Our Horses, Our Lives: Families and Communities in Popular Brazilian Equestrian Cultures

Historical research, literary tradition, and our own ethnographic research reveal, in the Brazilian context, the existence of rich and unique popular equestrian cultures, whose impressive number of participants (Brazil has the third or fourth largest equine population in the world, with horses spread across diverse walks of interspecies existence) include many humans who cannot imagine their lives without horses by their side. The present paper explores the daily life, family and community aspects of this relationship within rural and semi -rural communities in Southern Brazil, without excluding the testimony of urban informants whose domestic venue precludes the possibility of keeping a “backyard horse” but nonetheless consider their equines as family members and “significant others”. Based on participant observation, interviewing and questionnaire responses, we examine the meanings that people attribute to their equine ‘friends’, parceiros or ‘family members’. Gender and generation are influential factors that our research explores, although we cannot yet suggest any clearly defined patterns regarding their effect on how this intimate human-horse bond is experienced, represented and expressed.