WRR@LARGE

by Joy E. Stocke and Angie Brenenr

by Joy E. Stocke

Midnight in Quito and we’re in the midst of a week-long celebration leading up to December 6 honoring the day Quito was founded by the Spaniards in 1534. The first week in December is also known as bullfight week celebrating a tradition imported from Spain more then three hundred years ago.

This morning Muhammad Yunus left Ecuador for Paraguay, and we left Guayaquil for Quito, planning to travel north into the Andes to Otovalo known for its crafts and shamans, one of whom we were planning to visit. But that would have to wait a day.

Before our tightly knit group began to disperse, we were invited to meet for a late lunch at Bolivar, a restaurant that celebrates the bullfight. Every afternoon during this celebration week, women dress up and men often wear the traditional Ecuadorian fedoras (commonly know as the Panama hat, but actually originating in Ecuador). They come to meet friends and watch their favorite torero. Like a football game the socializing begins early. Because many in our party planned to attend today's bullfight, we chose to stay and meet them at the restaurant before saying goodbye.

Bullfighting is big in Quito. So big that you can't miss the advertisements showing handsome young men in a pas de deux with a bull. All week long we’ve had conversations about the moral implications of bullfighting. Is it a blood sport whose time has past? Clearly, many Ecuadorians share this thought. But as we got ready to meet the rest of our group for a post-bullfight dinner, we never thought we’d find ourselves sitting next to Ecuador’s best torero Guillermo Alban.

Alban, compactly built, with blue eyes the color of sea-glass, fielded questions from us as we tried to understand the psychology of bullfighting and why it still exists as a sport.

With a degree in business management and applied economics from Cornell, he is thoughtful and clear. Bullfighting for him is a metaphysical experience.

Guillermo Alban, Torero
by Angie Brenner

Correia means killing the bull. I think that bullfighting is a very strong activity. I understand that people say, 'I don’t like to see the blood. Or humans don't have the right to kill another species.'

But, once you’re in the ring, the only friend is your bull. He’s your companion. He’s your partner in a death dance. You can get very badly gored. Nowadays, few toreros die not because it’s less risky, but because medicine is so good. We have doctors ready to clamp your arteries if you get gored. In the days before antibiotics many toreros died or lost a leg.There’s a statue in the Las Ventas bullring in Madrid, Spain in honor of Dr. Fleming who invented penicillin.

I’ve been gored twice, but not very badly. It’s more out of luck. Once a bull knocks you to the ground, or once he throws you to the air, you are no longer in control of the situation.

Sometimes the bull just touches you. And you are bruised and battered and you think, oh, he didn’t gore me. I think it’s luck that I haven’t been gored. There must be some protection, something looking out for me. As time goes by, I get so much more convinced of that. I am 36, and 15 years I've been trying to find an explanation for this, but I don’t.

What bothers me the most about these comments is that bullfighting gets attacked by people for being cruel. But, in modern society, we exploit animals every day. Just because we don't see the cow going to the slaughterhouse doesn't mean it didn't suffer.

I would like to ask people who are against bullfighting why a person in whatever city of the developed world has a right to eat a lobster or crab, putting a live creature in boiling water with no thought how it feels? But we are omnivores and when you eat a piece of meat, are you eating it because it's right or because you need it?

Killing a bull is probably the part of bullfighting that satisfies the least. I try to kill a bull with dignity. Quickly, efficiently, with the least pain. You face the bull and do not stand behind its back. For a moment, the bull sees you and you see the bull. It is a spiritual connection. I think it's much sadder to send a bull to a slaughterhouse and send him down a dark, narrow corridor to be killed.

When I stand in the ring, I begin a dance that has a long history. In Crete during the Minoan period, bull dancers came to Knossos and performed many feats on top of the bulls. We, in modern society, want to deny death. A bullfighter shows how real death can be. You could say the blood of the bull is a symbol of the sacrifice thousands of animals make every day so that we can live.