1.

LIFE IN A CLOAK AND DAGGER WORLD
By Leslie Crawford

Financial Times
July 30, 2005

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/24831fe4-0096-11da-b57e-00000e2511c8.html

She is paid to kill. She has no fixed address, as her job keeps her on the move for most of the year. She is much in demand in Latin America, where her particular talents are more appreciated than back home in her native Spain. She employs seven men, whom she must feed and house for the duration of a contract. And then there is the cost of her gear -- the cloaks, the daggers, the slippers, the suit of lights . . .

Within minutes of meeting Mari Paz Vega, Spain's leading female matador, the world of bullfighting has been skewered, stripped of its mystique. The era of Dominguín, whose conquests outside the ring -- including Ava Gardner, Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth -- were as notorious as his triumphs inside it, belong to a distant past, she says. The brave, reckless matadors immortalized in Hemingway's novels are long gone. So is the conceit of the bullfight as an atavistic struggle between man and beast, in which the beast is in the man, and the animal is admired for its nobility.

"The world of bullfighting is not as pretty as you think," says Vega, who is 29 and tough beyond her years. "These days it is all about showbiz. The bullfighter is little more than a hired hand."

I met Vega at Casa Botín, a 17th-century tavern famous for being Hemingway's favorite drinking hole in Madrid, shortly after her debut in Las Ventas, the cathedral of Spanish bullfighting.

Vega has been a professional bullfighter since the age of 16, but it was only this month, with her appearance at Las Ventas, that she finally gained entry into the inner sanctum of Spanish bullfighting. By despatching three half-ton bulls at Las Ventas, Vega was deemed to have confirmed her alternativa, or graduation to a fully-fledged matador. She is only the second woman ever to join the highest echelon of the matador ranks. Cristina Sánchez, the first woman to do so, retired a few years ago, complaining that male matadors refused to appear on the same bill as her.

In spite of her acclaimed performance at Las Ventas, Vega is struggling with the same prejudices that dogged Sánchez during her career. She has been unable to secure a billing this season in Málaga, her home town, because promoters claim she is not a crowd-puller, and that male matadors are reluctant to fight alongside women. This in spite of the fact that she was voted the best torero de capote in Málaga last year, for her art in handling the matador's flowing, magenta and yellow cape during the first third of a bullfight.

"The empresarios [managers] rent the bullrings," Vega explains. "Their main interest is in selling as many tickets as possible. Who fights, or how the bullfighters perform, is of secondary importance."

Then there are the "godfathers," who sponsor aspiring bullfighters in exchange for a share of their earnings. Vega's father, a failed bullfighter, was too poor to pay for her training, so she left home at the age of 15 to enter the service of her first godfather, a bullfighting agent in Zaragoza, 900km away from home. Her mother had just died. It was, she says, a heart-wrenching move.

But Vega counts herself lucky.

Her career has gone from strength to strength. She has settled her debts with her godfathers (there have been four in total) and she is now financially independent. "There are many kids who do not make it, and who have to work to pay off their debts for years after they have quit bullfighting," she says. "It used to be the case that you became a bullfighter to become rich. These days you need to be rich before you can be a bullfighter."

Start-up costs are prohibitive, she says. An aspiring matador must employ three banderilleros, who run at the bull to place darts on the nape of its neck; two picadors, the lancers who ride on horseback and weaken the bull before a fight by driving spears into the bull's neck muscles; a mozo de espada, or sword-handler; and a sword-handler's assistant. The seven are clothed, housed and fed at the bullfighter's expense.

A bullfighter's personal kit is also horribly expensive. The most economical suit of lights -- hand-sewn and embroidered -- sets you back

"When I was a novice, I could not charge much for a corrida," Vega says, "so after paying my assistants, the hotel bills, the van hire, the driver, the food and petrol, and my manager's take, I often had nothing left for myself," she says.

So why do it? What was the appeal of risking death by exposing oneself to an angry, wounded beast that weighed at least 10 times as much as Vega (who is a slim 56kg)?

It runs in the family, she says. Her father never made it as a bullfighter, but he had ambitions for his five sons, whom he enrolled in the local Escuela Taurina, or bullfighting school. As a small girl, Vega was taken along and told to play in the patio while her brothers were put through their paces in front of a mechanical bull, then calves, cows, and finally young bulls.

Vega watched from the sidelines, taking it all in. "Nobody paid attention to me, but when I was 10 or 11, I asked my father if he would enroll me in the school as well. He laughed and threw me in the ring with a cow in the hope that the experience would knock some sense into me and send me scurrying home. Well, it didn't, and here I am."

Although four of her five brothers are now banderilleros and sword handlers, none of them became fully-fledged bullfighters. Mari Paz, the only daughter, is her father's pride and joy. Their home in Málaga is decorated with bullfighting memorabilia, including three stuffed bull's heads -- trophies of Vega's biggest fights.

Her early years as a novillera -- a fighter of young bulls -- were also the happiest. "I was starting out, with a lot of ambition and all my illusions intact," she says. The constant travelling didn't bother her. Vega says she gets bored after a week in the same place. She spends the winter season in Latin America, mostly in Venezuela, where she has a big peña, or fan club, and in Mexico, where many aspiring bullfighters make their name, travelling from fiesta to fiesta. "It's the village fiestas that keep bullfighting alive," she says. "It is the only way of winning over a new generation of spectators to the sport. In the big cities, and the famous bullrings, La Maestranza in Seville, or Las Ventas in Madrid, the cost of a ticket is beyond the reach of most young people.".

After eight years as a novillera, Vega was ready to fight the big bulls. That was when the accidents began. Five years ago, in France, she almost bled to death after a nasty goring that punctured a femoral artery. "What saved me was the fact that there was a hospital just opposite the bullring," she says.

In 2001, in Mexico, Vega was trampled by a 560kg beast as it charged out of its enclosure. An exposed fracture, resulting from a femur bone broken in three, took almost a year to heal. "My doctor said I was well enough to spend the rest of my life in an office, but if I wanted to continue bullfighting, I needed my head examined."

She has never thought of quitting. "Bullfighting is about self-discipline," she says. "It is about controlling your fears as much as your movements. It is also about controlling your anger, when people insult you because you are a woman."

Bullfighting fans can be merciless. "Go back to the kitchen." "You don't have the strength to kill." Vega has endured the heckling, she says, because she wants to succeed on the same terms as men.

"I do not ask for smaller bulls because I am a woman. And I do not chose tame bulls -- like some famous bullfighters do -- in order to save my skin," she says. Bullfighting critics in Spain often bemoan the poor specimens that are offered up in the ring. Vega says this is no coincidence. "If you are fighting 100 corridas a year, like some of the top matadors, you ask breeders to deliberately select placid bulls. It is the only way to sustain your energy for the duration of the season.

"The world of bullfighting is envious, and full of deceit," she says. "You cannot trust anyone, in or outside the ring. The only thing I enjoy is the 20 minutes I am in front of the bull."

Vega hopes that her debut at Las Ventas, and her elevation to the top rank of matadors, will open new doors in her career. But she also knows that as a woman, she will only be as good as her last fight. To be a female matador is still to be something of a freak, an object of curiosity rather than admiration, an interloper in a male world.

2.

[Translation of Jacques Brel, "Les Toros" (1963)]

THE BULLS
By Jacques Brel

http://www.paroles.net/chansons/22669.htm

Every Sunday the bulls are bored
When they have to run for us

A little sand, some sun and boards
A little blood to make a little mud

That's when the shopkeepers think they're Don Juan
That's when the English ladies think they're Montherlant
Ah!

Who will tell us what it's thinking
A bull that's turning and dancing
And suddenly sees that he's completely naked
Ah!

Who will tell us what it's dreaming
A bull whose eye is looking up
And who discovers he's wearing the cuckolds' horns

Every Sunday the bulls are bored
When they have to suffer for us

Here are the picadors and the crowd takes revenge
Here are the toreros and the crowd's on its knees

That's when the shop-keepers think they're Garcia Lorca
That's when the English ladies think they're la Carmencita

Every Sunday the bulls are bored
When they have to die for us

Now the sword's going in and the crowd leans forward
Now the sword's has gone in and the crowd's on its feet

That's the moment of triumph when the shop-keepers think they're Nero
That's the moment of triumph when the English ladies think they're Wellington

As they're falling to the ground
The bulls are dreaming of a hell
Where dead men and toreros are ablaze
Ah!

Or at the moment when they die
Might they perhaps not pardon us
Thinking of Carthage, Waterloo, and Verdun
Verdun

--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Department of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Home page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@plu.edu

3.

LES TOROS
Par Jacques Brel

http://www.paroles.net/chansons/22669.htm

Les toros s'ennuient le dimanche
Quand il s'agit de courir pour nous
Un peu de sable du soleil et des planches
Un peu de sang pour faire un peu de boue
C'est l'heure où les épiciers se prennent pour Don Juan
C'est l'heure où les Anglaises se prennent pour Montherlant
Ah!
Qui nous dira à quoi ça pense
Un toro qui tourne et danse
Et s'aperçoit soudain qu'il est tout nu
Ah!
Qui nous dira à quoi ça rêve
Un toro dont l'œil se lève
Et qui découvre les cornes des cocus

Les toros s'ennuient le dimanche
Quand il s'agit de souffrir pour nous
Voici les picadors et la foule se venge
Voici les toreros et la foule est à genoux
C'est l'heure où les épiciers se prennent pour Garcia Lorca
C'est l'heure où les Anglaises se prennent pour la Carmencita

Les toros s'ennuient le dimanche
Quand il s'agit de mourir pour nous
Mais l'épée va plonger et la foule se penche
Mais l'épée a plongé et la foule est debout
C'est l'instant de triomphe où les épiciers se prennent pour Néron
C'est l'instant de triomphe où les Anglaises se prennent pour Wellington
Ah!
Est-ce qu'en tombant à terre
Les toros rêvent d'un enfer
Où brûleraient hommes et toreros défunts
Ah!
Ou bien à l'heure du trépas
Ne nous pardonneraient-ils pas
En pensant à Carthage Waterloo et Verdun
Verdun