Vicente Fernandez Jr. named Mr. Amigo 2010
Champion horseman, singer and actor Vicente Fernandez Jr. -- “a true charro for Charro Days” – is being honored with this year’s Mr. Amigo award.
Son of the legendary Mexican singer and actor, Vicente Fernandez Jr. has made his own mark in the world of charreado, or Mexican style rodeo. Read more...
Charro Days Book signing
 Meet the authors of “Charro Days in Brownsville” at Baile del Sol on Sunday, Feb. 21
Dr. Anthony Knopp, Dr. Manuel Medrano and Priscilla Rodriguez will sign copies of their new book “Charro Days in Brownsville” between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. at the Charro Days headquarters, 455 East Elizabeth Street.
Books will be available for purchase. A portion of book sales revenues will go toward a scholarship for UTB/TSC history majors.
Read more...
Sombrero Fest in Iraq
 Somewhere in Baghdad, the soldiers of 812th Quartermaster Company are getting into the Charro Days spirit, with help from Sombrero Festival and Charro Days officials, plus other civic and veterans groups.
Sombrero Festival officials were contacted in January by Sgt. Mark Anthony Lucio of Brownsville, who is currently stationed at Camp Stryker near Baghdad. Lucio had a plan to stage an Iraqi Sombrero Festival, just like the ones he has attended and enjoyed all his life.
Most of the soldiers in his company, based in Harlingen, are from the lower Rio Grande Valley, he wrote.
“For years I've attended the Charro Days events...Read more...
Charro Days Volunteers ...Thank You!
Volunteers are the heart, soul and willing hands of Charro Days.
Also, the crepe paper flowers, fajita taquitos and just about everything else.
Whether it’s arranging beautiful table-top decorations or cutting, scooping and rolling hundreds of pounds of grilled beef into flour tortillas for a hungry Baile del Sol crowd, Charro Days wouldn’t be Charro Days without the thousands of hho give their timelpers we to make the festival happen.Read more...
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Johnny N.Cavazos as Charro Days Parade Marshal 2010
 Honorary Parade Marshal for the 2010 Charro Days festival will be successful businessman and philanthropist Johnny N. Cavazos.
Cavazos is being honored for his extraordinary years of volunteer service to Charro Days, and his involvement throughout the Brownsville community. He will ride in a position of honor in the traditional Illuminated and Grand International parades.
“Johnny has been an active member of Charro Days for over 50 years,” said Kenneth Lieck, president of the Charro Days Association. “He’s a past president and life director.
“You don’t find too many individuals that stay with an organization as an active member for so many years. This is just our thank-you to Johnny for his participation in Charro Days for all these years.”
Cavazos, who first began volunteering with Brownsville’s premier annual celebration as a youth, said he is proud to add Honorary Parade Marshal to his Charro Days resume.
“It’s quite an honor. I’ve been a member of every Charro Days committee you can think of and worked my way up to being president in 1977. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Cavazos and his wife of 56 years, Nena S. Cavazos, were honored together several years ago with the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College’s Distinguished Alumni Award. Nena will be at his side during the Charro Days parades, Cavazos said.
The couple met on the TSC campus in the early 1950s, and both have been active in the community for decades. Starting from a one-room office in 1965, they built a thriving independent insurance agency together.
Never forgetting their own modest beginnings, the couple has helped many deserving high school graduates with scholarships. They also donated generously to UTB/TSC, creating one of the largest family scholarship endowments in the university’s history.
“Johnny is very well known, not only for Charro Days but also in the community.
He and his family have always given back to the community,” said Lieck. “He’s done well, but he’s also given back to his community.”
Cavazos said his first volunteer job with Charro Days was as a gofer. “Do this, do that, go here, go there….They really put us to work,” he recalls. He remembers the fun of growing out his hair and beard and participating in the Charro Days “Brush Courts,” staging mock-arrests of community leaders and extracting fines that were always paid in good humor.
Nowadays, Cavazos joins other past presidents in barbecuing fajitas for Baile del Sol, Charro Day’s popular downtown street dance. He’s proud of the way Charro Days has preserved and is bringing back the fun he remembers from the old days – the dances, the parades and the costumes that are part of the Charro Days culture.
“I am very, very honored to be Parade Marshal,” said Cavazos, 76. “I told my wife, I just feel like I’ve done everything…I’ve worked in all those committee, I worked my way up to becoming president, and now this. I love Charro Days.” |
