Tijuana's Bullfighting Season Ends

Tijuana’s 2011 bullfight season — during which six events took place — came to a close September 4 with a first in the city's history: all three matadors (or matadoras) were women.

The ladies killed six bulls Sunday afternoon. Frontera’s report pronounced the afternoon’s corrida as pretty much pedestrian, with only one of the women being awarded a ceremonial ear of a bull she slew, at the behest of the crowd.

Another matadora was tossed about by a bull in her second fight of the day and was pulled out of the ring and sent to the infirmary with injuries later declared minor. Her bull was finished off by one of the other ladies.

The bulls involved were said to be not of top-notch fighting stock, and there was an accusation of a rules violation regarding the playing out of the ancient Iberian drama of life and death.

Outside the ring, another group of women was protesting the performance of the bullfights, claiming that bringing children to see them was a form of child abuse and that witnessing such events increased violence in the community.

Spokeswoman Victoria Bravo said that her placard-wielding protesters represented “a call to conscience.” “We don’t want more violence in our cities,” she said outside Tijuana’s Bullring-by-the-Sea. “We want to live in peace. We want art and culture. We don’t want barbaric events where there is torture and maltreatment and where they allow the presence of minors.”

Bravo claimed that the protesters have been victims of violence, attacked and insulted by bullfight aficionados as they arrive or leave the stadium.

Pictured: Mari Paz Vega, one of the toreras who finished Tijuana’s bullfighting season.