As Season Opens in Tijuana, Efforts to Ban Bullfighting Run Up Against Culture Nigel Duara - The Los Angeles Times
go to original April 13, 2016

As Baja resumes bullfighting, Mexicans debate: Is it an art form or a cruel, outdated ritual? (The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Just before 4 p.m. Sunday, with sunshine filling the stadium and a gentle breeze wafting off the Pacific Ocean just a few hundred yards away, the chant begins.

“To-ro! To-ro! To-ro!” They are calling for the bull. The crowd is restless.

It has been months since the last bullfight, which many believe should have been the last bullfight ever. Just three days before, Baja California's congress — its state legislature — postponed a vote that would have banned bullfighting in the Mexican state and forced the cancellation of this spectacle.

Ever greater numbers of Mexicans see this as a cruel and outdated ritual. Polls show that roughly 80% of Baja Californians oppose it. But as the bullfighting season opened on schedule Sunday, the dwindling ranks of traditionalists could savor at least a temporary victory and another day of what, they insist, is an art form.

...Part rodeo, part derby and part tailgate, the Tijuana bullfights are an amalgam of Mexican society in the borderlands.

Read the rest at The Los Angeles Times

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