The New York Times-20080124-Alcohol and Blood Flow as Amateurs Face the Bulls
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Alcohol and Blood Flow as Amateurs Face the Bulls
The radio reporters huddled in a corner of the Red Cross tent on Sunday, waiting for the wounded to arrive on stretchers. They wanted details of the injuries. They were not disappointed.
A stream of men arrived with wounds out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting: intestines peeking out of a belly, bone protruding from a fractured shin, blood spurting from a gash in the buttocks.
These were not victims of the civil war that has afflicted this country for four decades. They were participants in the corraleja, a bullfighting ritual in northern Colombia pitting hundreds of amateur matadors, many in advanced stages of inebriation, against a 900-pound bull.
This year was calm, no deaths yet, said Felipe Bertel Munoz, who broadcast the names, ages and injuries of the wounded to the listeners of RCN Radio. Some say it is good luck for at least one person to die, but our paramedics are too talented to let that happen easily.
Looked upon in other parts of Colombia as a bizarre and even grotesque spectacle, the corralejas (pronounced koh-rah-LEH-has) are passionately defended by residents of the northern savannas, an impoverished region with a cattle-ranching culture going back centuries.
Dozens of towns hold such bull festivals at this time of year, when temperatures here climb above 90 degrees. Deaths are not uncommon. Sincelejo, the capital of Sucre Province, boasts the largest corraleja of them all, a six-day affair in January that ended Tuesday.
The event here makes normal bullfights and related rituals, like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, seem restrained and quaint by comparison.
The rural poor, the urban unemployed, testosterone-filled adolescents, drifters, shopkeepers, mechanics -- as long as they are undaunted by the possibility of severe injury or death -- enter an arena on Sincelejo's outskirts made from lumber and discarded pieces of wood.
From 2 to 6 p.m. each day in the ring, hundreds of these manteros, including a handful of women, waved red capes advertising spirits (Harris Whisky, anyone?) or the candidacies of local politicians. One middle-aged man ran around the arena dressed in a yellow Speedo. Another participant, a transvestite, wore a miniskirt and green knee socks.
Others lighted small fires in the ring, brewing coffee as if they were at a picnic. One man wandered the ring with a sign that said, If you like war, send your son to war.
The ring was more like a battlefield than a picnic. Periodically, a bull was released into the crowd, a total of 40 bulls over the four hours. The bulls were harassed by about two dozen horsemen carrying barbed sticks called banderillas, used to prod them into lunging madly into the throng. This worked well, resulting in many wounded manteros.
The bulls are not killed in the corralejas as they typically are in bullfights in Colombia. But if a bull is exhausted or, as often happens, tripped up by a rope held by the participants, the crowd swarms in, pelting it with rocks, kicking it, slapping it, spitting on it and pulling its tail.
Observing this in the stands are cattlemen and others of the moneyed classes. They throw 2,000-peso notes (about $1) and bottles of rum to the most popular manteros.
I recognize that one cannot avoid the comparison with the Roman Colosseum, said Inis Amador, a lawyer who helped revive Sincelejo's corralejas in the late 1990s. They were discontinued in 1980, when more than 200 people died after a wooden arena collapsed, crushing spectators gathered under the stands.
But why do some cultures race automobiles or climb Himalayan mountains or box each other to a pulp? Mr. Amador, 54, said. This is about the ecstasy of escaping death. It is part of us as human beings.
For reasons simple and complex, the corralejas are a resilient feature of life on the savannas. It's fun, said Alirio Paternina, 38, a mechanic, as he emerged smiling from the Red Cross tent with a bandaged hand that had been accidentally speared by a horseman. My hand feels like it is on fire, but I'm fine.
Anthropologists say the corralejas reflect a rigid social hierarchy, with the rich amusing themselves by watching the poor risk their lives. But the festivals, thought to date to the first half of the 19th century, go deeper than that.
Outsiders view the corralejas as a savage and humiliating event, but that is not how people in the area see them, said Sandra Turbay, an anthropologist at the University of Antioquia in Medellin. For young men, they are a rite of initiation and sexual maturity. For young women, they are an opportunity to look for a worthy boyfriend.
Some participants in the corralejas are not so young. The legendary Luis Gumersindo Cuadrado, who is in his 50s, according to local newspapers, claimed to have taken part in 938 corralejas before announcing his retirement this year. He fought under the name Kaliman, wearing a white turban.
Mr. Cuadrado, gored in the face, stomach and leg at a festival in December in the town of Sampues, walked the stands here in Sincelejo on Sunday displaying his wounds to the crowd and receiving money in return.
But money is just one incentive. There is also glory and something harder to pin down. Consider Adrian Manzano. I'm from Queens, he said in perfect English as he walked out of the Red Cross tent, looking dizzy.
Mr. Manzano, 26, who sells real estate in New York and is the son of Colombian immigrants, said he came to Sincelejo after listening to a folk song about the festival. I've run with the bulls in Pamplona, but this is riskier, he said, pointing to the place on his head where a horse's hoof had trampled him.
It felt like my brains were coming through my ears, he said. I've had it for the day.
Animal rights activists deplore the bull festivals, calling on officials to prevent minors from attending and to prohibit the use of banderillas and horses, which are frequently killed by the bulls during the event.
In the future we should prohibit the corralejas altogether, said Ingrid Falla, director of the Animal Protection Association in Bogota, even though what Colombia produces is all that is illegal.
[Illustration]PHOTOS: Luis Gumersindo Cuadrado says he has taken part in 938 corralejas, and readily displays the wounds bulls have given him. (PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLIAM FERNANDO MARTINEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS); Amateur matadors test their wits and courage against a bull in Sincelejo, Colombia, in a tradition called the corraleja. Regarded in other parts of Colombia as a bizarre spectacle, the corralejas are passionately defended by people of the northern savannas, an impoverished region. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT DALTON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)MAP Map of Sincelejo, Colombia.