.
Oh my gosh.
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