Jorge
El Ranchero
Aguilar was a man from another century who made local history in the bullrings of Tlaxcala.
He put on the suit of lights for the first time in 1945. The last time was on January 27, 1981. The chronicles of that time say that the matador suffered a heart attack when he was stableing a heifer on the Coaxamalucan ranch.
He died instantly.
A few months later, the bullring in Tlaxcala city was renamed in his honor.
On January 28, 2024, 43 years and one day later, El Ranchero Aguilar's great-niece, Victoria, walks around dressed in black, with false horns on her head and a t-shirt that talks about saving animals around the area. Monumental.
The plaza in Mexico City, the largest bullring in the world, hosted a bullfight this Sunday for the first time in 20 months.
And Victoria, who does not even remotely share her grandfather's tastes, has come to protest along with a few hundred people who are part of the anti-bullfighting movement in the capital.
Victoria is 28 years old, she is a flamenco dancer, she likes art and hates bullfighting.
“My family used to be bullfighting.
My great uncle was a famous bullfighter from Tlaxcala.
I was part of those people, but I realized that I could not tolerate seeing the bull suffer to death.
My parents brought me to the square when I was four years old and I came out crying and screaming because I couldn't stand seeing that.
I felt very helpless.
I realized that bullfighting people are very violent and very sexist, they like these types of events where there is bloodshed, they are sadistic people.
I suffered an abusive relationship with a bullfighter, when I began to heal all that and go to therapy I realized that everything was related."
Victoria talks about the pull while, in the background, the anti-bullfighting beats get louder and louder.
They turn up the volume in the same way that tension grows between the protesters and those attending the bullfight.
A group tries to break down one of the red doors that surround the square.
The structure trembles and is about to give way.
On the other side there are dozens of police officers acting as a counterweight.
If it weren't for them, the entrance would collapse.
There are exchanges of stones.
At some point it seems that the situation is going to boil over, but it doesn't get any worse.
There are almost more police than protesters.
The agents provoke the anti-bullfighting protesters, most of them young, who provoke them back.
They paint slogans on the walls, they chant chants with better intention than originality—“Bulls yes, bullfighters no!”—.
They try to block access to the square and intercept attendees, scolding them and surrounding them on occasion.
A group of women perform a
performance
in the middle of the road in which they lie on the asphalt covered in fake blood and pretend to be dead.
Performance to demonstrate against bullfighting after the season reopened in Mexico City.Nayeli Cruz
Judgments and anachronisms
In June 2022, a federal judge granted a definitive suspension to the Just Justice organization to stop bullfighting in the Benito Juárez mayor's office, where the Monumental is located.
The group defended that federal laws prohibit animal abuse and that the “degrading” treatment given to bulls violates the right to a healthy environment.
The judge accepted the suspension under the argument that “society is interested in respecting the physical and emotional integrity of all animals.”
The suspension remained in effect until early last December.
Then, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) attacked the anti-bullfighting population of the city by rejecting the protection of Just Justice.
The project, motivated by the controversial Minister Yasmín Esquivel, who has refused to resign despite evidence supporting that she plagiarized her undergraduate and doctoral theses, was approved unanimously with four votes in favor.
This Sunday, protected by the decision of the SCJN, the bullfighters of the Mexican capital have returned to the plaza, with a capacity for 42,000 people seated.
The authorities, who saw a confrontation with the anti-bullfighting movement coming, have armored the Monumental with hundreds of riot police from the Secretariat of Citizen Security (SSC) protected behind their shields and helmets.
Getting to the gate of the square is almost impossible if you don't show an entrance.
Once crossed the fence, the eye faces a somewhat anachronistic scene that seems taken from a black and white film: gentlemen in vests, hats and cigars;
very elegant ladies in riding boots.
There are food stalls and dozens of street vendors selling all kinds of paraphernalia: wine boots, more hats, stuffed bulls.
—Take the cushions, young man, the cushion for the seat.
Doña Noelia Casas is 65 years old and has been selling bullfighting
merchandise
at the gates of the plaza for more than 50 years.
Except these almost two years of suspension.
During this time, she has dedicated herself to “washing other people's clothes and ironing other people's clothes, but since she is already one, she is older, so she gets tired,” she admits.
She says that she prefers this job than having to clean for others.
“I'm not a big fan of bulls, but this is where I get to eat.”
—Don't you like bullfights?
—I don't like bulls, but I like to sell.
Against that logic it is difficult to answer anything.
—There are people who say that bullfights are very violent.
What do you think?
—At the end of the day, we all eat meat.
One way or another they have to kill the bull to be able to eat meat.
Element of the capital police during the protest against bullfighting held this Sunday.Nayeli Cruz
Paradoxes and art
Rafael Montana is only 23 years old but he is already an expert in paradoxes.
He belongs to a platform called Tauromaquia for anti-bullfighting.
“We try to bring bullfighting to a broader audience,” he explains, hiding behind his hat.
The young man, from the State of Mexico and residing in the capital, began going to bullfights as a child with his grandfather.
Montana has controversial opinions that are easily refuted by a veterinarian or anyone with eyes.
“The bull does not suffer, it is not mutilated, no bad things are done to it,” he says.
“This is a party for the bull to demonstrate his greatness.
He won freedom and today the bullfighting people won.”
There are those who call what happens inside the Monumental a sport.
Others even call it art.
There are those who call what happens inside the Monumental violence.
Others even call it sadism.
“Art does not destroy, art creates,” says Victoria, the great-niece of that bullfighter from Tlaxcala.
She prefers to talk about the “corruption” that, in her words, surrounds the bullfighting world.
“I am fighting for something that is unfair, for beings who have no voice,” she adds.
Until this Sunday, the last time the Monumental held a bullfighting celebration was on May 15, 2022. The future is uncertain and the judicial journey will still be long.
The amparo trial remains active in the absence of a ruling, which could be appealed in the second instance and returned to Court again.
The hypothetical tomorrow of bullfighting does not look too good.
They can be abolished by the courts or even by a kind of popular consultation proposed by the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Or it may simply be that the passage of time ends up erasing this tradition, which is more threatened by irrelevance than by the bullfighting movement itself, in a society that for the most part no longer enjoys seeing an animal stabbed to death.
Almost no one wants to take out men like El Ranchero Aguilar through the front door.
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