Blood, Sweat, Bulls and Dancers
By Gustavo Morejon
21 July 2008
When I first heard about the story of the "Bulls of Giron", I thought it was something similar to the bull's race of San Fermin in Spain. I joined two friends of mine in a photography travel to the heart of this particular festivity which originated in the colonial times in Ecuador, South America.
It was a sunny morning and a light fog was emerging from the mountains as we approached the place where the festivities were going to take place, the town of Giron. Everybody was running to get a good place to see the bulls. I walked with my friends in the same direction: an open stadium where bulls, dancers, music and the whole town were frenetically dancing.
As we got there, a bull passed in front of us trying to escape. At the center of the stadium, everybody was drinking and dancing; women with very colorful dresses and right in the middle of it, there was a bull!! Its eyes were so sad and red, that it impressed me. Around the bull, men were trying to get it really angry, hitting it, spitting alcohol in its eyes, and attempting to ride it. Meanwhile, the women were dancing and the musicians were singing a very typical Andean song.
I was concentrated on my camera, when I realized that another bull came in from behind. Now we had a brave bull in the stadium. Everybody was running and we decided to do the same. The music became louder and the people more aggressive. The bull was very big and furious.
The men started to fight with the bull using only their hands. In the meantime the young women were dancing very happily all around the stadium. Then... we saw an amazing and inhuman (almost prehistoric), behavior: the men started to kill the bull by hitting it! When the bull was almost knocked out, they tied the bull and started to dance around it. The girls were laughing and they sat on the bull and the boys were making jokes around it.
I had to fight between the nausea and the desire to stop it somehow. But it was too late. The collective hysteria was too dangerous. But, wait... it was only the beginning. With a very ceremonial attitude, the main character of the festivity, the "Prioste" (wearing a nice shirt and some gold medals and bracelets), ordered to get a very sharp knife and approached to the bull. Drinking a lot of "puro alcohol", a sugar cane drink made in town, he gave the knife to the strongest man in the stadium. This very strong man took the knife and with a sharp cut, opened the veins of the neck of the bull and the blood started to flow.
A big shout of everybody made my nerves get really weak; to be honest ... my legs were shaking. I could not believe what we saw. They started to drink the blood flowing from the bull's neck, and it was still alive!!!
Women, men, boys, old timers, everybody was drinking it. I had to take a deep breath far from the people for a moment and separate my feelings from the documentary work. When I went back, the bull was dead and everybody was drinking its blood and taking a part of the meat. The rest of the festivity was only taking parts of the bull for lunch. The girls are called "Maceteras", and they are the more beautiful ladies in the town, selected by the "Prioste", which is usually the richest man in town. It is a privilege to be a Macetera, and they are happy, drinking blood and dancing.
In my research I discovered that the bulls tradition started back in the colonial times, when the owners of the big "Haciendas" (farms), offered a bull to the indigenous people as a gift for their work (and as an strategy to prevent them to steal the cows) and released the bull in the wild to let them hunt the bull.
Now that the Paramos (the original high altitude vegetation of this part of the Andes) are too populated, the festivity of the bulls has been reduced to kill the bull in a stadium. The festivity is a mix between the Catholic religion and the old indigenous beliefs.
Back to Cuenca, the city from where we departed to Giron, a very strange feeling invaded me. Sometimes, as a photographer, you have to separate your feelings from the subject. At least this is the theory, but... Can you do that? I saw a very primitive behavior and a terrible bull killing. My shoes had blood as well as my jeans. I decided to get a hot shower and send my clothes to the laundry.
It was so shocking that I was not sure if it was a good idea to publish it. Up until now.
2 Responses
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On 7 December 2008 ! allie cross said:
That's sad and disgusting. I'm sorry you had to see that. I would of left or passed out. I'm kinda speechless.
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On 7 December 2008 Gustavo Morejon said:
Sometimes I have this little fight inside me, regarding my function as a "documenting photographer" of being critic and and take a part in the "action", or being objective and not take a part in the action and just document it. Believe me, it is very hard when you have to fight between your action documenting something like that and the impulse inside you shouting "get out of this place" or "kick that guy". I heard from many documenting photographers the same thing, specially war photographers.
