Animal Rights Activists Gather to Protest Bullfighting in Mexico City PressTV
go to original February 4, 2013

Hundreds of protesters covered themselves in fake blood and gathered in front of the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City on Sunday to call for an end to bullfighting in Mexico. (ITN)

Hundreds of animal rights activists in Mexico have expressed anger at abuses of bulls in bullfighting.

The protesters, who had painted themselves red as fake blood imitating a slain bull from a matador’s sword, lay on the ground in Mexico City’s Republic Plaza on Sunday to raise awareness of the event.

Almost in every bullfighting event the matador kills the bull.

The origin of bullfighting, legal in only eight countries in the world, goes back to about 287 years ago, when the Spanish invented a duel on foot of a man whirling a red cape and yielding a sword to demise the raging bull in a ring of spectators.

Animal rights activists in Mexico, having the largest bullfighting stadium in the world, have called for the government to enforce a ban on the event, saying it has lost popularity.

“The majority of people that live in the capital, more than 70 percent, support this initiative because it is an act of mistreatment and cruelty against animals and furthermore it promotes negative values in society,” said a spokesperson for animal rights group Animanaturalis.

“More than 80 percent of people that live in the capital associate bullfighting with negative ideas such as animal mistreatment, danger, violence and abuse.”

The Mexican government passed a law banning cruelty against animals in December, however Animanaturalis says the move is not enough and the group demands legislature that puts an end to bullfighting.

Over the past decade, some regions in France, Portugal, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador have enforced bans on the event and they classify themselves as ‘anti-bullfighting.’

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