I've never been to a bullfight, despite spending a month in Spain and visiting Mexico four times. I'm not so sure it's on the list of things I want to experience.
On the one hand, it's a cultural event, a skilled sport and a tradition I've never experienced. On the other, it's about making animals very angry and injuring, possibly killing people in sport, both of which disgust me.
When I read this story from the New York Times about how children as young as 9 are going face to face with bulls, I honestly didn't know what to think.
My first reaction was horror.
How can any parent allow his or her child to participate in an activity where most adults get seriously injured or killed at some point in their careers? How can a child possibly have developed sufficient skills and judgment to go into a ring with a raging beast?
But then I started to think about the other side of the argument.
How is it different than kids who engage in extreme (or even regular) sports and get seriously injured or killed? Teens who fly planes, drive race cars and the like? Shouldn't these young matadors get a chance to start honing their skills at their chosen career/passion at a young age, just as musicians and athletes do?
I just don't know what to think. Please leave a comment and let me know what your take is on this rather recent development. Is is sport or stupidity?
I'm no fan of bull fighting. No matter how you justify it as "sport." No matter how old the matadors. It's bull.
I hear the bullfights in Mexico and the Americas are different, but in Spain the one I saw was... brutal. Sad. Painful.
Bull fights have three parts. In the first two parts, men on horses and on foot stab the bull to weaken his neck muscles. This is so the matador, who is the third part, can get his sword (that's what's hidden behind that pretty cape) into the neck of the bull and kill it. In a real bull fight, something always dies.
That doesn't sound like a sport OR something kids should do.