A Different Kind of Corrida Courage

Fighting to make a difference is hard work, especially when you’re an 11-year-old boy who wants to put an end to a sport viewed as both courageous art and needless gore: bullfighting.

But Jordy Brown has been trying, for months, to do just that. He has petitioned and penned letters and boycotted Pepsi because it is advertised at bullfights.

He also saved enough of his allowance--about $80--to adopt two bull calves in Baja California, Mexico, through a program that helps save them from being raised for certain death in the ring.

And now Jordy--a shy sixth-grader whose speech and language skills were hindered by three years of deafness as a toddler--has taken his crusade even further with an invitation to Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.

Jordy wants to meet Zedillo in person to discuss “how we can end the cruelty” of bullfighting.

“I just want to talk about it to make sure he understands why I’m doing this,” Jordy says. He and several animal-rights activists who have joined his cause mailed a letter to Zedillo last week.

“If people are allowed to hurt animals, what’s to stop them from hurting each other?” he asks.

The Irvine boy has been on the case since his father returned from a trip to Mexico last year and showed him a poster that promoted a much-anticipated bullfight. Jordy called the sport “uncivilized and cruel” and, disgusted by the thought of people paying money to see such a thing, made his father swear not to attend one again.

Then he began his campaign to stop bullfighting altogether. He circulated petitions through his neighborhood and persuaded his classmates at Alderwood Elementary School to stop drinking Pepsi.

After several e-mail exchanges with officials at the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles, he finally met in April with then-Consul General Jose Angel Pescador, who explained to him the history of bullfighting and its undeniable place in the culture of several countries.

“There are many critics of bullfights,” Pescador wrote in a response to one of Jordy’s many letters. “But to the fans, it is a ritualistic drama that rolls together courage, fate, pathos and death in one symbolic event.”

Jordy wasn’t convinced. He contacted animal rights groups and started a Web page (https://www.animalnews.com/jordy) to promote his crusade. Before long, he was receiving letters and e-mail from people all over the country, including a Texas girl who sent a good luck card stuffed with four-leaf clovers.

“That was one of his favorites,” Laurie Brown says of her son’s correspondence. “He’s done radio interviews, television shows and had invitations to speak at schools all over the place. . . . He’s even had a marriage proposal.”

He’s also had his share of criticism. Bullfighting aficionados have sent a stream of messages to the 11-year-old, warning him to leave their culture alone. One author poked fun at Jordy’s hearing disability--from which he is still recovering--and questioned his mother’s judgment in letting him take on such an “impossible fight.”

“I have to screen every e-mail before I let him read it now,” Laurie Brown says. “People will do anything to get him down, and I won’t let them take this away from him.

“He feels strongly about animals, and to me, that’s a good thing. We’re not hurting anybody here. I mean, he’s 11 years old.”

Meanwhile, Jordy waits for a response from Zedillo, although he’s not quite sure what he’ll say if the president does agree to a meeting.

“I’ll probably be a little nervous,” Jordy says. “But maybe he doesn’t really like bullfighting either. I heard he has kids. Maybe his kids don’t like it and he will listen to all of us. I hope, I hope, I hope.”

Jordy continues to send money to the ranch owners who are taking care of his two young bulls, to help cover the cost of food, and travels to Mexico to see them every few months. He hopes he can soon bring the younger bull, Ben, back to the U.S. to help show others “that they aren’t the mean, wild animals like you would think.”

During a recent visit to the ranch near La Bufadora, Jordy flung a rope around 6-month-old Ben’s neck and ran around happily with the 125-pound black-and-white calf, who loves to have his chin scratched and insists on being bottle-fed.

“Look at him,” Jordy pleaded, cupping his hands underneath Ben’s head and planting a kiss on the young bull’s nose. “How could anyone want to lay a finger on this guy?”