A Colombian New Years

As part of the New Year’s pilgrimage, Cartageña on Colombia’s Caribbean coast is a much-coveted resort town. Hotels fill to capacity, restaurants overflow with families, couples, and packs of linen-clad males hit the ramparts to bask in the tropical weather. While Cartageña welcomes the world, the locals just outside the city limits in Turbaco celebrate quite differently.

Corraleja tournaments are a colonial tradition diffused from the Spaniards that seem to literally represent the class divisions that still exist between a white coastal elite and, well, everyone else. Paying customers sit safely above the field in covered bleachers while the majority of attendees are in for free either unable to afford the $10,000 pesos ($5 US dollars) entry fee; or because they willingly choose to be part of the action below.

The arena is a sandy pit, primitive, and hemmed in by tall, bendy tree poles that mimic matchsticks. I ask Ramón, one of the locals I’m traveling with, if it’s ever fallen down. He confirms, “Yeah, once a 3-story arena came down killing a few thousand. But,” he adds reassuringly, “it hasn’t fallen in the past couple years.”

There are 300 to 500 men at any given moment running wildly around the bull tormenting him any way they can. The crowd also throws anything they can find at the stunned animal, as well as sticks of sugar and cans with money, enticing the drunken hooligans to get closer to the bull to collect their sweet prize. When the bull isn’t giving the crowd the desired show, cowboys on horses will encourage a short chase, and spear garocheros into the bull’s neck muscles. Some of the players even carry a traditional banderilla in each hand and challenge the bull face to face, jamming the two decorated spears into the bull’s neck.

The bull does eventually win, and if the men survive they are allowed to enter the paying section of the arena where they are tipped money for their bravery. This is also a proud moment for the owners and breeders ‘ganaderos’ of the bulls and how they show off the strength of their prize cattle. As a spectator it’s hard not to cheer for the bull, anticipating his next stomp and victory. That seems to be the energy of this strange event. The crowd screams as a bull charges into an intoxicated crowd. But it’s hard to decipher who the real animal is prancing around this treacherous, dusty corral.