CHOACHI, Colombia (AP) — Sebastián Caqueza says a new law bans bullfighting in Colombia by 2028 will not dampen his passion for the sport, which he has been practicing since he was a little boy.
Caqueza became a professional matador five years ago by mocking and killing a full-grown bull with his sword for about 20 minutes in a ceremony known as the Alternativa. Now, the 33-year-old says he will struggle to make a living as a bullfighter, but he vows to do his best to continue in the centuries-old tradition.
“I will continue to participate in bullfights outside of Colombia,” Caqueza said. “And once bullfights are illegal in Colombia, we will have them here anyway, because this is our passion and our life.”
“I will die as a bullfighter,” said Caqueza.
The legislation signed Monday by Chairman Gustavo Petro imposes restrictions on bullfighting for a three-year transition period before imposing a complete ban in 2028. It also orders the government to convert more than a dozen bullrings into concert halls and exhibition spaces.
The bill was approved by the Colombian Congress earlier this year after heated debate. It removes Colombia from the short list of countries where bullfighting is still legal, which includes Spain, France, Portugal, MexicoVenezuela, Ecuador and Peru, although the bill does not prescribe sanctions for those who continue to organize bullfights.
Recent polls in Colombia show that bullfighting has lost popularity in the South American country. Animal rights activists have applauded the government’s efforts to end an activity they describe as cruel and inconsistent with modern values.
Bullfighting enthusiasts and those who make a living from the sport say the government is threatening the cultural freedoms of minorities.
The bill is of particular concern to matadors, their assistants and ranchers who specialize in breeding fighting bulls, whose future is now uncertain.
“For me, bullfighting is like loving someone, and now it’s forbidden for us,” said Nicolas Nossa, a 70-year-old retired matador who runs a bullfighting academy in Choachi, a town of fewer than 10,000 people surrounded by pastures and forested mountains.
In the town’s small bullring, students practice wearing their capes, using a cart with real horns that an instructor pushes toward them. The bullfighting academy has trained more than 100 youngsters, according to Nossa, including the matador Caqueza, who began studying his craft as a teenager.
But the new legislation is already forcing the academy to make some changes.
Classes for children under 14 have been suspended since May, when lawmakers approved the bill. Now the academy’s leaders must decide whether to continue training a younger group of bullfighters in a country where the activity will soon be banned.
“This is especially painful for my generation,” Nossa said, “because we have witnessed the greatness of bullfighting. We represent the hero of flesh and blood, who dies, really, if necessary, just as the bull is also killed” in the bullring.
Nossa lamented the uncertain future of bullfighting and said he hopes that plans by bullfighting advocates to file a lawsuit in Colombia’s Constitutional Court will block the ban.
Animal rights activists have been asking Congress to pass a ban for more than two decades, but often lost key votes by narrow margins.
Andrea Padilla, a senator for Colombia’s Green Party who has long been an animal rights advocate, believes attitudes toward animal spectacles have changed. She said the passage of anti-bullfighting legislation was finally possible because Colombia’s first left-wing government pressured many lawmakers to approve it.
Padilla challenged the arguments of bullfighting enthusiasts, who praise the bulls for their courage and say it is their destiny to die with honor in the arena.
“I don’t understand how you can raise an animal and then watch it get slaughtered at a public event,” she said.
Colombia’s president has been trying to ban bullfighting since 2012, when he was mayor of Bogota, revoking a contract granted to promoters for the use of the city’s bullring, which can hold about 14,000 people.
During Petro’s mayoralty, bullfights were no longer held in Bogota, but they were resumed after his term thanks to a court ruling that the closure of the arena violated the rights of enthusiasts to express their cultural heritage.
However, bullfighting advocates still face obstacles in Bogota and other major cities such as Medellin. In Cali, Colombia’s third largest city, such events are still held regularly.
The last bullfight in Bogota was in March 2020, just before large gatherings were banned due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In 2012, Petro arbitrarily closed the bullring, and since then many other smaller towns have followed suit,” said Caqueza, the bullfighter from Choachi.
Ranchers who breed aggressive, lean bulls used in bullfighting have also suffered from the loss of the tradition and now their future is uncertain.
In the municipality of Mosquera, on the outskirts of Bogotá, Gonzalo Sáez de Santamaría runs the Mondoñedo ranch, with more than 300 head of cattle, including cows, adult fighting bulls and their offspring. The ranch was founded in 1923 with five fighting bulls that his great-grandfather brought by ship from Spain.
“What are we going to do with all this cattle?” Sáez de Santamaría asked during a recent visit to his ranch. “For every bull that dies in a bullring, there are 10 to 15 more fighting bulls” on Colombian ranches.
Sáez de Santamaría estimates that there are more than 30,000 fighting bulls in Colombia.
Padilla, a senator for the Green Party, regretted that the new law, drafted by a member of the president’s Historical Pact party, did not specify what should happen to bulls bred for fighting, but said she hoped their owners would let them live.
Sáez de Santamaría said fighting bulls, which typically weigh between 400 and 450 kilograms (800 and 990 pounds) and can fetch about $5,000 for use in fights, are expensive to maintain. He predicted that most ranchers will eventually sell their bulls to slaughterhouses.
He said he is considering turning his property into a beef ranch or perhaps a dairy farm, or he could simply sell it to nearby developers who are buying up land to build factories and apartment buildings.
“Bullfighting is an ancient ritual with religious origins. It is sad that these bulls now have to die in a slaughterhouse,” said Sáez de Santamaría.
There are no reliable statistics on how many people in Colombia earn their living from bullfighting, so the economic impact of the ban is unclear.
However, the bill calls on the government to identify people who make a living from bullfighting and fund projects that will help them develop new livelihoods.
The fanatic bullfighter Caqueza said he has no interest in anything else.
“If we can’t fight bulls, we’re dead in life,” he said.
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