1/06/02 | ¡Ole!

Everything I know about bullfighting, I learned from two sources: an Outside magazine article about a female matador, the title of which I still remember as "La Matadora Revisa su Maquillaje" ("The matador checks her makeup"), and Tom Lehrer's song "In Old Mexico". In other words, I know nothing about bullfighting. But when in Cartagena, one must do as the Cartageneros do, so last night we and a dozen or so other gringo yachties joined the throngs at Cartagena's newly-rebuilt Plaza de Toros for the once-a-year spectacle.

The arena itself is impressive, a Roman coliseum done in red brick instead of marble. At the very top are balconies, like opera boxes. Halfway up is the concourse, with reserved seating below and general admission above; we sat in the top row of reserved seats, a location we were advised to choose because it allowed us to lean back against the wall separating the stands from the concourse. An ornate wrought-iron fence splits the arena like an equator, with no crossing from one half to the other except by a single guarded gate on each side. This is the division between sol and sombra, the sunny side and the shady side. Sombra is slightly more expensive, not just because of the shade (the corrida began at 5 in the afternoon and went on into the evening) but because it is the "front" of the arena, where the dignitaries and officials sit, the direction to which the matadors direct their performance. Their stage, the center of the arena, is covered in sand and surrounded by a red-painted wooden wall about five feet high. At intervals, small sections of the wall are offset by a few feet, wide enough gaps for men to enter but not bulls.

The women tended to be a little more dressed up than usual at American sporting events, and the vendors hawked sliced mangos and some sort of cheese donuts in addition to popcorn, peanuts, and beer, but otherwise the scene would be familiar to any sports fan. People drank and argued with their friends, and gabbed on cell phones, and did the wave. A brass band played. Everyone stood for what we assumed was the national anthem.

We had gotten tickets together with Dee and Rob from Ventana, and as Rob had been to bullfights before, he explained what was going on. First came the parade, led by a gorgeous woman in tight jeans and a very small bikini top astride a rather feisty horse. (Britt and I dubbed her the Rodeo Queen.) Then came two guys, also on horseback, in black-and-white outfits of that made me think of the Spanish Inquisition. They had special prancing horses that did little mincing dances with their hooves as they went around the arena, which annoyed the Rodeo Queen's horse enough that we thought it might toss her right off. Everyone made little bows to the dignitaries, who were apparently sitting directly in front of us down in the front row, and then moved to the "back" of the staging area. Then came the matadors and their entourages, each man dressed in a shiny traje de luces (suit of lights). The suits of the three matadors were covered with gold sequins and mirrors, and their picadors and assistants were in silvery suits. Every costume was a little different, a different color of cloth underneath or a different pattern of sequins. But they all wore pink stockings and what appeared to be, after a close examination with binoculars, black ballet slippers, with little black bows.

The corrida follows a ritual, explained Rob, as carefully choreographed as any ballet. There are always six bulls, and three matadors. They may all take part in each fight, but they take turns in the starring role. As the bull is let into the arena, it is stuck with a small ribbon-covered spike in the shoulder, just to get it a little riled up. Sure enough, it runs charging around the arena at the various matadors and sub-matadors, who entice it with their capes (which are not red, but pink, to match their stockings, I guess) and then dash behind the offset sections as the bull bashes its horns into the wall. The spectators all yell ¡Ole! almost like they do in the movies, except that the accent is on the "O" rather than on the "le" as I had always thought. This goes on for a few minutes, and then the band plays a particular cadence and two picadors come in on horseback. The horses are very big, and they are blindfolded and armored with thick padding, and the picadors wear armor on their legs and carry lances. One takes up a position in the back and just sits there looking stern. The other goes to in front of the sombra seats, and the matadorial crew leads the bull, with swipes of the cape, over to the picador, whereupon the bull attempts to gore the side of the horse, and the picador leans over and pokes the bull in the shoulder with the lance. The three of them stand in tableau for a good half-minute or more:  the man, stabbing the bull; the bull, ramming the horse; and the horse, standing its ground and looking bored. The horses must be either extremely well trained, or extremely well drugged. The most we saw one move was when one bull managed to lift the horse's front hooves off the ground for a few seconds.

The band plays the cadence, and the picadors leave. Then comes my favorite part, the banderillas. These are little spears with decorative ribbons on them that get most artfully stuck into the bull. Rob says that this is often done by specialists, the banderilleros, but on this evening the matadors and assistant matadors did the banderillas. The matador would take two banderillas and go out into the center of the arena, then turn and call the bull, waving the spears to get the bull's attention. Finally he would run toward the bull, holding the spears high and crossed at the tip, and slam them into the bull's back right below its neck, then pirouette away, depending on the other men with capes to draw the bull's attention away from him afterwards. Usually there would be three sets of banderillas, each placed by a different man. I was impressed at the men's bravery in running at the bull, and their precision and strength with the banderillas. Of course, sometimes the little spears would fall out (a bad sign), or even worse, once the assistant matador who was placing them didn't even manage to stick the bull properly.

Now the bull is a little bloody, a little damaged, and a whole lot pissed off. The band plays. The matador of the event goes out into the middle of the arena with a smaller cape, the muleta, and this cape really is red. He removes his little black hat and tosses it into the air -- it's a bad omen if it lands upside down, which he will quickly rectify by turning it the right way. He does a whole bunch of "passes", enticing the bull to charge the cape which is held in a number of specified ways: he gets on his knees and waves the cape, he waves it such that his back is toward the bull as it charges, and so on. This is really the main part of the bullfight, and the stands ring with ¡Ole! on each pass, particularly when the matador does something particularly interesting or dangerous. In the best fight of the evening, the matador hammed it up, at one point dropping the cape to his side and pulling his jacket open as if to bare his chest, tilting his neck back, daring the bull, "Come get me!" The bull, with equal theatrical instinct, turned and looked at the stands, as if to say, "Can you believe this guy?" Needless to say, the crowd went wild.

Finally the matador trades his fake sword (which he uses to hold up the cape) for a real one. He maneuvers the bull to where it can be seen by the important people over in the front of the sombra section, then directs the bull's head down by waving the cape low while he jumps over its head and thrusts the sword into its neck. Ideally, the bull will stagger around looking confused for about fifteen seconds, then abruptly fall over and die. This actually happened once. In the other fights, the bull remained fairly feisty for a few minutes, and the various assistant matadors kept it occupied with their capes until it decided to keel over; twice the matador did a poor enough job that they had to bring out other swords to stab the poor bull with until it croaked.

If it was a really good show, some sort of signal is given, and one of the Spanish Inquisition guys comes out to cut off a trophy. Last night one matador was awarded an ear from the second fight, and another -- the big ham, who was the one who dropped the bull almost instantly -- got two ears. Even us novices could tell that the third matador was not all that good, but this was somewhat understandable as he looked to be about fifteen years old. All three matadors were quite young, but this third guy didn't look old enough to have a driver's license, let alone be sticking swords in bulls. Finally the carcass is dragged off by a team of three mules, and a bunch of men come out and rake the sand flat for the next match.

So that was our first bullfight. An interesting spectacle. I guess there is always the possibility of a man being killed by the bull, but it seemed fairly remote, with all the assistants with capes and knives and swords and whatnot, all ready to jump in if needed, and the bulls which all seemed on the stupid side, consistently ignoring the brilliantly-costumed men in favor of the waving cloth. Although I suppose if bulls were smart enough to figure this stuff out, bullfights would have stopped being held long ago. However, it seems to me that Ernest Hemingway's famous dictum about bullfighting being one of the only two real sports (the other being auto racing) isn't really true. The corrida is far more performance than sport, more like theater than like football or soccer. Although it's a performance that doesn't please everyone; a couple of cruisers left after the first bull, saying that it was just too horrible to watch, too much cruelty to animals. (While this is undeniably a cruel sport, we wondered what, exactly, they were expecting to see.)

In fact, I was persistently reminded of nothing so much as figure skating. There are certain specific motions which must be performed, and although technical proficiency is required, the emphasis is on elegance and artistry, on showmanship and style. You can draw the analogy out to include the fancy costumes worn, and even the smoothing of the surface between contestants (we jokingly called the men with rakes "zambonistas"; I have no idea what they are really called, if anything!). But the man's partner in pairs figure skating is usually considerably more svelte and attractive than the matador's partner. And she usually doesn't get killed in the end.