Mexico City bans traditional bullfights for violence-free option

In the biggest bullfighting city in the largest bullfighting country in the world, Mexico City lawmakers overwhelmingly voted on Tuesday to ban traditional bullfighting — a move that was supported by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum but was fiercely opposed by backers of the centuries-old custom.

The legislation, approved by a 61-1 vote, prohibits the injuring or killing of bulls for sport, in or outside of the arenas. It will allow for what proponents call “bullfighting without violence,” in which rules determine how long a bull can be in the ring and limit bullfighters to using only capes.

“My heart always beats for animal welfare,” said Xochitl Bravo Espinosa, a Mexico City legislator who helped spearhead the effort.

But Bravo Espinosa said that legislators tried to find a balance in which the bullfights could go on, albeit modified, so that people who made a living off the industry could continue working. She pointed to people who sell gear and food around La Plaza México, the largest bullfighting arena in the world, which opened in 1946 in the heart of the city and seats 42,000 people.

Bullfighting proponents denounced the legislation, protesting outside the Mexico City legislature’s building on Tuesday morning.

“This is just the beginning of a fight for our bullfighting,” four bullfighting groups said in a joint statement later in the day.

Bullfighting was at the center of a major legal fight over its return to Mexico City just last year. A human rights group successfully persuaded a federal judge in 2022 to approve a suspension of bullfights at La Plaza México. But arena officials appealed the decision, and Mexico’s Supreme Court revoked the suspension, paving the way for bullfights to return with much fanfare in January 2024.

According to Mexico City’s legislature, 168 bulls and steers were killed at La Plaza México in 2019. Proponents of the tradition have argued that represents a very small percentage of all bulls born in Mexico and that the bullfighting industry creates tens of thousands of jobs in the country.

The new legislation decreed that bullfighters will only be allowed to use the traditional large cape and the smaller red one to lure the bulls. It also determined that individual bullfights last only 15 minutes, with only six such bullfights per event.