Readers React: Bullfighting as an ‘art form’? More like a barbaric act of animal cruelty

A half-ton bull bleeds steadily, growing weaker as a large crowd of onlookers cheers the animal’s increasing agony and exhaustion. After enduring taunts and repeated pricks by human performers, the coup de grace is delivered by knife.

This is an “art form”?

More than 130 readers took issue with a Monday front-page headline on bullfighting in Tijuana describing it as such. As of Friday, letters expressing outrage at the article were still streaming in. Here is what a handful of those writers said.

Animal rights activist Patty Shenker worries that most readers won’t get much farther than the headline:

For The Times to call bullfighting an “art form” on the front page of the paper was really unnecessary and subtly implies your acceptance of it. This is not art; this is horrific animal abuse and the promotion of violence in a world that knows far too much of it.

This bullfighter is not an artist; he’s a sadist. People like him may call it art, but The Times certainly should not have.

Reporter Nigel Duara gave a good description of the gruesome, heartless practice, but I fear most readers don’t get that far.

Kathleen Barnard of Norwalk, Ohio, writes that bullfighting is increasingly unacceptable even in Mexico:

Somebody was time traveling back to Hemingway’s specious machismo on some vicious Kool-Aid when he or she came up with that headline.

The article itself reported that 80% of the people in Baja California oppose the sadistic ritual. About 100,000 people marched against the corrida last year in Spain.

Torturing an innocent animal to death has no place in a modern civilized society. The Mexican people are better than that. Let the die-hard aficionados investigate the art in pulling each other’s fingernails out and leave the helpless creatures alone.

Writing from Tijuana, Erika Valdés says bullfighting sickens society:

Bullfighting it is not an art form; it’s barbaric. We citizens of Tijuana hate this activity because of its cruelty to animals and because it promotes violence in our society.

We believe that the crime we suffer in our streets and the bullying in our schools happens because of a lack of empathy and compassion. Bullfighting teaches children not to feel compassion for a suffering creature.

Our government is corrupt, and we are fighting against that too. Because 80% of Baja Californians are against bullfighting but our government apparently is fine with it, we have to fight so we can be fairly represented.

San Diego resident Mike Schooling takes issue with referring to bullfighting even as a sport:

Torturing a bull is not an art. It is not a sport either.

A sport means that either side has at least a 50% chance of winning. The fact that the bull only rarely leaves the ring alive means that it is not a sport.

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