A Yankee in the Far East

by George Hoyt Allen

I've seen them chop off human being's heads in China, in the name of justice. It jarred me some. I've seen the awful condition of human life in India. That jarred me more. But yesterday I saw five thousand men, women and children gathered to witness bulls tortured for "fun"!

I found myself jammed in with the cruelest, most blood-thirsty, cut-throat gang I've ever seen—and the fact that human beings could be brought to look upon that thing as "sport," "pastime," "pleasure," jarred me most of all—and Juarez is only a little more than a stone's throw from El Paso! El Paso has poignant feelings on the Mexican situation—the nuisance is at her door.

Twenty-five years ago El Paso was a cluster of mud huts. Juarez was a town five hundred years ago, and it's little more than a cluster of mud huts now. Some fair-size two-story brick buildings, but a sorry makeshift of a city, the chief thing in evidence being poverty, vice, and dirt. Its chief pride, and by all odds largest building, is its bull ring—an amphitheater that will seat 10,000, built around an arena. This arena, about 100 feet in diameter, is fenced in with a high-board fence. A gate opens out of the arena, through which first come six gaily-dressed bull baiters on foot, followed by three more riding blindfolded, scarecrow horses, sorry, poor, limping old beasts, which, in man's service have earned a merciful death—their value in the open market would not exceed $2.00 each. Their riders are armed with long-handled spears. They all, on foot and horseback, have official names. I don't know, nor want to know, what their titles are. They are men!—not brutes. It would be an insult to the brutes that go to make up the sketch to call them that. They doff their hats and salaam to the throng, who answer back with lusty cheers.

I found myself jammed in with the cruelest, most blood-thirsty, cut-throat gang I've ever seen

And now the bull comes from the darkened pen, where he has been kept for twenty-four hours,—a walk of thirty feet through a fenced-in lane. His bovine majesty, a splendid bull, comes walking leisurely along, rejoicing to get into God's sunlight, no thought of malice in his heart. He seems to nod a kindly good-afternoon to the attendants, who drive him towards the gate that opens into the arena. As he is passing through the gate a man perched up out of harm's way jabs a cruel harpoon on the end of a handle decked with gaily colored ribbons between the bull's shoulders.

There is no maddened rush of an angry bull. He stops for an instant with a startled look—surprise, and hurt wonderment, and "what for?" written on his face as plain as man can talk. A baiter inside the ring with a blanket shook out at his side stands just ahead of him. The bull charges the blanket—no danger to the man—the gate is shut, and the baiters with their blankets held out at their sides get the bull more and more into fighting trim.

But the crowd wants blood. So a baiter on a horse, rides up and jabs the bull's shoulder with his spear, and another rider jabs him on the other side. The bull wheels to catch his tormentor, who is out of harm's way on his horse. The bull charges back and forth, from rider to rider, until one of them deliberately reins his blinded horse directly in range of the bull, who rips its entrails out. The rider deftly and easily dismounts; the blinded horse is down, and the bull finishes him with a thrust or two, and the crowd goes mad with "delight." The remaining two riders have played their part, and withdrawn from the ring, and six baiters on foot take up the "sport," and with their blankets draw the bull from the now dead horse. He charges from one to the other, with no more danger to the trained athletes on foot than there would be to a hound after a rabbit.

But the rabbit has a chance for its life—the bull none.

And now another baiter comes with two harpoon spears on handles two feet long decked with ribbons, and tempts the bull to charge him. The bull accepts the challenge, and as he charges the trained baiter side-steps, and, as the bull passes, plants his harpoons in the bull's sides.