Unbreakables: 11 generations of horsemen

By Miranda de Moraes

”Unbreakables” are feral horses, older than 3, too wild to train. Jose Alejos adopted four.

Mustangs have overpopulated Rock Springs. In an effort to repair the ecosystem, the Bureau of Land Management has placed many up for adoption.

While the program offers a nonlethal alternative for population control, some of the wild horses are no longer colts, which can render them “unbreakable.”

When horses can’t be trained any longer they run the risk of slaughter, especially since horse meat is a blackmarket commodity. Therefore, the BLM surveys the new homes of its adopted horses to ensure the animals are alive and well.

It was Alejos’ turn for a checkup.

“Where are my babies?” the bureau worker asked, swiveling his head.

Alejos motioned ahead.

Three horses stood tall, patient, fastened with ropes. The bureau worker’s eyes doubled in size at the once feral mustangs, tamed. He hung speechless for a moment, then asked where the fourth was.

Alejos flashed a toothy smile.

“Between my legs,” he said, sitting atop a horse, one of the adopted “unbreakables.”

As a 10th-generation descendant of Jacinto Alejos — a Spanish horse trainer who he said profoundly contributed to the success of Spanish conquest in the Americas — Jose Alejos has horsemanship in his blood.

In 1611 the Spanish throne gifted Jacinto a 200,000-acre ranch in Retalhuleu, Guatemala, which he said was the first private Spanish property in the Americas. Jose Alejos grew up on this ranch, learning to herd cattle and handle horses as soon as he could walk.

Now a globally acclaimed horse trainer, the 52-year-old Alejos is stationed in Afton at a ranch where he’s “saving horses and changing lives,” as the Bronze Buffa lo Club’s slogan goes.

Alejos’ 20-year-old son, Joe, is a prodigy at the club, attributing much of his success as a now-professional bull rider to the Jackson Hole Rodeo. Joe was the rodeo’s top bull rider last season and is back this year to do it all over again.

The trainer

Jose Alejos calls himself a “war kid,” born in Retalhuleu amid the Guatemalan Civil War. The “warrior” mindset he cultivated at a young age informed his philosophy on masculinity and his value system today.

“In the modern world we are so accommodated with good stuff, but we need strong men,” he said. “Men like us conquered the land, men like us made society what it is, whether we like it or not.”

Alejos sees worth in war as a means to “save lives.” A virtuous man, he believes, is one who understands he has a “mean demon inside but can keep it down” until the time is right to be a “warrior.”

That thinking has enabled Alejos to excel professionally in the hair-raising sports of bull riding and bullfighting.

As a multigenerational horseman, Alejos found that bull riding came easily. He won his first national championship when he was 14. Two years later he started competing in college at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala, the fourth-oldest college in the Americas.

Alejos had intended to pursue a professional career in bull riding, but his alcohol addiction shattered his vision.

“When you’re an alcoholic you can’t be a pro athlete — you’re low energy,” he said. “I didn’t make it riding bulls in the U.S. because of alcoholism.”

It took the loss of his second son for things to change.

One month after his son was born, the infant died of a surgical complication. Alejos was 27 at the time and realized it was time to quit his addiction.

“I had to lose a kid to learn and do what I did,” he said.

Because he was no longer young enough to bull ride professionally, Alejos opened a professional bull riding arena in Guatemala called A-10.

At A-10 he recruited formerly incarcerated youth and orphaned children as athletes, training them to channel their aggression into bull riding, which provided the teens with purpose.

“The cartels gave them a sense of belonging,” Alejos said of the past lives of many of his riders. “That’s what I offered these guys: a family.”

Alejos was also committed to helping the kids get clean, as many struggled with addictions themselves. By sharing his “war kid” philosophy, he helped troubled teens “straighten out.”

“I would tell the delinquents, ‘It’s harder to not break the rules,’” he said. “Going wrong is easy, going clean is hard — especially when you’re an addict.”

In the nine years of A-10, Alejos said, he trained more than 60 kids to ride bulls, propelling them to professional competitions in countries like Australia, Canada, Brazil and the United States. The bull riding competitions Alejos held were so popular that the Guatemalan government insisted on buying the operation in 2006, he said.

Instead of changing hands, Alejos closed it down in 2008.

A few years before he opened A-10, Alejos started competing as a bull fighter, since he was then too old to bull ride professionally. He won the Professional Bull Riders, Inc. World Cup 10 years straight for bullfighting, among other accolades, until he decided to hang up his hat 14 years later.

“In my line of work, there are three reasons to quit,” he said. “When you’re not as good as you used to be, when you start getting scared and when you stop enjoying what you’re doing.”

Alejos was readying to compete at the 2008 PBR World Cup in Chihuahua, Mexico, when he felt something shift. For the first time in his career of extreme sports he felt he didn’t want to say goodbye to his wife and 1-year-old son, Joe.

While he still showed up at the World Cup, he quit bullfighting for good afterward.

Alejos reverted to horse training, channeling his multigenerational wisdom into training professionally. In home-schooling his children, Alejos could travel the world with his family as a horse trainer.

He works “behind the scenes,” often “training the trainers to train,” he said. Now he’s the star of his own show, smoothing out “unbreakable” horses and kids at the Bronze Buffalo Club.

The club

Multigeneration Wyoming cowboys and brothers Cody Hyde and Justin Hyde opened the Bronze Buffalo Club in Victor, Idaho, nearly 15 years ago in an effort to “preserve Western values.”

For about a decade, the Hyde brothers had been hunting for an emblem of traditional