Type the text here Horse tripping’: animal welfare
laws and the production of
ethnic Mexican illegality
Laura Barraclough
Published online: 08 Jun 2013.
‘Horse tripping’: animal welfare laws and
the production of ethnic Mexican illegality
Laura Barraclough
Abstract
Conflicts over animal practices have long been used to construct
dynamics of power. This essay examines how debates over immigrant
animal practices contribute to the production of immigrant ‘illegality’ in
the contemporary USA. I examine laws banning the ‘horse tripping’
events of the Mexican rodeo enacted in California (1994) and Arizona
(2009), situating these laws and related media coverage within the broader
landscape of exclusionary anti-immigrant politics. While the activists
(including Latinos) who supported the bills were primarily concerned
with animal welfare, their concerns were marshalled, out of context and
against their will, by nativists who demand border militarization,
exclusion and deportation. This essay shows that a range of actors
not just notoriously nativist groups but also Latinos themselves, as well as
progressive people and organizations participate, indirectly and
inadvertently, in the production of immigrant illegality.
Introduction
In 2009, the Arizona state legislature overwhelmingly passed a littleknown
bill, House Bill 2282, which banned the two so-called ‘horse
tripping’ events of the charreada (Mexican rodeo): the manganas a pie
and manganas a caballo (roping the front legs of a galloping mare
while on foot or on horseback, respectively, to bring her to the ground
in a shoulder roll). In the legislative hearings for House Bill 2282,
charros (Mexican cowboys) were portrayed as threats to American
identity and culture. The bill’s sponsor falsely contended that charros
intentionally maim and kill horses, while a city official from Phoenix
argued that people who abuse horses also abuse ‘our children’ and
‘must be reminded of American laws’. Ultimately, the Arizona state
legislature deemed the manganas an illegitimate cultural practice, in
contrast to ‘legitimate’ events in Anglo-American style rodeo, which
were explicitly exempted from the law (ASLHJC 2009).
Arizona was not alone in banning ‘horse tripping’; nine states have
banned the manganas since 1994 (Curnutt 2001, p. 153) in two distinct
waves corresponding precisely with the anti-immigrant sentiment and
legislation that erupted in the mid-1990s and again in the mid- to late-
2000s (Varsanyi 2010). Although these laws highlight a deeply contentious
element of Mexican immigrant culture, they have been largely ignored
by the press, scholars and activists, who focus instead on legislation
relating more directly to immigration enforcement and immigrant
exclusion such as Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 (2010) or Mississippi’s
House Bill 56 (2011). Scholars argue that these better-known laws, as
well as the thousands of other immigration-related bills passed in recent
years, collectively construct immigrant ‘illegality’, conceived not as an
objective marker of legal status but rather a racializing device that
positions Mexican migrants as criminals threatening American identity
and sovereignty from within the nation state (De Genova 2002; Ngai
2004; De Genova 2005; Nevins 2010). In focusing on laws directly
related to immigration, however, scholars miss an opportunity to
analyse the wider cultural terrain upon which illegality is constituted.
Given the centrality of animal practices and humananimal relations
to the consolidation of racial categories and structures of power, past
and present, animal welfare laws offer an especially rich site to analyse
the contemporary production of illegality. In this essay, I examine state
proposals to ban ‘horse tripping’, focusing on the laws passed in
California (1994) and Arizona (2009). I examine legislative documents,
media coverage and the websites and blogs of animal welfare organizations
to account for the relationships between the law, media and social
practice in the production of illegality. I argue that the discourses about
‘horse tripping’ propose an interpretation of charros’ cultural practice
specifically, and ethnic Mexicans’ degree of civilization more broadly,
within a wider social field characterized by debates about the threats
that Mexican immigrants allegedly pose to American culture and the
economy. I show that ethnic Mexicans who engage in the practice are
racialized and marked as illegitimate subjects devoid of claims to
belonging or citizenship that is, as ‘illegal’ and that they are
economically marginalized and politically disenfranchised as a result.
Yet because of the moral dilemmas raised by human domination
over non-human animals, legislation to ban the manganas has
generated substantial support from progressive people and organizations,
including those that represent the ethnic Mexican community,
which complicates analysis of animal welfare practices as a constitutive
site of illegality. As this essay will demonstrate,Mexican American
animal welfare activists, Chicana feminists and organized labour have
opposed the events because of the parallels that they perceive between
charros’ domination of animals, patriarchal ethnic Mexican family
structures, cultural nationalism and capitalist exploitation of the
working class (see also Na´jera-Ramı´rez 1994). Their objections have
often been marshalled, out of context and against their will, by
nativists who demand border militarization, exclusion and deportation.
Thus, a range of actors not just notoriously nativist groups like
the Minutemen but also Latinos themselves, as well as people and
organizations that are socially progressive in other ways participate,
indirectly and inadvertently, in the production of illegality. In what
follows, I first develop a theoretical framework for the analysis of
animal practices as a constitutive site of immigrant illegality, and then
use this framework to examine how the laws in California and Arizona
worked to construct Mexican immigrants and their co-ethnics as
‘illegal’ subjects.
Animal practices and the production of immigrant illegality
Contrary to US popular media, which use the word ‘illegal’ as a
naturalized and dehumanized marker of immigrant status, scholars
conceptualize illegality as a sociopolitical category, constituted by the
law, that marginalizes immigrants who reside within the USA, as well
as their co-ethnics, to preserve the capacity for their economic
exploitation and political disenfranchisement (De Genova 2002;
Ngai 2004; De Genova 2005; Nevins 2010; Harrison and Lloyd
2012). De Genova (2005, p. 215) argues:
In the everyday life of Mexican migrants in innumerable places
throughout the United States, ‘‘illegality’’ reproduces the practical
repercussions of the physical border between the United
States and Mexico across which undocumented migration is
constituted. In this important sense, migrant ‘‘illegality’’ is a
spatialized social condition inseparable from the particular ways
that Mexican migrants are likewise racialized as ‘‘illegal aliens’’
invasive violators of the law, incorrigible ‘‘foreigners’’, subverting
the integrity of ‘‘the nation’’ and its sovereignty from within the
space of the nation-state.
Illegality is produced through everyday processes by social actors who
do not necessarily represent the state, including animal welfare
activists. The state is, however, paramount, because it creates the
laws that define immigrant practices as ‘illegal’. The law is buttressed
‘Horse tripping’ 3 dominant discourse (De Genova 2002).
For Chavez (2008, p. 2), the primary discursive formation shaping
illegality since the 1990s is the ‘Latino Threat Narrative’, which
suggests that:
Latinos are unwilling or incapable of integrating, of becoming
part of the national community. Rather, they are part of an
invading force from south of the border that is bent on
reconquering land that was formerly theirs (the US Southwest)
and destroying the American way of life.
A sense of Latinos’ profound cultural difference and separation is
central to the Latino Threat Narrative. The claim is that ethnic
Mexicans and other Latinos cannot and will not assimilate into
American society, thereby constituting a primary threat to the
sovereignty of the nation state. The Latino Threat Narrative is
constructed primarily through media spectacles, which, according to
Chavez (2008, pp. 56):
transform immigrants’ lives into virtual lives, which are typically
devoid of the nuances and subtleties of real lived lives. It is in this
sense that the media spectacle transforms a ‘‘worldview’’ that
is, a taken-for-granted understanding of the world into an
objective force, one that is taken as ‘‘truth’’.
As a result, viewers lack empathy for immigrants and their co-ethnics
and ‘pass policies and laws that govern their behavior, limit their social
integration, and obstruct their economic mobility’ (Chavez 2008, p. 6).
Indeed, this is exactly what has happened since the 1990s: the number
of state- and local-scale laws related to immigration has skyrocketed,
corresponding to a charged media climate in which anti-immigrant
sentiment has grown dramatically (Varsanyi 2010).
Though not usually considered within this broader legal landscape,
controversies about immigrant animal practices merit closer attention
as vectors producing illegality. With the growth of the animal rights
movement since the 1970s, a robust body of animal welfare law has
been established (Curnutt 2001). These laws extend a long history in
which conflicts between groups with culturally distinct animal
practices have been used to construct and bolster dynamics of power.
Manipulation of the humananimal boundary was a central tool in
the European colonial project, when modern notions of race were first
being developed; non-European bodies were labelled as ‘beastly’ and
‘savage’ to justify their dispossession, colonization, enslavement and
4 Laura Barraclough
exploitation (Eze 1997; Elder, Wolch and Emel 1998; Mullin 1999;
Lundblad 2012). Although the terms of race-making have clearly
changed since the height of European colonialism, the humananimal
boundary continues to be a key site for marking difference and
justifying inequality in a post-colonial, neoliberal world. In South
Africa on the eve of democracy, for example, ritual cattle slaughter
conducted by black South Africans in formerly exclusive white,
middle-class suburbs became a ‘lightning rod for concerns about
racial integration in the post-apartheid suburb’ (Ballard 2010, p. 1070).
In Malaysia since independence from British colonialism, characterizations
of ethnic Chinese pig farmers as ‘dirty’ by the Malay-Muslim
majority have subtly shaped land development processes and regulations
to the pig farmers’ disfavour (Neo 2012). And in the USA, in
addition to the events in the Mexican charreada, activists have targeted
the live-animal markets frequented by Chinese immigrants, the
spiritual practices of West Indian immigrants devoted to Santeria,
and Muslim and Pilipino food preparation methods (Griffith, Wolch
and Lassiter 2002; Casal 2004; Kim 2007; Emery 2012). For Elder,
Wolch and Emel (1998, pp. 723), these conflicts signify a ‘process of
animal-linked racialization [that] works to sustain power relations
between dominant groups and subordinate immigrants, deny their
legitimacy as citizen-subjects, and restrict the material benefits that
derive from such status’ in other words, to produce immigrant
illegality.
Yet because animal practices raise the issue of speciesism
conceived as the failure to accord any non-human being equal
consideration and respect (Dunayer 2004, p. 5) such processes of
racialization and ‘illegalization’ become significantly more complicated.
Critical ethnic studies and American studies scholars, among
others, denounce the ways that cultural defences of human ‘rights’ to
dominate non-human animals not only fail to engage meaningfully the
moral issue of animal well-being, but also reify uncritical and nonintersectional
forms of multiculturalism (Casal 2004; Kim 2007). Kim
(2007, p. 234) observes that immigrants and ethnic minorities typically
invoke the value of their animal practices to the cohesion of their
cultural communities, and interpret their treatment by animal activists
as the latest attack in a long history of white aggression. They typically
argue that animal activists are hypocritical because they do not target
animal practices of the majority culture that could, if using similar
standards, also be judged as cruel. Yet Kim responds that the
multiculturalist defence wrongly essentializes and homogenizes animal
activists, who embrace a wide range of ideologies, strategies and
commitments and are often socially progressive in other ways (see also
Finsen and Finsen 1994, p. 26; Beers 2006, pp. 14795). She notes that
the multiculturalist framework overlooks divisions within ethnic
communities, and insists that animal welfare activists are working to
challenge ‘majority’ cultural practices such as American rodeo and
factory farming, albeit more slowly given the power of the industries
representing those interests. For all these reasons, Kim (2007, p. 239)
claims:
The notion that we are looking at a ‘‘clash of cultures’’ over
animal usage is therefore misleading. What we are really looking
at is a set of conflicts among interested parties who hold different
positions on specific animal-usage issues and belong to different
racial/ethnic groups, as well as the broader political entailments
that then attach to these conflicts.
My purpose in the remainder of this essay is to investigate these
‘broader political entailments’, and specifically the ways in which the
‘horse tripping’ bans despite their ethical intentions and roots in
progressive movements contribute to the production of immigrant
illegality. I remain sensitive to the dilemmas raised by the issue of the
human domination of non-human animals, while also showing how
those moral concerns can be, and have been, marshalled in the service of
a wider exclusionary agenda. As Na´jera-Ramı´rez (1996, p. 506) argues:
In a time of heightened intolerance, fear, and suspicion of others,
the charreada a transnational cultural practice involving
predominantly working-class Mexicans finds little support or
justification among the American public. Instead, the charreada
becomes one more social problem brought to the United States
by Mexican immigrants.
Indeed, in both California and Arizona, the ‘horse tripping’ bills were
enacted alongside other more obviously anti-immigrant bills, namely
California’s Proposition 187 (1994) and Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070
(2009). Thus, despite their ethical intentions and progressive positions,
animal welfare activists who worked to ban ‘horse tripping’, as well as
the organizations representing ethnic Mexicans that supported the
bills, inadvertently and indirectly engaged in the work of Latino
racialization and the production of immigrant illegality. I now
examine the California and Arizona bans within the wider landscape
in each state regarding ‘illegal’ immigration.
California (1994)
California was the first state to ban ‘horse tripping’, in 1994. At that
time, the state was gripped by polarized debates surrounding
Proposition 187, which proposed to deny medical care, public
education and other social services to undocumented immigrants
and their children. Propelled by economic recession and growing
anxiety among white voters about the state’s emerging Latino
majority, Proposition 187 was passed by nearly 60 per cent of the
state’s voters. Although Proposition 187 was later declared unconstitutional
and unenforceable, its passage produced immigrant illegality
by representing undocumented immigrants as illegitimate
subjects, valuable for their labour but unworthy of political participation
or social membership (Cacho 2000).
Though originating from progressives, California’s ‘horse tripping’
ban was proposed and considered within this context, and thus helped
shape the climate of illegality. California’s ban was initiated by Eric
Mills, director of the Oakland-based organization Action for Animals,
who had worked since the mid-1980s to prohibit various animal
injuries, from American-style rodeo to live-food markets. Like many
animal activists, Mills is progressive in some ways: he is a gay man who
was involved in the environmental movement before turning to animal
welfare activism, and he articulates a ‘universalist philosophy that
the abuse of animals is deeply linked with the same domineering
mindset that has subjugated women, ethnic minorities, and gay people
throughout history’ (Platoni 2003).
In 1993, Mills approached state congressman Joe Baca, a Latino
Democrat, to sponsor a ‘horse tripping’ ban. Perhaps cognizant of the
climate surrounding Proposition 187 and aware that the bill could be
perceived as another attack on ethnic Mexicans, Mills hoped that
Baca’s ethnic identity would assuage criticism. Baca agreed to sponsor
the bill, and introduced Assembly Bill 1809 to the state legislature that
year. Assembly Bill 1809 proposed to make it a misdemeanour to
intentionally trip or fell an equine by the legs for entertainment or
sport. However, when the Agriculture Committee adopted amendments
to regulate the manganas rather than prohibit them outright,
Baca and Mills dropped the bill (Bustillo 1994).
The following year, Mills worked to get a similar bill introduced, this
time arranging for the California Equine Council to sponsor the bill
through white Democratic Congressman John Burton. The new bill
proposed to amend an existing section of the California penal code
that already banned horse ‘poling’ (using a pole fitted with sharp
objects to make a horse jump higher) to also prohibit ‘horse tripping’,
punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
Exceptions were made for medical and identification purposes
(Bustillo 1994). In this version, the bill specified ‘nor shall the section
be construed as condemning or limiting any cultural or historical
activities, except those prohibited therein’ (California Penal Code
597g), suggesting that the bill’s sponsors were concerned with the
potential impact of the bill upon ethnic Mexicans in the state, or
perhaps wished to defend themselves from charges of racism.
Yet these sensitivities were elided by media spectacles that, amid the
tense climate wrought by Proposition 187, transformed concerns with
animal welfare into a wider discourse of illegality. While the ‘horse
tripping’ bill was before the California State Legislature, a television
special entitled ‘Pity the Horses’ aired on the ABC network’s 20/20
programme. In Na´jera-Ramı´rez’s (1996) interpretation, the narrative
portrayed horses as defenceless victims of the Mexican charro. Several
testimonies from veterinarians and animal rights activists (including
one Chicana activist) were featured; all claimed that the charreada is
dangerous and unnecessarily cruel. The one representative of charros
defended charreada in the name of tradition. This media spectacle also
included multiple elements of the Latino Threat Narrative. Through
references to charreada as Mexico’s national sport, the segment hinted
that charreada is un-American. The show also characterized charros as
criminal, dangerous and secretive; for example, the reporter claimed
that she ‘needed to blend in to attend’ because ‘armed guards are
present and conduct full body searches for weapons and cameras’
(CSLHACPS 1994, p. 3). Finally, the segment ignored the fact that
animal rights activists oppose all rodeo activity, including Americanstyle
rodeos, thus ‘racializing the debate’ by isolating charros as the
unitary threat (Na´jera-Ramı´rez 1996). Despite these biases, the 20/20
programme was included as the main piece of evidence in the legislative
analysis prepared for Burton’s bill (CSLHACPS 1994), demonstrating
the power of media spectacles to influence policy (Chavez 2008).
Burton’s bill was supported by numerous animal welfare groups that
focused on the events’ potential harm to animals, but these groups
implicitly constructed charros as illegitimate subjects. In its testimony
before the California State Legislature’s Public Safety Committee
(CSLHACPS 1994, p. 2), the San Francisco Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals submitted: ‘Although practiced at certain rodeo
shows, ‘horse tripping’ has no legitimate ranching or agricultural
application. It is solely in the name of ‘‘entertainment’’ that horses
running at full gallop have their legs lassoed and yanked out from
under them’ (emphasis added). The Fund for Animals expressed
similarly subtle references to the charros as illegitimate caregivers for
horses: ‘no [true] horseperson would subject his or her horse to such
treatment’ (CSLHACPS 1994, p. 2).
Defenders of the manganas responded that the bill would negatively
affect ethnic Mexicans by contributing to a climate of anti-immigrant
sentiment and anti-Mexican racism; however, their objections echoed
the uncritical multiculturalism and speciesism that have hamstrung an
ethical critique of humananimal practices (Casal 2004; Kim 2007).
For example, Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre said he
supported charreada because it is part of Mexican American culture
and a traditional form of family entertainment. He rejected the
characterization of charros as abusers who do not care about animal
welfare: ‘I think [the ban] . . .was prompted not by what is the norm,
but by some renegade groups that made it seem like charros are
unsympathetic to the welfare of animals, which could not be further
from the truth’ (Bustillo 1994, p. A18). Opponents argued that the bill
unfairly singled out Mexican American cultural events because it
proposed to punish ‘horse tripping’ but did not outlaw other activities,
notably Anglo-American rodeo events such as calf roping. As Pedro
Vaca, president of Federacio´n de Charros, told a reporter: ‘This is a
Mexican sport, and I think that has something to do with this. If they
take this away from us, what happens next? That’s what many of us
Latinos are saying’ (Bustillo 1994, p. A1). Manuel Escobedo, a
charreada organizer for the Pico Rivera Sports Arena in Los Angeles
County, believed that there were undertones of racism in the bill: ‘The
Americans are trying to take away one of the greatest Mexican
traditions . Plenty of horses die [at racetracks] but no one has
complained about that like this’ (Bustillo 1994, p. A18).
Yet numerous labour and civil rights groups representing ethnic
Mexicans supported the bill, defying the idea that the debate about
‘horse tripping’ was clearly defined along racial or ethnic lines. The
Mexican American Political Association, the Mexican American
Chamber of Commerce, the United Farm Workers (UFW) and the
International Longshore Workers Union all went on record in support
of the bill (CSLHACPS 1994). Mills submitted as evidence a letter that
Cesar Cha´vez, founder of the UFW, had written to him in 1990
(CSLHACPS 1994, pp. 34), which says:
There is great need for legislation to ensure the humane
treatment of animals employed in rodeos, and I would certainly
support any such bills . . .Racism, economic deprival, dog fighting,
and cock fighting, bullfighting and rodeos are cut from the
same fabric: violence. Only when we have become nonviolent
towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves.
Mills also submitted a 1993 letter (CSLHACPS 1994, p. 4) that he had
received from Arturo Rodriguez, then-president of the UFW, which
stated:
The legislation concerning charreadas and the banning of the
most dangerous and harmful of the events that you [Action for
Animals] are currently trying to put through is worthwhile and
much needed . . . I support your efforts on behalf of animals.
‘Echoing the animal welfare organizations, the Mexican American
Chamber of Commerce (California State Legislature 1994, p. 4) said:
The tripping of horses serves no useful or beneficial purpose and
is neither an art nor a sport nor can it be defended on the
grounds of cultural diversity or national tradition . . .You don’t
have to know how to trip horses to be considered a good
Mexican or Californian charro . . .No true horseman would
consider, much less allow, his/her horse to be tripped.
The cross-section of interests supporting the bill, including organizations
representing ethnic Mexicans, made its passage quick and easy.
The bill passed the State Assembly, with sixty-four voting in favour
and two opposed, and moved to the Senate in June 1994, where it was
also approved by a wide margin (Bustillo 1994). On 19 September
1994, governor Pete Wilson signed the bill into law, and its language
was added to the California Penal Code (section 597g), making the
practice of ‘horse tripping’ a state misdemeanour.
Despite the law’s progressive foundation and multiracial support,
California’s ban on manganas shaped a wider discourse of illegality,
anchored by Proposition 187, that contributed to charros’ economic
dislocation and political marginalization. Ramiro Rodrı´guez, national
press secretary of the American Charro Association who operated the
Los Alazanes charreada in El Monte (a city in Los Angeles County),
blamed the bill for the demise of his business. He said that the law
exacerbated the constructions of illegality and criminality framing
ethnic Mexicans in California. He told a reporter: ‘They almost made
it seem like going to a charreada was illegal, like going to a cockfight
or dogfight.’ He also noted the negative economic impacts: ‘The
arenas in Escondido, Coachella, Bakersfield, they went away. People
went from training horses to working as truck drivers. A lot of people
that were living well went from being on top to being on the bottom’
(Platoni 2003). Mark Franco, national director of the Federacio´n de
Charros, explained the bill’s impacts on charros’ political legitimacy.
He recalled that when the charros went to Sacramento to protest the
bill, their president spoke no English and needed a translator;
moreover, because of their outfits, ‘the senators thought the guys
were mariachis’. The charros felt that they had been delegitimized as
political subjects: ‘They really decimated us, and at that time we
weren’t prepared. We didn’t know why everything was happening’
(Platoni 2003).
For the California charros, these experiences were a wake-up call.
They immediately called a national meeting of charro organizations,
which decided to modify the practice of manganas in the USA. Since
1994, charros may rope the horse’s front legs but are prohibited from
actually bringing the horse to the ground, and strict punishments are
imposed on those who do (Guzma´n 1999). Despite these modifications,
however, animal activists and state legislatures have continued
their efforts to ban ‘horse tripping’ in other jurisdictions.
Arizona (2009)
Fifteen years after the passage of California’s ‘horse tripping’ ban,
Arizona’s state legislature considered a similar bill, amid a slew of laws
related to immigration enforcement and immigrant exclusion in that
state. The most controversial of these included Senate Bill 1070, which,
among other clauses, requires local law enforcement to determine a
person’s immigration status if there is ‘reasonable suspicion’ that the
person lacks documents (Arizona State Senate 2009a); and House
Bill 2281, which bans ethnic studies programmes (Arizona State
Legislature 2010).
It was in this context that Arizona’s ‘horse tripping’ bill was
introduced, considered and ultimately enacted. Upon her election to
the Phoenix City Council in January 2008, incoming Republican
representative Thelda Williams announced that her first item of
business would be to ban ‘horse tripping’ in the city, which she had
first learned about the previous summer while working with Maricopa
County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who proclaims himself to be ‘America’s
toughest sheriff ’ (MCSO 2012) and is embraced by nativists for
criminalizing immigrants. She explained her rationale for pursuing the
ban: ‘I don’t understand the entertainment or sport of it all because all
they’re doing is maiming and killing horses, but it is considered a part
of a rodeo and I want it stopped’ (Horse Channel 2008).
The Phoenix City Council did not take action, so Williams worked
with state representative Kyrsten Sinema (D-Phoenix) to introduce a
statewide bill. That bill, House Bill 2539, made the deliberate roping of
a horse’s legs for sport a misdemeanour, punishable by up to six
months in jail and a $2,000 fine. Exemptions were included for
‘traditional Western show events’ including barrel jumping, steeplechase,
racing and branding. Thus, ethnic Mexican charros were
deliberately singled out, while comparable activities that involve
predominantly Anglos and celebrate the American frontier experience
were specifically protected. In April 2008, the state House of
Representatives passed the bill by fifty-four to two and sent it to the
Senate, where it died on the last day of the legislature’s regular session
(ASLHJC 2009).
Sinema reintroduced the bill the following year as House Bill 2282.
When the bill came before the House Judiciary Committee, of which
she was a member, Sinema described the practice:
The purpose [of ‘horse tripping’] is for entertainment or sport,
and it’s practiced in three of the nine events held in charreada, or
Mexican-style rodeo. The tripping is intentional during these
events and points are awarded to contestants for dropping a
horse to the ground . . .we don’t have a lot of statistics about how
many horses are used in these kinds of charro rodeos, but . . . the
injuries are quite substantial.
Sinema distinguished the ‘horse tripping’ events, which she portrayed
as ‘illegitimate’, from ‘legitimate’ Anglo-American rodeo. This distinction
rested on her false statement (ASLHJC 2009, emphasis
added) that charros intend to hurt horses, an intention she did not
attribute to Anglo-American cowboys, who engage in virtually
identical practices:
I want to make it clear that this legislation would not interfere
with legitimate rodeo activities where the calves and other horses,
cows, are not hurt or not intended to be hurt during the
activity. This would solely outlaw those activities where the intent
is to hurt the animal and where points are awarded for felling the
horse to the ground.
Sinema misrepresented the manganas as intentionally harmful and
charros as deliberately abusive, while simultaneously freeing Anglo-
American cowboys from a similar critique. Her narrative fulfilled one
of the central outcomes of the media spectacle: it painted over details
and context to create a sensational (and untrue) portrait of the
practice, which could then be legislated out of existence.
Thelda Williams, who spoke in support of the bill, used similarly
sensationalistic language: ‘We felt very strongly because this is such a
severe formof animal abuse that there are just some things that warrant
this type of punishment and this happens to be one of them (ASLHJC
2009).’ Like Sinema, Williams mischaracterized the events as focused
primarily on the goal of injuring and killing horses: ‘To me, it’s heartbreaking
to think that you would deliberately maim or kill an equine.
They are beautiful animals, they do not deserve this, and it is simply a
sport whose purpose is to maim or kill an animal (ASLHJC 2009).’
She continued by suggesting that the events were linked to other
kinds of crime, namely child abuse, and that if they were allowed to
continue, the state of Arizona represented by its white American
children would be threatened (ASLHJC 2009, emphasis added):
I know people who abuse animals also abuse children, and to me,
in my mind, they are both very strongly linked. I think that any
form of animal abuse in the state of Arizona needs to be
prohibited, and very strong penalties attached so that they know
that we are serious about this, and that we will not stand for that.
Our people, our animals, are more important to us than anybody.
For Williams, ‘our people, our animals’ were clearly not charros and
not ethnic Mexicans, nor their children. She represented charros, and
the community that supports them, as cultural and national outsiders
as illegitimate subjects who need to be policed within the US
nation state. To be sure, charros would have taken serious issue with
these characterizations except that none were present in any of the
meetings where the bill was considered. As a result, the portrayals of
charros and charreadas that Williams and Sinema advanced during the
legislative process were allowed to stand as fact.
The bill passed the House Judiciary Committee unanimously and
was referred to the Senate, where Senator Jonathan Paton (R-Phoenix)
introduced the language of House Bill 2282 as a floor amendment to
Senate Bill 1115, which revised an existing statute prohibiting dog
fighting, to also ban ‘horse tripping’. Like the house bill, this
amendment specifically exempted American-style rodeo and other
Anglo-dominated equestrian events (Paton 2009). Not one legislator
spoke in support of the charros, or even raised concerns about the bill’s
clear ethnic targeting. The Senate passed Senate Bill 1115 by a vote of
twenty-eight to one, with no discussion or debate, and transmitted it to
the House for reconciliation. The House passed the consolidated bill
overwhelmingly, and transmitted it to Governor Jan Brewer, who
signed it into law on 13 July 2009 (Arizona State Senate 2009b).
As in California, media spectacles in Arizona played a key role in
the discursive construction of charros as illegitimate subjects, although
by the 2000s, websites and blogs had become significantly more
influential. Coverage of the Arizona legislative process was featured on
two blogs: horsechannel.com and the Phoenix New Times. The
horsechannel.com blog post, which caters to animal enthusiasts, first
appeared in January 2008 and opened with Thelda Williams’
mischaracterization of the sport: ‘participants . . . have the horses
gallop around a rodeo arena and then pull wires (sic) to trip the
animals.’ In the comments section, thirty-three individuals posted
thirty-five unique comments over a period of more than two years
well after the ban had been passed showing that the blog continued
to influence public opinion about manganas, and ethnic Mexicans,
even when the events were no longer allowed in the state (and despite
the fact that charros had not felled horses anywhere in the USA for
fifteen years). In this discussion, most posters wrote that they had
never heard of manganas, but were appalled to learn about their
existence. Most stated that they did not believe the manganas to be a
valid form of sport or entertainment, and supported Williams’
proposed ban. One person, Kathryn from Florida, did use the blog
to express her prejudice towards Mexico and Mexicans: ‘There is no
excuse for mangana, 400 years of stupidity and cruelty doesn’t make it
right . . . These ‘‘events’’ are enjoyed by neanderthal morons. You
would expect this to come from Mexico, just like bullfighting which is
reprehensible as well.’ Most comments, however, were framed as
concern for animals and did not attack Mexican immigrants, Mexican
Americans or Mexico as a country.
The second blog, posted by James King (2009) on the Phoenix New
Times a lifestyle website that reaches a much broader audience
appeared on the day that Brewer signed the ‘horse tripping’ law into
effect. King opened the article with the sentence ‘Its practice is even
dumber than its name’, and described ‘chicken-hearted charros’ who
play a ‘cruel game’. Forty individuals contributed 123 unique
comments. Like the 20/20 programme, this blog became a media
spectacle shaping the wider climate of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Randy Janssen, an Anglo-American man who defends the manganas
and maintains the website legalizehorsetripping.com, posted the first
comment and framed the debate by arguing:
Mangana or what the lunatic fringe likes to call horse tripping is
no more dangerous to horses then (sic) other equine events such
as steeplechase and cross country. The problem is, Williams lied
about it. She would not know the truth if it jumped up and bit
her. The fact is very, very, very few horses are hurt in mangana.
Eric Mills, the key figure in California’s ban, replied to Janssen:
I have witnessed charreadas first-hand. Even when the animals
are not injured, they are terrified. The horses I saw were
emaciated, with wounds old and new. They were leased from
‘‘killer-buyers’’, en route to the slaughterhouse. After being
roped, I saw horses turning somersaults, crashing into the arena
fence, defecating and urinating in fear, even screaming. And all in
the name of ‘‘tradition’’, God forgive us.
Janssen responded:
What you never seem to understand, is the importance of family
and tradition that is part of charreada. It is the core purpose of
charreada. That completely outweighs the small danger that the
animals are in. Homicide is the biggest killer of juveniles in the
country. Charreada helps to stop this . . . Outlawing mangana will
just mean that the already over worked police will have to
investigate alleged injuries to horses when they should be
protecting our children.
Notably, Janssen recast ‘our children’ to include ethnic Mexican and
immigrant children. But, like scholars who have debated the rights of
cultural minorities to engage in practices that harm animals, he and
Mills disagreed about where priority should be awarded: human or
animal lives.
Mills never replied to Janssen or posted again in this blog, but
Janssen’s claims about the centrality of charreada to Mexican culture,
and its importance for steering ethnic Mexican children away from the
dangers that they face by giving them a family-oriented recreational
outlet, sparked a heated debate. As subsequent posters responded,
they also subtly and, in some cases, explicitly attacked ethnic
Mexican families and parenting styles. ‘Mac’ wrote: ‘I think it is
supremely insulting to imply that Mexican families need to unite in
abusing animals to stay together. I assure you the Mexican family will
survive by relying on their traditions and religion.’ ‘Tattooed Lady’
wrote: ‘don’t try to use the excuse of ‘‘the ONLY thing keeping kids off
the streets is horse tripping!’’ what a crock! Time to come up with new,
improved ways to do that! Like . . .oh . . .GOOD PARENTING?’ A
poster named ‘MisterPeabody’ stated: ‘Maybe you people should be
encouraging your kids to volunteer at a shelter to keep them ‘‘from
getting pregnant and out of gangs’’ rather than supporting animal
cruelty.’ In response, Janssen replied: ‘Who are ‘‘you people’’,
Mexicans?’
With this query, Janssen struck a nerve that exposed Arizona’s
seething racial climate. Many blog posters protested that Janssen had
‘played the race card’, but then immediately and without apparent
contradiction linked their opposition to the manganas with the threat
that they believed Mexican immigration posed to American culture:
I am sick to death of hearing culture used as an excuse for cruelty
and abuse . . . FYI, this IS the United States of America, not
Mexico or any other third world country, Charreada is NOT a
tradition or custom here! . . .The ethnic/racial card is old and
played out. It has nothing to do with your ethnicity or race, there
are many customs/traditions that are not legal in the US, animal
fighting, canibalism, human sacrifice, etc and it has absolutely
nothing to do with discrimination. If you don’t like the laws here
you are free to leave at anytime. (‘Laura’)
If you want it in your life so badly, move to Mexico where
families are free to bond with one another over the petty torture
of innocent animals, and stop complaining. (‘Jessica’)
If you like this ‘‘sport’’ so much . . .move to that third world
failed state also known as Mexico. (‘Leni’)
For those of you who support horse tripping: okay, so it’s a
tradition in Mexico. FINE. KEEP IT THERE. I swear, the
machisma (sic) of bull fighting . . . and all the other garbage you
Mexicans call ‘‘tradition’’ can stay in your country and stop
leaking its way into the United States. (‘Andrea’)
I for one am sick of the bs ‘‘culture’’ argument. You are in OUR
country, either accept OUR culture or leave . . .Bottom line, we
need a much more secure fence at the border. For those that are
already in our country, either accept our ways, learn to speak
ENGLISH, or get the he** out. (‘JM’)
I for one am sick and tired of foreigners immigrating to this
country just to rape our freedoms!! (‘Anon’)
And one comment linked the manganas to that other hot topic in US
media spectacles concerning immigrants, the drug war:
I love freedom as much as the next person but a lot of the
‘‘underground’’ Rodeo circuit is actually laundering the drug
money and many gangs participate in every aspect of it, it’s more
like a introduction to the MM than keeping your kids from it.
(‘Wallangers’)
As these comments illustrate, participatory online discussion about the
manganas offered a platform for the construction of key elements of
the Latino Threat Narrative: the sense of charros (and ethnic Mexicans
more broadly) as a separate and criminal people who are unwilling to
assimilate and who endanger American society. Together, these
discourses and the laws banning ‘horse tripping’ helped to consolidate
the production of immigrant illegality in Arizona.
Analysis and conclusion
There were significant differences between the legislative processes to
ban ‘horse tripping’ and the associated media coverage in California
and Arizona. These differences attest to each state’s distinct political
economy and racial formation, but they also show how illegality has
become consolidated as ‘common sense’, and therefore increasingly
difficult to challenge, in the past two decades.
California’s ‘horse tripping’ bill was notable for its progressive
foundations and multiethnic support. There, a white social progressive
used an intersectional, inter-species lens to link the oppression of
marginalized human groups, non-human animals and the environment.
Whether due to genuine concern for the bill’s potential impact
on ethnic Mexicans or simply shrewd political strategism, Mills
deliberately allied with well-respected Latino labour and civil rights
organizations that opposed the manganas. Although the ethical
foundations of the bill became overshadowed by media spectacle,
charros and ethnic Mexicans in California nonetheless retained some
political voice. After the bill’s passage, established Latino leaders
defended the importance of charreria to ethnic Mexican culture, and
charros had the ear of the media to explain the bill’s negative impacts.
Whatever the shortcomings of the multiculturalist framework in terms
of its refusal to consider the moral well-being of non-human animals,
its proponents were able to show that the law had ‘racialized the
debate’ by singling out ethnic Mexican animal practices while leaving
similar Anglo-American events untouched.
By 2009, in Arizona, these sensitivities and limited defences had
vanished. There, the ‘horse tripping’ ban was initiated not by animal
welfare activists, but by two white elected officials who had virtually
no first-hand knowledge of charreada, showed no concern about how
their bill might affect Arizona’s ethnic Mexican community, and made
no efforts to build alliances with ethnic Mexican representatives or
organizations. As a result, perhaps the most striking characteristic of
Arizona’s legislative process and associated media coverage, in
comparison to California, is the utter absence of Latino voices,
whether in support of the bans or in opposition. Although multiracial
coalitions that included many ethnic Mexicans were vociferously
protesting other exclusionary bills in Arizona, namely Senate Bill
1070 and House Bill 2281, around the same time, such coalitions did
not emerge to challenge the ‘horse tripping’ bill. There are several
possible reasons: perhaps they did not know about it; perhaps they
deemed it insignificant; or perhaps genuine concerns about animal
welfare made them wary of challenging this particular bill. Whatever
the reason, their absence facilitated the construction of charros and
those who support them as threatening, ‘illegal’ subjects.Williams’ and
Sinema’s truth claims about charreada went totally unquestioned,
and not a single legislator went on record as objecting to the clear
ethnic targeting of the bill or the ways in which charros were accused
not only of potential harm to animals, but also of a much broader
range of social ills including child abuse, terrorism and savagery.
The silencing of immigrants and their co-ethnics, and their exclusion
from the sphere of formal democratic politics, is one of the main
effects of ‘illegality’. It is a reflection of the climate of fear, borne by
the threat of deportability (De Genova 2002), that leads ethnic
Mexicans and other Latinos to avoid public space, social institutions
and interactions. Harrison and Lloyd (2012, p. 381) observe that, in
this respect:
Both the oppressive and productive machinations of power here
function in a decidedly Foucauldian way: not tethered to laws or
policies or specific state actors but operating pervasively through
memory of dangerous and expensive crossings, as anticipation of
apprehension and deportation, and through expectations about
the associated burdens.
The cumulative effect is to produce ‘the ideal, productive worker: the
compliant workaholic’ (Harrison and Lloyd 2012, p. 380), who is
simultaneously invisible in other dimensions of social life and who
bears the costs of social reproduction themself. In this way, constructions
of illegality ensure the profitability of capital and maintain the
political legitimacy of the state in the eyes of the public a public from
which Mexican immigrants and their co-ethnics are increasingly
excluded.
The legislative processes and accompanying media spectacles
analysed in this essay suggest that these forms of exclusion and
silencing are achieved not only through laws related directly to border
and immigration enforcement, which are of course crucial, but also
through debates about everyday cultural practices, including those
involving animals. Casting the analysis of illegality’s constitutive sites
more broadly, in this way, implicates a far more diverse range of
actors, namely progressive people and organizations, in the constitution
of illegality. As I have illustrated in this essay, animal welfare
activists’ moral objections to the treatment of horses in the manganas
became marshalled by nativists as evidence of ethnic Mexicans’ alleged
threat to American culture, and to support calls for border militarization
and deportation. Given what is at stake, therefore, these cases
suggest the importance of developing political coalitions between the
animal welfare and immigrant rights movements, which so far have
not worked together in any meaningful way. Together, these groups
could fruitfully examine the relationships between the human domination
of non-human animals and the marginalization of immigrants
in the post-colonial, neoliberal world.
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LAURA BARRACLOUGH is Assistant Professor of American Studies
at Yale University
ADDRESS: American Studies Department, Yale University, PO Box
208236, New Haven CT 06520, USA
Email: laura.barraclough@yale.edu
20 Laura Barraclough