Dispatches from a Mexican Bullfight

(Rafael Ortega)

The Spanish, as we all know, came, saw, and conquered virtually everything from Mexico southward, on horseback with swords drawn. Along with smallpox and Catholicism came the centuries-old tradition of the corrida de toros, translated directly as “a running of the bulls.” More simply, it’s bullfighting. The spectacle caught on all over the old Spanish empire, but nowhere quite like in Mexico. The country currently has somewhere in the neighborhood of 220 bullrings of varying sizes and quality. The largest in the world, Mexico City's Plaza del Toros, holds 42,000 fans, which puts its capacity on par with a Major League baseball park. But I wanted something a little more intimate, so I went to Merida in the Yucatan Peninsula, to a ring much more in line with Double-A baseball.

The late February Sunday performance is a sellout and I’m forced to turn to scalpers and pay double the face value—800 pesos, a little over 60 dollars. As often is the case, a big-name Spanish bullfighter is the quickest way to fill up the seats; it seems Mexico has the rings and Spain provides the stars. Today the marquee name is Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza, who has movie-star looks and is considered to be the greatest rejonador in the world. A rejonador, for the uninitiated, is a bullfighter who works on horseback. Popular Mexican matador Rafael Ortega and a few others round out the bill.

(Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza)

The afternoon heat has become absolutely sweltering as I make my way to the cheap seats. A sluggish military band starts playing, and an instant later a bull weighing nearly half a ton charges through the arena gates. Over the course of the next three hours, five bulls will fight and eventually die in the ring. Mendoza wows the crowd with horse maneuvering that recalls a ballerina’s grace, though for my tastes all the prancing and smiles to the crowd are a bit Las Vegas. Ortega, though, provides the most dramatic performance of the afternoon, during his second fight. Ortega stands mere feet from the bull for over 30 minutes, twisting and dancing with all the arrogance, grace, and bravery you expect from a bullfighter. He turns his back on the bull, receiving wild cheers from the crowd. A sword is driven into the bull’s neck, and Ortega points at the beast and it instantly falls dead. Lifeless, soaked in blood, the bull is dragged from the ring by a team of horses.

Not surprisingly, both animal rights groups and Catalan separatists oppose bullfighting, the former decrying it as a senseless and barbaric pursuit, and the latter associating it with a Colonial Spanish past they would sooner forget. "Don't they kill the poor bulls?" is the knee-jerk criticism that you’ll hear from even the most open-minded audiences. The answer is yes—the bull gets killed, though there are rare circumstances when the bull is pardoned.

It seems odd that Americans who happily gobble up mass-produced packaged beef would turn sad and angry because a handful of bulls meet untimely ends. (Incidentally, bulls slaughtered during a Correo are turned into meat that’s donated to local charities to help feed the poor.) While in some cases, bullfighting audiences are metropolitan—this is the case in Madrid and Mexico City—it mostly remains a rural sport, beloved by the men and women who work on ranches and are actively involved in food production—people who have a clear-eyed view of the natural life cycle and are more comfortable watching animals die than urbane protestors. You don’t see the cows get killed by a hammer to the head before you devour a burger, but that doesn’t mean that stuff doesn’t happen.

Recently banned in Catalonia and Ecuador to the delight of detractors, bullfighting may eventually find its end not because of protestors, but rather indifference. The crowd at a bullfight skews old; Mexican youth have little interest in the slow-moving ancient practice. Attendance is down across the country, and NBA games are coming in on satellite feeds. There’s no room for such an openly bloody, agrarian spectacle in a world that wants to sanitize everything, even the inherent violence of sport. Ernest Hemingway and Teddy Roosevelt would clearly be bummed.

@AndyPry