Abstract
Southern Brazilian “traditionalist movement” discourse constructs its main signifiers of identity around the figure of the bold and adventurous “Gaucho” and his faithful mount. Women, on the other hand, are represented as fragile creatures, suited only for hearth and home. Nonetheless, our own field work suggests that a decade of women’s rodeo participation is changing the face, if not the deep symbolic constructions, of movement practices. Through participant observation and interviews, we not only uncover an emergent “deconstruction” of rodeo milieu homosociality but also provide a unique view of changing gender relations in contemporary Brazilian society. Changes, however, are as evident as they are contradictory: as women and men negotiate new forms of interaction, the sporting institution of the rodeo and its still largely male leadership both welcome women’s participation and act in ways that “domesticate” it, attempting (consciously or unconsciously) to keep it within the confines of normative femininity.
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Notes
- 1.
Widely respected and honored for her bravery and courage, Anita Garibaldi, a native of the Southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, took part in the famed armed struggle of the nineteenth century known as the Revolução Farroupilha and has long since joined the ranks of Brazilian folk heroes.
- 2.
The practice of holding a separate national competition for women show jumpers continues, but is seen as an ancillary practice meant to feed into the major non-sex-segregated circuit and, as our informants tended to frame it, as a means of providing girls and women with added encouragement and incentive (Adelman 2004).
- 3.
With a population in the vicinity of 236,000 thousand inhabitants, the municipality belongs to the Greater Curitiba region (http://www.sjp.pr.gov.br/sjp/sao-jose-dos-pinhais-cidade)
- 4.
Horse barns which bring people together around Gaucho traditions, the name itself draws a line between this space and that of English-style riding barns, commonly referred to as “hípicas.”
- 5.
A monthly publication, this magazine features news, publicity, and articles related to Brazilian Crioulo horses. This particular report was published in September 2009 (http://www.revistacrioulos.com.br/)
- 6.
For ethical reasons, we use pseudonyms throughout this article when citing or quoting our interviewees and informants.
- 7.
According to official rodeo programs and our observation, separate (age-specific) categories are organized for men (peão) and for boys (piá), whereas there is just one female category, that of the so-called prendas [girls and women].
- 8.
Women use a lasso that is shorter and therefore lighter than those that men use.
- 9.
Without any interest in constructing an apology for the decade of Workers’ Party national administration, it seems reasonable to argue that there has been a much more visible feminist presence in Brasilia and that several types of government policies have supported new ways of thinking about gender and sexual diversity (Adelman and Azevedo 2012). Feminists in academia have also become increasingly visible as interlocutors in public and political debates, although there is still much to be done in this vein.
- 10.
See Sedgwick’s (1985) brilliant contemporary classic for historical discussion of this issue.
- 11.
Peon, cowboy, ranch hand.
- 12.
The term “feminist,” for example, continues to be largely demonized and misunderstood in Brazil today.
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Adelman, M., Becker, G. (2013). Tradition and Transgression: Women Who Ride the Rodeo in Southern Brazil. In: Adelman, M., Knijnik, J. (eds) Gender and Equestrian Sport. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6824-6_5
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