This last weekend I went to the bullfights, a first time for me. I was expecting the bullfight to be a brutal spectacle that would horrify me and I was pretty sure I would leave after the first show. Why did I go, you ask? Because I live in Mexico and have been asked by every person I know that moves here if I have ever seen a bullfight, as well as all of my friends that come down to visit. I must admit that I had a cultural bias against the bullfights, because I was raised with the idea that animals have some sort of feelings.
I showed up at the bullring about the time the “Corrida” was supposed to start, there was plenty of seating but lots of people still showing up. The tickets were $225 pesos per person, I was a little surprised because I can imagine that this price is a little prohibitive to some of the local population.
A band with about five players was seated at the back of the ring near the exit and the crowd started shouting for them to play something soon after I found my seat. The band seemed rather hesitant to start but soon was belting out familiar traditional songs and the party started going.
I was amazed at the way the crowd seemed to direct the goings on of the event, after a few minutes of sitting a few of the rowdier spectators started shouting for the lights to be turned on. After a while, more and more people were shouting, some standing up and waving there hands, even screaming obscenities at an unseen (at least to me) entity, who eventually acquiesced to the requests.
The crowd started to get more and more rowdy, the band played rowdy music, venders offered cokes and beers and deep fried hotdogs and I felt right at home in the middle of this party. I kept getting the sensation of “What is going to happen next?” Finally, after about 15 minutes, the band started playing the typical bullfight song (I believe it is called “La Malageña” and the crowd quieted down for the show to start.
The bullfight starts with a parade of the bullfighters and support staff, all dressed in very bright clothing and very decorated. They walk around in funny hats and salute the crowd, going to each part of the ring to get approval from all of the crowd. One of the matadores appeared to be in his mid-sixties and was dressed in a black, grey, and silver suit with lots of piping and sequins, the other was wearing a hot pink suit with gold piping. I am not sure if this is traditional but it certainly made an impression on me. The crowd roared as the matadors walked around the ring and waved, receiving hats and scarves from the crowd, at one point even a pair of sunglasses, all of which was used quickly by the matador and then thrown back to its owner.
Another interesting player in the show was the “Picador” who is mounted on top of a horse that is wearing a thick blanket of armor and is completely blindfolded, he wears steel boots and carries a spear, I didn’t put it all together at the time but his role gets interesting later. There was also another guy wearing a red suit and a funny had, but I never caught what he was called, his role will be explained later as well.
After much ceremony everyone retreats back into the inner section of the ring and waits, this gives an opportunity for the crowd to get a little bit of excitement worked up as well as a window for the beer venders to wander around and supply the crowd with re-enforcements. The anticipation builds to a head and the crowd starts shouting for a bull, about that time I started to hear a loud crashing noises from the side of the ring opposite my seat.
Finally, a door near the crashing opened, after about thirty seconds an angry bovine emerged from the dark hallway behind the door and started across the ring for one of the men who was waving a large pink cape at the bull. At the last minute the man with the cape ducks behind a barrier that is especially for this purpose and the bull grazes the barrier but keeps going to another part of the ring to attack yet another one of the men with capes. This goes on for a little while, I am not sure what it accomplished other than to give the crowd the feeling that the bull is really pissed off.
After a little bit more of the bull running around showing that he would attack anything that moved the Matador enters the ring and waves the cape at the bull for a little while. This pisses the bull off more, inciting him to attack the matador and everything else in sight. The bull apparently needed more excitement, because next, the picador on the horse enters the ring and the matador leads the bull over near him. Now, I am thinking, “Spear, bull, ok, I know whats coming”, but I really had no idea about the reality. See, its not as if the bull stands still and lets the Picador come to him to stick the spear in. I think he figures that the best defense is a good offense, so he attacks the horse brutally, hence the steel boots and padded armor.
The horse seemed not to notice that a thousand pound bull was charging into his side, I guess because of the blindfold (I know people like this, actually), so he did not move or run or really even flinch. I wonder about the training they used to get no reaction out of the horse in such circumstances.
Here is where the bullfight got a little more bloody, while the bull was attacking the horse, the man on top of the horse was ramming the spear into the hump behind the bull’s neck, opening up a large wound. Not once during this does the bull stop and evaluate the situation, he just keeps pounding away at the horse until the crowd shouts enough for the horse to be retired from the ring.
Next, another crazy man who we don’t recognize, wearing a red and white suit sprints into the ring with pointy sticks with lots of flare, jamming them into the already frustrated bull. These sticks, upon further viewing, have metal spike and a barb on the end, but the spike doesn’t seem to be long enough to do much other than annoy the bull, but the barb keeps it from falling out, therefore the bull exits the encounter with these sticks hanging out of his back.
After a little bit more of the bull running around the ring attacking things, the matador comes in with a sword and his cape and toys with the bull a little bit more. The bull follows the cape around charging it and barely missing the matador, it looked challenging getting the bull to do exactly what he wanted it to like that. I knew what was coming now, the bull looked like he was getting a little bit tired, though he was not losing any of his resolve in terms of needing to attack things.
The matador went to the side of the ring after a little while and asked for a different sword, I wasn’t sure what this was about but it seemed important. Right away, he started holding the new sword up with the business end towards the bull. He seemed to be aiming, after a little while he lunged at the bull with the sword. The bull lunged back at the matador and the sword glanced off of the back off the bull. Twice more the matador aimed and lunged, twice more the bull attacked back and fended off the sword.
By this time the crowd started shouting insults at the matador, making jokes about his age and his inability to distinguish the bull from the surrounding area. He seemed to take the insults rather well, on the fourth try he managed to land the sword squarely in the back of the bull. It didn’t take but five seconds for the bull to fall to the ground, dead. Soon afterward the man in the red and black suit came to make sure that the bull was dead, driving a blade into the base of his skull.
While the bull lies there the matador walks around the ring and people cheer and throw things for him to touch and throw back. I found it a little odd that somebody threw a rag to him and he picked it up, wiped his brow with it and then threw it back. Maybe it’s good luck.
After the matador pranced around for a while a pickup truck drove into the ring and hooked the bull up by its back legs, dragging it out of the ring. I had heard that the bull would be pulled from the ring by donkeys, which I thought much more appropriate for the event than a Chevy. What do I know?
The other three fights were more or less the same, nothing really to talk about. The point I would like to point out is that at no point during the fights did I feel disgusted or horrified by the event and the bull did not seem to be in any pain. I actually felt worse for the calves that were tortured during the “Midget Bullfights” than I did for the real bulls.
My favorite parts of the bullfight were actually when something went wrong and the bull got his chance to get some vengeance for what was happening to him. Once during the second fight the bull managed to catch one of his tormenters and drag him across the floor for a little while, I didn’t manage to get it on film unfortunately. The other time the bull got points was when he attacked a horse and managed to get the Picador off of the horse’s back and onto his. This caused a little bit of chaos and was pretty exciting; I managed to get video of this.
Another thing that really stood out was how the second matador was very showy, a little overkill in any other event really. I think this might be a normal occurrence in bullfighting, I remember reading “Ferdinand the Bull” when I was a kid and it talked about the matadors and their egos.
Overall, I cannot say whether or not I would go to another bullfight, it was definitely an experience that I am glad that I had. I can now say that I have seen a bullfight and my experience was not horrible, but I know that the event is really gory and very vivid.
The local fair is going on right now. I went on opening night to see the attractions and check things out, it was kind of cool. The real reason I went was for the midget bullfighting, a big draw for a child of the “Jackass” generation. I was told on one of the online forums that “Midget Bullfighting is to a Corrida(bullfight) what midget wrestling is to Olympic grappling.” I think the metaphor was meant to discourage my enthusiasm, but it honestly just made me want to see it more.
The schedule for the event, broken into three pictures
A group of six friends went to the fair after dinner, I was sure that the event started at nine but I had also heard seven and I couldn’t remember exactly, so at about eight we started out that way to see, we stopped in front of PlayaResale to look at the poster that I had originally seen there a couple of weeks before. The poster said the “Enanitos Toreros” started at six-thirty, but I was pretty sure we could still make it, because I am familiar with scheduling practices here on the Yucatan peninsula. The fairgrounds is rather hidden, you drive down Juarez until you get to the line of cars turning left, then follow the car in front of you until you get to all the police telling you that you cannot park here. Then you find a suitable spot in a vacant lot or sidestreet and walk the few blocks back to the very well lit entrance. Sorry folks, I can’t give better directions than that. So we got to the gate and I was expecting to pay an entrance fee, a police officer waved us over and asked if we spoke Spanish. Allie(Mexico-or-Bust) jumped in and said that she did, so I kept quiet. The police officer basically gave us the typical speech about this gathering is pretty far off the normal tourist route and if we want to be here we need to behave like we live here and don’t do anything that would jeopardize our safety. I got sort of a “This ain’t spring break in Cancun” feeling from his message.
As we were walking up and talking to the police, the fireworks display had started, it was the closest I have ever been to a real fireworks show. Burning embers were falling on us and the crowd around us, it was pretty vivid, I spent the whole time wondering if they were going to catch something on fire. True to form, there was a chapel at the entrance of the fairgrounds, during the fireworks show, the large Virgin-Mary-holding-baby-Jesus on top of the chapel burst into bright pyrotechnic flames, a nice touch to any opening.
A very cool fireworks show
The first thing we did was made our way to the bullring, the Midget event didn’t start until 10pm according the the flyers, so we had plenty of time to look around. We got something to drink, I tried an agua-de-naranja, which was a lot sweeter than the aguas-frescas that I am accustomed to.
There was a show being put on at the main stage, so we went to check it out. Singing and poetry and dancers with baskets of fruit, pretty typical to many of the dances I have seen but always entertaining.This show seemed to be put on by the Honorable Ayuntemiento de Merida, at least it said so on their sashes.
Dancing girls with fruit!
We walked around for a while, noticing lots of food booths and puestos selling various fried goods. I have never been a big fan of deepfried hotdogs, but I did notice that if that was something you were interested they were in stock. Allie’s husband Hans and I often venture about Playa Del Carmen looking for new and interesting culinary experiences, so I convinced him that he should try Marquesitas.
Marquesitas, mmm!
A Marquesita is a crispy crepe fried right in front of you and then sprinkled liberally with a parmesan-like cheese and your choice of caramel, lechera, or nutella. I found the booth that seemed to have the most people frequenting it and we each got one, I got it with lechera and Hans had his with nutella. None of the rest of the group was feeling up to trying these sweet treats, but we certainly enjoyed ours. Next, we wandered over to the rides area of the fair, joking how there was no way we would get on any of these deathtraps. Then I suggested to Hans that we ride the spinning wheel of death, sort of as a joke. I was sure he would turn me down, because it was quite apparent that it was not safe. Unfortunately, he took me up on the offer. We climbed the stairs to the ride and hopped in, what the hell, it was only 20 pesos per person. We were buckled in(well, the buckle in our seat was broken, so the attendant tied a nice knot in it), and off we went.
Wheel of death!
The ride was an interesting spin-you-this-way-and-that-until-you-puke affair, I think they must be outlawed in The States because I don’t remember ever seeing anything comparable. We started to spin but then stopped, the loud grinding noise had been a clue to the operator that we were out of balance, they shuffled some people around and we were off again. It started out fine this time and the only complaint we had for the first few minutes was that the cart we were in seemed a little small. Then, the loud grinding noise returned and at this point we were moving too fast to do anything about it, but we didn’t stop. We spun forwards and backwards and sideways and the operator made fun of us…then the burning plastic smell came. Nobody else seemed concerned, so we didn’t scream too much about it.
Crazy people on a carnival ride.
The spinning was really starting to make me sick and I wasn’t sure how much more I really could deal with, but mercifully the ride ended. We wobbled down the steps and got on firm ground, I quickly made a mental note of where the nearest garbage can was in the case of spontaneous vomiting. We had about 20 minutes before the midgets started, so we decided to walk off the nausea. I am proud to say that neither Hans nor I got sick, though that was still questionable as we found our seats for the bullfight. The tickets were $100 pesos each, I am amazed that they can charge that much but they about halfway filled the arena. The midgets made their grand entrance soon after we sat down and the show began.
Bullfighters entering the ring.
The main event was rather anti-climactic for the evening, we watched yearling bulls get manhandled by two midgets in torero suits and two normal-sized clowns, they had some comedic(?) acts involving a midget acting drunk and making cute little plays on words, then there was a weird midget dancing session. Overall, it was entertaining but just barely.
Small bulls fighting small matadores.
The experience was worthwhile, even though the midget bullfighting wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. I guess there was no way it really could have lived up to the expectations I had for it. I had a very entertaining evening and I am glad I went, I think I spent less that $200 pesos for the whole night, which is pretty ok in my book. I don’t know if I would say I recommend the fair to everyone, it is definitely not a typical 5th Avenue experience, but I really had a good time.
Well, the tournament is over. Team USA played their best. We lost horribly to all who challenged us. We are broken and beaten but it was sure fun!
We had been practicing all week, not so much so that so that we could win any games, more so we didn’t look like complete fools out there on the beach. We knew that we would probably not be winning any games, but we wanted to be able to say we tried our best. I think we accomplished that goal.
Our team was made up of four Mexican guys, three Americans, and a German(who is a partner in coffee café). We showed up at Coffee Café for the pre-team meeting at 8am Saturday morning and I handed out jerseys and got all the liability-waver paperwork filled out. We read through the rules that La Quinta had given me and we signed them, then we walked down to the beach to get things started.
We showed up at 9am, right on time for our first game. We were kind of hoping for a dramatic entrance, you know, showing up at the last minute and looking tough. It was a great plan except that the tournament was a little late in getting started, so when we got there the first game was just getting underway. We wandered around and schmoozed with the Playa color for a while, talked about team strategy, and casually observed the wildlife at Mamitas beach.
At 10:30 we played our first game against Israel, it went really well and we thought we were getting on a roll. Israel was made up of mostly Israelis, possibly all special forces. They were all about my size(6 footish) and very sturdily built. We got scored on a couple of times in the first period, but we were pretty sure that 2-0 wasn’t such a bad way to start the second period. We rotated out and played good defense, but in the end we just couldn’t stand up to the force of the Israelis. Somebody at some point made a comment about “they beat most of the middle east in seven days, how could we expect them not to beat us in a soccer game?” We almost scored a point in the second period, which was a big moral booster for the guys, but for some reason it was called no good.
Our next game was rescheduled because the Dutch team wanted to play in our time slot so that they could watch their match against Russia in the Eurocup, so we finally played again at around 3pm.
The second game was against Argentina, last years champion. They had a cheering section of probably fifty people, some of their cheerleaders were VERY distracting. They had drums and half naked women, people painted in light-blue and white, the Latin Americans take this thing very seriously. We had one of the player’s wife and and a friend of ours. One of our other player’s wives seemed to be sitting with the Argentinians, maybe for sabotage purposes?
The Argentinian team was very physical, most of them somewhat large, they started pushing the guys around the field. They got really rough with us during the first half and were able to score a few points on us. The guys weren’t used to that kind of abuse, some even said it was getting dirty out there, so they were a little shaken up. We decided to change our strategy a little for the second half. We were going to play less carefully, hopefully it would even up the odds a little bit.
We put in all of the Americans to start the second half, with orders to make room for the one Mexican to make some points. After just a few minutes of this the opposing team asked us if we could possibly all calm down a little bit on the fouling, and apologized for getting the game started off with that tone. We agreed and pulled most of the Americans out, but the game started getting a little physical again toward the end.
One of the Argentinian cheer squad at one point in the game tried to jump on the field after one of the American players and then team USA ended the last 2 minutes of the period with only 3 players because one of the Mexican guys got thrown out for illegal use of hands(mostly on somebody else’s body). It was a little out of control, all of the foul shots in the end of the game ended up giving Argentina 6 points. This game really brought our team closer, we felt like we had gone through something together.
Team US after Argentina
This game ended at 3:30pm, two hours after we were supposed to play our last game. One of the Americans had an business meeting at 4pm and one of our Mexican players had to meet his mother-in-law for the first time, so our team we down to just six players. We were a little worried about not having enough players for the next game, but we decided to get some lunch and regroup for the next game anyway.
At 4:15 we were informed that we were late for our next match, against Britain. We rushed over to the second field to find nobody but a couple of referees sitting in the shade of one of the tents that was set up for the game. I guess Britain didn’t know they had to play either. The ref’s wanted to call the game, which was OK with us, because that would have been a win! At the last minute 4 of the British team showed up and convinced us to play anyway, they told us that if they beat us that they would advance against to the finals and Argentina would not. We were exhausted and short a couple of guys, but we figured we wouldn’t rob the Brits of the chance to go on just to be spiteful.
Three minutes into the first half the refs called time, I guess they were taking time off of the clock for time we kept them waiting. At the beginning of the second half a couple more British players showed up, so we were now playing against a full team. They started playing really well, but it seemed that some of their players were not as tired as the rest of us.
Five minutes before the end of the game some Argentinians and some of the tournament organizers showed up for a little high-spirited discussion on the sidelines. There seemed to be some question as to whether or not we were letting them win! Team USA was flattered by this sentiment, and I can assure you we were playing to the best of our abilities. Then the Argentinian faction pointed out that some of the British players were not the players who originally signed up to play, which started even more controversy. The game ended, Britain beat us fair and square. Unfortunately, I seems that they were disqualified due to the new players. So we may or may not have technically won that third game. We didn’t really feel like sticking around for all the arguing to find out.
As we were leaving, we heard that Team Israel was disqualified as well, because they were switching jerseys between other people. I guess when they were asked about it they claimed they had “Eight players plus a goaly”, which wasn’t quite what was in the rules. This game really controversial, I had no idea.
Well, Team USA had a great time. I was glad to get the opportunity to play and hope that I can do it again next year. Maybe we will train more so we can legitimately win one game.
It’s official. We are a soccer team, we have the jerseys, we were presented to the world by La Quinta Magazine last night. It was kind of a scary experience, I got to recieve the jerseys from in the front of a press conference in Coffee Cafe.
The Jersey
We have been practicing hard and I hope we are getting better. We were a little worried last week because we tried a couple of runs up and down the beach with the soccer ball and was more difficult than we expected it to be, but today was a good practice and we left feeling pretty comfortable about our soccer skills.
Team USA is made up of three Americans, one German, and four Mexicans. The four non-Mexicans are who really needs practice in this equation, the Mexicans are all “bien chavito”, about 18 years old, and all in very good shape. A couple of them play for Interplaya(the Playa semi-pro team), which might actually give us some chance of winning a few games, or at least not making complete fools out of ourselves.
It is really amazing to watch our guys play, the American faction of the team runs around and wastes a lot of energy trying to chase the ball, and the Mexican guys seem to always be standing exactly where the ball is going. This seems to be some sort of Tai-Chi that I just don’t have yet.
Our strategy will be very simple, get the ball to the Mexican kids. They all have repeatedly told us that we need to stop moving so much or we or not going to make it through the first game. Actually, at first they just said we weren’t going to make it through the first game, no qualification. Things have changed and they have a little bit more confidence now.
The tournament has four groups of four teams, all of which will play three games. The games will be two fifteen minute quarters with a five minute intermission in between. There will be an hour and a half break in between games. By game three I have a feeling we will be exhausted, but our coach Luis(also a player) seems to think that all of the teams will be exhausted by that time so it won’t be such a big deal. He is very optimistic.
The practices this week have been kind of fun. Yesterday was pretty tough, we practiced really hard and all of us ended up very sandy and very sore. Today was much better, though some of the players couldn’t show up because of other commitments, we just played two-on-two in the hot morning sun and then did some passing and ball-handling drills. The practices all end with a swim in the ocean, which makes me remember why I love living here.
Tomorrow we will be practicing at one of the municipal soccer fields, Luis wants us to take a day off of running on the beach to give our ankles a rest. I was quite pleased to hear that he thought that would be a good idea because I have been feeling a little hobbled the last couple of days. We will have another beach practice on Thursday and then take Friday off to rest before the big day.
I have never been really into soccer but this experience is really making me think that it might not be so bad. Some of the guys have talked about maybe continuing to play after the tournament is finished and there have been some inquiries on one of the Playa Del Carmen forums I post to about a continuing team. Not what I was expecting at all.
So, a couple of weeks ago(could be a month even) somebody came to me and asked me to be part of Team USA in the annual Mundialito soccer tournament that is held here in Playa. At first I said absolutely no, because I don’t know how to play soccer. I played in a league when I was about 6 but I remember lots of grass stains and that is about it.
I became convinced to play, a friend of mine is sponsoring the team and he can’t play and it sounded like a good chance to get together some other young people and have a little fun. Then I became informed that I was the team captain because nobody else was on the team, it was my responsibility to get a team together.
I called some friends and got a lot of no’s but eventually my friend Hans got together some people he knows and we got a team together. I still seem to be the captain. There is almost no soccer skill between all of the Americans I got to play on the team, I was a little worried. Luckily, we were informed that we could have four non-Americans on the team to even it out a little bit. Good thing, because we were having a hard time finding Americans anyway.
Now, since I am not good enough friends with anyone from the Mexican National team, I figured I would have to look for talent elsewhere. We got the next best thing, some guys from Coffee Cafe volunteered to play as our ringers. They play all the time and I hear they are pretty good. Since Coffee Cafe is our team sponsor, they were easily convinced to play, though I think they are a little amused by our lack of skill.
We had a team meeting on Thursday, which went well. We got together, had a coffee, bs’d a little bit and got the details down. It will be a fun experiment because all of us are sort of “managers” in our daily life and the team organization seemed to wreak of too many bosses. It will all work out.
I went to La Quinta today to register the team, they showed me the jersey design, very cool. They also informed me that there is a little pre-party tonight at Santanera and asked that I get all of the team members there. We shall see, it will be our grand unveiling to the world I guess. I am on my way there now, so I better cut this short. I will try to take pictures and I blog about what happens next.
Stay tuned, Monday morning is our first “formal” practice. This should be interesting.
