Festival adapts as border wall looms in its future

Written in 1937, the charter of Brownsville’s first Charro Days lays out its terms and conditions like this:

“The purpose for which (Charro Days, Inc.) is formed is to promote immigration.” Next, it will take place in Brownsville and “it is to exist (for) twenty years.”

The number of directors is 10, the number of dollars? 100.

Defying these conditions, 2008 marks the 71st celebration of Mexican culture in Brownsville, emphasizing the unique relationship between the city and it’s sister to the south, Matamoros.

The charter is not only incongruous with the present meaning of the festival — it also fails to convey the climate in which it was conceived.

“The 1937 decision to come up with a Mexican cultural flavored event had a dual purpose of lifting spirits during the depression, and tourist attraction to help the city economically,” said Tony Knopp, professor of history at UTB-TSC.

Coming out of the Great Depression, Mexican culture was marketed through traditional dances and costumes that had begun to fade from the region.

“Immigration” is presented as an open term, not specifying what type, but at the time it likely meant domestic and international growth for the city.

The founders of the festival, including the local chapter of the Pan American Round Table, dressed in costume for all four days. According to Javier Garcia at the Historic Brownsville Museum, many carried on with what might now be considered a very “un-PC” or non-politically correct behavior.

“These were the borrachos,” he said, indicating a photograph from the 1930’s of two men on a street corner downtown. “Now, these were white men dressing up like Mexican peasants and drinking tequila. Today, some people might consider this offensive, but it wasn’t intended that way and people didn’t take it that way back then.”

Over the years, Charro Days has found its own meaning, independent of the original charter. It has grown into several coinciding festivals and continues to attract tourists to the region.

But with the threat of a border wall looming in the collective imagination of next year’s festival, the contentious landscape the parades march across belies a sea change in surrounding national politics; though Charro Days retains it’s local meaning, it is an increasingly unique expression of bi-nationalism in a country where walls are the favored means of conflict resolution.

The event’s Executive Director Michael Puckett says that although the border wall won’t change the spirit of the festival, its current path would relegate a crucial 10 acres of UTB-TSC property to Mexico, cutting off a space usually used for carnivals during the week.

Nobody wants to go through an access to the carnival grounds across the border,” Puckett said. “The wall would really hurt Charro Days.”

This isn’t the first time tighter border regulations have altered the festival.

To Puckett, the biggest change to date occurred in the early 70’s, when the state department cracked down on the lax restrictions during the festival.

“There would be more strolling musicians around downtown, the mariachis and all the singers would come (from Mexico) and play along the streets for money,” Puckett said. “The loss of that has probably hindered it the most.”

But Charro Days has evolved into a 10-day celebration that, though profitable — Charro Days, Inc. is now worth $497,492 — is more importantly a source of local pride and collective memory.

Like the charter, now a 71-year-old relic of official comprehension of the border, the planned path of the wall is just an external set of guidelines composed without true foresight; Brownsville and Matamoros will continue to determine their relative togetherness.