This post is dedicated to my friend Veronica Holmes, for obvious reasons.
I’m the kind of guy that always, no matter the odds, pulls for the underdog. I had money on the Ionians over the Persians in the Battle of Ephesus, I always preferred Baltic Avenue to Park Place, and I swear I will root for the Dallas Cowboys over the New England Patriots (well, I’m not sure I’ll go that far. I think I might just root for the injury.) One of these days I’d like to see that coyote catch and eat that damn, smug roadrunner.
Given my propensity to be continually disappointed, it was natural that when I went with my son and a few friends to watch a bullfight, I was rooting for the bulls. Bulls are the ultimate underdog. Vegas refuses to even give odds on bullfights since bulls lose about, and I am not making this number up, 99.99 percent of the time.
Bullfighting, as you may know, goes back centuries to very olden times. There is prehistoric evidence of bull worship and sacrifice in Mesopotamia and very well done pen and ink drawings of the Greek king Alexander the Great riding a bull across the plains of India with his conquering army in 326 B.C..
A photo of a bull (perhaps Tata Nacho?) taken near “the place of the skull” on the morning of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Although the Pope doesn’t like to admit it, the 13th Apostle was a Spanish Fighting Bull affectionately nicknamed Tata Nacho by his Lord and savior (his real name was Fernando.) On the fateful night when Leonardo snapped that famous photo, Jesus had asked Tata Nacho to step outside and cool off because he was snorting and pawing the cow-hair braided carpet in an obscene way. This potentially explosive sexual scandal led the Church to cover-up the fact Tata Nacho ever existed. You can’t even find his name in the Bible.
Of course, the Spanish are most associated with the art of taunting, subduing, and killing bulls, so it should come as no surprise that when they danced their galleons across the waterway to Latin America to taunt, subdue, and kill the natives, they brought their bullfighting tradition with them. While bullfighting has been banned in many countries because it is considered to be cruel and unusual punishment to the bull; in Mexico, where life has little meaning, bullfighting remains pretty popular. And by “pretty popular” I mean at least as popular as bagels.
The bull is just hanging out waiting for his bus, but the matador won’t leave him alone. He’s like, bull, look what I got (what he has is swords.)
The Plaza Mexico, in Mexico City, holds 48,000 people; it’s been reported that when the crowd musters a stadium-wide “ole”, you can hear it in space (citation needed). The Plaza de Toros in San Miguel, situated on a narrow, cobblestone street just a few blocks from the central plaza, isn’t quite that big, and isn’t very impressive in passing; consisting of an old stone wall with a large, wooden gate. Still, the dozen or so times I have walked past that stone wall and wooden gate, I have been intrigued by the notion that we have a bullfighting ring in town. It’s as good a selling point to me as having a Trader Joe’s within walking distance.
So I googled it, and learned that the place could be rented out for events like weddings and office parties. Since the website didn’t say anything about bulls, and I’m unemployed and already married, I didn’t think I would ever get to go inside. Then I saw a flyer posted at the grocery store advertising a corrida de toros.
Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves at the bullfight. Especially this guy who was charging almost $5 US for a cup filled with pretzels, chips, doritos, and cheese curls and covered in hot sauce. This is a popular snack in Mexico.
After purchasing our general admission ticket and making our way with the mostly local crowd interspersed with a few gringos past the wooden gate, through a stone arch that wasn’t quite as awe-inspiring or old as the Roman Colosseum but still looked pretty cool, and placing our asses on the piece of concrete bench that our 450 pesos (US$22.50) had bought us, we immediately felt in familiar territory: concessions are as overpriced at bullfights as they are at a baseball or football game.
A bag of potato chips which we could have purchased at the tienda outside the gate for 30 pesos sold for 60 pesos; a cute, souvenir stuffed bull that my dog would have ripped to pieces in 35 seconds was 10 dollars; and beer, everybody’s favorite thing to overpay for at a sporting event was . . . well, I don’t even want to tell you how much beer cost.
I was also immediately reminded of the one thing I miss about the U.S. - there is no smoking in public places. Before the first bull came out, I had inhaled at least as much second-hand cigarette smoke as if I had been stuck in an airport smoking lounge for a year and a half and I smelled like an ashtray that someone had taken a crap in and then left in a hot car.
But grievances aside, after much pageantry and a few off-key notes from the brass band, the first bull came out. The thing to know about bullfighting is that there are rules. The most important rule is that everyone dressed in a brightly colored costume and wearing patent leather shoes gets a chance to stab the bull with a sword before the matador drives his sword through its heart. I mean, without rules, it’s just blood sport.
In the earliest days of bullfighting, a single fighter on horseback armed with a lance was the sole opponent of the bull. It wasn’t until the 1700’s that the matador fought the bull on foot. The man on the white horse revived the early tradition. His horsemanship was pretty spectacular. At one point he reached behind him and placed his hat on the bull’s head while the bull was in full pursuit of fleeing man and horse.
I felt a certain affinity for the first bull because he was named after me. Don Pablo weighed in at over 1,000 pounds and was quickly greeted by several sissy-like bandilleros, the equivalent of rodeo clowns, who took turns waving their pink capes at him, stabbing him in the back with a short sword, and then running for cover behind partitions placed at various points in the ring where Don Pablo could not get them. From there, they thumbed their noses at Don Pablo until he was distracted by a bandillero on the other side of the ring and went charging off. Although a physically impressive beast, Don Pablo was none too smart.
Here, a bandillero gets the bull’s attention and prepares for a charge. If things get too scary he will hide behind the white rectangle (a reinforced wall) to the right.
Next came the picadores, men mounted on horseback in costumes reminiscent of a merry day in Sherwood Forest. The picadores had lances and their horses were wrapped in protective armor to prevent them from being disemboweled by the bull. Once Don Pablo was engaged in trying desperately to drive his horns into the horse, the picadores stabbed him repeatedly in the muscle behind his neck with their long lances. My son liked the picadores.
Finally someone determined the bull was bloody enough and the picadores trotted from the ring. If we had been waiting for any moment, this was it. The matador entered the arena in his sparkly matador jacket and tight matador pants. Of course, by the time el matador claimed center stage, and the bandilleros and picadores were backstage enjoying a smoke and sharing the latest pictures of their children, poor Don Pablo was bloodied, tired, and confused.
So, in true bullfighting chickenshit tradition, it was the perfect time for the matador to run the bull through a series of passes that, to the trained eye, create a sculptural form between man and animal that rivals the Sistine Chapel, but to the untrained eye, looks a lot like a bull running through a cape dozens of times.
First, the matador has to get the bull’s attention by shaking his cape a few times . . .
Then the bull charges . . . (the things hanging out of the bull that look like gym socks are swords)
The matador deftly moves the cape and himself out of the way of the charging bull . . .
And runs the bull in a few circles to tire him out. Wash, rinse, and repeat twenty or thirty times.
Finally, when the matador determines the bull is ready, he very elegantly drives a two foot sword through Don Pablo’s back and into his heart for a quick and painless death. However, just to ensure the death was really quick and painless, one of the bandilleros returned to drive a heavy dagger through Don Pablo’s spinal cord, ensuring once and for all a quick and painless death.
They say that it’s not so bad to be a bull bred for bullfighting because while alive it is entitled to all the perks that ordinary bulls don’t get - the best heifers, all the phosphorous-rich grass it can eat, and the finest pastures to take a dump. But in death, none of that shit plays. Before Don Pablo’s inert body lost a single degree in temperature, a pair of sturdy horses came out and dragged him unceremoniously by his legs through the dirt and out of sight where, we heard, a local butcher took him to shop to carve him into steak.
Goodbye, Don Pablo.
Because the matador was so gallant in his disposal of Don Pablo, the officiant of the match cut off one of Don Pablo’s ears and gave it to the matador as a token for his performance. Under other bullfighting rules, if the matador was really, really good, he would get two ears, and sometimes a tail.
I liked Don Pablo, but after witnessing his fate I had little hope that any of the six bulls we were to see that night could prevail. And it was a truth that bore fruit. Each bull suffered the same fate as Don Pablo in the same hopeless sequence. Though, the second bull provided a little variation when he managed to gore one of the bandillero’s legs before he was able to leap out of the ring. The bandillero was carried from the ring in clear agony, which is one of the downsides of having the bull win a point in the fight.
Once in a long while, a bull fights so valiantly that he can be spared death, returned to his ranch, given the cool title of “seed bull,” and left to stud. I guess it’s the only reason a bull would get into the business, but none of the bulls we saw this night were considered to be valiant enough.
Our spirits rose as the final match of the night developed into more of a cirque du soleil performance, with acrobatic young men using the bull as a pommel horse and turning flips and rolls off of it, than a fight to the death where the bull dies. And then this happened (Spoiler Alert and graphic warning - The bull wins; you should know what that means.)