Mexico considers banning bullfighting

Lawmakers in Mexico this month proposed legislation that would ban bullfighting in Mexico City. The bill will be voted on early next year, where it has to obtain a majority in a plenary session for its approval.

The Animal Welfare Commission of the local Congress approved the initiative. The legislation bans “holding public shows in which bulls, steers, and calves are abused, tortured or deprived of life.” Violators could be fined up to $234,000.

“This show is based on torture, pain, and cruelty towards the bull, as well as a contempt for animal rights,” reads the report.

The ban follows similar measures in Spain, Ecuador, Colombia, and other areas of Mexico. Anti-bullfighting activists cite animal abuse and animal rights as a reason to end the sport. On the other hand, bullfighting fans see the move as an attack on their sport and the country’s culture. Part of why Mexican bullfighting is so popular is because it maintains the oldest traditions of the sport.

“This is a movement that comes here from outside of Mexico and tries to take away an ancestral tradition,” said José Saborit Santa, director of the professional bullfighting association Tauromaquia Mexicana.

Mexico is one of the few countries where traditional bullfighting is still allowed, placing Mexico City as one of the greatest cities for bullfighting. Bulls are raised to die at the spectacle by the sword of a matador.

“The prohibitionists seem not to understand that we aren’t fighting elephants or dolphins or cats. We are fighting animals who are raised for this, to show their abilities, to have a chance and, if not, to die nobly in the ring,” said Guillermo Leal, the bullfighting correspondent for the Reforma newspaper.

Among the biggest obstacles the initiative faces are the economic and political pressures that oppose the measure. “The industry around the bull generates a spill of 6.900 billion pesos a year, generates 80,000 direct jobs, 146,000 indirect, and 800 million pesos in terms of taxes,” said the president of the National Association of Breeders of the Bull of Lidia in Mexico, Jorge Cardenas.