VILLAVICENCIO, Colombia — My mother would kill me if she knew what I was watching. To suppress the shame, I take a swig of beer. A charging bull is approached by two galloping horsemen. One clean yank on its tail and the bull topples. The rickety stand I’m in vibrates from the cheering. The bull lies motionless in the mud.
This is coleo, a rodeo event practiced here in Los Llanos, the vast grassland plains of Colombia and Venezuela. Today is the final round of the Under-21 World Championship, and I’ve come along to host-city Villavicencio to understand the fascination of watching bulls flipped over at high speeds.
One person I know who would condemn such an event is my mom. With six cats, an adopted lion in Africa, and a lifelong membership to the United Kingdom’s leading animal welfare group, she is a vehement animal rights lobbyist. She believes any sport involving animals should be banned, participants severely punished, and spectators given a stern ethical dressing-down. My trip, therefore, was kept a secret.
At around 1 p.m., I wander into the field to watch the cattle being unloaded into an enclosure at the end of the competition course. Hooves clatter as the bulls clamber down a ramp from the truck and head into the muddy paddock.
The bulls jostle for position. Huffs and snorts discourage any human from coming close. One even charges at me as I attempt to snap a photo, like an irate celebrity protesting against the paparazzi.
Shaken, I jog toward a giant tent from which plumes of smoke emanate. Sitting underneath are the llaneros — as the local cowboys are called — all wearing open-collared shirts, tightly-belted jeans, and an array of curvaceous headwear. Some gnaw stringy pieces of mamona (slowly barbecued veal), others chug bottles of beer and wipe sweat from their brows with the ponchos on their shoulders.
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Moments after slumping into a chair and smelling the sodden collar of my polo shirt, I notice two men whistling and waving in my direction.
“Hola, amigo. De dónde eres? [Where are you from?]” one shouts.
“England.”
“Si!? Gringo! Ven aquí! [Come here.]”
The men, who are part of a group of 12, rearrange the circle of chairs so I can join them.
“Señora, señora, bring my friend a cold Aguila,” one man shouts to the waitress.
We all shake hands and hold our bottles aloft to cheers. Fresh lime citrus tinges the ice-cold beer on my lips.
My questions about the art of bull flipping yield snippets of information before muffled dialects, alcohol-slurred speech and joropo harp music wafting over us make it difficult to communicate.
Then a shadow falls over my shoulder and a clink-clink of metal chimes in my ears.
I squint behind me. A middle-aged man stands wearing a milk-white shirt with red piping, and the most dazzling silver cufflinks. His cowboy hat shields his eyes, emphasizing his chiseled cheekbones and sunken mouth.
“Hola, soy Camilo, el presidente de Coleo,” he says, shaking my hand.
Camilo drags a chair next to mine and places a sombrero on my head. He hands me a beer and raises his bottle to salud!
“Coleo is an ancient tradition,” Camilo starts. “It originates from when cowboys moved livestock from one side of the ranch to the other, sometimes 300 or 400 at a time. The rebellious bulls, the ones who escaped a lot, were caught by the tail and knocked down. It was the only way to keep control of them. Then it became a sport.”
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He leans back and pats his chest firmly. “Coleo is the soul and the heart of the people. For a man born in this region of Colombia, it’s like a religion.”
Although Camilo no longer practices Coleo, the tradition has been passed to his sons. His eldest, who first tailed a bull at age 6, is changing into his competition uniform as we speak.
The course where he would compete is known as the Manga de Coleo and is about 490 feet long and 50 feet wide. Teams earn points depending on how many times they flip the bull over. One flip is good, two is great, and three — a feat witnessed only twice by Camilo — is exceptional.
Sensing my unease as I imagine what my mom would say about 1,000-pound bulls somersaulting through the air, Camilo puts down his beer and leans closer.
“I know what you are thinking,” he says. “And yes, there are people who complain about animal abuse. . . . But the fact is that all the cattle that arrive here are going to slaughter anyway. This is why we believe that the purpose is not to mistreat or kill them like bullfighting, where they kill the animal brutally.”
A crackling loudspeaker interrupts. Camilo springs to his feet and slides on his aviator sunglasses.
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“Let’s go,” he says. “It’s about to begin.”
I follow Camilo up the stairs of the makeshift stand, slightly drunk and gripping the hot steel rails so as not to fall over. We bundle our way past a girl selling beer, an old man selling dried pork, and another girl selling beer. We reach his friends, one of whom hands me a beer and gives a thumbs up.
Over at the starting gate, the first riders (coleadores) trot in circles, waiting for the bull to appear. In the stand opposite, bulky young men in cowboy hats and sleeveless shirts sit with hands on knees and sunlight twinkling off their sunglasses. Women and children fan themselves with pieces of cardboard. A solitary medic perches on the fence, his ambulance parked beside him with its trunk flipped open.
Then, the beast is released. The audience stands in unison. The commentator’s voice increases in speed and volume. One photographer crouched in the middle of the track, quickly scampers through a gap in the fence to avoid the charging bull and the pursuing horsemen.
Approaching the midpoint of the track, the riders position themselves on either side of the bull. One lunges for its tail, wraps it around his wrist, and grabs it again with his other hand. He then lifts one leg out of his stirrup, so he’s horizontal on his horse, and pulls the tail around the side of the bull.
Unbalanced, the bull tumbles sideways like a drunken old man. It flips over and skids to a stop. The two horsemen trot back around and tug at its tail. The bull races off again before being chased and flipped a second time.
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The commentator congratulates the Venezuelan competitors, the audience applauds and heads swivel to the starting position for the next team.
Coleo has grown in popularity ever since the first world championship in 1997. Although competitors mainly come from Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Panama, last year Team USA made its first appearance.
It’s still unknown whether the Miami-based organization will compete again this year, as it has yet to respond to the invitation. But if it does, there could be opposition from certain animal welfare groups. One such group is the Humane Society of the United States, whose stance is clear: Coleo presents “an unreasonable risk of harming animals.”
The society’s Scott Beckstead adds that: “Any rodeo event which causes a full-sized steer to do a somersault by its tail is, by its very nature, unreasonably cruel, and poses too much harm to the animals.”
The commonly employed culture defense doesn’t wash either. “A whole host of terrible practices are defended and justified on the basis of culture and tradition, and to me the very fact that people have always done something doesn’t make it right,” says Beckstead.
Like bullfighting, cockfighting, horseracing, or any other animal-inclusive sport, debates will continue to circulate as to what is cruel, and what is acceptable. Coleo is relatively new in terms of a sporting event and raises similar issues.
Snoozing off the beer in the taxi back to the hotel, I picture my mother’s face as I tell her about what I’ve just witnessed. I’m not sure exactly what she will say about bulls being flipped over for entertainment, but I have a pretty good idea.
Simon Willis can be reached at swillis1@hotmail.co.uk. Follow him on Twitter @simonwillis11.