Arnold R. Rojas
Arnold R. Rojas, also known as "Chief," was an influential writer and chronicler of the vaquero lifestyle, drawing from his own experiences as a vaquero in California. Born on September 25, 1896, in Pasadena, California, to parents of mixed Yaqui, Mayan, and Spanish descent, Rojas faced early hardships, including the loss of his parents and a stint in an orphanage. He escaped formal education by running away at twelve, seeking a life as a vaquero, a path that shaped his identity and literary voice.
Over his lifetime, Rojas authored seven books that are recognized as regional classics, rich with the lore and culture of the vaquero community. His writing style blends elements of Spanish oral tradition, incorporating vignettes and anecdotes that convey both the humor and challenges of ranch life. Rojas emphasized the unique characteristics of vaqueros, such as their distinct horsemanship techniques. His work not only celebrates the vaquero way of life but also reflects a deep respect for the individuals who lived it, capturing their virtues and the dignity found in their hard existence. Rojas passed away in 1988, leaving behind a legacy that honors the vanished breed of vaqueros.
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Subject Terms
Arnold R. Rojas
Writer
- Born: September 25, 1896
- Birthplace: Pasadena, California
- Died: September 8, 1988
Biography
Arnold “Chief” Rojas wrote of the vaqueros with whom he lived and worked for much of his adulthood. His seven books, widely considered regional classics, record the colorful but hard life of a vanished breed.
Of mixed Yaqui, Mayan, and Spanish heritage, Rojas was born on September 25, 1896, in Pasadena, California. His Mexico-born parents died when he was six years old, and he was placed in an orphanage in San Luis Obispo. His formal schooling ended after the third grade when at age twelve he ran away from the orphanage hoping to become a vaquero. “The only work a man my race could get in those days,” he later wrote, “was as a mule skinner or vaquero, both cheap labor.” Rojas worked in California’s San Joaquin Valley at several large ranches, learning to handle horses and cattle and absorbing the lore of the vaqueros, who, he insisted, were entirely distinct from cowboys. In 1935 he opened the Bar-O Stables in Bakersfield, California, which he operated until 1950. Afterward he worked as a horse dentist and trainer. Rojas died in 1988.
While Rojas was a teenager, living with an uncle near Acton, California, a nearby homesteader befriended him, lending him books by such authors as Miguel de Cervantes, Émile Zola, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, and Jack London. From these Rojas taught himself to write, but his first inspiration was always vaqueros. “It is in his work that the vaqueros have found their collective voice,” writes literary critic Gerald Haslam.
Rojas came to publish his writing indirectly, however. In 1950, in order to advertise a rodeo program for which he was the chair, he began contributing short character sketches of vaqueros to the Bakersfield Californian. First part of a column by the paper’s editor and later under his own byline, Rojas’s sketches continued and drew the attention of the California historian Monsignor James Culleton, who published three collections of them in book form. Four more collections followed.
Rojas’s style is rambling, full of the flavor of his subject. According to Haslam, Rojas imitates the estampas, cuentitos, and chismes (vignettes, tales, and gossip) of Spanish oral tradition, a mixture of folk history, practical lore, and campfire-style storytelling. Rojas frequently speaks of the traits that distinguished vaqueros from cowboys, such as the way they rode horses by controlling them with their own bodies rather than by the reins, and he delights in relating the history of horsemanship as much as the rough humor that attended ranch work. Underneath both the fact and the humor, however, Rojas’s deep appreciation for the men themselves informs his books with poignancy and hardscrabble dignity. In The Vaquero (1964), he writes bluntly, “The vaquero’s way of life gave him virtues which do not exist in this modern day, and at this distant time no man can judge a man of that era. His life was hard.”