The Criollo (in Spanish), or Crioulo (in Portuguese), is the native horse of the Pampas (a natural region between Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, in South America) with a reputation for long-distance endurance linked to a low basal metabolism.

[citation needed] The Criollo is a hardy horse with a brawny and strong body with broad chest and well-sprung ribs.

[4] The breed is famous for its endurance capabilities and ability to live in harsh conditions, as their homeland has both extreme heat and cold weather.

[citation needed] The first promoted the Asian-type crioulo and the latter the taller African type with a coarse, convex head; fallen croup; and thinner mane and tail.

Nevertheless, the breed maintains its own identity in a taller, leggier and squarer body conformation with a more angular hock that gives it the long stride it requires to cover the great distances in the flat Argentine plains known as "Pampas".

The modern crioulo head has a straight facial profile and a shorter muzzle with longer ears than is typical in the Chilean Horse breed.

The national rodeo competition is known as paleteada, and it involves a paired team of horses and riders that approach a steer from both sides at a full run.

[editorializing] One example of the breed's fantastic endurance was the ride made by the Swiss-born Argentine rider Professor Aimé Félix Tschiffely (1894–1954) between 1925 and 1928.

[6] Tschiffely took two crioulos, 16-year-old Mancha and 15-year-old Gato, on a 21,500-kilometre (13,400 mi) trek from Buenos Aires to Manhattan, New York, crossing snow-capped mountains, the world's driest desert, the thickest tropical jungles, riding in all types of weather.

In 1987, Jorge Saenz Rosas, owner of the Argentine Estancia Cristiano Muerto, offered his criollo Sufridor to the American Louis Bruhnke and the Russian-French Vladimir Fissenko for a horseback ride from the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego up to the shores of the Arctic Ocean in Deadhorse, Alaska.