A study published in the journal Scientific Reports in 2022 showed that the Paso Fino breed descends from the Puerto Rican Criollo horse. The Criollo evolved from the original stock brought by the Spaniards: horses of Iberian-Barb ancestry known collectively as the Spanish Jennet, a type used by the Spanish light cavalry.

The Criollo was not a breed, properly speaking, but a horse population that set itself apart from other horses in the Americas and the Caribbean. These were the horses André-Pierre Ledru had in mind in 1797, when he wrote about the “indigenous horses” with a different kind of gait. They “have neither trot nor the ordinary gallop, but rather a kind of amble, a gait so hasty that the most attentive eye cannot follow the movement of their legs.” He was describing the Paso Largo and Andadura gaits at Las Carreras de San Juan and the many patron saint festivities in the capital and in other towns around the island.

In the big haciendas and plantations, foremen selected the horses with the smoothest gait and the greatest beauty for the landowners and their families to ride. From this selection, a new breed arose: the Paso Fino. By the mid-1800s, these horses were known and admired as the best horses in all the Antilles.

Its exceptional gait set the Paso Fino apart: an isochronal, four-beat, rhythmic, lateral ambling gait with quick, short footfalls that earned the breed its reputation as the smoothest-riding horse in the world. The Paso Fino from Puerto Rico was also known for its elegance and beauty, abundant mane, proud tail carriage, and, in some horses, a singular amber eye color that the jíbaros knew as ojos de cabro and geneticists call “tiger eye.”

Although the breed has been known since the mid-1800s, it was not until 1943 that the Asociación de Dueños de Caballos de Silla de Puerto Rico was founded. With it, the breed’s use shifted from that of a riding horse to that of a show and sport horse. The first official registry opened, and competitions became the stage on which the breed was showcased. Once celebrated in the town squares during the fiestas patronales, it was now revered as an elite show horse.

While the Asociación was being born, another story was unfolding: military families stationed on the island fell in love with the smoothness and comfort of the Puerto Rican horses. Instead of the show ring, they enjoyed their horses on the trail and at their riding clubs, where they held gymkhana events. When they returned home in the late 1950s and early 1960s, they brought their horses with them. What began as an appreciation of these horses as saddle and trail companions eventually evolved into competition: show horses were imported, and the Pure Puerto Rican Paso Fino Federation of America was born in 1987.

I have traced how the breed came into existence and how it was cherished on the island and on the mainland, because somewhere along the way—for the sake of versatility—we forgot what the breed is meant to be.

What defines the Puerto Rican Paso Fino is the unique Paso Fino gait, known on the mainland as “Classic Fino.” Sure, most of these horses also perform Corto and Largo, yet the trademark—the characteristic that makes a Paso Fino horse a Paso Fino—remains the Fino gait. That is where the real versatility of the breed lies: in a Fino horse that commands the full spectrum of gaits. A pleasure horse that only performs the Corto and Largo can make a great trail companion, but it represents the breed poorly because it lacks the emblematic quality that defines it.

In Puerto Rico, Paso Corto and Paso Largo—and sometimes Andadura—belonged to the Condiciones Generales class, a competition designed to judge functionality beyond the show ring. I usually describe it as the class where the foremen’s horses were evaluated. On the mainland, the Pleasure and Performance classes evolved from this concept. They were created not to replace Classic Fino or to exist as parallel classes, but to make room in competitions for horses that, although bred to be Finos, lack the qualities required to perform the Fino gait.

This distinction is harder to see on the mainland because horses usually lack show training and are mostly used as trail horses. Both conditions tend to mask the Fino gait in truly Classic Fino horses. On the island, on the other hand, while all horses are shown in the Paso Fino (Classic Fino) classes, it is clear to the educated eye that most are not really performing the Fino gait.

We must acknowledge the importance of the Classic Fino gait: in the show arenas, on the breeding farms, on the trail, and anywhere the breed is presented. We must also recognize the true worth of our horses—be it a Fino horse used on the trail or a paseo horse entered in a competition—with a dispassionate heart and a clear mind. It is not the use that defines the horse; its quality, assessed objectively, does.

Do not get me wrong: all these horses—show, trail, paseo, Fino, or pleasure—have Paso Fino ancestry, and their place in the breed is not in question. But just as the breed evolved from Criollos into the Paso Fino through the selection of the best horses, it could regress if we stopped breeding for its unique Fino gait.

I want to emphasize that here I am writing solely about gait, without considering other qualities that are also important and affect the way our horses perform. Conformation, naturalness, size, brío, temperament, elegance, and even smoothness are qualities that belong to the breed, and we have discussed them on other occasions. Today, our focus is exclusively on the gait—the Fino gait.

It is a fact that the Pure Puerto Rican Paso Fino is endangered. So we like to talk about preservation, genetic diversity, and growing the population and the number of breeders. But none of that matters if along the way we lose the one trait that makes this breed unique. If we stop breeding for the Fino gait, then we are not preserving the Puerto Rican Paso Fino; we are breeding Criollo horses.

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Photo of Con Suelte, by Conduende out of La Deseada.