VII A Mexican Bullfight
Mexico City,
Sunday, November 24th.
A feeling first of disgust and then of anger came over me this afternoon. I was sitting right between two pretty Spanish women, young and comely. One of them as she came in was greeted by the name Hermosa Paracita (beautiful little parrot), by eight or ten sprucely dressed young Spaniards just back of me. The spectators with ten thousand vociferous throats had just been cheering a picador. He had done a valiant deed. He had ridden his blindfolded horse around the ring twice, lifting his cap to the cheering multitude. He was applauded because he had managed to have the belly of his horse so skillfully ripped open by the maddened black bull, that all its vitals and entrails were dragging on the ground while he rode it, under the stimulus of his cruel spurs and wicked bit, twice around the ring before it fell, to be dragged out, dying, by mules, gaily-caparisoned in trappings of red and gold, tugging at its heels! Paracita clapped her pretty bejeweled hands and cried “bravo!” And so did the scores of other pretty women; women on the reserved seats, elegant ladies and pretty children in the high-priced boxes on the upper tiers! The howling mob of thousands also applauded the gallant picador! Would he be equally fortunate and clever and succeed in having the next horse ripped open so completely, all at one thrust of the bull’s horns? Quien sabe?
The city of four hundred thousand inhabitants, capital of the Mexican Republic, had been profoundly stirred all the week over the arrival from Spain of the renowned Manzanillo and his band of toreadors (bullfighters). Their first appearance would be the opening event of the bullfighting season.
Manzanillo, the most renowned Toreador of old Spain! And bulls, six of them, of the most famous strains of Mexico and of Andalusia! Señor Limantour, Secretary of State for Mexico, spoken of as the successor to President Diaz, had just delighted the jeunesse dorée by publicly announcing his acceptance of the honor of the Presidency of the newly founded “Bullfighting Club.” Spanish society and the Sociadad Española had publicly serenaded Don Manzanillo at his hotel! A dinner would be given in his honor after the event! Men and women were selling tickets on the streets. Reserved tickets at five dollars each, could only be obtained at certain cigar stores. The rush would be so great that, to secure a ticket at all, one must buy early. I secured mine on Thursday, and was none too soon. The spectacle would come off Sunday afternoon at three o’clock, by which hour all the churches would have finished their services, and the ladies would have had their almuerzo, and time to put on afternoon costume.
By noon the drift of all the street crowds was toward the bull ring, a mile or two out near the northwest border of the city. All street cars were packed and extra cars were running; even all carriages and cabs were taken, and the cabmen commanded double prices. I had retained a carriage the day before. At the restaurant I could scarcely get a bite, the waiters and cooks were so eager to get through and escape, even for a single peep at the spectacle. As I drove out, young ladies were standing in groups at the gateways of many fashionable residences waiting for their carriages to take them to the ring. As I approached the arena, the throngs upon the streets and sidewalks blocked the way.
Hundreds of Indians and Mexicans, mostly women, had set up temporary eating stands along the roadside. Fruit, tortillas, steaming broth and meat roasting over fires, tempted the hungry. These stands would feed a multitude. It was early, but the city fire department was already on hand with apparatus to extinguish any possible blaze among the wooden tiers of seats. A battalion of mounted police sat on their blood-bay horses at intervals along the road, their gaudy blue and gold uniforms setting off effectively their dark brown skins. We entered a large gateway, gave up half of our tickets, and then passed in to a broad flight of steps. We ascended to the tiers of seats and chose good places. Presently, two companies of infantry with set bayonets also entered and took up their positions. Often the mob becomes so mad with blood-lust, that bayonets are needed to keep order, sometimes also bullets.
It was an hour before the set time, but none too early. The crowds, all well dressed on this side, every one of whom had paid five dollars for a ticket, kept pouring in. Across on the other side swarmed the cheap mob. Behind me was a row of young Spaniards. They stood up and called nicknames to all their friends who entered within reach of their vision. They cheered every pretty well dressed woman. They howled like mad when the band came in, they fairly burst themselves when, at last, Manzanillo, the toreador, the matadores, picadores, the valiant gold-laced company of bullfighters, entered and marched around the ring.
Manzanillo sat on a superb Andalusian charger which pranced and threw up his forefeet as though conscious of the illustrious character of his master. Then Manzanillo dismounted and took his place, the picadores stationed their horses on either side and pulled over their eyes the bandages to blindfold them, others carrying big gold-embroidered red shawls, stood all attention, the band struck up, the door opposite me was thrown open and a handsome, black-brown bull trotted in. As he passed the gate he received his first attention. Two rosettes of scarlet and gold ribbons were hooked into his shoulders, with steel teeth, enough to irritate him just a little. He stood there amazed. The crowd cheered him. A man in gold lace promptly flaunted a red shawl in his face. He charged it. The man stepped lightly aside and bowed to the audience, who cheered vociferously. “Bravo! Well done!” Then one of the blindfolded horses was spurred toward the bull. The bull was dazed and angry. He charged right at the horseman. The horseman lowered his spear and caught the bull in the shoulder. The bull flinched to one side. The audience cheered the picador, but the bull dexterously turning, charged the horse on the other side, and, before the poor beast could be turned, drove his sharp horns into his abdomen, ripped it up and upset the rider and horse in a cloud of dust. The audience now cheered the bull. A dozen men rushed to the rescue and dragged the picador away. The horse lay there and the bull charged it again, and again ripped out more entrails. The audience cheered the bull, and the bull, encouraged by the applause, took another turn at the dying horse. Just then a dexterous footman slung the red sheet in the bull’s face and he turned to chase it. But all in vain! Charge the red vision all he would, he never caught anything but thin air! He could never catch the man.
Then the bull saw another horse blindly sidling towards him, for though blindfolded, the old horse could yet smell the bull and the blood, and only went forward under the pressure of savage spur and bit. The bull stood gazing at the horse and rider a moment, then he charged right at them with head down. He caught the horse in the belly and ripped out its entrails, which dragged on the ground, while the brave picador continued to ride it about, and sought yet again to engage the attention of the bull.
But the bull was now tired. He thought of his mountain pastures and the sweet, long grass of the uplands. He would go home. He would fight no more. He wanted to get out, he wanted badly to get out. The now hissing mob scared him worse than when they cheered. He ran about the ring trying all the locked doors. He couldn’t force them. Then he tried to climb over the high wall, to jump over anyway. He was frantic with pathetic panic. But shouting men stood round the parapet and clubbed him over the head. So he gave up and returned to the center of the ring, panting, his tongue hanging out, foam dripping from his jaws. He was altogether winded.
Now was Manzanillo’s opportunity. He carried a small purple gold-fringed scarf over his left arm, and his long, straight naked sword in his right hand. He stood directly in front of the bull. He caught its eye. He waved the purple banner. Almost imperceptibly he approached. The bull stood staring at him, legs wide apart, sides panting, tail lashing, head down, tired but ready to charge. Then, quick as lightning, Manzanillo stepped up to the bull, straight in front of him, and reaching out at arm’s length drove the sword to the very hilt right down between the shoulder blades. It was a mortal stroke, a wonderful thrust, perfect, precise, fatal. Only a master of his craft could do just such a perfectly exact act. And as quick as lightning did Manzanillo step aside, fold his arms and stand motionless, not ten feet from the bull, to watch him die. He gave only one sweeping bow to the audience. The Spaniard is a connoisseur in all the delicate and subtle masterstrokes in this duel of man and beast. Manzanillo had sustained his reputation as the greatest living bullfighter of old Spain. The nerve, the agility, the lightning-like act—too quick for human eye to follow—the perfect judgment of time and distance and force, all these he had now displayed. The vast audience broke out into one simultaneous “Bravo,” rose to its feet and then, like the matador, stood silent and breathless to watch the bull die,—to see the hot blood pour from mouth and nostrils, the sturdy thighs and shoulders shake, the powerful knees bend. The nose sank to the dust, the knees trembled, the bull rolled in the sand, quite dead. Manzanillo drew out his reeking sword. Again he bowed to the vast multitude, and no human being ever received a more overwhelming ovation than did he. Flowers were thrown him in heaps. Sometimes women even take off their jewels and throw them, and kiss the hero when they later meet him on the street. So great is the joy of the blood-lust! So has the frenzy of the Roman arena descended to some of Rome’s degenerate sons. Mules in gay red and gold trappings now dragged out the bull as they had the horse. There would be cheap stews for the multitude in the city to-night.
The next bull was jet-black, big, sturdy, ferocious. He scorned to charge or gore a blindfolded horse, but he chased a man wherever in sight. Such a bull is according to the Spanish heart! The audience cheered him wildly. He ripped up three or four horses just because he had to, in order to get at the man on their backs. One of the horses had been ripped up by the first bull, but his dusty entrails had been put back, the rent sewn up, and under cruel spur and bit he had been presented to the second bull to be again splendidly and finally ripped wide open, ridden around the ring by his bowing rider, bloody entrails dragging in the dust, and applauded to his death by the blood-hungry multitude! The second bull was game! The banderillas were placed with danger and difficulty. These are two beribboned sticks tipped with steel gaffs that are jabbed into the bull’s shoulders, adding to the irritation of the rosettes, and increasing his desire for revenge. In the first bull they were perfectly planted and three pairs set in. In the second only one was got in at first, then a pair, then one again. Each setting of the banderillas is a dangerous feat! The bull must be approached from the front. Just as they are stuck into the maddened animal, the banderillador must step aside. He must be quick, very quick, as quick as the toreador in planting his fatal sword thrust. And not infrequently the banderillador gets tossed, and perhaps gored and killed by the bull. Hence the act, well done, receives deafening applause. Despite his fierce courage, this splendid black bull also met at last his inevitable fate, beneath the perfectly skillful thrust of Manzanillo.
The third bull was the biggest and oldest yet. Horses were ripped up by him in exciting succession and one picador was caught under his fallen horse and badly bruised. Nor was it so easy to kill this bull. The matador lost a trifle of his nerve. The sword only went in half way. It took the bull some time to bleed internally and die. With the sword-hilt waving between his shoulder blades, he tried to follow and gore the matador, but his strength began to fail. He stood still, his head sank down, his knees bent, he knelt. And the vast audience stood in hush and silence to watch with delighted expectancy the final oncoming of death. When he rolled over quite dead, the pretty women in the box behind me shouted and waved their dainty hands in mad delight.
The fourth bull was just ushered in when the brutality and cruelty and horror of it all quite nauseated me. I rose to go. My friend told our neighbors that I was “ill.” Otherwise they could not have understood my leaving in the midst of the fight. Afterward I heard it declared to be a very fine performance, for, as a little Mexican boy exclaimed delightedly, “they killed six bulls and thirteen horses! It was magnifico!”
As I sat and looked out on the ten thousand faces of all classes, rich and poor, all radiant and frenzied with the blood-lust and the joy of seeing a creature tortured to the very death, and then heard the clang of the multitudinous church bells, calling to Vesper services, even before the spectacle was ended, I realized that, surely, I was among a different people, bred to a different civilization from my own; a civilization still mediæval and still as cruel as when the Inquisition sated even fanaticism with its cultivated passion for blood! I also shame to say that I met to-night two young American ladies, school teachers at Toluca, going home with two bloody banderillas plucked from one of the bulls—“Trophies to keep as souvenirs.” They “Had so much enjoyed the fine spectacle.” Thus do even my countrywomen degenerate, thus is the savage aroused within their hearts!