Colombia Ellis. Feria de Manizales ^ Bulfighting

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1/4/2010 Today me, juliana, and david went to manizales for the manizales fair. It’s a college town right in the middle of coffee country and its just as hilly if not more so than san fransisco, its literally built on top of the mountains. This is also the home of bullfighting and during the feria is literally the goal of every matador to come here, only the best come here and I wanted to go to a bullfight. That day we got shown around some of the sights and some of the others went zip lining though I didn’t really feel like it. We got back and went out, the feria unbenounced to me is colombian party heaven for people my age and we went to one of the tents, bought a bottle of aguargiente and danced to salsa and reggaetown all night.
1/5/2010 Next day, we got up and julianas family from periera came. We all went around to a world craft show that was part of the fair and then went to get some fried chicken. It was better than in the US, no lies. Me and david went to the bullfight and I bought a bote which is a leather container for holding water but was being used and passed around by nearly everyone in the stadium for aguargiente, wine, or a combination of the two. The smell of this so called, fire water, literally filled the air as you entered the stadium. The fights were pretty gruesome, though I liked it. This day it was a faceoff between 2 matadorsm, each had 6 bulls and went 1 2 1 2. Ill describe the process as best I can. Men would come out with a sign presenting the bullfighter on one side with his stats and the bull on the other with his. The bull entered and was kept angry by four designated matadors who would run behind walls when it got closer. Then the real matador would come out with much pagentry and gesturing. He would breifly fight the bull, using the yellow and pink “cape, ill call it” and then the band presedent would signal for the band to play a particular tune. At this sounding 2 horses fully armored along with horsemen with spears came out. The bull would attack a horse, lifting it into the air, and the rider would spear it. The horns sounded and these men went back inside. Next 2 men came out each with 2 spear like devices I forget the name of. They have blades at the front and are covered in something white,,,and absorbant. In turn they would gesture towards the bull, who would attack and be speared by these weapons in the neck and shoulders until 3 men had done this and 6 spears hung from its hide. The horns sounded and the matador returned to face the bull. Again with pageantry it would olay and olay, sometimes touching the bull to show his bravery. Eventually the bull was tired and the matador would pull out his sword, and if all went well, would time the attack perfectly, thrusting the sword fully into the neck and heart of the bull. 2 of the designated matadors would come out and tire the bull until it finally fell to the ground. Now another completely different man, the killer, would come out and stab the bull in the head, during which it would more often than not be twitching. the president then decided the outcome, the matador could get one, or two white flags as well as another. And the bull could get a blue one. Each white flage was an ear and if the matador was good hed get one, great hed get 2 and amazing hed get the 2 white flags and the other. So for example, one of the matadors got 2 white flags which is really good, they immediately cut off the ears of the bull and he paraded around with them. The best possible outcome would be to get both ears and the tale, but this didn’t end up happening. For the bulls, the blue flag was the honor to earn. Only one got it and that meant that instead of dragging its dead body directly back into the stadium, it got dragged around in a circle for all to see first…what an honor!
So this was the way of things for 5 of the 6 bulls but one didn’t go quite this way. Right into the fight it rammed so hard into a wall when trying to hit one of the designated matadors that it partialy broke off part of his horn. Soon after it did it again, the horn ripped off, and the bull fell to the ground writhing in pain. It stood up and wouldn’t fight. The whistling of the croud told the presidente that the croud wasn’t happy, the bull was replaced…I don’t know what happened to it. The only other thing that happened at the fight was when one of the stabbers got thrown down. He was rammed and trampled and then hooked in the leg by the bull. The man was carryied off hastily by four men while others kept the bull busy, I didn’t see him again.
That night more gore was to occur. We went out to party and one of the tents was set up to look old fashioned, complete with cockfights and gambling. I bet on the first cockfight, it was a red one verse one that was white, dubbed “el gringo” the fight ended in a tie and neither one died. We left and retuned later for another fight later where again the outcome was not the usual death.. but instead one rooster just refused to fight and kept flying into the crowd. They pulled them out and the 2 fights I saw never really saw completion.

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