HAVANA: Bullfight

A bullfight has been advertised all over the town, at the Plaza de Toros. Shall we go? I would not, if it were only pleasure that I was seeking. As I am sure I expect only the contrary, and wish merely to learn the character of this national recreation, I will go.

The Plaza de Toros is a wooden amphitheater, in the suburbs, open at the top a circle of rising seats, with the arena in the center. I am late. The cries of the people inside are loud, sharp, and constant; a full band is blowing its trumpets and beating its drums; and the late stragglers are jostling for their tickets. I go through at a low door, find myself under benches filled with an eager, stamping, shouting multitude, make my way through a passage, and come out on the shady side, for it is a late afternoon sun, and take my place at a good point of view. A bull, with some blood about his fore-quarters and two or three darts (banderillas) sticking in his neck, is trotting harmlessly about the arena, “more sinned against than sinning,” and seeming to have no other desire than to get out. Two men, each carrying a long, stout, wooden pole, pointed with a short piece of iron, not long enough to kill, but only to drive off and to goad, are mounted on two of the sorriest nags eyes ever beheld reprieved jades, whom it would not pay to feed and scarcely pay to kill, and who have been left to take their chances of death here. They could hardly be pricked into a trot, and were too weak to escape. I have seen horses in every stage of life and in every degree of neglect, but no New York Negro hack-driver would have taken these for a gift, if he were obliged to keep them. The bull could not be said to run away from the horses, for they did not pursue; but when, distracted by sights and sounds, he came against a horse, the horse stood still to be gored, and the bull only pushed against him with his head, until driven off by the punching of the iron-pointed pole of the horseman.

Around the arena are sentry-boxes, each large enough to hold two men, behind which they can easily jump, but which the bull cannot enter; and from these, the cowardly wretches run out, flourish a red cloth at the bull, and jump back. Three or four men, with darts in hand, run before the bull, entice him by flapping their red cloths, and, as he trots up to them, stick banderillas into his neck. These torment the bull, and he tries to shake them off, and paws the ground; but still he shows no fight. He trots to the gate, and snuffs to get out. Some of the multitude cry “Fuera el toro! Fuera el toro!” which means that he is a failure, and must be let out at the gate. Others are excited, and cry for the killer, the matador; and a demoniacal scene follows, of yells and shouts, half-drowned by twenty or thirty drums and trumpets. The cries to go on prevail; and the matador appears, dressed in a tight-fitting suit of green small-clothes, with a broad silver stripe, jerkin, and stockings a tall, light-complexioned, elegantly made, glittering man, bearing in one hand a long, heavy, dull black sword, and in the other a broad, red cloth. Now comes the harrying and distracting of the bull by flags, and red cloths, and darts; the matador runs before, flings his cloth up and down; the bull trots towards it no furious rush, or maddened dash, but a moderate trot the cloth is flashed over his face and one skilfully directed lunge of the sword into his back neck, and he drops instantly dead at the feet of the matador, at the very spot where he received the stab. Frantic shouts of applause follow; and the matador bows around, like an applauded circus-rider, and retires. The great gate opens, and three horses abreast are driven in, decked with ribbons, to drag the bull round the arena. But they are such feeble animals that, with all the flourish of music and the whipping of drivers, they are barely able to tug the bull along over the tan, in a straight line for the gate, through which the sorry pageant and harmless bull disappear.

Now, some meager, hungry, sallow, sweaty, mean-looking degenerates of Spain jump in and rake over the arena, and cover up the blood, and put things to rights again; and I find time to take a view of the company. Thankful I am, and creditable it is, that there are no women. Yes, there are two mulatto women in a seat on the sunny side, which is the cheap side. And there are two shrivelled, dark, Creole women, in a box; and there is one girl of eight or ten years, in full dress, with an elderly man. These are all the women. In the State Box, under the faded royal arms, are a few officials, not of high degree. The rest of the large company is a motley collection, chiefly of the middle or lower classes, mostly standing on the benches, and nearly all smoking.

The music beats and brays again, the great gates open, and another bull rushes in, distracted by sights and sounds so novel, and for a few minutes shows signs of power and vigor; but, as he becomes accustomed to the scene, he tames down; and after several minutes of flaunting of cloths and flags, and piercing with darts, and punching with the poles of the horsemen, he runs under the poor white horse, and upsets him, but leaves him unhurt by his horns; has a leisurely trial of endurance with the red horse, goring him a little with one horn, and receiving the pike of the driver the horse helpless and patient, and the bull very reasonable and temperate in the use of his power and then is enticed off by flags, and worried with darts; and, at last, a new matador appears a fierce-looking fellow, dressed in dark green, with a large head of curling, snaky, black hair, and a skin almost black. He makes a great strut and flourish, and after two or three unsuccessful attempts to get the bull head on, at length, getting a fair chance, plunges his black sword to the hilt in the bull’s neck but there is no fall of the bull. He has missed the spinal cord and the bull trots off, bleeding in a small stream, with a sword-handle protruding a few inches above the hide of his back-neck. The spectators hoot their contempt for the failure; but with no sign of pity for the beast. The bull is weakened, but trots about and makes a few runs at cloths, and the sword is drawn from his hide by an agile dart-sticker (banderillero), and given to the black bully in dark green, who makes one more lunge, with no better success. The bull runs round, and reels, and staggers, and falls half down, gets partly up, lows and breathes heavily, is pushed over and held down, until a butcher dispatches him with a sharp knife, at the spinal cord. Then come the opened gates, the three horses abreast, decked with ribbons, the hard tug at the bull’s body over the ground, his limbs still swaying with remaining life, the clash and clang of the band, and the yells of the people.

Shall I stay another? Perhaps it may be more successful, and if the new bull will only bruise somebody! But the new bull is a failure. After all their attempts to excite him, he only trots round, and snuffs at the gates; and the cry of “Fuera el toro!” becomes so general, with the significant triple beat of the feet, in time with the words, all over the house, that the gates are opened, and the bull trots through, to his quarters.

But the meanness, and cruelty, and impotency of this crowd! They cry out to the spear-men and the dart-men, and to the tormentors, and to the bull, and to the horses, and to each other, in a Babel of sounds, where no man’s voice can possibly be distinguished ten feet from him, all manner of advice and encouragement or derision, like children at a play. One full grown, well-dressed young man, near me, kept up a constant cry to the men in the ring, when I am sure no one could distinguish his words, and no one cared to until I became so irritated that I could have throttled him.

But, such you are! You can cry and howl at bull-fights and cockfights and in the pits of operas and theaters, and drive bulls and horses distracted, and urge gallant gamecocks to the death, and applaud opera singers into patriotic songs, and leave them to imprisonment and fines and you yourselves cannot lift a finger, or join hand to hand, or bring to the hazard life, fortune, or honor, for your liberty and your dignity as men. Work your slaves, torture your bulls, fight your gamecocks, crown your dancers and singers and leave the weightier matters of judgment and justice, of fame by sea and land, of letters and arts and sciences, of private right and public honor, the present and future of your race and of your native land, to the care of others of a people of no better blood than your own, strangers and sojourners among you!

The next bull is treated to a refinement of torture, in the form of darts filled with heavy China crackers, which explode on the neck of the poor beast. I could not see that even this made him really dangerous. The light-complexioned, green-and-silver matador dispatches him, as he did the first bull, with a single lunge, and a fall and a quiver, and all is over!

The fifth bull is a failure and is allowed to go out of the ring. The sixth is nearly the same with the others, harmless if let alone, and goaded into short-lived activity, but not into anything like fury or even a dangerous animosity. He is treated to fire-crackers, and gores one horse a little the horse standing, side on, and taking it, until the bull is driven off by the punching of the spear; and runs at the other horse, and, to my delight, upsets the rider, but unfortunately without hurting him, and the black-haired matador in green tries his hand on him and fails again, and is hooted, and takes to throwing darts, and gets a fall, and looks disconcerted, and gets his sword again, and makes another false thrust; and the crippled and bleeding animal is thrown down and dispatched by the butcher with his short knife, and drawn off by the three poor horses. The gates close, and I hurry out in a din of shouts and drums and trumpets, the great crowd waiting for the last bull but I have seen enough.

There is no volante waiting, and I have to take my seat in an omnibus, and wait for the end of the scene. The confusion of cries and shouts and the interludes of music still goes on, for a quarter of an hour, and then the crowd begins to pour out, and to scatter over the ground. Four faces in a line are heading for my omnibus. There is no mistaking that head man, the file leader. “Down East” is written legibly all over his face. Tall, thin, sallow, grave, circumspect! The others are not counterparts. They vary. But “New England” is graven on all.

“Wa-a-al!” says the leader, as he gets into the omnibus. No reply. They take their seats, and wipe their foreheads. One expectorates. Another looks too wise for utterance. “By,” ... a long pause How will he end it? “Jingoes!” That is a failure. It is plain he fell short, and did not end as he intended. The sentiment of the four has not yet got uttered. The fat, flaxen-haired man makes his attempt. “If there is a new milch cow in Vermont that wouldn’t show more fight, under such usage, than them bulls, I’d buy her and make a present of her to Governor Cunchy or whatever they call him.”

This is practical and direct, and opens the way to a more free interchange. The northern ice is thawed. The meanness and cruelty of the exhibition is commented upon. The moral view is not overlooked, nor underrated. None but cowards would be so cruel. And last of all, it is an imposition. Their money has been obtained under false pretences. A suit would lie to recover it back; but the poor devils are welcome to the money. The coach fills up with Cubans; and the noise of the pavements drowns the further reflections of the four philanthropists, patriots and economists.