Nikki Payne: 0:00

Ha, you thought you're getting off, didn't you? You thought you could get out of this series without talking about capitalism.

Adriana Herrera: 0:09

We're here with the Mexicans.

Nikki Payne: 0:13

You thought wrong.

Adriana Herrera: 0:14

We brought the vaqueros. You're going to eat your veggies today? Yeah and yeah. Welcome to another episode of Unbound, the podcast that explores the intersection of pop culture and the steamy world of romance literature. I'm Adriana Herrera, a novelista who loves to write about hot and horny Latinos.

Nikki Payne: 0:38

And I'm Nikki Payne, and I bring you steamy romance inspired by high school classics. In this episode, we're heading south of the border, or rather just west. Our series right now is about how the West was won, and we're examining the West through a different lens. So here's a juicy factoid for you the West is just Mexico y'all. For you, the West is just Mexico y'all. In the past, Hollywood movies have painted Mexico as this wild, lawless land, and it makes a case for American expansionism. It's like, hey, let's just take over, because it's a fucking mess down there.

Adriana Herrera: 1:19

Or another classic that they love to throw out there every once in a while is they're not doing anything with that land. Which leads us to one of the themes we'll be exploring in this episode Cowboys as a product of capitalism and ranching. Because we like to keep things light on this podcast With a side of land occupation and another one is are cowboy romances, or vaqueradas in Mexico, just tales of class struggle? Again, keeping it light on this last episode of our podcast for the season.

Nikki Payne: 1:54

Yes, my vote is yes. Cowboys are just the tentacles of ranchers with better PR, and nobody actually lays his bare better than the Mexican media. We're going to talk about telenovelas, we're going to talk about romance novels, we're going to talk about the border, ew. And we are going to actually also talk about some academic work. Again, like we said, nice and chill.

Adriana Herrera: 2:20

And you know what, Nikki? I think this might be the right moment for me to break a shocking truth to the people.

Nikki Payne: 2:32

I don't think we're ready. Just I don't know, I don't know.

Adriana Herrera: 2:37

Book yourselves. I think this is the right moment to bring up that. Latina people. We got white people too. What are you talking about, girl the?

Nikki Payne: 2:45

Latina people. We got white people too.

Adriana Herrera: 2:50

What are you talking about, girl? I know, shocking, shocking.

Nikki Payne: 2:56

But we are. All my life there have been whites, browns and blacks. What are you doing to me?

Adriana Herrera: 3:00

I mean like now, like everything is disarrayed now that I've said that. But we're going to get into it and even the white Latinas are catching some strays today. Stick with us, because we've got some stories, history and maybe even a bit of escándalo. All right, the tease this y'all. The Marlboro man is a remix, the OG is the Michoacan man. Imagine your cowboy rounding up the cattle, bringing down steers, taming wild broncos is something we all know. But did you also know that these skills were first perfected by vaqueros, the Mexican ranch hands working for wealthy Spanish conquistadors and hacendados in the 16th century? Because you guys had to know that Americans didn't actually invent white supremacy. By the time Elizabeth the Great figured it out, isabella Catolica was licensing franchises.

Nikki Payne: 4:09

Oh, God Burn, no, okay. No, this is true because Martin Sandler in his book Vaqueros, americans, first Cowboys, he argues that the Central American cowherders preceded the cowboys by centuries. So, according to Sandler, the vaquero lacked status and remained a pretty poorly paid laborer for hundreds of years. But these guys were the real deal. They rode barefoot, they developed the expertise needed for the dangerous work and they were master horsemen. Fast forward a few hundred years and these vaqueros shared their know-how with the inexperienced cowboys from the American West. The cowboys did what they should and they adopted their techniques, their distinctive clothing, tools and even the lingo. And in American media the Mexican, like capital T, capital M, represents folks we have to clear out to make the space safe for Manifest Destiny. But in actuality the West belonged to the vaqueros.

Adriana Herrera: 5:08

Vaqueros really are as much of a myth in telenovelas as they are in American media. The take them or leave them. Vaquero is still very much alive. Fuego en la Sangre, for instance, a Mexican remake of Pasión de Gavilanes, one of my favorite Colombia telenovelas. We can have a whole season just me talking about that one. That one novella revolves around three brothers seeking revenge for their sister's mysterious death. They infiltrate the hacienda of the wealthy and influential family, only to fall in love with the three daughters Adriana.

Nikki Payne: 5:46

The shit they start in that telenovela it is unhinged.

Adriana Herrera: 5:51

And Juan Reyes, that cowboy, that vaquero.

Nikki Payne: 5:58

Just a moment, just a moment of breath, just a moment of exhalations. Just exhale as we release our ovaries. Okay, but the real elephant in that room for that telenovela is actually class.

Adriana Herrera: 6:13

Exactly, and I mean it's such a theme in the genre of vaqueradas Fue, when La Sangre shows how class divides are navigated, with the upper class portrayed as corrupt, lazy and the lower class is honorable, scrappy, resilient, loyal. And it mirrors the social history of the vaquero who, despite his skills and bravery and basically creating the skill set and the survival skills that, like Americans, needed to conquer the West, they were never given the status that he was never given the status that he deserves. This is not only an example. This, this is not just this example with Paso de Gavilanes or En Fuego en la Sangre, but so many Mexican telenovelas about vaqueros focus on that impenetrable class divide that there is an usurper who wants what the wealthy have, or evil rich folks who want to maintain that status quo. Fuego en la Sangre is really a core story in the Mexican Western the poor engaging in that vigilante justice because the system just won't serve them.

Nikki Payne: 7:25

The system won't serve them. So there's justice, but there's also love. There are love stories, and we have oftentimes in telenovelas. There's the man from humble means, and this is the one who knows the land. There's the man from Humble Means, and this is the one who knows the land best, who knows how to do the work. We'll come back to this because this is an important aspect of the West in general.

Adriana Herrera: 7:48

The one who can actually tame the wild things on the ranch, which brought a thought to my head earlier about domestication and domination as a through line, not only in American westerns but in Baccarat too, like something that is kind of a core story in romance, specifically having to do with the west, is this man that has, like, the ability to tame right like the.

Adriana Herrera: 8:15

There's always these like very interesting symbolism and parallels with the, with the wild cold that nobody can get like to ride, and then the wild girl from the big house that nobody can get to calm down but he can get her to ride, so that there there is something very seductive here in this narrative.

Adriana Herrera: 8:39

Around the men who come from a poor background would be the ones to kind of like, take in hand this girl who, like, is kind of out of control and brought to mind. Actually, isabel Cañas says Paqueros del Norte, which is a horror kind of romance story, and it's one that really has that trope which makes sense, because I feel like Isabel is really trying to kind of really work with themes that are classic themes of Mexican storytelling, and in this story he is one of the farmhands and when they were children they were in love, but he ends up having to leave because of something that happens, and the heroine is one of the daughters of the Esendado, so you usually have this wild girl that's kind of untamed, so to speak, that the cowboy takes on and uh brings to heel, I don't know but like you know, you know you get what?

Nikki Payne: 9:45

I'm saying yeah, yeah, no, I get it and I'm activated. So, yes, I mean, alpha heroes are popular for a reason. It's very interesting to think about the flip side of that and the fact that a vaquerada or a western nepotism does happen, but it is the man who has the skill who often wins the day. So it's not just if you inherit a ranch, if you inherit a hacienda, you are actually going to have to know how to work that land, and the Western is one of the few genres and storytelling modalities where you actually have to earn your position.

Adriana Herrera: 10:24

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting thinking about it in terms of a romance, right? Because in romance, the alpha hero in many contemporary settings isn't required to do anything and in historical settings is really not required to do anything because maybe you just got to be a duke. You don't have to come on, baby, you have to be up, upright and breathing and a duke, and that is all that is required from you to be a hero. Um, it's a nice um bonus if you kind of say a speech about being an abolitionist every once in a while.

Nikki Payne: 10:56

Yes, or, if you like, fix the roof of a of a failing house, like everyone's a roofer.

Adriana Herrera: 11:03

That, that, that really does kind of like, make you like in, like the, kind of like 99 percentile, but like the, the, the Like the cowboy actually has to have more than that. Because if you in the cowboy romance, if you are like the son of the big house and you're just lazy and don't know how to like rope a horse or do a thing with a lasso or kind of like herd that cattle, then you're worthless, you're not the hero. You can't be the hero if you don't have the skill to tame the land Right. And so I think that is an interesting kind of little piece of something to think about. That kind of makes us, kind of brings us back to, like that original point of the beginning of the season of.

Adriana Herrera: 11:49

Is the Western, the quintessential American narrative, beautiful? So, yeah, so through these media lenses, whether it's books, telenovelas and movies, it is kind of easier to see the clear picture that the cowboy, as we know it, owes a lot like in the vaquero go hand in hand. The vaquero was there before, but you know, gentrification and everything, yes, bring it through, sis. The romanticized cowboy has overshadowed the true heroes of the American West.

Nikki Payne: 12:27

Yeah, I love the way you say that, because the Vaquero story is one of skill, courage and often unrecognized contribution. Right, and we are going to continue to explore some of these bigger stories, larger themes, and we're going to keep in mind how these narratives actually shape our understanding of history and identity. I mean it feels kind of big, but it's all going to loop in together. Trust us, ride with us.

Adriana Herrera: 12:53

Let us cook. We're not done. We're headed for the border next and it's not going to be so. We've seen how the vaquero culture deeply influenced the cowboy mythos, but I think it goes deeper and a lot of it revolves around the border.

Nikki Payne: 13:16

Exactly Y'all. Let's talk about the border. The border between Mexico and the US has really blown itself out of proportion. It's become a symbolic boundary between the safe United States and the threatening world beyond. We're in an election year right now, so politicians and pundits often use the border to signal their stance on safety and security, like framing it as defense or a line against various supposed threats criminals, drug traffickers, even diseases.

Adriana Herrera: 13:48

It's the narrative of invasion, which is a tried and true one, especially in the Western, but as always, it's more complicated than that.

Nikki Payne: 13:59

Always, always, okay. If anyone grew up in Texas, you know that we were like stapled to our chair and forced to learn so much Texas history. But this is like it's all coming back. It's kicking in against my will, because, if we remember, in the early years of the Republic, there wasn't really a clear border. It was just like, eh, vibes, right, just this amorphous western frontier. But all that shit changed in 1824 when the Mexican government enacted a colonization law. They're enticing Anglo-American settlers into Texas with super generous land grants, right. It's like come on, white people to settle. What's the worst that could happen? We all know what the worst that could happen is. So, like many Latin American countries actually did this in an attempt to whiten the indigenous and African population, so Mexico is not like new for doing this. And so all of these Anglo settlers come in. We'll call them proto-Texans. And the thing that they didn't like was that Mexico had already abolished slavery and attempted to enforce it, and they were pissed off about this. So, 1836, they revolted, declared independence from mexico.

Adriana Herrera: 15:07

Bada boom, bada bing, we have texas I love how you said that, um, but I mean I think, like the idea like this, like the settling piece and the division, is so seductive, like I mean thinking about, even hispaniola, where I'm from, is a very small island and even we, okay, we have a border between the dominican republic and haiti in a space that small. You still have that division, and it all comes down to race and it all comes down to socioeconomic conditions, um, which is interesting, I mean, if you thought we were just going to talk about romance novels and how cute they are, no, not in this episode. You're going to learn today. So I mean, yeah, I mean thinking about race and the idea of the West. It really was an attempt to define a symbolic boundary between English-speaking American and Spanish-American lands. In the South, the vaqueros taught white settlers how to cowboy and then they were run out of their own country.

Nikki Payne: 16:19

Boom, boom, our cowboy books, movies, television, and that includes romance. They rely a lot on this concept of holding the line against lawlessness. We talked about the sheriff or the cowboy who ends up having to create order in a town. Think of how you see the Mexican capital T, capital M, represented in the golden age of Westerns. There's always a? A, a simple, beautiful character. I'm going to call her Maria de Guadalupe. That she, she has large eyes, she's a brunette, often played by a white woman who's just brown hair. That like needs white protection. Or the men all have guns, or they're always running around, like there's always like a can of ale, like everyone's burping right, like everyone is always there's a sombrero tipped over their head. Like you understand the media that we are inundated with all the time.

Adriana Herrera: 17:14

Yeah, I mean it's interesting, like that piece of kind of like the browner you are in a Western, the least likely you are to be able to have some kind of like chance of making it in the west, even though you have been there for hundreds of years already you know what I mean, like the, the idea that in the media, how the western has been constructed, the maria de guadalupe, or like the ramones or the Juan's, are the ones most likely to not be there by the end of the movie, and yet they had been there for 200 years before John Wayne got there.

Adriana Herrera: 17:55

So I mean it is interesting and it's also something to think about. I thought that I I kind of say this here in terms of how we construct the cowboy romance narrative and thinking about, like the more insular it is, the more that it's a gentrified version of how the West actually has always been. Yeah, and and I mean if, if, if, we have to kind of like think about in a romance novel. I know that there are many a romance novel that I've read that is a cowboy romance where Brown people are only mentioned to talk about some kind of crime some kind of crime?

Nikki Payne: 18:41

And what if I tell you that every single news story that you hear about the invasion you can't see me, but I'm doing air quotes, heavy air quotes on invasion at the border by criminals, rapists, gang leaders, etc. It is the same cowboy narrative, y'all.

Adriana Herrera: 18:59

Yeah, the most secure border shit is John Wayne's storytelling, and it worked. The cowboy, the lawman who inherited and benefited from vaquero techniques and tools and situational knowledge, is celebrated for pushing out the very people who taught them how to do the things that they're doing to keep the land that they occupied.

Nikki Payne: 19:23

Okay, so let's bring this around. What does the border have to do with romance? Rock with me for a minute, y'all. So we've established that the border is not just about geography. It's a symbol of economic, racial, cultural divides. And in vaquero romances, interestingly enough, love doesn't always actually conquer all. It actually brings fucking chaos, right, death, destruction. The class divide in many ways, particularly in Mexican media, is stronger than love, and oftentimes, in the golden age of Hollywood, the cowboy may love that Maria de Guadalupe character in need of white protection, but she is not his ultimate stop in need of white protection.

Adriana Herrera: 20:05

But she is not his ultimate stop. No, she indeed is not. She is the point in that hero's character arc, as he earns his heroine, who will not be Maria de Guadalupe de los Santos, de Los Angeles. Every time it's, let's say, save the cat, but, you know, with a woman from another country that speaks a different language and so we're so used to like seeing these borders as these liminal spaces.

Nikki Payne: 20:37

But I'm I'm getting the feeling and you can argue with me, argue with me in the comments but like class and race, divides are actually firmest sometimes in these liminal spaces, as people try to like stretch and reach for identity yeah, agreed, and in an essence, the border is a definition marker that separates the hero from the villain, those in need of protection, those who give it, who is on what side of good and evil?

Adriana Herrera: 21:03

I mean it is a literal, physical line that is, defining where good is and where evil is, when light is and where darkness is, and guess where the lightness is and where the darkness is? Come on, it's always the same one, it's always the same place, spoiler alert, it's always. It's always south um, and a lot of stories we read and the media that we watch, love upends the social order if it intersects with class and race, like I mean I again like to me, like, and even when you think about movies, like classic movies, like the searchers with john wayne, I mean it is like these, these righteous men, you know, kind of going into like that darkness to extract that one innocent woman that was like taken from them, into like the hands of, like savages. I am also doing air quotes, even though you can't see me, so I mean it is. It is kind of like the construct, almost like, like, in certain ways, like these things have become part of the conventions of the genre.

Nikki Payne: 22:11

And in telenovelas we see this as well that line may not be associated with someone from a different country. Oftentimes that line, that deep border, that mark kind of etched in stone, is class and oftentimes, when individuals go across that line and across that border, all hell breaks loose and it tells us a story about who deserves love, who deserves a happily ever after and who actually deserves their comeuppance. Honestly, everything I need to know about love I learned from a telenovela. Don't do it, girl, he will sleep with your sister and plan to kill your father.

Adriana Herrera: 22:49

He will do it. He will do it. And I mean, the West is a hell of a drug. Hell of a drug. One thing that I would say is that it's not comparison for the way vaquero heritage has been repackaged, you know, cut, commercialized, whitened into the modern cowboy myth and and and again, kind of going um back to point of view, and the thing that we really talk about here is the gaze, um, that we're story telling stories from, and the difference that that makes it really comes. I think, when you think about cowboy romance Like if you're reading cowboy romance that doesn't deal in any kind of interaction with anything outside whiteness and these, you know a family that doesn't ever kind of have to grapple with occupation or the, you know the environment and the way the environment has been devastated, then you're reading sanitized.

Nikki Payne: 23:56

You're reading sanitized Westerns and you are injecting like America's favorite drug, like you are telling yourself America's favorite bedtime story over and over again, whether you mean to or not, even if you're reading really widely once you like, when you consume that Western that tells the story of moving people out so other folks can come in, or is talking about taming the land and saving someone from Native American raids. Like that language, right, is all about who belongs in the land, who deserves to be there. So is the West just Mexico? In many ways, yeah, the vaquero culture laid the foundation for what we now celebrate as the cowboy lifestyle.

Adriana Herrera: 24:45

I mean, they gave us music, they gave us mariachi hats and they gave us the chaps.

Nikki Payne: 24:50

Come on. They gave us Peso Pluma, which I'm very happy for.

Adriana Herrera: 24:56

Peso Pluma and Vicente Fernandez. Come on, oh my gosh Corridas.

Nikki Payne: 25:00

Oh my gosh, did you hear the Bad Bunny? And I think it's like Banda Frontera. Por cierto, I'll send it to you. It's very good, send it to me please.

Adriana Herrera: 25:12

I am all about it.

Nikki Payne: 25:14

I never knew I needed Tejano music with Bad Bunny in it, Like I never knew into los buques, which is like my favorite.

Adriana Herrera: 25:23

But let's, let's, let's, um, um. As much as I have loved this venture into the West, I am ready to go back East because it's hot, it's summer. Are we done with the West? I think we are.

Nikki Payne: 25:35

Okay, look, the first thing we tackled was the myth of the West. What kind of political work these myths that erase Black bodies, brown bodies, queer folk off the map does, because it's doing something, y'all it's giving you a bedtime story about your America right now, who is part of the American dream, who is excluded from it. But we actually didn't touch on everything. What?

Adriana Herrera: 26:01

did we miss Asian folks, queer women, or is there something else that we should have been talking about that we missed? We want to know. Tell us, is there anything that you want us to do in the future?

Nikki Payne: 26:18

We want to hear from you. What would you like to see us do a season on? Thank you all for joining us on this journey through the hidden histories of the West. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a review. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the Vaquero legacy and its influence on the American cowboy. We want to hear your thoughts on Beverly Jenkins. We've actually already seen some hot takes, right?

Adriana Herrera: 26:44

We love communicating, engaging with y'all, so make sure you spread the word, review us and subscribe and we might have some fun stuff um for next season to be able to keep this community growing and going until then, keep your hearts unbound.

Nikki Payne: 26:58

We did it, we did it. We, we did it. We did a series on the West. We did it, joe.

Adriana Herrera: 27:11

We did it, Joe. Oh my gosh.