Each July the small Mexican town of Nopala celebrates its saint’s day with a week-long rodeo. Mexican cowboys are called charros and their celebrations are elaborate and ritualized. Certain aspects—the participants' fashion and their camaraderie—are enthralling and beautiful, but others are alcohol-fueled and violent; cows in the rodeo sometimes lose part of the tail they are pulled by. What keeps me coming back, however, is how the event crystallizes the performance of masculinity by men and boys for other men and boys.