HOWDY, COMRADE: IT'S ROPIN', RIDIN' AND REVOLUTION AT RODEO CUBAN-STYLE

By Laurie Goering
Tribune Foreign Correspondent
February 9, 2001

HAVANA -- During the week, strapping Homero del Sol works as a technician for Fotovideo
Services, a Cuban state videotaping firm.

Come Sunday, though, he cinches on a belt with a big silver buckle, settles a gray Stetson on his
head and heads out to one of Havana's oddest weekend hot spots: the revolutionary rodeo arena.

Never mind that Havana is an urban redoubt of 2 million. Never mind that cowboy boots and chaps
are outnumbered 100-1 by four-pocketed white guayabera shirts and hot pink spandex bodysuits.

In Havana, "Pure Cuban Rodeo"--as the arena sign notes--is alive and kicking in all its dusty,
bawling, socialist glory.

"Ninety percent of these guys live in the city," says del Sol, lounging among the milling horses
during a break from his Sunday work in the rodeo announcer's booth. But with the help of shared
horses, homemade equipment and an occasional coaching visit from Texas, Cuban rodeo is holding
its own, he said.

Havana's whitewashed arena lies in the heart of Lenin Park, a sprawling green delight on Havana's
outskirts filled on the weekends with kids flying kites, families rowing on a lake and couples
trotting about in pony carts.

The rodeo arena itself, like most of the park, was built by Celia Sanchez, a noted revolutionary who
supplied Fidel Castro's rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains before their 1959 victory and
remained a close Castro confidant until her suicide in 1980.

On Sundays the arena's parking lot is jammed with bicycles and hulking 1950s Buicks and Fords;
Cuba has few pickup trucks. It's disco and Cuban criollo music that blares rather than country, but
there's no mistaking what's happening down in the white dust arena, flanked by palm trees and
stands of bamboo.

Tail in the air, a calf breaks from the chute and streaks down the arena with a cowboy in hot
pursuit. Seconds later the loop finds its mark. The calf is flipped upside down, and the cowboy's
hands are in the air. It's a fast time.

"Muy technico!" del Sol says admiringly over the loudspeaker. An exacting technical performance.
"Applauso publico!" he yells, and the crowd takes the hint.

The bulldoggers in red crash helmets rather disconcertingly make their leap onto the horns of a
galloping steer. It's not the picture of Western tradition but certainly safer.

Bulldoggers who miss the mark the first time around sprint to their horses, remount, chase the steer
again and fling themselves into the air, this time emerging with an armful of horns and digging their
heels into the dust. Sometimes the steer quickly falls to a judolike flip; other times long seconds
tick off the clock before the dusty wrestling match ends.

Cuban rodeo, like its Latin cousins in Brazil, Mexico and Central America, has its eccentricities.

In socialist Cuba, rodeo is an amateur sport. There are no professional cowboys, no cash prizes, no
trophies or ribbons for rounding a trio of barrels on a sprinting horse or sticking atop a ton of
spinning bull for eight seconds. Anybody with sufficient guts and talent can enter free.

"We do this for love of the sport," del Sol says. "There's no money here, but there's love."

One advantage, of course, is that in socialist Cuba medical care is free. The cowboy who isn't quite
fast enough climbing the fence in front of a charging bull gets a free ride to the hospital and a free
patching up.

Cuban rodeo has no saddle bronc or bareback riding events. The problem, del Sol explains, is that
there just aren't enough horses to spare in Cuba, especially any with talent for bucking.

There also isn't much money for rodeo finery. The odd cowboy in Cuba has red show chaps, but
silver-laden saddles, fitted Western shirts and ostrich cowboy boots are the exception. These
cowboys ride, more often than not, in well-worn saddles, jeans and black work boots.

Most of them, like Wilfredo Valdez, a bandy-legged Cuban Marlboro man in a black cowboy hat
and black handlebar mustache, keep a horse or two in their back yards on the city's outskirts, or
they muck stalls for somebody else to earn the chance to ride.

"I have been doing this 12 years now," says Valdez, leaning on his little quarter horse mare, "and
there isn't a weekend you won't find me here."

Cuban rodeo is not a sport for rugged individualists. Cowboys are judged in teams, rather than
individually. Horses generally are shared. And sportsmanship is the rule, even during the tire race, a
free-for-all version of musical chairs in which cowboys race their horses toward a handful of old
tires at the end of the arena and dive feet-first into them in a cloud of dust.

The odd cowboy out loses--there's always one fewer tire than there are riders--but there are always
more pats on the back than angry gestures, even when two cowboys end up face to face in the same
tire at the same second.

Over the years, Cuban rodeo has benefited from a few contributions from its much-admired but
formally imperialist neighbor to the north.

Occasionally, an embargo-evading Texas cowboy, for instance, has stopped by to offer tips on
roping or bull riding, and from time to time del Sol gets his hands on a U.S. rodeo video to study.

"We're improving our technique," he says. Cuban rodeo may have only 50 years of history,
compared to double that in the United States, but it is gaining ground. This week, the country is
hosting a full-scale international rodeo, with cowboys from Brazil to Guatemala testing their mettle.

The crowd favorite at Havana's arena most Sundays is one of the odder rodeo events: wild-cow
milking.

A herd of surprised-looking horned cows are driven into one end of the arena, while at the opposite
end cowboys on foot coil their lassos and shake out loops.

When a hand is dropped, the cowboys sprint down the arena--a comic sight--and toss a loop at the
nearest cow. One member of each cowboy team then grabs the plunging animal by the horns and
hangs on for dear life while the partner, evading kicks, attempts to get a few squirts of milk into a
tin cup.

Then it's a race on foot back up the arena, tin cup in hand, to the announcer's stand, to the satisfying
roar from the stands.