Thursday, April 09, 2009

Conchita Cintron, Bullfighter - Women's Rights in Spanish Culture

Bull, Bahre name (real or not?)

Sometimes, a country transports its culture as much as its people. Here, bullfighting.

One of the first women bullfighters - a matador - was Conchita Cintron, who just died at age 86. Her obituary from the New York Times is at ://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/sports/othersports/20cintron.html/.

Apparently she began her vocation at age 13, and was from Peru, not Spain. Still, the sport is so tightly tied with Spain, and she was living in Portugal at the time of her death, we include here regionally and culturally, here - with Spain.

Her life and near death - in 1949, she was gored in the thigh during a bullfight in Mexico, was taken out of the ring, broke away from the doctors in the infirmary, and returned to the ring to kill the bull. That bull was one of 750 taken in her career. She then fell unconscious and was taken to emergency surgery.