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Richard Jernigan -> RE: What's your opinion about bullfighting? (Feb. 16 2025 22:38:27)
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In my admittedly limited experience in Spain, I have never heard "La Virgen de la Macarena" played before a corrida. My experience includes the opening day of the Fiesta de San Isidro on a few occasions, the Corridas Goyescas in Ronda, the opening day of the season at the Maestranza de Sevilla, etc. But most of this was fifty years ago or more, so customs may have changed.
Where I have heard it played is at Holy Week in Sevilla, where the slow paso doble accompanies the Virgen during her night time parade.
The first time I heard the piece played as a trumpet solo was during the 1950s when the Mexican virtuoso Rafael Mendez put out a recording with elaborate variations. I learned his version as a kid trumpeter, before I knew of the Holy Week context.
Re the corrida: As some have pointed out, many, if not all cultures maintain customs that are seen by others as cruelty to animals. Whether a specific custom is seen as cruelty depends upon the cultural socialization of the individual.
I spent every summer from age 4 to age 16 in South Texas, a few miles from the Mexican border. Just about every Sunday most of my adult male relatives and some of their friends went to Reynosa for the corrida. After I turned 12 I was allowed to go along.
A few years ago neuroscientists discovered a particular set of neurons in the brain. When we observe with interest someone doing something, these neurons are activated. They send impulses to other parts of the brain, as though commanding them to mimic the observed actions. Thus when we focus on the matador's bravery and panache, it is as though we were ourselves in the ring with him, experiencing the adrenaline rush of caping the bull, basking in the admiration of the crowd.
Unless, that is, our training has not socialized us to respond this way. If the corrida presents us with an unfamiliar spectacle, we may see it as cruelty to the bull. However, our socialization may have anesthetized us to the blatantly evident cruelty of the slaughterhouse, the massed misery of chicken farms, or other enormities of industrialized agriculture.
I had not been to a corrida in many decades, when, out of curiosity i bought tickets to the Corrida Goyesca at Ronda. During the first bulls of Morante de la Puebla and Cayetano my attention was directed mainly toward the crowd. I was interested more in their reactions than in what went on in the ring itself.
But to my surprise, the performance of Roca Rey captured my attention, and i felt the surge of emotion from days long past. My socialization was still imprinted.
Our seats at this corrida were high up, in the next to last row, so at times our view of the action was blocked. For the following year I bought the best seats.
That year Cayetano was on hiatus, Roca Rey was recovering from an injury, and Morante wasn't interested. Our seats were on the stone wall bordering the callejon. We were just behind the enclosure where the veterinarians were grouped for their legally required observation.
The bulls' horns were shaved. They were visibly and heavily drugged. The second rate toreros phoned it in, safety first. One of the bulls simply collapsed, bellying down at the beginning of the third tercio. One of the bribed veterinarians, who had been looking disgusted, turned and glared at the crowd while they simply sat mute.
I was astonished. Many years before, at the old Plaza Mexico, such a cowardly spectacle would have set off a riot, with the crowd spilling into the ruedo to attack the toreros. The assembled Spaniards and tourists just sat silent. Not even a whistle.
The unfortunate matador approached the presidente and requested another bull. He was rewarded with one that managed to keep its feet until it was dispatched, though it too was decidedly drugged.
My socialization didn't prepare me for such an event. I grew angry. Not so much out of sympathy for the bulls, but for the brazen ripoff by the perpetrators.
If this is how the corrida has degenerated, I wouldn't mind if it disappeared altogether.
By the way, if you have ever spent much time around crafty and murderous Santa Gertrudis bulls, it might temper your sympathy toward their bravo relatives to some degree, though the bravos don't seem to be as smart.
RNJ
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