Young Traveler–Silver Winner: Finding My Matador’s Flair
By Jennifer Hare
Uno, dos, tres – ¡ahora!
Here I am on a dusty dirt road in God-Knows-Where, Mexico, about an hour in from the border, watching three men huddled around a Chevy Suburban with a flat tire. They’re trying (unsuccessfully) to loosen the lug nuts with a wrench provided by a local rancher in order to switch on the spare. Muffled grunts. Boot-scuffing. Sweat-dabbing. The sun rises higher and the fenced goats across the road bleat pathetically, a riveted audience to our roadside fiasco. How did I get here? My hunger as a student journalist led me, and I’m beginning to doubt whether this story is worth it.
Initially this article was supposed to be a spring-break sampling of ideas for college students on what to do in San Diego if they couldn’t afford a plane ticket out. When I called Coleman Cooney to do some fact-checking on his bullfighting school, he told me, “If you want to write a profile article on it, I’ll take you to Mexico and you can see what it’s all about.” Foolishly, I said yes. Now, with any opportunity for escape and miles behind me, I try to remember what first captivated me about this man’s tale.
Facing Coleman Cooney is a 700-pound bull. It’s the first toro he has ever encountered and its horns could impale him if he didn’t know what he was doing. He regards it with heaving breaths and his heart thumps out wild rhythms in his chest. Finally the bull lowers its head for the charge. Coleman is ready; he sidesteps it with surprising ease as the red cloth grazes the beast’s frame. This is the first charge of many – and the last will end in the toro’s death.
How does Coleman – or anyone, for that matter – find himself killing bulls as part of his job? Well, first of all, he wasn’t your average college student. He left university for Paris, France in 1983 with a degree in Art and European History.
“I’m actually not sure I graduated,” he admits. “I might be three units short…”
A mere three units couldn’t keep him from Europe, however. Little did he know that his transatlantic trip would eventually become the catalyst for a lifelong passion: bullfighting.
As a native San Diegan, Coleman had plenty of experience as a bullfighting spectator during his frequent jaunts to Mexico. It wasn’t until he found himself in Spain during his post-college European sojourn, however, that bullfighting struck an emotional chord. Under the magnetism of his reawakened interest, he procured season tickets to the San Ysidro Feria, a 30-day bullfighting fair that takes place every May in Madrid and draws crowds of over 25,000 bystanders.
Smitten with European lifestyle and bullfighting culture, Coleman decided to settle in Madrid, where he lived for seven years. There, he received training from bullfighting masters and aficionados alike. His stint in Europe was a “defined wanderlust,” he reflects, and he’s still in it. Only now he makes regular pilgrimages to Mexico and Spain as part of the curriculum for the California Academy of Tauromaquia, a bullfighting school that he founded in 1997.
“When I came back to the States,” Coleman reminisces, “I noticed everyone was talking about extreme sports and adrenaline-charged activities. They seemed desperate to find thrills.” What he didn’t bargain for was that he would have the perfect answer for such a hungry market: a bullfighting school that could teach the cerebral aspects of this daring and highly misunderstood art form.
Coleman drafted a business plan and opened the Academy in May of 1997. Within a matter of weeks, it was featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Maxim, Sports Illustrated, “Average Joe” and ABC News.
“I think it was serendipitous in some ways that we came out when we did,” he says of his entrepreneurial venture. “We have experience in a very unusual niche.”
The California Academy of Tauromaquia is one of three bullfighting schools in the nation and offers an annual trip to Spain as well as frequent excursions to Mexico. The school is above all a mobile one, but its base is located thirty minutes east of San Diego in Alpine, California where Coleman resides with his wife and two sons.
Students at the Academy run the gamut – from dancers, filmmakers and pop singers to architects, lawyers, students and corporate businessmen. Some are simply thrill-seekers who want to say they’ve “been there, done that.” Others are more serious and some even have professional ambitions. Most students start off with the weekend introductory class, where they might submit themselves to the test of amateur bullfighting at Rancho Santa Alicia, a working bull ranch in Valle de las Palmas, situated 50 miles from the border in Baja California.
Today, Rancho Santa Alicia is our final destination, and I will become one of those students. Coleman’s other apprentice, Walter Badet, is a Frenchman and horse-breeder who currently resides in Arizona. Right now he´s gripping the wrench with weathered hands and bracing himself against the tire´s dust-encrusted rubber, his dark locks escaping from a ponytail and falling across a forehead knitted with fatigue. My heart beats a little faster inside my chest. I have always had a weakness for Frenchmen.
With some effort and collaboration, the lug nuts are finally worked loose, the tire replaced – and we continue our dusty travail towards Rancho Santa Alicia, leaving the bleating goats behind us. Walter and Coleman fittingly crack open cans of Red Bull to replenish their reserves.
We arrive, trailing a mélange of barking dogs behind us. Coleman greets the rancher, begins to unload. I walk a few paces away from the flurry of arrival to compose myself. Here I will have the opportunity to encounter a one-year-old vaca or female cow (no horns) and learn some bullfighting skills in a workshop, hands-on setting called a tienta. Really an agricultural service provided by toreros, the tienta is a way for ranchers to appraise their livestock in action and, based on their observations, decide which ones to breed and which ones to sell to other ranches or send to the meat market. As the toreros practice their bullfighting skills and refine their maneuvers, the ranchers will be assessing the animals with the following questions: Do they react well to the lure? Do they carry their head low on the charge? Do they follow a certain grace and geometry in the way they turn after the charge?
The antique stone ring at Rancho Santa Alicia is comprised of a dirt carpet, two doors, an opening to the bullpen, and four burladeros or wooden partitions which offer shelter to on-lookers inside the ring. Burladeros can also be used as stations from which to gauge a student’s progress or yell out direction and encouraging advice. That students are never left completely alone with the bovine is perhaps the most comforting aspect of the program. Given this safety net, it’s rare that anyone will sustain injuries beyond the occasional bruise.
This is not to say that one’s first encounter with a charging vaca is a walk in the park. On the contrary – it is usually an adrenaline-surging, heart-thumping, spleen-wrenching panic fest. “Girls have broken down and cried,” Coleman says regarding the “first time” experience. “Honest men have shaken their heads and refused to go in.”
But for those who dare to conquer the nagging voice in their head that tells them they’re crazy for volunteering to be attacked by an untamed beast, blessings await. They are given a red cloth – a muleta – which the bullfighter (or torero) holds to the side as he or she advances. To a “virgin” vaca, the muleta appears as part of the bullfighter’s body and the torero is able to make a neat escape when the cow charges it instead of him. This phenomenon only lasts for fifteen or twenty minutes, however; after that, the vaca will begin to decipher the difference between the human and the cloth.
Most students have never touched a cow, let alone been charged by one. Their most overwhelming response after the experience is, “Did I do that? I can’t believe it!” Some are so enthralled that they regularly come back for more—Joe Escalante, the bass player for The Vandals, is one of them.
Santiago Gonzales, Coleman’s business partner and fellow bullfighting aficionado, sums up the magnetism by saying, “Toreo is a profound mental and physical challenge. It’s the man against the beast. It’s about proving yourself.” True bullfighting isn’t just a hobby; it’s an alliance of business and art.
“A lot of people romanticize bullfighting into something completely spontaneous, but it’s not,” Coleman confides. “It takes hours of discipline and training just like any other sport.”
I watch Walter unfurl a red muleta and enter the ring alone, pacing the compact dirt to execute a complex ballet of side-steps and advances with an imaginary bull before the live beast is let loose to face him. Some months ago he underwent a five-day $2000 intensive course where he trained for six hours daily, studying bullfighting videos and practicing his technique, gestures and stance. He knows as well as anyone here that the road to matador stardom is hard-paved – that you must pay your own way in order to climb the bullfighting hierarchy, purchasing bulls at astronomical prices just so that you can kill them. He knows that Enrique Ponce, César Rincón and Cristina Sánchez are among the precious few who have forged a name for themselves as true matadors in this pageantry-filled industry. That’s why he doesn’t aspire to be one. He’s only interested in bullfighting for self-exploration, content with bloodless combat.
Without further ado, the bloodless combat begins. I claim my station behind the protection of a burladero while Coleman, Santiago and several ranchers take their places at the outskirts of the ring. A cow bellows in the holding pen outside and there´s a general bustle and commotion as the ranch-hands douse the hems of the muletas with water so they will hang heavier in the hand. Finally, the vaca is ushered in with all the expectancy of a celebrity at the Golden Globes. She blinks in bewilderment and her nostrils flare as new scents of sun, dust and sweat commingle. Walter approaches her slowly, one step at a time, until he reaches an invisible threshold. There’s been an inexplicable exchange between the two. Walter’s body is a rigid, taut wire beneath the flowing folds of his Romeo-inspired blouse; the vaca begins to show signs of agitation, flicking her ears back and rasping her hoof against the dirt. And then – Walter’s heel striking earth, a harsh call of challenge uttered forth from somewhere deep within his chest. The vaca responds by lowering her head for the charge. She is swept beneath the muleta as Walter pivots gracefully to let her pass, as in a dance. She charges him again; this time he stumbles in his effort to confront her and his precision dissolves into a clumsy attempt to escape. A chorus of encouragement and advice chimes from all corners of the ring as the more seasoned bullfighters judge his progress from behind the burladeros. On the third charge his composure has returned and the vaca’s desperate low reverberates in our ears as her eyelashes graze Walter’s stone-washed jeans. All blunders aside, he has performed considerably well for his first time in the ring, and now he joins the on-lookers so that the others can have a round.
First Coleman. Then Santiago, who exudes bravado. In a blatant display of machismo, he leans nonchalantly against the burladero and sips disinterestedly on his water-bottle as the vaca approaches him, side-stepping her at the last second to avoid getting trampled. When his 13-year-old son, Santiago Junior, faces the vaca, his fatherly desperation becomes apparent. “La mano en la cintura! La mano en la cintura! Hand at the waist!” he yells. Clearly, people are watching, and clearly, form matters.
After everyone else has had their turn with the yearling, it’s mine. She looks deceptively placid, but I know from watching earlier that she can paw the ground with the best of them. I muster my best bullfighting stance and approach the vaca slowly – shoulders back, spine straight, head high. My insides are a quivering jellyfish buffeted by the churning waters of a hurricane. Coleman has told me earlier, “Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,” but I’ve long forgotten that nugget of advice. Santiago’s continual refrain is, “Inch a little closer. Suave. Despacio.”
And then it happens, all in a blur so that it’s done before it can even begin. The vaca charges towards me and despite my best efforts to dazzle the on-lookers with my bullfighting prowess, I remain rooted in her path and she head-butts me in the crotch, lifting me off the ground before I stagger backwards in bewilderment. Thank goodness I’m not a guy and thank goodness she doesn’t have horns. I barely have time to compose myself before I’m being charged again. This time she makes more contact with the red muleta than with my crotch. I hear cheers and claps from behind the burladeros: “¡Bien hecho! Well done!”
Juan Belmonte, a pivotal bullfighting figure, once said, “Se torea como es. One bullfights the way one is.” Any art form will reflect who you are, and toreo is no exception. In a twisted sense of paradox, my first attempt at bullfighting reminded me of my own human ineptitude and at the same time augmented my self-confidence. This feisty vaca bestowed me with a new-found sense of perseverance. I may not be the next Cristina Sánchez – there were no red carnations thrown – but I had found my story. I had found my matador´s flair.
