Bullfights return to Mexico City after two years as protest quashed
BULLFIGHTING returned to Mexico City on Sunday after almost two years, drawing tens of thousands of fans as well as protests from animal rights activists doused in red paint.
The capital’s first show since June 2022 saw spectators gather in the 41,000-capacity Plaza de Toros bullring, the largest of its kind.
Inscribed in the dirt was the phrase: “Freedom. Bulls, living culture.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters wearing bull masks and covered in blood-red paint gathered outside the stadium. They were blocked from entering the arena by police after marching under a banner which read: “Torture is neither art nor culture.”
Sunday’s event, which featured bullfighter Joselito Adame, came after a Supreme Court ruling last month which overturned an indefinite suspension of the centuries-old practice in Mexico City put in place two years ago. Six bulls fought on Sunday and all were killed.
The Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision agreed with animal rights activists who had filed a lawsuit demanding bullfighting to be banned.
While that decision was revoked by the Supreme Court, it did not provide a ruling on the merits of the case.
Anti-bullfighting groups are hoping for a final decision in their favour in the coming weeks.
Gabriela Martinez, a 62-year-old protester, told the AFP news agency: “It’s important to be here because they’re going to resume their barbarity, their cruelty, their massacre. It must not happen, and we have to send them a pretty clear message.”
Jeronimo Sanchez, the director of the NGO Animal Heroes, said: “These events continue to be held where only pleasure is sought through the torture of an animal.”
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the president, has proposed a referendum on the future of bullfighting in the city.
Four of Mexico’s 32 states have already banned the practice, which according to its supporters generated millions in revenues and employed about 80,000 people in 2018.
Some 250,000 bulls are killed in bullfights globally each year, according to Humane Society International.