Charro Days

Charro Days
Also called	Charro Days Festival; Charro Days Fiesta
Observed by	Matamoros, Tamaulipas; Brownsville, Texas
Type	Cultural
Date	Mid to late February
Frequency	annual

Charro Days, also known as Charro Days Fiesta or Charro Days Festival, is a two-nation fiesta and an annual four-day pre-Lenten celebration held in Brownsville, Texas, United States in cooperation with Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. The grito—a joyous Mexican shout—opens the festivities every year. This festival is a shared heritage celebration between the two border cities of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas. The Charro Days festivals usually have about 50,000 attendants each year. This celebration includes the Sombrero Festival as well as a parade that goes down Elizabeth St. through Historic Downtown Brownsville, TX.

The festival was first organized and celebrated 1937 by the Brownsville Chamber of Commerce to recognize Mexican culture and honor the charros, or the "dashing Mexican gentlemen cowboys." In addition, it is mentioned in the official webpage that the Charro Days festival was also created to bring people together during the effects of the Great Depression. Although not proven, it is rumored that the first “unofficial” Charro Days was realized in the early to mid-1800s, when people from the city of Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, just across the Rio Grande in Mexico, came together to celebrate a cooperative cultural festival to honor the two nations.

The four-day festival has daily parades, food stands and music, people dancing in the street, boat races, fireworks, bull fights, and a rodeo in Brownsville and in its sister city of Matamoros. Men, for the most part, wear traditional Mexican costumes—whether it is the charro costume or a cowboy one—while women wear the colorful Huipil costume.

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Wikipedia