RSS FeedVAQUERO THE FORGOTTEN COWBOY- NOW ON DVD
HECTOR GALÁN’S CLASSIC DOCUMENTARY ON THE ORIGINAL COWBOY- THE VAQUERO- now on DVD!
NARRATED BY HENRY DARROW
The screen is filled with visual pleasures, particularly the faces of Samuel Torres, Chanate and Wanche Alarcon, which are as dramatically contoured and weather beaten as the land that has sustained their livelihood. Galán’s intent in the story was to focus on more than just the bond between vaqueros and their ranching skills. “The land has its own beauty,” he said. “I wanted to make a portrait of the people, the work they do and the land, and the interaction of the three.”
-San Antonio Express News
The cowboy has been American’s mythical hero in countless books, television shows and films, a universally recognized symbol of America. Yet few people realize that the first cowboys in America were the Mexican American Vaqueros. They are the unsung heroes of the American West. “Vaquero” literally translated means “cowboy” in the Spanish language. These Mexican-American cowboys began their trade almost 400 years ago, shortly after the conquistadores from Spain brought horses to North America. Today, there are only a handful of these descendants of America’s first cowboys since a rapidly changing industry is quickly making this lifestyle obsolete. Shot on location in South Texas and narrated by Henry Darrow, the actor who portrayed “Manolito” from the “High Chaparral” Television Series, this documentary pays homage to a breed of men that history has overlooked as they practice a dying trade from an era gone by. Vaquero: The Forgotten Cowboy is told through the stories of these few remaining vaqueros. In the hard but beautiful environment of South Texas fifty-six miles from the Mexican border, the cattle industry is still important. Here, where the American cattle industry began, the old vaqueros faces attest to years of hard work in an unrelenting climate. In the film, vaquero Chanate Gutierrez (pictured above) says:
“All my life I’ve been on ranches, horseback all day…until ten or eleven at night sometimes…all month working, only on the last day we’d go to town to have fun…28,30 days in the brush, that’s what I miss. It’s very different now…you come back to town every night. Everything’s different.”
Although there is a sadness about the uncertain future of the vaquero, those portrayed in this film show no bitterness of resentment. In keeping with their tradition, a sense of dignity and pride prevails. “The documentary pays homage not only to the vaqueros of today, but also to the vaqueros who came before them, those who never received their due recognition,” says producer Hector Galán.
This special collector’s DVD of this now classic Hector Galán documentary (1988) has both the English and Spanish Versions of Vaquero and a bonus track of La Mujer en el Rancho, a documentary short that examines the role of women in the ranching culture of South Texas from 1750 to the present, exploring the sources of these roles in Mexican and Spanish cultures. Check out our on-line catalog for more info.