Bullfights… Controversial to say the least
Bullfights are an essential part of the Fiestas de Quito which start at the end of November and last until the 6th of December in order to commemorate the founding of the city in 1534. There are nine days of bullfights held at the Plaza de Toros in Quito. However, this was the first year that the killing of the bull in the arena was made illegal. On May 7, 2011, Rafael Correa’s referendum was passed making it illegal to kill animals for entertainment.
I was interested to participate in this cultural tradition, but also had a good amount of fear of what I was going to witness. I am not a fan of animal cruelty or seeing anything suffer and I definitely don’t like to see blood or gut or anything of that nature.
After attending the bullfight and seeing it for myself I decided to do a little more research and really understand what I had seen. Now I am not trying to put forth an opinion just stating the information that I found and what I saw.
A bull fight consists of 3 parts each signaled by the playing of a bugle. The first part is when the bull is let out into the arena and taunted by the assistant matadors using pink and yellow capes (this I found interesting because I always thought they used red capes to anger the bull but it turns out that bulls are terribly colorblind). Then the horn sounds which signifies the second part where men on protected horses known as picadores enter the ring. Their purpose is to drive their lances into the bull’s back and neck muscles in order to cause severe blood loss for the animal and impair the animal’s ability to lift its head. Then come the banderilleros who dart around the bull and stick banderillas, sharp, barbed sticks into the bull’s back. These are meant to anger and weaken the bull even more. In the final stage the torero appears (matador in English terms) in order to kill the bull. He has a red cape and a skinny sword which he uses in the hopes of stabbing the bull to its death in one swift movement through the heart.
My opinion: Like I said before I am not a fan of animal cruelty and after doing some research and also editing through the pictures I had taken I realized how cruel and gruesome bullfighting is. I read through information that disclosed some of the torture methods they use on the bulls before they enter the ring which really saddened me to say the least. It is said that 250,000 bulls each year are killed because of bullfighting.
As part of my experience, there were parts that I could have lived without seeing and parts that excited and scared me at the same time. Being in the bull ring was an experience in itself and a great way to see the culture of Ecuador, its people, and this year long tradition. I had a hard time watching the bulls be tortured and stabbed to the point of pure exhaustion and confusion. I was happy to have them not kill the bull in front of us but towards the end it became boring and prolonged because the bull was clearly tired and beaten down from the fight but because they couldn’t kill it they continued to run it. The first bull that was let lose was filleted open by the picador, exposing over a foot of its insides along its spine. This was heartbreaking because the animal was alive and was unaware of what was going on. The following bulls went through the normal bull fighting procedure as listed above. A difference in the bullfight I saw was that there was a man on a horse who chased and poked the bull in two different occasions. This was terrifying because the bull would get so close to the horse that you were sure the horse was going to get hurt. There were 8 bulls at the fight I saw which apparently is more than normal. Even though the bulls cannot be killed in public they are killed afterwards which some argue causes even more suffering to the bull. This I am not really sure about, however, I can now say that I have been to a bullfight and whether you are for or against them it is part of the culture and something to experience. Will I go to another bullfight again? Probably not, one was enough and I don’t think I could handle seeing the torment of innocent animals again for the sake of peoples’ entertainment.
