In the heart of Mexico City, amidst the greenery of a major urban park, a group of dedicated bullfighters continues to practice their craft. The scene is one of stark contrast: practitioners use a pair of real horns to simulate a bull, gliding toward a fuchsia bullfighting cape. They're practicing to kill, but as the sunlight filters through the trees and the bullfighter dodges with grace, his hips to one side, his arms perfectly perpendicular, it looks incongruently beautiful.
José Luis Herros, one of the practitioners, describes the practice as the "ballet of death." When asked about the seemingly slow and graceful movement of the simulated bull, Herros explains that this is how a real bull behaves when it is ready to gore an opponent. "The whole point of bullfighting is to face fear and death with the intelligence that we supposedly have," Herros says. "The bull has two daggers, we have this piece of cloth."
Because Mexico City has implemented a ban on the killing of bulls, these practitioners must travel outside the capital city to engage in their sport. For those who gather in the park, the practice is deeply personal and often dangerous. Luis Conrado, who participated in the training session, shared the physical toll the sport has taken on him, revealing scars from near-fatal encounters. "One bull tore my chest in half," Conrado said. "But I kept fighting and I cut off an ear." For the participants, the beauty of the training remains inextricably linked to the frank reality of facing death. For more Far-Flung Postcards, click here.
"That's the way bulls move," he says. When their head is down and it's ready to gore you with its horns, he explains, it comes at you slowly.
Again, I thought, the beauty of this scene was incongruous with the frank talk of death.
