Yaya, a 5-foot, 73-year-old ball of energy, darts around us, flitting in and out of the room, each time entering with a pile of photographs. There’s Yaya as a 7-year-old—decades before her daughter and my wife, Ana, came along—beaming from the top of a float festooned with posies. Another photo captures her aboard a wagon honoring Costa Rica, finger firmly inserted in her nose. “Ofelia de la Garza, my godmother, put me on a float for Charro Days every year,” Yaya says.
Ana and I lie in bed, having driven to Yaya’s house on South Padre Island late the night before with our 2-year-old son, Tommy, who’s watching Thomas the Train at the foot of the bed. Yaya shows us another photo: my wife at 3 in a China poblana dress, hands on hips like a gunfighter ready to draw.
“Tommy, look,” I say. “It’s Momma when she was your age.” He gives the image a glance before turning back to his cartoon.
First held in 1937, Charro Days is a weeklong celebration that pays tribute to Brownsville’s ties to its Mexican mirror, Matamoros. Their union is symbolized by the Grand International Parade, which starts in the former and ends in the latter. The annual fiesta is filled with smaller parades, private parties, and public events. “The nuns of Incarnate Word would bring in instructors from Mexico to teach us dance steps,” Yaya says. “Las raspas, las chiapanecas—every grade learned a different dance from a different part of Mexico.”
“Do you remember any of the dances?” I ask teasingly, sure she can’t recall the steps.
“Alexa!” Yaya shouts. “Play ‘Jarabe Tapatío’!”
When the trumpet starts to blare, Yaya grabs the end of her purple nightdress and begins swinging it from side to side, her tiny feet stepping forward and back in concert with the music. The sudden movement breaks Tommy’s trance. Blinking, he looks at his grandmother, back to me, then back to Yaya. “My turn! My turn!” he shouts and bounds forward.
Enjoying this article?My mother-in-law, Yaya, was born in Laredo in 1950 as Maria Antonieta Ferraez. Her father, Tony, and mother, Belia, moved the family to Brownsville two years later and had a son, George. The Ferraez family grew thick roots in the Rio Grande Valley. Tony ran his banana-importing business, while Belia taught migrant students in local high schools. They built a house on Calle Jacaranda overlooking a resaca. There was camping on the unblemished sands of Boca Chica Beach and fishing off the docks at the Port of Brownsville.
Maria and George established their lives in Brownsville, too, both as teachers, but when Ana left for college, she didn’t come back. A journalist, she moved to California, then North Carolina, where she fell in love with a fellow Texas ex-pat—me. Ana and I relocated to Denver, got married, and bought what we thought was our forever home. Tommy’s arrival made us think otherwise. Most of my family, along with Ana’s best friends, lived in Austin, and we needed babysitters.
We moved home to Texas in 2022 and have built a nice life, but one that very much resembles my childhood—in a cookie-cutter, mostly white neighborhood outside Dallas. This is concerning because Ana is Tony and Belia’s only grandchild, the last of the Brownsville Ferraez line. We worried: How would Tommy ever come to know and love the culture that shaped his ancestors’ lives?
Our first step, we decided, was Charro Days. So, this past February, we packed Tommy into our SUV and decamped for the RGV.
As much as we want Tommy to experience all of Charro Days, we also realize a toddler’s moods are, well, capricious. We decide to stuff our itinerary into the final Saturday. We’ll watch the Grand International Parade and then take in Sombrero Festival, a carnival in downtown’s Washington Park. The plan seems foolproof. I mean, what kid doesn’t love a parade? On the road from South Padre to Brownsville, Tommy chants, “Party, party, party!”
Ana and I make the same hourlong drive the night before to meet friends for dinner in downtown Brownsville. Recently, the local government has poured millions into revamping the historic city center, attracting a flurry of new retailers. We arrive early and pop into one of them: Pluton Brewing Company. Before the bartender can fill my pint, Ana tilts her head in recognition. “Do I know you?” she asks him. It turns out she went to high school with his sister, and their dads jammed together in the same band.
The number of chance encounters Ana has whenever we’re in Brownsville always amazes me. She went to high school with this girl, crushed on that guy’s son, snuck over to Matamoros to party with the cousin of that woman over there. But later, over drinks inside the dark confines of the James Beard–nominated cocktail bar Las Ramblas, I bring this phenomenon up to our friends, both natives, and they look at me like I’m crazy.
“I don’t know anyone here,” Grecia says.
“In Brownsville?”
“No, here. Ramblas.”
Her husband, Ed, then takes me next door to see the new Boqueron Tapas + Wine restaurant…where his friend just happens to be manning the grill. Oh, and down the street, his wife’s cousin had just opened a bakery called Sweet Co. On the drive home, Ana points out the window: “Hey, I went to high school with that guy!”
The next day, we score a coveted seat for the Grand International Parade by the grace of a family friend, Celia Galindo, who is hosting a brunch at her family’s restaurant near the start of the procession on Elizabeth Street. Even at 10:30 a.m., two hours before the parade begins, the event bursts with laughter and Tejano music.
Tommy bobs his head to the beat, grabs handfuls of cinnamon cookies from the buffet of chilaquiles, tamales, and chorizo con huevo, and downs too many Champagne-free mimosas. For 30 glorious minutes, he is indeed partying. But then his fuse starts to sizzle. Ana and I take him on a tour of the floats in the staging area, where he dances as mariachis warm their trumpets, then hops on the saddle of a plastic steed. Then comes the meltdown, and we retreat to Tío George’s house near downtown for a respite.
Charro Days is a citywide reunion natives look forward to with nostalgia. “It’s for children,” Grecia had said at dinner, “and for people who have children.” Think Christmas—one that outsiders, like me, can enjoy but never fully appreciate. Driving to George’s house, I worry that Tommy, nodding toward sleep, won’t either.
A few hours later, our spirits refreshed from a nap, we swagger with renewed purpose through the streets of Brownsville toward the echoing carnival bells of Sombrero Festival—and slam to a halt behind a traffic jam of strollers.
Since 1986, Sombrero Festival has injected even more entertainment into Charro Days. Food vendors encircle Washington Park, one end of which is flanked by a concert stage and the other an inflatable ship under attack from a giant octopus. Hundreds of children and their parents press closer and closer around carnival rides. Tommy points from his stroller to a red sports car gyrating on a track. “Lightning McQueen!” he squeals.
The next two hours are a blur. From Tommy high-fiving the person in the pepper suit at the chilaquiles stand to downing not one but two footlong corndogs (chased by a rainbow snow cone), our son finally comes to rest at the edge of the crowd gathered for the grito contest. This daily Sombrero Festival competition pays tribute to the triumphant cry emitted by Mexican soldiers during the War of Independence from Spain in 1810.
Tommy is struck still by the thunderous yelps emanating from the speakers. “Like this,” Yaya tells Tommy. She bends her back and belts a powerful imitation of the staccato howl to the sky. Tommy laughs, shakes his head, and then tries his best to mimic his Yaya—though his war cry comes out more like a hooting owl singing falsetto. “Good, good!” Yaya says.
We giddily make our way to the car as the sun sets. In the quickening darkness, Ana and I can hear them privately conferring in the backseat.
“What was your favorite, Tommy?”
“Um—Dada and Momma and George and…Yaya!”
“Are you glad you came to Brownsville?”
“Yep,” he says, then shouts, “Boo! I see you!”
“I see you!” she replies, then coos, “Aye, my Tommy.”
