The Colombian bullfighter announced yesterday in Seville his intention to return to the bullring, at 60 years old, with the intention of “defending and vindicating” the bullfighting culture of his country, where next year bullfighting will be definitively prohibited by decree of the Government of Gustavo Petro.
Without yet specifying specific dates or places, the veteran right-hander has in mind the development, both in Colombia and in Europe, of the project of some so-called “pre-Columbian bullfights”, which, in a similar sense to the traditional Goya or Picasso bullfights, will have a staging and allegorical clothing to the cultures originating from his land, although bullfighting did not reach America until years after the conquest by the Spanish.
“In reality,” Rincón explained, “my return to the bullring is an act of rebellion, motivated by the nonconformity of seeing my passion and the centuries-old bullfighting roots of my country attacked. I even feel obliged to confront, in this way, that wrong policy that is going to end the culture of millions of people and what I have been all my life with.”
Together with the Mexican businessman Guillermo Chapa, César Rincón plans to organize these “events” on specific days of the Spanish bullfighting season and in the last campaign that is scheduled to be held in Colombia, “without the desire for triumph of my beginnings, but for pure vindication and, why deny it, also for my personal satisfaction, since at my age I am still prepared to be able to do it,” stressed the Colombian.
Rincón, retired since 2007, explained that he intends to participate in bullfights “that are not the normal circuit, it is not entering the San Isidro Fair and fighting any bullfight. They have to be very special things.”
The bullfighter was also very motivated by the new generations of fans, the young people who saw him fight for the first time at the Madrid festival: “I want to leave them a legacy that is the perseverance, dedication and passion that someone has to put into what one does. That is everything. I felt that I had to get out of my comfort zone: I am rich thanks to my profession and the bull, I don’t need anything, but I was very comfortable in my chair and I thought that this was not the life. I started walking, training and preparing and I recovered that hope for life. That is the most important thing for youth: not to stop setting goals.”
He acknowledged that his reference is that of , who remained in the arena until he was well into his seventies, and who, in addition, was godfather of the Rincón’s own alternative, held in the plaza of his native Bogotá in 1982, when he began a career in which he achieved the historic milestone of leaving on his shoulders through the Puerta Grande of Madrid’s Las Ventas plaza four consecutive times, already in 1991.
As the greatest Colombian bullfighter of all time, Rincón crossed that same door twice more during his active years and even a third time, on October 12, at the end of the festival held in tribute to Antoñete himself, in which he cut off two ears after a plethora of tasks.
Encouraged by this success, the one from Bogotá still performed this winter in two other festivals in the Colombian squares of Cali and Manizales and is announced for another, next June, in Istres, in the southeast of France, which will be the prior preparation for that “pre-Columbian bullfight” project of which, he said, he will give specific details later.
