Quito is currently in the midst of a ten-day celebration marking the foundation of the city. Part of this celebration is a series of nine corridas, or bull fights. I’ve been conflicted about my feelings toward bull fighting since I arrived and was first introduced to this tradition, but as it is a huge deal here, I figured it was something that I shouldn’t miss.
So, last night I went to the Plaza de Toros, the bull fighting ring, with a group of people. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but what I definitely did not expect was to have tear-filled eyes within the first thirty seconds. I felt AWFUL. I can’t stand seeing animals in pain, and as much as I try to avoid judgement whenever I travel, this is one tradition that I just don’t understand. For this reason, I will be posting only photos of bulls triumphing over matadors in this post.
(Fun fact: the average bullfighter is gored at least once every season.)
As painful as it was for me to sit there, I didn’t want to offend or upset any of the people around me. So, every time I was asked “Te gustan los toros?”. I just smiled and nodded my head in a completely incomprehensible way. I’m not sure that my companions were convinced.
To cope with the emotional hurricane raging inside of me, I came up with a genius plan that consisted of drinking the better part of a bottle of wine and looking absolutely anywhere but at the spectacle going on inside the ring. I also chanted “Libertad” pretty steadily with the crowd at one point, but I’m pretty confident that they were protesting the President’s new rule for bullfighting, and not for the freedom of the bulls as I was.
(Who's in charge now, you pink-sock-wearing torturer?)
So, the President’s new rule: this year he decreed that no bull can be killed in the ring. This doesn’t mean that the bulls are spared, simply that they cannot be killed in front of the public. Instead, they are merely stabbed several dozen times in the ring before they are made to chase a cape through a corridor that leads to the place where their throats can be cut under the ring, without any glory or audience applause. Yes, because this seems much more humane.
Maybe the worst part was the other animals that become involved besides the bull. In one of the first fights, the horse that the carries the picador, a man who stabs the bull from above, was badly attacked by the bull and ended up flipping completely upside down onto its back. First of all, I had no idea you could even do that to a horse. Secondly, because the armor that the horses wear for “protection” is so heavy, it took six men to lift the horse back onto its feet so it could take some more abuse.
Here's a picture so you can imagine what the armor on the horses looks like:
(So now, we have people attacking animals, and animals attacking other animals. Fun for all.)
I do plan to do some further research on the history of bullfighting in an attempt to find a valid reason for the love and respect that so many people have for this tradition. If you're interested, I highly recommend you read a little about the history of bullfighting. It's a really complicated tradition that I can't even begin to explain because I don't even understand all of the parts of it.
There were probably one hundred other things that offended or shocked me in some way last night, but I’m trying very hard to practice cultural acceptance or at the very least, lack of extreme hatred and judgement, so I’ll just leave you with a small anecdote that shows the absolute lack of belonging that I exhibited last night.
After the slaughter, I mean bullfights, we went to McDonalds, the home of all that is cruel and disgusting. While the rest of our group enjoyed cheeseburgers, I delighted in a bun with a slice of cheese and pickles. Nope, I didn’t stick out at all.
(Face down in all that blood. Delicious.)
