California - Velcro Bullfights

[Guest guest]

Of interest to Cow Conference members. Please note Humane Society's objections

at

the end of the article.

 

your servant,

 

Hare Krsna dasi

 

******************

 

New York Times, June 27, 2001

 

In California Bullfights, the Final Deed Is Done with Velcro

 

By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

 

STEVINSON, Calif. — By day, Dennis Borba could be mistaken for just another

Central Valley rancher in a T-shirt and red pickup truck. But come Monday

nights at

this torrid time of year, he puts on his glimmering "suit of lights,"

custom-made

in Madrid, and becomes Matador Borba, grabbing a handful of dirt and crossing

himself before stepping into the bullring.

 

In dusty, off-the-map towns like Stevinson, Gustine and Thornton, this is the

season of the "fiesta brava," the bullfight. From May to October, but

especially

June — roughly coinciding with the arrival of Pentecost Sunday and summerlong

celebrations of the Holy Ghost — thousands of Portuguese-Americans, many from

the

Azores, flock to wooden bullrings to watch a distinctly different brand of

bullfighting.

 

When Matador Borba takes his cape into the ring, he confronts a living,

thousand-pound bull, but not with a sword or a retinue of picadors to jab the

bull

with lances.

 

The bull wears a Velcro patch on its mighty shoulders. Mr. Borba's

paper-frilled

darts, or banderillas, are Velcro-tipped. Rather than piercing the bull, they

stick

to it. Call it, with apologies to Hemingway, Velcro in the Afternoon.

 

The California hybrid, in which the bull's diamond-tipped horns are rounded and

sheathed in leather to protect stallions mounted by men in Three

Musketeers-style

outfits, is a spinoff of the traditional Portuguese bloodless bullfight. It

also

includes a team of eight young men who line up to wrestle the bull to a

standstill.

 

In this variation, the bull is teased, harried, danced with and grappled, but

not

killed. The Velcro is a California twist.

 

It is both a nod to animal protectionists and a response to state law.

Bullfighting

as it is practiced in Spain and Mexico, in which the bull is killed at the

finale,

is outlawed in the United States. California banned bullfighting of any kind in

1957, but after lobbying by citizens in Gustine, the site of the state's oldest

and

largest bullring, lawmakers eventually permitted Portuguese-style bullfights

held

in connection with religious celebrations or festivals.

 

The 20 or so bullfights held here each summer are not widely known or

advertised

beyond California's Portuguese-Americans, a closely knit group of some 350,000

dairy farmers and owners, ranchers, and food processing and construction

workers.

Some make the pilgrimage to Stevinson (population 155), which has one of eight

bullrings in the Valley, from as far away as Los Angeles. (Stevinson is a

two-hour

drive from San Francisco and San Jose.)

 

They come to partake in a ritual that harks back to village life in Portugal

and

the Azores, nine islands in the Atlantic about 740 miles off the mainland. Many

families in and around Stevinson — Mr. Borba's among them — come from the

island of

Terceira, where summertime celebrations of patron saints and feasts for the

Holy

Ghost always end with a bullfight.

 

In California, bullfights typically take place on Monday nights after a series

of

masses, feasts and religious processions, said Elmano Costa, director of the

Center

for Portuguese Studies at California State University Stanislaus.

 

"The bullfight is more than sport," Mr. Costa said. "It's a social event, the

place

where boy meets girl. It keeps close connections between people who may live

far

apart, but meet in Stevinson for the bullfight."

 

The ring here — capacity 3,000 — has the rickety intimacy of an old

minor-league

ballpark. It resembles a circular town square with maroon siding and is

plastered

with signs for local businesses like Silveira Hoof Trimming and Joe L. Coelho

Inc.

Hauling and Corn Chopping, with not a Budweiser logo in sight. It was erected

10

years ago in a pasture across the street from the Stevinson Pentecost

Association

hall, the nonprofit organization that sponsors most fights and built the ring.

 

The hall was filled with the aromas of wine and garlic, as dozens of women

wearing

traditional Azorean aprons cooked pork loins for linguica sandwiches — ring

food.

 

"Without the bullfight, this town would be pretty much dead," said Ruben

Almada, a

19-year-old student at Modesto Junior College whose mother, Mary, was cooking.

"It

brings the culture alive. You feel like it's dying without it."

 

Mr. Borba is the only active professional matador born in the United States.

His

father, Frank V. Borba, was a pioneer of bullfighting here, going so far in

1980 as

to build by hand a Spanish-tiled, 1,200-seat bullring, called Campo Bravo, at

the

family's ranch in Escalon. His grandfather John bred fighting bulls in the

Azores.

Most matadors who perform here are flown in from Mexico or Portugal. Mr. Borba

is a

novelty: a local boy who grew up watching late-night bullfights from Tijuana on

UHF.

 

The matador — who refuses to divulge his age and supplements his income by

doing

stuntwork for Hollywood (he says he will be Kiefer Sutherland's stunt double in

a

forthcoming film about rodeo) — spent eight years as a novilheiro, or novice,

in

Mexico, becoming a full-fledged matador in 1987.

 

In Mexico City, he learned the secret of fighting with the half-cape: "to make

the

pass slow, instead of Speedy Gonzalez, so it becomes an art," he said. Like

many

other people here, he can recite the story of how wild bulls were brought down

from

the mountaintops of Terceira in the 16th century to fend off Spanish invaders.

 

On a recent Monday night, the trumpets blared mournfully as he stepped into the

ring. The first bull, one of two Mr. Borba fought that night, tired quickly,

prompting disapproving mutters from the audience, who did not throw their

baseball

caps into the ring. The second time around, Mr. Borba slowly romanced the bull,

gazing at him intently while he pirouetted in the dirt, as if dancing a minuet.

The

caps flew.

 

The most alarming job belonged to the Forcados de Turlock, the eight young men

who

call themselves "the suicide squad." They are the fearless "grabbers" who line

up

and take the bull by the horns as he is charging. The team practices on a dummy

bull made out of metal and car tires. Injuries to last year's squad included a

concussion and broken ribs.

 

The bullrings followed the 1960's influx of Azorean immigrants, who came to

California, which they referred to as "the tenth island," after a major

volcanic

eruption. Sometime in the mid-1970's — there is disagreement over who was first

—

local breeders began to import purebred fighting bulls from Mexico.

 

"You don't know how a bull will fight until you put it in front of a matador,"

said

Frank Borba, now 74.

 

Bulls can be fought only once. "The second time, they won't go for the cape,"

Dennis Borba said. "It's, `uh-oh.' They're very intelligent animals."

 

After the fight, they await various fates. The strongest bulls, he said, about

one

in 100, are bred. The rest are either sold to the rodeo or wind up at

slaughterhouses. Mr. Borba, who lays claim to the Velcro concept, is not

sentimental about fighting bulls; he considers them lucky.

 

"At least they have an opportunity in life to show who they are," he said.

 

During the winter, Mr. Borba fights "real" bullfights in Mexico, Costa Rica,

Panama

and Peru.

 

Although largely confined to California, bloodless bullfights have begun to

crop up

in other states; last summer, three were held in Arkansas City, Kan., to

promote

"diversity awareness," said Rodney Tipton, a member of the town's multicultural

committee. In San Diego, the country's first matador school, the California

Academy

of Tauromaquia, opened in 1997 despite opposition.

 

Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United

States,

said that "most states are silent" on bloodless bullfighting, which the society

opposes.

 

"They create a scenario in which we are one step closer to bloody bullfights,"

he

said. "We're moving away in our culture from harming animals for entertainment

purposes. Unfortunately, animal cruelty knows no cultural bounds."

 

To Mario Carrión, a retired bullfighter from Madrid and a former Spanish

professor

at the University of Maryland, Velcro bullfighting is "a clever addition" to

the

taurine canon. "The artistic value is there, but the extreme danger is not," he

said. Without picadors weakening the bull's muscles, the bull is more difficult

to

dominate.

 

"You can be thrown into the air with tremendous energy," Mr. Carrión said. "The

bull seems driven by Duracel batteries."

 

Velcro or no Velcro, Matador Borba says a prayer each time he enters the ring.

 

"I think every bullfighter better have some religion," he said. "It's you, the

bull

and the Lord."