Exporting a more American brand of animal cruelty"In the municipal bullring in Guadalajara, a small city near Madrid, a bilingual emcee tries to fire up the crowd as 'Miss Rodeos' waving the Stars and Stripes ride out on Harley-Davidsons," writes Jerome Socolovsky in "From Bullfighting to Rodeos: Culture Shock in Spain," a recent story on NPR.com.
"The cowboys rope, steer and ride broncos, as the high-decibel sound system shakes the arena's foundations."
As animal rights activists in Spain have been working to put an end the country's cruel bullfighting industry (Copperwiki.org estimates that more than 30,000 thousand bulls are killed annually), American entrepreneurs have descended in an effort to give Spaniards a more humane alternative -- rodeos.
"All it takes is one visit to the SHARK Web site, including the Rodeo Cruelty section, where you can find far more reports and videos from rodeo investigations than you ever want to see, to know instantly that there is nothing humane, nothing honorable, about rodeos," writes Stephanie Ernst in a story on Change.org.
"Animals are shocked, taunted, and tortured with pain -- and that's even before they're released to be chased down, jerked and yanked around, broken (in the literal sense), and tied up or "dominated" for the crowd. The animals don't run and thrash because they're wild or because they too are engaging in some sort of competition. They run and thrash because they are terrified, because they are trying to escape pain, because their abusers are chasing after them to cause them even more pain, while lights flash and sound systems blare and people scream and laugh all around them."
As they don't involve the actual killing of an animal, rodeos may be construed as more humane than bullfights. But to really answer that question properly, fans of these so-called "sports" should ask themselves, "Would I rather be tortured day in and day out, or be tortured and then killed?"
For Conchita Ruza, who was interviewed by Socolovsky, rodeos just don't have what it takes.
"I'll stick to the bullfights. They're a lot nicer. First of all, you don't have all this racket. Secondly, the bull is a beautiful animal. And lastly," she says, "I'm Spanish."
GET INVOLVED
- Sign the World Society for Protection of Animals petition to ban bullfighting
- Sign the RodeoCruelty.org petition to ban rodeos
- Sign a Care2 petition urging the Cheyenne Frontier Day to ban steer busting, the most cruel rodeo event
- Breeder of Fighting Bulls to Clone Aging Sire (March 24, 2009)
- Horse Fighting in the Philippines (April 4, 2008)
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