Last Days of the Bullring?

Imagine a baseball season in which no player hits more than 20 home runs, games are held in nearly empty ballparks, the farm system is belly up and the world’s best teams are in other countries. It might describe what’s happening to the national pastime of Mexico, where the tradition of bullfighting runs so deep that the landscape is dotted by more bullrings (280) than there are minor and major league ballparks in the United States.

Word of the demise of bullfighting might cheer Americans who find the sport barbaric, but that is not the issue in Mexico. To fans of the sport, death is acceptable if the struggle is artistic and heroic. The sin is in killing badly or with unfair advantage, such as was described in a confidential report last year.

Julio Tellez, the bullfight commissioner of Mexico City, had grown frustrated over government inaction to halt the deterioration of the sport. So he released the report publicly--and was promptly fired for it. The report found that eight of 12 bulls examined by veterinarians during the 2000-2001 bullfight season at Mexico’s premier bullfighting arena, Plaza Mexico, were either under the minimum age of 4 or had their horns blunted to make them less dangerous to matadors.

Bulls in that condition ordinarily are a mismatch for bullfighters. But in Mexico today such disgrace is saved by a sorry equilibrium. Many toreros are as unsatisfying as the bulls. Together these inferior combatants engage in fights that crowds would never tolerate in Spain, the birthplace of bullfighting, or in Mexico not so long ago. But here, too, the sport has achieved a sad balance: Hostility toward its decline is muted because most fans have given up on it. Fights take place in largely empty arenas.

“The attitude in today’s bullfighting world is that we have lost the essence of professionalism,” says Luis Ni-o de Rivera, a former city bullfight commissioner who is now head of the German Dresdner Bank’s Mexican operations. “The public feels cheated and is voting with its feet by staying away from the plazas.” During the 2000-2001 season, Plaza Mexico attendance averaged no better than 10,000 to 15,000, or less than one-quarter full.

Mexico’s love affair with bullfighting has its heritage, like much of modern Mexican culture, in Spain. Bullfighting there dates from the 11th century, when fights were staged as sacrificial acts to celebrate marriages. Philosophers and historians have tried for centuries to explain why bullfighting--the fiesta brava--holds Spain in such thrall. Some say it represents Spaniards’ rejection of modernity, or that the bullfight somehow reflects national sexuality. Others insist that it’s just a show of blood lust.

What is clear is that bullfighting has resonated throughout Latin America. Spanish conquistadors brought it with them to the New World, with the first known mention of a Mexican bullfight appearing in a 1526 letter from Cortez to Spanish King Carlos V.

Bullfighting followed the colonizers to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, but it took hold in Mexico as nowhere else, possibly because Mexico was the most important colony in the Spanish imperium.

Bullfighting begins, of course, with the bulls. The instinct a fighting bull displays of charging moving objects that present apparent threats is a trait that breeders have carefully cultivated over centuries. Descendants of wild bulls that roamed over the Iberian peninsula, fighting bulls have been refined for optimal bravura, or aggression.

Fighting bulls were imported to Mexico by the Spaniards, and by the early 1600s were bred in Mexico City specifically for bullfights. Over time, however, the quality suffered. In 1887, after a particularly bad bullfight in Mexico City, an enterprising breeder named Luis Mazzantini went to Spain and brought back 30 Spanish bulls. It was the beginning of the practice of “refreshing” Mexican livestock with Spanish cows and fighting bulls. This practice continued until 1946. Then an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease led to a quarantine of Spanish livestock that was not lifted until 1996.

Experts say the long isolation is what caused the decline in the quality of Mexican bulls, even as the sport thrived and bullrings were erected over the length and breadth of Mexico, from Merida in the Yucatan peninsula to Tijuana. The most important arena of them all is “La Mexico,” or Plaza Mexico, which, since its completion in 1946, has been the proving ground for Mexican toreros and breeders.

The season in Plaza Mexico typically extends from late October or early November through February, with fights held on Sunday and holiday afternoons. Since Spain’s bullrings operate in summer months, the two seasons complement each other, and it is common for toreros from Spain and Mexico to travel back and forth in their pursuit of glory. Despite the infusion of Spanish talent, however, the 2000-2001 season in Mexico was pitiful.

The findings Tellez released about Plaza Mexico created a maelstrom around the manager of the bullring, empresario Rafael Herrerias, who has controlled the lease on Plaza Mexico for nine years. It has been a stormy tenure, even for a sport whose methods of operation invite controversy. Unlike the way most American sports are organized, such as baseball or football, which are run under strict rules enforced by strong governing organizations, Mexican bullfighting operates more like the boxing world, where conflicting rules and the absence of a strong central authority create conditions where side deals and special interests can flourish.

The lack of regulation of Mexico’s bullfighting provides opportunities for unscrupulous breeders who are happy to sell underage bulls to the rings. It saves them hundreds of dollars in feed costs and reduces the risk of bulls dying in fights with other bulls on the ranch or in the pens.

Herrerias, a voluble, silver-haired man, manages bullrings in four other Mexican cities. He has carried on a running battle with critics in the press as well as with breeders who claim that he buys bulls only from his friends. Herrerias says he has to trust the breeders that the bulls are mature, but at the same time he downplays the age factor of the fighting animals. Determining a bull’s age is an inexact science, he says, an issue drummed up by the press to create scandal. As for cronyism in selecting bull breeders, Herrerias says it is the bullfighters who choose more often than he, a reference to the power some superstar matadors have to specify which bulls from which farms they will face.

In any case, he adds, the age issue has little to do with the success of the show. “You can’t regulate art,” he says. “Does a symphony last exactly 17 minutes or have so many notes? In his concerts, is Elton John forced to sing 14 songs and not 16? Does a Picasso painting have to measure 80 centimeters by 40?”

Herrerias’ defenders describe him as a blustery straight shooter, a charismatic rogue who is trying to make the best of bad business conditions. “He could come in here, clap you on the back and be charming, or he could enter the room and just as easily start screaming at you,” says a friend.

Aficionados and city officials challenge Herrerias’ philosophy. The age of bulls has everything to do with a good fight, they say. Underage animals are less stealthy, less serious, less vicious--and thus easier for matadors to handle, but less provocative for spectators. Plaza Mexico veterinarian Benjamin Calva says that sending an underage bull to face a matador is “like saying it is all right to send an 8-year-old boy into the military. Neither are fully formed.”

The controversy even led to a physical confrontation. In January 2001, Herrerias pushed Calva in public. Calva says it was an attempt to intimidate him into quitting. Herrerias says he stuck his finger in the vet’s chest but did not push him. Calva lodged a police complaint against Herrerias. He and veterinarian Santiago Aja Guardiola are still on the job, but tend to their Sunday afternoon duties under the protection of police bodyguards. Both say they receive frequent anonymous telephone threats. Herrerias says he knows nothing about the threats. “That’s not my style,” he says. “I deal directly with people.”

While critical of Herrerias’ business practices, Ni-o de Rivera, the former bullfight commissioner, says the city shares responsibility for not enforcing the minimum age rules for bulls. “In Spain, breeders would be fined or lose their licenses for sending younger bulls,” he explains.

Perhaps one reason poor practices are tolerated in Mexico today is the absence of any prominent patron to give the sport legitimacy. In Spain, King Juan Carlos has become closely identified with bullfighting and declared it to be Spain’s cultural patrimony. In Mexico, President Vicente Fox is a fan, and he has relatives who are cattle breeders. But the prospects of his taking a stronger role dimmed following a deal he made with Mexico’s minority environmental party, the Green Ecologist Party, which is opposed to bullfighting. The party supported him in the 2000 election and he agreed not to attend public bullfights during his campaign.

Among bullfight aficionados, there are many who believe that Eduardo Martinez Urquidi is the last great hope for the sport in Mexico. He is also one of the breeders with whom Herrerias is at odds.

Martinez’s goal is to raise bigger, faster and meaner fighting bulls such as his amazing Romerito, a hulking half-ton package of destruction who was so valiant during his 40-minute appearance in Mexico City’s bullring one year ago that he received the rarest of tributes: a pardon from the ring judge, an honor bestowed on only 18 other bulls since 1946. As befits his warrior status, he now lives as a stud in Queretaro state in Mexico, propagating the bloodline that Martinez nurtures.

Martinez was the first Mexican breeder to receive permission to import Spanish fighting bulls after the 50-year quarantine ended. He created his Los Encinos ranch 100 miles outside Mexico City and brought in 34 cows and three bulls from the famous Saltillo line of Spanish livestock. A highly successful attorney, Martinez began building Los Encinos in 1991, when he had acquired enough wealth to support his passion. “This is not a money-making business for anyone,” he says. Analogous to U.S. thoroughbred owners, the roster of fighting bull breeders in Mexico includes some of the country’s wealthiest men. They receive as much as $7,000 for each bull they sell to a bullring, Herrerias says, but that’s just a fraction of what it costs to raise them--assuming they are kept alive for the regulation four years.

What motivates Martinez and others like him is not pecuniary gain but the pride that comes from producing warrior animals for Mexico’s most important rings. Martinez’s task is to genetically mix and match suitable fighting characteristics. To help, he has assembled a video library of 15 years’ worth of bullfights in Mexico and Spain from which he has cataloged each bull’s performance.

Martinez likens raising bulls to any other kind of animal breeding--with one big difference. “With other animals bred for behavior, like racehorses or fighting roosters, you test them little by little along the way. With bulls, you have one chance, in the bullring. You always hope the bull will fight, but you don’t know until he is in front of the public.”

That’s why one of the most important parts of bull breeding is the tienta, or testing, as displayed in a miniature bullring on Martinez’s ranch one chilly Friday afternoon last fall. He submitted a half-dozen female calves to basic trials, allowing the ones with desired traits to live on to breed future generations, while sending the disappointments to the slaughterhouse. Male calves are not put through a tienta. The experience would ruin them for real bullfights, Martinez explains, because they would learn enough to make a bullfighter’s job impossible.

Bulls from Martinez’s “refreshed” bloodline have recently begun reaching the plazas, with sometimes spectacular results. Martinez produced six bulls that so outclassed the others that fought in Plaza Mexico in the 1999-2000 season that they won the “best of season” title. Martinez’s bulls also fought bravely in Uruapan, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Aguascalientes and other locations.

Yet despite his success, Herrerias refused to buy any bulls from him for the current 2001-2002 season.

If Mexican bullfighting is to revive, it also needs one other major infusion--a shot of celebrity. The sport now lacks home-grown matadors with the star appeal of Spain’s Julian “El Juli” Lopez, Enrique Ponce and Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza. They command fees of $100,000 or more, two times what top Mexican matadors get. But the Spaniards are worth it. When they fight in Mexico, they regularly fill Plaza Mexico’s 42,000 seats. The bullring was a virtual sellout for the season’s inaugural show on Oct. 28, headlined by Hermoso de Mendoza, a rejoneador, or torero who fights on horseback.

But other than those Sundays when an imported torero is fighting, the cavernous stadium is mostly empty. Witness the corrida on Nov. 4, when barely 8,000 showed up to see a card that lacked the requisite Spanish star. A week later, Mexico’s El Zotoluco could only fill half of the plaza, despite having triumphed before aficionados in several Spanish bullrings last summer in widely publicized successes that made him the talk of the bullfighting world. Gone are the glory days of great Mexican matadors such as Manolo Martinez, Luis “El Soldado” Castro, Fermin Espinosa, Silverio Perez and Lorenzo Garza. They live on as fading memories or in the busts, plaques and paintings that adorn the interior of Plaza Mexico. “It’s not one person’s fault that there are none. It’s the fault of everyone, the entire bullfighting environment,” Herrerias says. But he is soon blaming the government, which, instead of foisting meaningless regulations on his operation, he says, should be helping support the development of young bullfighters and provide promotion for bullfights such as his.

Many bullfight observers look with envy at Spain, where the government underwrites the operation of dozens of bullfighting schools, including 22 in the province of Andalucia alone. In coordination with breeders and empresarios, Spain also helps organize and fund the minor league of bullfighting, the novilladas, or bullfights where apprentice toreros, or novilleros, are given the opportunity to fight young bulls--3 years old or younger--to learn their craft in a real ring.

By contrast, Mexico has just two bullfighting schools and government support is spotty. Even Herrerias’ critics credit him with sponsoring a dozen or so novilladas at Plaza Mexico last summer that cost him thousands of dollars each. But the events are increasingly costly to sponsor because attendance is so meager. Mexican youth also have lost interest in becoming bullfighters because there are so few famous ones to look up to in their country. Young boys are more likely to aspire to be soccer stars or baseball players.

For anyone who was in the stands at Plaza Mexico’s opening-day sellout last October, the notion that bullfighting is archaic--or irrelevant--may seem farfetched. But the principals in the industry know that bullfighting is competing against more entertainment options than ever before. “Television has 200 channels now. And last year they broadcast the soccer games at 4 p.m. [when bullfights start],” Herrerias says. “And there are other things that hurt attendance, like public insecurity.”

Fewer fights are being held, former bullfight commissioner Tellez explains, which creates the double whammy of giving audiences less opportunity to observe the sport and, to Herrerias’ mind, limiting Mexican bullfighters’ opportunities to generate a following. The audiences at Plaza Mexico are becoming older and older, with fewer parents bringing their children to teach them the intricacies of the fight and to communicate the passion of bullfighting.

Could this be a make-or-break period for Herrerias and Plaza Mexico? Guillermo Leal, bullfight critic for the Reforma daily newspaper, thinks it could be and, like others, wonders how the business can survive with such low attendance.

Herrerias denies that the 2001-2002 season is any more crucial than previous ones.

“Bullfighting has been going on for a hundred years and will keep going. Would the Los Angeles Times close if it had three bad weeks?” He has signed top Spanish stars to build box office. But he has refused to buy any more bulls from Martinez.

At his ranch 100 miles away, Martinez surveys the rocky expanse of his 1,000-acre spread and tries to explain why he feels optimistic. “It’s a spectacle that is colorful, emotional, totally different from anything else and difficult to do, beginning with the raising of bulls. If done right, it projects harmony and a great deal of mysticism. It is life and death.”

In fact, Martinez promises a new “age of splendor” in Mexican bullfighting.

Others aren’t so sure. They are fearful that a glorious tradition could be lost, a ritual that for centuries has defined Latino culture but which now, on some unspoken level, seems to no longer serve the mysterious and primal purpose at the heart of its creation. Nearly 500 years after its introduction to Mexico, bullfighting may be relegated to just another mention on a historic tour; Plaza Mexico, just another photo opportunity.