CELEBRATION 2000 - LAS VEGAS (USA)
THE REORGANIZATION
OF THE USA MARKET
International Point of Reference of the
Spanish Thoroughbred Horse
Report © PURA RAZA Magazine/ by Eliseo Ferrer
THE FOUNDATION FOR THE PURE SPANISH HORSE,a Californian entity presided by Barbara Currie, and created in 1998 with the purpose of boosting the breeding and development of the Spanish thoroughbred horse in USA, has gone out of its way to present its image, concerns, and line of work, not only to the Spanish public opinion, but also to all those countries of the world that are involved, in a greater or lesser degree of commitment within the breeding of the Spanish thoroughbred horse. This is how the Celebration 2000 event has carried though. Already in its first edition (Las Vegas, 25th-28th September) it has gone beyond expectations, surpassing the typical sketches of a "morpho-functional" (morphological and functional) thoroughbred horse contest (85 to enter into competition, and 150 in overall terms), in order to turn into an important international event, where the most urgent issues on Spanish horses have been addressed and analyzed (both formally and informally).
It couldn't have been any other way for an International Contest that had specimens coming from horse breeding stables and owners spread from coast to coast throughout the United States (nine states), not to mention some of the most renown Mexican horse breeding stables. In addition, there were institutional and private delegations from Spain, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, Canada and New Zealand. There was an important representation of authors / artists linked to the Spanish horse who presented their artwork per Donna Hecht's initiative within the commercial area of CELEBRATION.
...This was quite an important initiative, which as can be seen, was confirmed by the institutional presence of the American Federation President (FACCE), Laura Collado, from Costa Rica; Presidents to the Associations of the Spanish Thoroughbred Horse breeders from Canada and New Zealand, Mrs. Terry McGuire and Mrs. Robinson, respectively; the president of the Guatemalan association, Roberto Moll; the president of the Mexican Thoroughbred horse breeders, Abelardo Morales, who had several specimens to enter into competition; Antonio Ariza, the creator of the Aztec Horse, such new and important breed, and even the indirect presence of the ex - president of FICCE, Federico Jiménez: an announced visitor that ended up not confirming attendance, yet who was represented by personnel from his horse breeding stables, as well as by specimens from his line of horses.The absence of a Spanish representation equivalent to the American scales and levels, was quite a surprise (we must admit it), as those Spaniards that were present and big in numbers, either acted as judges (Miguel Ángel de Cárdenas, Francisco Fernández Daza and Lieutenant Colonel José Bovi), were part of the author-artist-sculptor representation under Donna Hecht's wing, or were just simply renown qualified pure race breeders: Juan Gómez-Cuétara, Andrés Montiel, Francisco Santana, etc., etc.
...Reasonable doubts that we most likely wouldn't have taken into consideration in Spain, given the sectorial discrepancies known by all, and which were quickly resolved in America, once we sat down to have a long chat with the President of the FOUNDATION FOR THE PURE SPANISH HORSE, Barbara Currie. This is an entity which, above all, and thanks to important resources, is working very seriously in order to eliminate disagreements, arrange concepts and labels (which more or less in opportunistic manner revolve around the Spanish thoroughbred horse) and integrate the existing diversity and scattering of organizational and association-related structures of the race.THE FOUNDATION
In addition to having very clear ideas, The Foundation's President, Barbara Currie, as well as the whole set of breeders, business-men and owners that are part of it, currently have enough resources and means to ensure that their work does not end up being a fruitless effort, nor does it get caught up in a political swamp, which is where having lack of resources takes the business world to most of the time. This entity has been subsidized in 1999 by the Federal Administration with an amount of 150,000 dollars aimed towards promotional and implementation tasks. The Foundation has received this year 2000, grants worth 300,000 dollars, which their executives have administered and invested, always with the purpose of boosting the values of the race (genetic and economical) as well as having local integration.
Perhaps the best way to understand its objectives and work plans, however, just as Barbara Currie explained to us, would be to know its origins and motivations, as all the future potential of this organism generates from its brief history.
We therefore should point our finger to IALHA (International Andalusian and Lusitano Horse Association), as the seed of the crop from where The Foundation for the Pure Spanish Horse sprouted.. IALHA comes from two of the most representative Associations within the USA sector. One of them, the American Andalusian Horse Association was created in 1977. The other, the International Andalusian Horse Association, was founded in 1979. With their merge in 1984, and the inclusion of the Lusitano horse together with the Spanish breeds, they planned to create an entity with important negotiating, organizational, and market potentiality skills. What happened was that the bond between the different races which was initially attractive and the main reason for the creation of IALHA, turned out to be something much worse than the dispersion existant before 1984. All kinds of products began to be bought and sold under the "Andalusian" name, as the new Association operated with poorly defined concepts (Spanish Thoroughbred Horse, Spanish Horse, Iberian Horse,Andalusian and Lusitano), and we encountered a very active market on the rise. This gave lead, in terms of information technology and buying and selling, to having horses officially registered in Spain, when only 40% of the IALHA specimens appeared within American registries. The Andalusian label was and continues to be used in an opportunistic and indiscriminate way by Lusitano horse breeders, as well as owners and breeders of Spanish horses without papers, etc.., even turning the Spanish Thoroughbred horse into a subdivision of the Andalusian Horse label. The temptation of this totum revolutum, just as some of the information obtained from our magazine reveals, has been so great that over the past few years, it has lead some of the Spanish Ancestry breeders (Fine Trot, Peruvian Trot, Aztec, Spanish Barb, etc.) to take advantage of the priceless job, both in registry and purity, that takes place in Spain as well as abroad in order to present these products under the ambiguous Andalusian Horse hallmark.This was, according to what the President of The Foundation told us in Las Vegas (Nevada), the sole reason for the break-up with the International Andalusian and Lusitano Horse Association: the defense of the registry of the pure race as one of the essential values, that must establish the aesthetic as well as the buying and selling values of a Spanish Thoroughbred horse. This is how this group of breeders led by Barbara Currie (Oak Hill, Jdon Farms, Manor Hill Farm, Vaughan Smith E.S., Rancho Sol del Pacifico, Gremlan Farm, Skelton Mountain Dream Ranch, Camass Andaluz, Blue Moon Ranch, etc.), in a disagreeable and defiant way against such ambiguous criteria from IALHA, ruled out the possibility of creating a new association from the beginning, since there are currently (for yet more confusion) two associations that were created in the last few years: Californian ACUSA-PRE, presided by Javier Herrera, and closely bound to the ANCCE, and Texan ACPRE, managed by breeder Beberly Denhan, whom we found at the last ECUMAD to be very dependant upon FENACE, and neglected while trying to to recover for her entity the signature of the protocols that Horse Breeding Registry office had broken off with IALHA (December 1999).
Thus, it is logical to think that given such confusing scene, which in USA clearly recreates the existing differences and accusations between ANCCE and the State Administration in Spain, the group of breeders represented by Barbara Currie avoided, from the beginning, the vain politicization that would have meant creating a new association, and opted for an intelligent way out, which would be the boosting of the market as well as common sense.
…Which is the base from which the Foundation For the Pure Spanish Horse emerged at the end of 1998, commercially supported by the parallel entity, PREMO (Pura Raza Española Marketing Organization). With complete determination, after the Horse Breeding Registry Office's break-up of the protocols with United States breeders, as well as the suspension of the evaluating commissions at the beginning of this year, it is fighting to recover and direct formal relations with Spanish Institutions, once their USA registries are organized and established.
We are talking about a project, which undoubtedly after the CELEBRATION 2000 experience, confirms a future reality, and before which, and critically speaking, there can only be one reasonable doubt…one that refers to the psychological and semantic rooting of the Andalusian Horse concept, as even after breeding and raising Spanish Pure Race horses, and being crystal clear when it comes to judgement, The Foundation….nor PREMO (Pre Marketing Organization for the Promotion of the Pura Raza Española, the Andalusian Horse), nor the Foundation's web page, nor advertising, nor the sponsors' and partners' web pages have been able to escape such controversial name.
The encouraging aspect of it is that in the case of the Californian initiative, the term Andalusian Horse is not deductive, but rather indicative instead.
_____________________________________
© PURA RAZA. N. 13. October-December / 2000
