Michelito Lagravere is just like any other child who likes playing guitar, surfing the Internet and watching Spiderman, but at just 10 years old, he is also a star bullfighter and has already killed 160 calves.
The pint-sized matador is fearless and dreams of rivaling the best. One of the world’s youngest bullfighters, the French-Mexican is also one of the sport’s hottest stars in Latin America.
Bull-fighting “is my passion. My father is a bullfighter and I really like it. I want to be more famous than he is and I want to fight bulls all my life,” Lagravere said.
Most children his age here dream of following in the footsteps of soccer giants such as the legendary Brazilian player Pele or the Argentinian Diego Maradona. But not Lagravere.
Lagravere, who began fighting bulls when he was just 5 years old, is following in the path of his father, French bullfighter Michel Lagravere.
“The first time, I thought of it as a game. But now I take it more seriously. Even if it’s still a game, it’s more than that,” he said before heading into the ring. “I want to choose something different and become a professional torero starting when I’m 14.”
Born in Merida, where he attends bullfighting school, Michelito practices swishing his red cape every day. “I go to school in Merida and work over the Internet. I send my homework every other day,” he said.
Over a breakfast of fruit and cereal, he talked about his passion for playing the guitar and for cartoon characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Asterix and Obelix and Spider-Man.
At the ancient Plaza de Acho in Lima, the oldest bullfighting ring in South America, Michelito pitted his strength recently against two girls, a 16-year-old Mexican and a 19-year-old Peruvian.
Thrown to the ground by a a young male calf, he recovered his poise quickly, to give a flawless performance with his cape before thousands of spectators.
The young apprentice works mostly in Mexico and other countries in Latin America because he is too young to compete in Spain, where the minimum age for entering the ring is 16.
Anti-bullfighting campaigns have denounced a move in Latin America that has seen a number of children facing off with bulls in the ring, calling for a ban on the fights where young beginners fight calves from 8 months to 2 years old.
“It’s one thing to say you don’t like corrida, but it’s another to call for a ban on something you don’t like,” said Michelito, brushing off the criticism.
“I don’t like football, but I would never criticize that sport.”
Like any fighter, he bows before a statue of the Virgin Mary before entering the arena. And he has only one superstition — on the day of a fight he wears his socks inside-out.
He proudly claims to have never been wounded — “just a few bruises,” he says — during more than 100 bullfights in France, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
When the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese forces 50 years ago this week, it prompted a mass exodus of some 2 million people — hundreds of thousands fleeing perilously on small boats across open water to escape the communist regime. Many ultimately settled in Southern California’s Orange County in an area now known as “Little Saigon,” not far from Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where the first refugees were airlifted upon reaching the US. The diaspora now also has significant populations in Virginia, Texas and Washington state, as well as in countries including France and Australia.
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
RSS