El Mariachi? No. Los Mariachis.

Technically when he's by himself he's not a mariachi.
 But he also has a gun so...

Oh Jalisco, birthplace of some of the great aspects of Mexican culture like tequila, barbacoa and pozole, Guadalajara (as well as the Lady thereof), and of course, mariachi music. Everyone knows mariachi music. It is a staple of Mexican cultural stereotypes but more than that it is some awesome music and an extremely revelatory and important aspect of a rich and wonderful history.

I’ve heard of mariachi music described as Mexican country music but that is not an accurate assessment. American country music (originally called “hillbilly music” – yeah, I’m not kidding; go look it up, I’ll wait) started in the south and much like mariachi music, it was made up of folk songs, ballads, and dance songs. It was composed with relatively simple and common instruments like guitars and maybe some brass but where country music eventually turned into musical atrocities like Lady Antebellum or Rascal Flats, mariachi music has remained pretty true to its roots and any great deviation from those roots it is no longer called mariachi music but something like ranchera, banda, or any other name to make ensure that it is distinct and not tainting the traditional sound and style.

Rascal Flatts - a country "band"

Here in New York there isn’t a great deal of exposure to Mariachi music. Most New Yorker’s only experience with the genre comes from the uninvited, eye-roll inducing, ear bud tightening performances on the subway. I like to imagine a bus in Mexico where an American dude with a guitar climbs aboard and starts singing Devil Went Down to Georgia and I understand why the average New Yorker has less than a great affinity for the music. On the West Coast however, well just to give an example, we had a mariachi trio playing at my grandfather’s funeral. It was pretty awesome and Abuelo would have been satisfied. Beyond that, as I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, New York has a greater Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban population than it does Mexican. For the record I am not a fan of Reggeaton music. It hurts me in my soul.

Chente

So here is your history lesson for the day: Mariachi music originated in Jalisco a few hundred years ago, probably in the 1700s during the colonial period. It lived on through the post-colonial period and gained prominence during a period of nationalism through which the genre became a symbol of the great Mexican landscape and came to be associated internationally as a representation of all things Mexican. The name itself, mariachi, is indigenous to Mexico and not an appropriated or some sort of malapropism. By definition mariachi music is always performed by an ensemble, always a group. A guy playing guitar and singing by himself- he is not a mariachi all alone. Some of you may be thinking, “Hey but what about Vicente Fernandez?” or “How about Javier Solis?” or “This site still gets updated?” Solis and Fernandez do look like mariachis. They wear outfits so stunning and shiny that Liberace would blush- however make no mistake, these are the suits, a traje de charro as they’re called, that are representative of the noble cowboy history that accompany this rich genre. But as for the men in the suits, when it’s just one man it is a ranchera singer. And again, make no mistake, when it’s Vicente Fernandez it is El rey de la cancion ranchera. Though one might hear groups playing similar music, if they are not dressed or playing in the style of Jalisco, they are not mariachis.

Mariachi ensembles now generally consist of instruments ranging from guitars and brass to larger groups including harps, percussion, and woodwinds. Of course one cannot leave out the grito, the yell that often comes at the song’s interlude often performed by either the singer or the audience. This is not unlike the yeehaw of an American hoedown. The songs can be either for listening or for dancing and the meter varies quite a bit. From 2/4 beat to 6/8 beat, waltzes and everything in between, there is a cancion to suit all of your mariachi needs. Mariachis are often hired to perform at weddings and birthdays, holidays, or really just about any occasion, they always fit the mood.

"Tambien hacemos bar mitvahs!"

There are many great songs performed by mariachis to suit a wide range of tastes. I’m a big fan of El Rey but some other greats are Son de la Negra, Guadalajara, and Camino de Guanajuato. But if you only have the faintest familiarity with mariachi music the one song that everyone seems to be familiar with is Cielito Lindo”. Go ahead and pull it up on iTunes, you’ll know which one it is.

Finding a mariachi band isn’t cheap, at least not if you want a good one. They can range from $120 per hour to several hundred dollars per hour depending on how good they are. I recommend them highly for birthday celebrations or even a trio to play ballads at a smaller, more intimate gathering. Maybe even at your next funeral. The songs range from the solitary musings of a cowboy out on the range, to the heart that beats only for the woman who left the singer. They romanticize the Mexican frontier and relate musings on love, patriotism, and nature. For whatever reason I can’t stand most American country music, but I will always have a place in my digital library for some mariachi music.

Take a Swing!

I was in my twenties before I was even able to conceive of the idea of a birthday party without a piñata. The idea that one could even have a celebration WITHOUT a papier-mâché animal or cartoon character was completely unthinkable to me. It was my brother who told me about this inexplicable horror. He had been seeing a young lady from Orange County who was of Scandinavian descent and this aberration of nature said that she’d only once had a piñata at Mexican themed birthday party. Nonplussed I simply stared at her. She may as well have told me that she had webbed toes. Keep in mind this is the same young woman whose family was also blissfully unaware that torillas are supposed to be warmed up before serving. For those of you who are only supposedly Mexican and do not have guac and beans running through your veins, piñatas are a mainstay of birthday parties. Like cake, ice cream, gifts, and a drunk uncle surrounded by empty cans of Bud Light, it is one of those items that without it, it simply isn’t a real birthday party.

Would you believe me if I told you that we have the Chinese to thank for the piñata? I don’t mean the Chinese working in the Toy District of Downtown Los Angeles, I mean the actual people of China! I wouldn’t have believed it either but it turns out that the people who brought us fireworks, Mao, delicious takeout, and the 2008 Olympics also gave us the gift of the piñata. According to Marco Polo (not just a fun game to play in the pool, my friends), the Chinese fashioned paper ox, cows, and buffalo, and filled them with different kinds of seeds. They were broken apart with different colored sticks and this was usually done in celebration of the New Year in hopes of bringing about a bountiful growing season. Along with silk, spices, and pasta, Mr. Polo brought back his writings which include this idea of the piñata which, in Italy, is referred to as a pignatta. By the 1300s the piñata was incorporated into Lent and, because Christianity had spread all over Europe, it is no surprise that this included Spain and by extension would reach the New World.

To say that all the credit goes to the Chinese and Europeans would be misleading. The ancient Mexicans did have similar concepts for quite a while before the Europeans arrived. It is the Mayans we can thank for the concept of blindfolding the participant before they take a whack at the piñata. If America’s Funniest Home Videos had been around back then we could have crotch shots on record going back over 1000 years. The Aztecs also had a tradition of honoring the god Huitzilopochtli, the god of the sun and war (think the Aztec Apollo), with clay pots filled with all sorts of goodies by laying them at the altar and then smashing them. I don’t really get it either but I suppose someday people will look back and wonder why I would eat cookies and wine every Sunday morning. Speaking of which, once the Europeans arrived they wanted to spread Christianity and did so by appropriating many of the native celebrations into Christian ones. Around the world most of the pagan religions revolve around the seasons and nature and in order to persuade people to convert they would give them a way to mingle the religions to the point where they could be celebrating two things at once. This is why we have All Saints Day at the end of the Harvest and Lent and Easter at the start of the growing season.

Over the years the piñatas did take on multiple specific Christian connotations. Everything from the seven deadly sins to man’s eternal struggle with temptation (I know, what?), stepping up to swing a bat a paper Optimus Prime full of candy was an entire Sunday School lesson. Needless to say, those days are long gone. In Mexico the busiest time for piñata makers is during the month of December for the Posadas, the nine days of celebration leading up to Christmas. In America it’s all about the birthday parties and celebrations of Cinco de Mayo.

My family has had them for every possible celebration- anniversaries, Fourth of July, Christmas, you name it. As you get older you are kind of forced to outgrow the piñata. This is never your own choice but the result of Mexican families being so big and everyone having so many damn kids. The ideal piñata age to be is about 10-13 years old. When you’re the youngest around you get the first swing but you’re not strong enough to do any real damage. Too old and you’re way at the back of the line and you’ll be lucky if you even get to take a swing. By the time you hit your late teens and you’ve got just the right amount of angst and hormonal frustration where beating a paper Ninja Turtle would be the best thing for you, you’re too big and too old to do it. And you probably have braces so you can’t enjoy the candy either so you just go to your room, pull down the shades, listen to some Nine Inch Nails and throw The Crow into the VCR. Ah, to be young again…


See that girl all the way over on the right? She probably never got to take a swing



So there you have it, your history of the piñata. Also, for those of you playing Words with Friends, Huitzilopochtli will earn you something like ten thousand points.

What's In A Name?

Latino. Hispanic. Chicano. Spanish.




When people ask me what I am I typically say American. It usually begs a follow-up or clarifying question as to my background or ethnicity and I’ll let them know that my family hails from Mexico. Though it’s not a terribly important debate in political philosophy I think hyphens are a little silly and are very misleading. After all exactly what would make someone Mexican-American? Could someone be termed American-Mexican? And how Mexican does one have to be in order to be called both Mexican and American? And how far back to we go with ethnicity or cultural background? Mexico has plenty of people descending from natives to the land. The people were invaded or mixed with nearly every country in Western Europe, most notably the Spanish whose land was at different times dominated by Jewish people, the Romans, and the Moors. Does that also make me part African-American? The hyphens are silly and do little to accurately represent ones cultural background.



Getting away from the hyphens we have all of these other names with which to designate ourselves. Spanish seems like an odd one. Here in New York it’s the one I hear most often. “What’s his background,” someone may ask when referring to me or someone with a similar family history. “He’s Spanish,” is often the reply. I’m about as Spanish as Gary Busey is sane- it’s a place I’ve visited and perhaps share some ancient connection to it but it does little to accurately describe anything about me. Around these parts Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, they’ll all be referred to as Spanish. That would be correct if the question was about which language they speak but not about their background. Not really, anyway. I would hardly refer to George Clooney as “that English guy.” Bill Gates isn’t considered British. And Fernando Valenzuela is not Spanish. Javier Bardem, that guy is Spanish. Julio Iglesias, also Spanish. Antonio Banderas, that guy is Spanish as well. Me? Not so much. Obviously it’s easier to say Spanish than go through the litany of possible countries from which a Spanish speaker could hail, but we do have other words which we have agreed upon for such designations.



There is Chicano. I’ve found several stories detailing the etymology of the term but the one that appears the most is that it is a shorthand way of saying Mexicano and specifically refers to people of Mexican descent. The way I hear it, “Mexicano” was shortened to “Xicano” and since no one really knows what sound the letter X is supposed to make (is it a Z? An H? does it sound like KS), people agreed upon the CH sound. Some say it was primarily used as a derogatory term but I think it was used more out of naiveté or ignorance. This was around the time words like “negro” and “colored” were being used and while it would be terribly insensitive to use these words today political correctness and cultural sensitivity were not what they are today. Calling someone Chicano was the label for the children of Mexican immigrants and it was chosen and it became a way to label someone in the simplest of terms. In any event the term took on a negative connotation but eventually came to be embraced and used for a political movement. The Chicano Movement has its roots in the mid 1800s but didn’t really gain traction until the 1950s and 60s. It’s a fascinating time and I will address it in a future post but for now we’ll have to move on. Having grown up in the 80s and 90s, just a little bit after a great era of political and cultural awareness, I personally never associated the label of Chicano with a political movement. It was just another way people referred to people like me.



The terms Hispanic and Latino are often used interchangeably but don’t always mean the same thing. “Hispanic” as a word has its history going back to both the Greek and Roman Empires where the root word was used to describe the Iberian Peninsula, the area that comprises Spain, Portugal, Andorra and part of France. It eventually became the Latin word for Spain. As such, groups that have a primarily Spanish ancestry or influence are Hispanic but aren’t Latino unless they are also part of Latin America. It is thought that Latino was originally intended to refer to someone of Latin American ancestry. Thus it is accurate to consider a Mexican either Hispanic or Latino but someone from Spain can only be Hispanic. Either way I don’t see the need to split hairs as neither term is considered descriptive of race or specific ethnicity or background. When it comes to filling out that census information, in the eyes of the government I think I’m considered white. And let me tell you, I have some cousins who look anything but white.



So is there a term that is more correct than others? Do I have a preference? Not really. I’ve heard all of the derogatory terms thrown around, too. I’ve been called a beaner and spic (though I had no idea what a spic was at the time- I’m still a little fuzzy about it). I’ve been called a wet-back. It’s extremely rare that I have heard those terms and when I do it does not make the person saying them any more powerful or vicious; if anything it makes them sound outdated or anachronistic. Those words carry very little weight because I think that mine is a culture that gives very little power to terms for which we have no use. It isn’t a matter of reclaiming pejoratives and making them our own because we don’t want or need those words. They’re silly and to use them, trying to give new meaning to them, would be a waste of effort because it would only give attention to the intended insult. But getting back to the terms like Spanish, Hispanic, Latino, or Chicano… As I stated above I think Spanish is really inaccurate. As for the others, I guess any of them will do if a label is necessary. Personally I prefer to go by Eric.

Why Do You Thound Different?

Growing up in Southern California, not far from Los Angeles, most everyone who spoke Spanish sounded the same as members of my family who spoke Spanish. The same inflection in the same places, same cadence, the same pronunciation… There were very little discrepancies in this social agreement of how the language sounds. Even the few accents that stood out, the few Puerto Ricans or Salvadorians that I knew, were not far off from what was familiar. The vagaries of encountering an unfamiliar accent were easily explained away by associating that particular accent only with that person. As a child it made sense that everyone spoke Spanish the same way and those who did not were completely unique in their pronunciation. When I heard Ricky Ricardo and the relatively direct and forward nature of the way his Cuban Spanish I assumed that was because he was always on the verge of slapping his wife. Outside of Ricky and a couple of others, everyone spoke the same way as far as I could tell.

The first time I heard a completely different system of pronunciation was when I was eleven years old and we took a family trip across Europe with stops in Spain. Their Spanish sounded different from what I’d heard my whole life to that point. It had a certain lilt to it. The emphasis came on different syllables than from what I was used to hearing. And of course there was the lisp. As a small child and I had quite the lisp. I was taunted and I was self conscious about it and I distinctly remember spending hours standing in front of the bathroom mirror staring at my mouth and forcing my tongue to stay in place when pronouncing those “s” versus “th” sounds. Then years later here was that lisp all around me! I realized the problem wasn’t that I had had a lisp as a child but that I was speaking Castillian Spanish! This was also my first encounter with a true class system which was really weird. There has always been the stereotype that Europeans are rude and see Americans as loud and obnoxious. Over the course of our trip those stereotypes had mostly gone unfounded. The Germans were stern and efficient but polite and straightforward. The Swiss and Italians were nothing if not welcoming. But Spain was a little different. For the most part we were treated kindly but on the edges of society, the café at the train station or the clerk at the local store, we were met with disdain. It was enough that we were American but we also spoke the language like Mexicans! Sin upon sin! Weird. Like I said, most everyone was nice but there were a few punks with bad attitudes.

FYI, people who are supposed to be Spanish have often claimed that the aforementioned lisp is in emulation of the adored King Ferdinand. There is absolutely no evidence to support this. Just wanted to let you know.

Once I got to New York there was an entirely new world of Spanish to hear. Mexicans are not the majority Hispanic culture as they are in Southern California. In New York there are Spanish speakers from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and many other places off the mainland, places that we think of when we say “Caribbean.” As such the Spanish language has been influenced by so many other cultures including the natives of those areas, the other invading nations like the Dutch, French, and British, the slave traders and the slaves themselves. Everyone brought with them their own culture which influenced how the dominating language, Spanish, is now spoken. To my ears the Spanish spoken here in New York has a completely different rhythm. It seems more sing-songy to me, with the inflection continually ascending rather than descending. Mexican Spanish seems to share the same mode of pronunciation as American English in that as we speak we typically put the heaviest emphasis on the final syllable of the sentence unless we are specifically trying to make a point or draw attention somewhere else. The Spanish I hear around the Big Apple tends to have the heaviest emphasis at the beginning with the weight placed on the words tends to rise as the sentence continues. The slang is different too. They don’t even know what a “cholo” is around here (lucky bastards). Of course neither cited nor done any of my own scientific research, I’m merely going what I’ve heard around the water cooler.

I guess the root of it all is that whenever you have a language spoken by disparate groups of people they are going to develop their own ways and rules for how to speak that language. That’s why Latin became French, Spanish, and Italian. That’s why I could barely understand what anyone was saying when I visited Ireland, though remarkably the more I drank the easier it was to comprehend. And that’s why I have something to write about today.

Also, for those of you visiting from Brazil, stop asking if I speak Spanish only to start speaking Portuguese because I have no idea what you are saying. IT’S A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE.

The Tortilla

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a flour tortilla with butter is probably the best snack ever. I have held this opinion for as long as I can remember. Sure I’ve had grilled cheese sandwiches and milk and cookies, I’ve indulged in cheese and crackers or apple slices, but for me nothing tops a flour tortilla with butter. It’s simple and delicious and amazing. All it takes is a few moments on the burner until you get just the right amount of crispy, flakey, texture- you can use a microwave in a pinch but it isn’t as good, smear some butter across that round, heavenly circle of flatbread that I can only liken to the manna of the Old Testament, roll it up and be sure to fold up the bottom end so the butter doesn’t drip on to the floor. There it is. A few moments of sublime satisfaction.

Tortillas and Mexican food are inextricable. Like rice with Japanese food, bread with American cuisine, and debt with President Obama, some things are always going to go hand in hand. These delectable disks of delicious dough derived from the kitchens of heaven have a long and stories history which can be found at the Mission Tortilla Factory at Disney’s California Adventure (sponsored by Mission Foods!) but if you haven’t got an extra hundred bucks for Disneyland and you don’t live in California you can get all of this rich and wonderful history for free here at ImSupposedToBeMexican.com because I love you so much. Tell your friends!

Growing up I always had flower tortillas more often than corn tortillas. Corn tortillas were around and they seemed to be preferred by my grandfather. The more durable texture of the corn tortilla seems to be more suitable for scooping up pinto beans and smearing with sour cream or guacamole whereas flour tortillas are better for wrapping up larger quantities of food as in a burrito or enchiladas. Of course these are anything but hard and fast rules. Though I have a penchant for the flour variety I prefer corn tortillas for tacos, the tortilla lightly toasted with a touch of oil or even fried up in to a crispy shell (I do not, however, like those store bought taco shells that seem to be made to arrive at the store already stale). There are other members of the tortilla family which include gorditas, tostadas, and the gordita’s Salvadorian cousin, the pupusa. I mentioned earlier about heating up a tortilla on the range or, if all else fails, in the microwave. But the best way is by using what you will find in most any Mexican household: the comal. The comal is a flat, cast iron piece of cookware sort of like a skillet that is often handed down from generation to generation. It has to be oiled just so, it never leaves it’s spot on the stovetop, and only gets better and cooks more evenly as time goes on. When my parents got the chance to redo their kitchen they specifically sought a stovetop with a fifth burner where the comal would have a permanent home. FYI, though I am a fan of Chipotle and find their chicken burritos as one of the best anglicized examples of how to bring Mexican food to the palates of Des Moines and Wichita, that device they use to heat up their tortillas is sadly inadequate.

So where in when did people’s love affair with the tortilla begin? For the answer to that question we take a look back through the annals of history long before El Pollo Loco was founded in 1975, or even Taco Bell in ’62. No for the whole story we need go back a little further. According to an a passage in Wikipedia which lacks any form of citation the tortilla dates back at least 10,000 years along with a Mayan legend about a peasant making the first tortilla from ground corn for his hungry king. Given their history of farming corn of course it would be the Mayans or the Aztecs who came up with a million different ways to eat corn including using ground corn to make cornmeal and then said cornmeal into cakes and breads which would eventually find their form as a tortilla. This is not far off from the discovery of other tasty treats like popcorn. Anyway, the great and ancient civilizations who pioneered the foundations of our modern systems of mathematics, astronomy, and art, also loved their vittles which is why so many wonderful foods come from the region. Many of these foods were discovered by the conquistador Cortes who brought them back to Spain. These little flatbreads/cakes, called tlaxcalli by the natives, were given the name “tortillas” by the Spanish, their word for “little cakes.” Weird side note: the Spanish have also given the name tortilla to a potato omelet.

With that long and storied history of the corn tortilla I kept searching for some solid data about the origin of the flour tortilla but kept coming up empty handed. While the ancient civilizations of Mexico and Central America were no strangers to wheat flour, corn was the food staple upon which their lives were based. It makes sense now when I find that flour tortillas are more popular in the northern states of Mexico than they are in the southern states. With all of those wheat fields here in the America it’s logical to assume that as the old empires made their way north some suitable substitutions had to be made when it came to dietary preferences. My mother coming from a region just north of central Mexico told me that as a girl corn tortillas were more popular and easy to come by than their flour counterparts. My dad on the other hand, coming from the northern states bordering America, always had flour tortillas around.

As for state of tortillas today, they’re everywhere. In my lifetime alone they’ve gone from being found in the Ethnic Foods aisle to being found in 7-11. They’ve gone mainstream. Head to old town San Diego or Olvera street in Los Angeles and you will still hear the clapping hands of ladies in the kitchen forming round balls of masa into torillas. By the way, if an elderly woman sarcastically asks you if you are making tortillas it’s probably because you are chewing loudly.

So there is your history of the tortilla. Unlike the Disney attraction I can't give you a free tortilla now that we’re through- quick tip, if you’re visiting the theme park on a budget there is no limit to how many times you can go through the little attraction and there usually is no wait time either. Walk through a few times and you’ve got enough tortillas to keep you satisfied and happy for an afternoon!

Some of the other tortilla related foods I mentioned earlier are gorditas, which are smaller, fatter tortillas that can be stuffed or used as a foundation to pile on meat and beans and cheese and stuff. Tostadas are crispy, fried tortillas often used to pile on other food as well. Think of them as tortilla chips that haven’t been cut apart yet. By the way, anyone in my family will tell you my dad invented colored tortilla chips back in the early 80s. True story. But it will have to wait for another time. Until then, my supposed Mexicans, I am heading to my stovetop to make one of the greatest snacks of all time. Adios!

El Matador...

In these here United States it is difficult to find someone who does not have an opinion one way or the other when it comes to bullfighting. It is either a barbaric and cruel relic of a less civilized time or it is a beautiful art-form and sport that represents a distinct and significant culture. I’ll be more than happy to admit that I am a bit biased towards the latter though I cannot say this has always been the case. The very first time I went to a bull fight I found myself aghast at the brutal nature of the sport. My American sensibilities wanted to shout that this is animal cruelty and this is barbaric and this is obscene! But I was missing the point. That isn’t what bullfighting is about. There is an anecdote, I don’t know how true it is, where Orson Wells was at a dinner at Hearst’s Castle and described an occasion where he sat at the knee of famous Spanish matador, Manolete, and Hearst remarked,“It is barbaric. Of all of man’s sadisms, nothing is more depraved than his cruelty to animals.” Mr. Wells took umbrage and replied quite sharply, “In Spain, sir, the cruelty would be in denying the beast a fighting end. As in your magnificent zoo, for instance.” Point being that there is always more than one point of view.

Last time I went to a bullfight was back in 2004. I was in Spain, in Pamplona, for the Festival of San Fermin and during each day of the festival there are bullfights in the afternoon. There was one matador in particular who had everyone’s attention. I don’t remember his name or any details about him other than that he was a relative newcomer who was making quite a name for himself. Every evening four bullfighters would find themselves in the arena three or four times, each one vying for the adoration of the audience. Each flourish of the cape and confident stride in to harm’s way was an attempt to command the crowd as well as the beast. This particular young matador was all of 19 years old I believe, and perhaps he had such confidence because he had not been instilled with the fear that some of the more mature fighters might have.

His stylish propinquity to the animal, the bravado and showmanship, his very presence captivated the crowd, half of which was under the shade of the stands, the other baking in the hot July sun doing all they could to quell the heat with bottle after bottle of sangria. This young matador demonstrated his mastery over the animal, looking him dead in the eye every time the beast charged, its calamitous hooves shaking the earth beneath them. After the colored barbs and lances, the taunts and runs back and forth across the arena, the matador presented his sword, his estoca, to the adulation of the attendants all clothed in white and red and wine. You know the old Looney-Tunes episodes where Bugs Bunny is fighting a bull and you see the bull dig it one of its hooves into the dirt before it charges? That really happens! Prior to seeing it in real life I thought it was just a comedic exaggeration. But finally it comes to one last charge. I don’t even know how one practices for this- standing your ground in front of a charging, angry, 1600 pound beast with nothing left to lose. A flourish of the cape and the bull builds up speed, charging and thundering through the screams of the crowd, the glare of the matador, and weight of certain death. Stepping to the side, missing the bull’s horns by just inches, and with just a fraction of a turn his blade is gone, disappeared into the hulking neck of the beast. The bull, not knowing he is already dead, spins around and begins his charge again and with that the banderilleros and other toreros rush in to, shaking their capes to distract the animal and keep him from goring the bullfighter but he calmly waves them away. Coming to the austere realization of what has befallen him the bull slows down as he comes upon the matador. Their eyes meet and the bullfighter rests his palm on the beast’s forehead as it falls into sleep one final time.

This kid, whatever his name was, gave an equally impressive performance every time he had the floor. Rapturous applause engulfed the ring at his every appearance. He made the cover of the local newspaper and was shown on the evening telecast. It was pretty amazing and to me he seemed like the very incarnation of Pedro Romero from The Sun Also Rises.

So there is the anecdotal part. Now for some history and technical stuff that might be of interest: Bullfighting is found in many Spanish speaking countries like Spain, Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador. It’s most direct early ancestor probably dates to the various games held in coliseums of ancient Rome. People vs people, people vs animals, animals vs animals… it all happened throughout the Roman Empire. Prior to that, pretty much ever since there was man and ever since there have been animals one has been killing the other- usually for food, sometimes for sport, and not uncommonly for sacrifice. There are cave paintings dating back to 200 years Before Christ that show a man facing a bull. Of course it was the Spanish who spread the sport to Central and South America and it was not uncommon for these games to take place at important events like weddings and funerals. According to Wikipedia, The modern style of Spanish bullfighting is credited to Juan Belmonte generally considered the greatest matador of all time. Belmonte introduced a daring and revolutionary style, in which he stayed within a few inches of the bull throughout the fight. Although extremely dangerous (Belmonte himself was gored on many occasions), his style is still seen by most matadors as the ideal to be emulated. Today, bullfighting remains similar to the way it was in 1726, when Francisco Romero, from Ronda, Spain, used the estoque, a sword, to kill the bull, and the muleta, a small cape used in the last stage of the fight.

One particular throwback to the gladiatorial days that still exists is that the bull has the chance to win his freedom. Though it is an extremely rare occurrence, if a bull is valiant and impressive enough, the matador will stand and look up at the President’s (or Governor’s) box. If he gets the indication from el Presidente to spare the animal’s life, the animal is taken from the ring and gets to live out the rest of his days in fields of green, put out to stud from time to time.

Of course as time has gone by and we have become more “civilized” the sport has fallen out of favor with a huge segment of the population. It is after all a pretty violent sport that ends with either the death of a gorgeous animal or the goring of a human being. So there are definitely protests and calls to end the practice in Spain. On one hand, up until the actual bull fight, the bull’s life is much less terrible than it would be in a commercial farm. On the other it is still a slow, torturous death with almost chance of freedom or survival. And for those of you who weren’t sure, yes- the bull from the fight is used for food. And yes again, it is delicious.

Whatever your stance, the one thing everyone can agree on is that it is a significant aspect of Latin-based culture, from Spain and France to North and South America. I’ve never had the chance to get to a bullfight in Mexico but it seems like it would be something worth checking out.

Donde?

Just a reminder that, thanks to all of you glorious supposed Mexicans who give this corner of the internet a look every now and then, entries from this blog have been posted on various websites including:

http://www.hispanicla.com/

http://www.bilingualbraings.com/

and most recently - http://www.labeez.com/

Thanks for reading and check out these other sites because they have some interesting stuff.

-EricV123