Rodeo —the Spanish word for “rounding up”— is a multi-million dollar sport in the United States, but it’s rooted in the riding, roping, and cattle ranching skills brought by Mexican cowboys to the Southwest hundreds of years ago. Today, most of the top professional rodeo athletes are white, but if you take a closer look, there are a large number of Mexican-American cowboys who live and breathe the sport. In this episode from our archives, Latino USA visits the Tucson Rodeo, also known as La Fiesta de Los Vaqueros, and follows one family’s dreams to turn their kid into a rodeo champion.

This episode was originally broadcast on April 7, 2017.