by Verne R. Albright

For Jose "Pepe" Risso (the father), October 3, 1992, began with an unimaginable disaster. Five of his best stallions were murdered; there is no other word to describe it. Wearing masks, persons unknown scaled the ten-foot-high wall surrounding Pepe's breeding farm near Lima, Peru. After overpowering and tying up four employees who lived on the premises, they moved on to the next stage of their grisly plan. Evidently, the stallions were chosen because they were more accessible in their stalls than the mares and geldings were in their large paddocks.

Seen here in Bozal, JRM Mariscal was 1988 & 1989 Peruvian National Champion of Champions

Quietly and mercilessly, the intruders clubbed the occupants of the first five stalls to death, but they were brought up short when they got to the sixth. JRM Mariscal defended himself, valiantly fighting off his attackers, delaying them until the overnight curfew, imposed because of terrorist activities, had expired. When people began moving around, the killers fled. Though struck several horrendous blows, one of which broke his skull and caved in his forehead, Mariscal had saved his own life and that of Resplandor, the stallion in the following stall

While the crime was in progress, the killers had been followed by accomplices who beheaded the victims and cut off their legs, leaving these bloody souvenirs behind in the stalls. The carcasses were muscled into the very truck that had so often transported Pepe's horses to glory at Peru's National Tournament. The truck and its gruesome cargo were then driven away. Before being recovered by the police, the vehicle would be repainted and used for further rustling activities, involving beef cattle. The final irony was that all five of the slaughtered horses - as meat - were worth no more than $750.00 total. Alive, they had been worth perhaps a thousand times that much. Among them was JRM Predilecto, one of only seven stallions in Peru's history to be a National Laureado, and several extraordinary young stallions, more than one of which had seemed destined for greatness.

JRM Predilecto+ three times National Champion of Champions Stallion and Laureado

In seven of the nine years between 1984 and 1992, one or another of Pepe's stallions had been Peru's National Champion of Champions. Considering the quality of his up and coming animals, the end of this dominance was nowhere in sight ... until the awful events that left him with only his mares, colts and two aging stallions. Though the loss of these stallions as show horses was devastating, it was even worse to lose them as breeding animals. The five of them descended from five different dams and four different sires, and that kind of genetic variety was a treasure, rare and irreplaceable. Among those slaughtered that terrible night was one of Peru's finest proven sires, JRM Predilecto+. He had been the leading sire of prizewinners at Peru's National Tournament in 1989 and won this award two more times after his death. The other victims had been among their breed's most-promising prospective sires. From countries throughout the Western Hemisphere, cards and letters poured in, offering condolences and assistance. Friends and competitors alike, thinking that terrorists had been responsible and might return, offered free care for Pepe's remaining horses at their ranches. A few even offered the use of their sires at no charge. Some of the most generous and appreciated of these offers came from breeders in the United States. Speculation was that the discouragement resulting from such a crushing blow might lead to Pepe's retirement from horse breeding. Overnight, decades of hard work had been undone. Gone were the sires upon which future plans had been based and for which his broodmares had been produced. To others, it seemed that a lifetime of work had been destroyed, but for Pepe, his work had only been interrupted. Within days he was making plans to land on his feet. His determination was evident when, fourteen days after the disaster, he named a newborn colt "Retorno."

JRM Predilecto+ three times National Champion of Champions Stallion and Laureado

It was his quiet way of saying what General Douglas MacArthur trumpeted when the Japanese drove him from the Philippines: "I shall return." And return he did! Pepe is one of the most masterful breeders in the modern history of the Peruvian Paso. Throughout his lifetime, he has been familiar with livestock breeding on both theoretical and practical levels. His father produced perhaps the best dairy herd in Peru as well as three winners of Peru's Derby Nacional, the maximum achievement to which a Thoroughbred breeder in Peru can aspire. In his own lifetime, Pepe has bred thousands of cows, horses and pigs with notable success in all three areas. Though few horse breeders produce more than 20 foals a year, he produced an average of 300 calves a year for decades, in the process supplementing his theo-retical knowledge of genetics with vast practical knowl-edge. After the murder of his stallions, it took only four years for Pepe to return to the ultimate winner's circle. In 1996, JRM Premier became the fourth of his National Champion of Champions Stallions, and in an interview, Pepe described the horse as the best he had ever owned, superior even to those that were murdered. In four short years, his skill as a breeder had miraculously brought his breeding program back to the top. Competing with the best at Peru's 1999 National Tournament, horses he bred took home four first place and two second place awards, mostly in classes for younger animals. One of his sires was the top producer of winners and two others were among the top ten. Only seven years after his unspeakable loss, he stood fourth as an exhibitor and fourth as a breeder in competition with the best Peru had to offer, and he did this while showing a remarkably small number of animals. It's worth stressing that Pepe's impressive list of winnings has been amassed almost exclusively at the national show. He rarely shows elsewhere. Having twice risen to the top of the Peruvian Paso world - once before and once after the murder of his stallions - Pepe has proven conclusively that success did not come his way by chance, nor was it achieved by pur-chasing exceptional animals from other sources. He stands out simply because he is a remarkably talented producer. According to Pepe, a horse breeder who doesn't improve his animals from generation to generation is no more than a "multiplier of horses."

JRM Resplandor 1990 & 1992 Peruvian National Champion of Champions Stallion

He defines breeding as: "the art of adding to one's horses the virtues they lack while not losing the virtues they already have." This is something that sounds a lot easier than it is, and by this definition, there are a highly limited number of breeders in any breed. When asked to name his most important accomplishment, Pepe will say: "My sires have been sons of my sires." This has been possible because of the exceptionally large variety of bloodlines, which he had skillfully blended into his herd. Many breeders gloss over their animalsÕ shortcomings and declare that they "love" their horses anyhow, but Pepe's intellectual approach demands that deficiencies be corrected. When making a point about Peruvian horses, he will often quote from great literature. This cerebral approach was one of the reasons that he and Jose "Pepe" Musante (the father), considered by many to be the "genius" of the breed, spent so many enjoyable hours talking when Risso was a young man in search of knowledge. But logic and reason, by themselves, do not make a great breeder. There must also be a touch of intuition, something few have and fewer still know how to use. The final necessary ingre-dient, of course, is plain old good luck. Except for the murder of his sires, Pepe has had it, and in the end, it overpowered the bad luck that sent his breeding program to the very brink of extermination. For that, he gives thanks to God.

The ultimate award available in Peruvian horse showing, Laureado, signifies that a horse has been three times Champion of Champions and is obligatorily retired from further competition.

In studying the lineage of Pepe's animals, one very seldom finds the same ancestor more than once in the first two generations. This is a general rule of thumb among dairy breeders and Pepe also applies it to horses. According to him, this helps avoid inbreeding depression, which in dairy cattle usually leads to a lower than average performance among highly inbred animals. Of course, breeding dairy cattle is not precisely analogous to breeding horses, but there are strong similarities.
Though there are exceptions, an animal's merit, fertility and life span generally decrease as the inbreeding level increases. The attraction of inbreeding is that it "fixes" characteristics, making them more likely to be transmitted. Unfortunately, it "fixes" undesirable characteristics with the same frequency as those being sought. In fact, some scientists maintain that inbreeding may "fix" undesirable characteristics more frequently since it increases the chance of matching up two recessive alleles, and recessive alleles generally have less desirable effects than dominant alleles.