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COACHELLA, Calif. — Donning a bright red Adelita dress, a large beige sombrero and a silky bow tied to her hair, Rashel Zamorez rode her horse Bombón up to the starting line.
She was preparing to compete in a friendly, untimed carrera con giros — an event in which riders guide their horses at top speed around a circular arena while completing three rotations at designated intervals.
For the record:
10:52 a.m. April 17, 2025An earlier version of this article said Rancho Zamorez is in Thermal, Calif. It is in Coachella, Calif. Also, Rashel Zamorez is 13 years old, not 14.
The race was the last act of her team’s performances, meant to show off their new skills to a small crowd of relatives and friends. Just minutes before, the team of eight created X-formations, O-patterns and other synchronized maneuvers around the Zamorez family’s homemade rodeo arena in Coachella, Calif., a community in the Inland Empire that’s surrounded by farmland and dirt roads.
Rashel, 13, shot out of the starting line and skillfully controlled Bombón through each rotation, spinning elegantly like a mounted ballerina, before crossing the finish line. Then, her teammates, between 7 and 14 years old, took their laps. They each showcased different levels of mastery in the solo event. A couple of riders slowly trotted across the arena. One teammate started swiftly, only to get bucked off her steed at the final spin. She fell onto the horse’s neck, slowly dismounted from the saddle and grabbed the reins as she finished the race on foot.
These young girls are Las Valentinas del Valle de Coachella, a group of middle and elementary schoolers who are taking on the sport of escaramuza — an essential component of Mexico’s national sport of charrería, or Mexican rodeo. The sport requires a combination of elegance and toughness as a team of eight girls wear long gowns, perfectly matching accessories and impeccable makeup while riding horses around an arena. They perform a 12-step routine consisting of synchronized and complicated equestrian ballet maneuvers in rapid succession for about five minutes. Some parts of the choreography require the riders to ride dangerously close to each other, according to Celina Zamorez, the captain’s aunt and Las Valentinas’ coach.
“It’s so competitive that if you make one small mistake, it’s like a domino effect,” she said. “You’re in a full gallop, and sometimes there’s parts of the routine where you have to pick up the velocity and if you’re off by the distance of a horse or half a horse, it can hurt somebody.”
The team is preparing for its second year of competitive escaramuza in the Infantil B — or 14-and-under — category after a successful first season: Las Valentinas earned first place in a regional competition, competed in a statewide competition and earned a score high enough to qualify for nationals in Aguascalientes, Mexico. At finals, they placed 37th overall in their division, but third among U.S. teams.
“I’m proud of them for what we did, but I thought we could do a little better,” Rashel said. “Mostly because the teams that beat us in Mexico, we beat them in California.”
Las Valentinas are among a growing number of young girls and women who are taking up the sport across the state. The renewed interest is helping to keep a Mexican tradition alive, said Elia Quezada, who worked as California escaramuza director for the Federación Mexicana De Charrería for 12 years before recently retiring. The organization sanctions official charrería competitions in Mexico and several U.S. states.
Quezada said there wasn’t a single youth team in California when she started her role. Now, there are a little more than 20 youth teams spread throughout the state. This includes the Coachella Valley-based team, which formed in early 2021. Quezada estimates that California now has around 70 registered charro teams and 50 escaramuza teams among all age groups.
She believes parents, particularly mothers, are introducing their children to the cultural sport and helping to fuel this movement, adding that every young escaramuza team has at least one second-generation rider.
“To me, it’s beautiful that there are kids who are still wanting to do this, still wanting to follow in the tradition of their parents,” Quezada said.
She pointed to the Zamorez family, a multi-generational charrería family, as a prime example of how the sport is being passed down to younger generations.
Rosemary Zamorez, the team’s director and founder, first began competing under the Las Valentinas banner in the adult division more than two decades ago alongside family members and longtime friends.
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1. Lillibeth Luna unpacks her sombrero. 2. Rashel Zamorez gets help with her scarf. 3. Roselina Medina, 13, pets her horse Malibu. 4. Lillibeth Luna, center, and Rashel Zamorez. 5. Lillibeth Luna removes the pad and blanket from her horse. (Photographs by Jill Connelly / For De Los)
“We did that for lots of years and then everybody started growing up and people started taking different ventures in their lives,” Rosemary Zamorez said. “Then, as our daughters started growing, we found it easy to make a team for them.”
She recalled her daughter asking if the youth team could continue riding as Las Valentinas. She agreed and, for the next two years, slowly began recruiting anybody who would take an interest in the sport.
Some of the girls, like 10-year-old Alondra Sustaita and 13-year-old Lilibeth Gonzalez, are second-generation riders. Their mothers competed in the sport in Mexico and the United States — a few were even part of Las Valentinas years ago. Others, like Roselina Medina, 13, and Azul Castro, 13, were newcomers.
“I just started doing lessons and then I was basically a backup for the team and then I was on the team,” Roselina said. “The first initial practices were a struggle, but after a few practices, we all started to understand the routine and our horses more.”
Initially, the girls practiced once or twice a week to get comfortable training with their horses. As the competitive season approached, they began practicing three or four times a week. At one point, they even hired an escaramuza coach from Mexico to review the final details of their performance.
At the end of the season, and despite the outcome at nationals, Rosemary Zamorez believes that the team ultimately achieved its goal: Its members reconnected with their roots while maturing and learning to take on responsibility.
The first season was incredibly costly for many of the families. It’s recommended that competitors purchase horses with some prior experience in charrería. According to Celina Zamorez, this one-time expenditure can cost upward of $15,000. Then, a family needs to budget for shelter, food and other monthly maintenance costs.
The team members also have to purchase custom sombreros, dresses, saddles and other accessories required by the sport. Sustaita’s father, Jesus Sustaita, explained that the judges can deduct points in competition for lack of uniformity between each rider.
The investment that each family made, added to the constant care required for each of their horses, taught the young girls important life lessons, according to Rosemary Zamorez.
“Now they can see that not anybody can do escaramuza,” she said. “You need discipline, you need time, you need dedication and you need your family’s support.”
U.S.-based charrería teams are more likely to carry this financial burden than teams in Mexico, said Diana Vela, the associate executive director of the National Cowgirl Museum in Fort Worth. Her museum curated an exhibition this year that showcased the history of charras in the U.S. and Mexico.
Through her research, she found that many of the teams have to continuously fund-raise to participate in the sport. “It just stands in stark contrast to U.S. rodeo, where you might have a competitor who’s got a five- or six-figure-dollar sponsorship,” Vela said.
The museum established a grant to help offset the cost for these teams and received applications nationwide. As her squad reviewed each response, she noticed a pattern. Many groups wrote about how they continued to compete in such an expensive sport because it helped them stay connected with their roots and gave them a sense of belonging.
Many of the girls in Las Valentinas agreed that the sport has brought them closer to their heritage. It was Roselina’s first time in Mexico when the team went to compete in the finals. She’s a third-generation Mexican American who had never thought of traveling to her family’s ancestral home. She said she was in awe of the experience, along with feeling a bit of culture shock.
“Competing in an arena that big with that many people watching on television is very crazy,” she said. “It felt really nice. It was different, but honestly, I prefer Mexico over the U.S.”
The experience has also motivated the girls to look forward to once again traveling across the southern border. Their first competition will be their regionals, typically held during the spring. There, Las Valentinas will have the opportunity to earn points to qualify for nationals. The team’s captain, however, doesn’t want to settle for anything less than victory.
“What’s the plan for this year? To get a higher score than last year,” Rashel said. “I would love to take first in the U.S.”
Hernandez is a freelance writer based in Riverside. This article is part of a De Los initiative to expand coverage of the Inland Empire with funding from the Cultivating Inland Empire Latino Opportunity (CIELO) Fund at the Inland Empire Community Foundation.
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