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Bullfighting Festival in Colombia
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Bullfighting Festival in Colombia (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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While the corrida has been losing popularity in both Spain and Mexico in the last few years, it was hugely popular until recently. Even border towns like Nogales in Sonora had a bullring that would be filled to capacity. I'm not sure about Colombia today, but I did a consulting gig for the State Department at the American Embassy in Bogota in 2000, and it was very popular then with the bullring filled to capacity as well. Just as the younger generation in Spain is not much drawn to flamenco, preferring "world music" and other genres like young people everywhere, they are not drawn to the corrida, either in Spain or Mexico, as the older generation was. There are too many other distractions to keep them occupied, and I suspect there is a perception of "cruelty" among them that is more dominant today than there was in past generations. That said, the corrida continues in Spain, as the court decision on Catalonia's ban demonstrates, and it will probably continue to an extent in Mexico as well. But it clearly does not have the popularity in either country today that it once had over decades and centuries. Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jun. 28 2022 12:08:49
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Bullfighting Festival in Colombia (in reply to Morante)
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quote:
People who live in cities and think their lamb chops always come in plastic containers, should live in the country a while, where life and death of animals is much closer. Somebody has killed your lamb or your chicken for you and the treatment of animals in slaughterhouses is not pretty. Would you be able to do it? If not, you should not eat it. Toros are bred to kill. Meet one in the campo y adios. No one in this thread has condemned the corrida or called it cruel. The discussion has been about where the corrida has been popular outside of Spain and whether or not it is losing popularity. I don't know to whom your quote cited above was directed, but I don't think it is good idea to start another argument about the ethics of the corrida or Simon will lock this thread just as he has past threads where the argument got out of hand. Let's keep it on a civil level about the popularity, or lack thereof, of the corrida in Spain and Latin America. Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jun. 29 2022 17:05:23
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3431
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Bullfighting Festival in Colombia (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Pgh_flamenco Do you mean that Toros used in bullfighting are bred to kill or are you referring to bulls in general? When I was a teenager my friends and I would round up cattle on foot. There was always at least one bull with the cows. After some experience we realized that these animals were no threat to us even when they appeared to be stampeding. When I was six years old we visited my mother's sister and her family on their farm in Mississippi. They had a black bull (Angus?) which was friendly and gentle. I would sit on the ground by the barnyard gate and feed him through the board fence with peaches fallen from the tree nearby. We became good friends. However, on the same farm I was charged by a dairy cow with a new calf. She would have killed me had not my stout 17-year old cousin struck her on the face with a piece of timber he carried, hard enough to bring her to her knees. Once her head cleared she decided to trot off in the other direction. But on the ranch in Texas there were Santa Gertrudis bulls which were both murderous and crafty. If there is rain enough the Coastal Bermuda grass, originally imported from Africa, will grow to a height of six feet. Santa Gertrudis bulls would hide in the tall grass, waiting for an opportunity to attack any unmounted person. Some would even attack a man on horseback. The Santa Gertrudis breed was developed on the King Ranch. Mr. Caesar Kleberg, manager of the South Section of the Ranch, a peaceful and friendly man, observed that the Santa Gertrudis breeders regarded their aggressiveness as a virtue rather than a fault. On my family's ranch, any pasture occupied by a Santa Gertrudis bull was identified by a red bandana tied to the gate. It would only be entered by a group of at least three vaqueros, mounted on trained and capable cutting horses. Nearer the Gulf coast the soil is almost pure sand and the grass is sparse. My grandfather kept a small herd of old style longhorns there, out of historical interest. When I was 16 I was delegated to take a visitor from the north to see the longhorns. Of course I relied upon the four experienced vaqueros who accompanied us. When we came in view of the herd I stopped the party at least 100 yards away. I lent the visitor my binoculars. He observed that the old range bull had sores on his knees and back, and insisted that the bull be treated with the black medicine the vaqueros carried in their saddle bags. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that we would approach no closer. Accusing us of cowardice, the visitor demanded some medicine and said he would treat the bull himself. I said he was welcome to try, but I had three questions: "How do you propose to get past the five of us, all armed? If you do, who will pay for your mount? And where should we send your body?" The Spanish fighting bulls are supposed to be kept from seeing a person on foot until they enter the ring. When in a herd, or at the corral at the plaza with the steers that accompany them there, they are reputed to be calm and manageable. They were on occasions long ago when I saw them in the corral. When they enter the ring alone they are immediately aggressive. They are easily provoked to charge the banderilleros, the horses of the picadores and the torero's big cape in the elaborate passes of the quite. They will continue to charge the matador and his muleta even when weakened and fatigued. RNJ
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Date Jun. 30 2022 2:54:51
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3431
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Bullfighting Festival in Colombia (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Pgh_flamenco quote:
But on the ranch in Texas there were Santa Gertrudis bulls which were both murderous and crafty. The Santa Gertrudis breed was developed on the King Ranch. Why anyone would choose to create a dangerous breed of animal is beyond me. What are the advantages? The King Ranch stated that the main objectives for deveioping the Santa Gertrudis breed were tolerance of subtropical climate and the ability to fatten on grass. They succeeded admirably. At the time the Ranch had substantial holdings in Brazil, and European beef breeds were not perfectly suitable even for south Texas. When the bulls acquired a reputation for danger, the rumor spread that the breeders either tolerated their violence, or that they might even have admired it. Mr. Caesar, a member of the family which controls the Ranch, did not appear to me to admire the bulls' violence, but did not dispute that it was tolerated by the breeders. The vaqueros whom I knew took pride in their bravery and skill in handling the animals. If you've ever been to a U.S. or Canadian rodeo, you will know that bravado is an essential element of cowboy culture, which is largely derived from that of Mexico and south Texas. The Mexican charreada on the other hand, celebrates the traditions of the gentleman horseman, and increasingly the equestrian skills of their daughters. RNJ
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Date Jun. 30 2022 22:20:33
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Bullfighting Festival in Colombia (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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The Mexican vaquero and American cowboy (whose culture was largely influenced by the vaquero) can trace their lineage directly back to Spain. The Conquistadors and those who followed them brought Spanish ranching techniques and, above all, introduced the horse to the Americas. The vaquero and cowboy developed local traditions and modified ranching techniques to accommodate the environment in which they worked. What is interesting to me is how "diverse" (to use an overworked word today) the vaqueros in the old American Southwest were. They consisted of Mexicans, Anglos, blacks, and Indians (many of whom spoke Spanish). At one time, it is estimated that one-quarter of the working vaqueros and cowboys of the Southwest were blacks. It is an interesting history and one that few people know about. That is probably a result of the mythical lone, American cowboy riding off into the sunset that even Henry Kissinger could not resist. In his 1972 interview with journalist Oriana Fallaci, Fallaci asks him to explain his popularity. Kissinger responded: “The main point arises from the fact that I’ve always acted alone,” he says. “Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else.” The picture of the lone American cowboy is as much a myth as that of the gunfighter who meets and faces his opponent on the town's main street. Never happened. Gunfights were not conducted according to some "honor code," as if they were medieval jousts. Even John Wayne knew what the Old West was really like. I remember in 1971 watching on television a tribute to John Ford, the director of some of the greatest Westerns and war movies ever made, narrated by John Wayne. At the end, Wayne said: "Well, maybe the Old West wasn't really the way John Ford portrayed it, but it should have been." A fitting tribute. Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jun. 30 2022 23:26:21
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3431
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Bullfighting Festival in Colombia (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH What is interesting to me is how "diverse" (to use an overworked word today) the vaqueros in the old American Southwest were. They consisted of Mexicans, Anglos, blacks, and Indians (many of whom spoke Spanish). At one time, it is estimated that one-quarter of the working vaqueros and cowboys of the Southwest were blacks. Bill All of the South Texas vaqueros I knew, and essentially all whom I knew of, would be called “Mexican Americans” today. This includes the Kineños of the King Ranch. Their families had lived for generations in what is now part of Texas, at a time when it was still part of Mexico or New Spain. I have relatives from Laredo who sometimes call themselves “Tejano,” but this would not apply to the vaqueros I mentioned. The borders of the Province of Nuevo Santander varied considerably since its foundation in the late 18th century, but it always contained the “entre rios” country between the Rio Bravo del Norte (Rio Grande to us gringos) and the Nueces. East of the Nueces headwaters the Province of Texas, or the Mexican State of Coahuila y Texas extended only as far south as the Nueces. After Texas gained its independence from Mexico in 1836, the Republic claimed the Rio Grande as its southern border. When Texas became the 28th state in 1845, Mexico still claimed the entre rios country and invaded. This was cited by Congress as the causus belli of the Mexican War, though it ended with Mexico having lost half of its arable land by 1848, including not only Texas but also California,Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. The diversity mentioned by Bill never effectively penetrated the entre rios country. When the cattle boom of the 1870s spread the cattle business to Central and West Texas and the Panhandle, the cowboys in those regions were as diverse as Bill describes. In San Antonio there is a museum dedicated to Texas ranch culture. It contains artifacts and exhibits from all over the state. There is no apparent distinction among the various regions. What it misses is that the language spoken in South Texas was, and still is Spanish, the vaqueros’ families had lived on the land for centuries, while the cowboys in other parts were the diverse and itinerant group descrbed by Bill. RNJ
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Date Jul. 1 2022 17:29:10
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3431
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Bullfighting Festival in Colombia (in reply to mrstwinkle)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mrstwinkle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dangerous_Summer The 33 page preface by James Michener contains a brief and well organized description of how the corrida proceeds in its modern form. Another informative book on the bulls is "..or I'll Dress You in Mourning," the detailed biography of the matador Manuel Benitez Pérez, "El Cordobés." The book describes extensively the social conditions which produced such an individual: persistent, grinding, starvation level poverty. The defiance of his fate, through years of hardship and poverty, shaped one of the most famous toreros of his era. To me, the book is as much an indictment of the social conditions that produced El Cordobés as it is the story of his doggedly determined path from starvation and oppression to almost unrivaled fame and fortune. Many, including the Spanish Ilustrados of the 19th century and the Republicans who lost the Civil War in the 20th, condemned the corrida for what they saw as its corrupting effect upon public morals. The life of El Cordobés shows the corrida to be at least as much a symptom of societal conditions as it was a cause. The "artistic" interpretation of the corrida proposed by Hemingway and others, and the trenchant opposition to these views by several prestigious intellectuals, are a minor part of the the eternal debate on the proper employment of the irrepressible human capacity for violence. RNJ
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Date Jul. 3 2022 1:14:06
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Bullfighting Festival in Colombia (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Another informative book on the bulls is "..or I'll Dress You in Mourning," the detailed biography of the matador Manuel Benitez Pérez, "El Cordobés." His uplifting personal story notwithstanding, although El Cordobes was the Matador of the Moment in his time. to many aficionados of the corrida he was considered a "showboat." Probably the greatest period of the Corrida in Spain in our lifetime was the rivalry between famed matadors Luis Miguel Dominguin and Antonio Ordonez. During 1959, Luis Miguel Dominguin and Antonio Ordonez were involved in a bitter rivalry. Ernest Hemingway chronicled that rivalry in his book entitled "The Dangerous Summer," mentioned above, which still makes good reading today. Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jul. 6 2022 14:05:51
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