Bullfighting and Los Angeles do not obviously go together, and bullfighting where the bull walks away unharmed sounds like a contradiction. Both are on offer Saturday night in Artesia, LAist reports, at one of Southern California's more unusual living traditions.
How a bloodless bullfight works
The event, at the Artesia D.E.S. Hall at 11903 Ashworth St., starts at 6:30 p.m. and runs about two hours, with admission $35 and children 5 and under free. It follows the form of a Portuguese bullfight, mounted cavaleiros, and forcados who attempt to grab the bull near the end, but strips out the killing.
The trick is Velcro. The darts the performers carry and the pad worn by the bull are both tipped with it, so a "hit" sticks rather than pierces. "It's Velcro on Velcro. It, most of the time, sticks," said Paul De Medeiros, president of the Artesia D.E.S. and one of the event's organizers, who was blunt about the point: "We don't want to injure the animals." What remains is the spectacle, the horsemanship and the nerve, without the blood that makes traditional bullfighting a nonstarter in California.
The community that keeps it going
This is not a novelty act imported for tourists; it is a genuine piece of Artesia's history. The bullfight is the centerpiece of the Festa do Espírito Santo, the Festival of the Holy Spirit, a Portuguese Catholic tradition carried to Southern California by immigrants who settled in what was then called Dairy Valley and built their livelihoods in agriculture and the dairy business.
They built institutions to match. The D.E.S. community hall went up in 1927; the bullfighting arena was constructed in 1976 by longtime coordinator Joey Martins's grandfathers and other community members, and it operates today under grandfather-clause exemptions. Saturday's performers reflect the tradition's reach: a matador from Mexico, cavaleiros including one from Portugal.
Why it is worth knowing about
Los Angeles County is a place people reduce to clichés, and stories like this are the counterargument. A thousand-seat Portuguese bullfighting arena in Artesia, drawing spectators from as far as Bakersfield and San Diego for a Holy Spirit festival that predates most of the freeways, is exactly the kind of specific, rooted culture that a region this large quietly holds and outsiders never suspect.
That it has adapted, Velcro standing in for the blade so the tradition can survive in a state that would never allow the original, is the most Southern California detail of all: an old-world ritual meeting local law and finding a way to keep going. The Herald notes it for anyone who thinks they know what this county contains.
