THE AMERICAS: New-World Fighters

In the proud bull rings of old Spain, the eight-month bullfight season is nearing its end. The critics regretfully agree that Castile and Andalusia can so far offer no fit inheritor for the cape of the fabulous Manolete, killed in 1947, or for wealthy Luis Miguel Dominguin, who retired last year to dally with film stars. Instead, three brilliant matadors from the New World have flamed up to win the Spanish public’s acclaim.

One is Mexico’s Miguel Angel, 25. Badly injured in May by a horn that pierced the roof of his mouth and fractured his brain pan, he came gallantly back early this month “with the taste of the horn in his mouth” to win a phenomenal triumph. Another newcomer is Peru’s Indian-featured Umberto Valle, 23, who gave the year’s finest single display of valor. Gored and tossed high in the air, he fought loose from the infirmary attendants who were carrying him away and killed his bull.

But the season’s brightest star is César Girón, a 20-year-old Venezuelan from an old Caracas bullfighting family. A promising baseball player in high school, Girón faced his first bull when, at 15, he jumped into the Caracas bull ring during a fight and gave the fans a laugh and a thrill. Last week, in the famed old bull ring of Salamanca, Girón got the highest honors a delirious crowd could bestow.

In his first kill, after performing the whole classic repertory of passing the charging beast, he stunned the aficionados with a new pass of his own. He started it daringly, with his back to the bull, the red cloth muleta to his right. Moving the cloth and pivoting, he pulled the animal clear around him, letting the bull’s left side scrape his body as the sharp left horn grazed his chin. Clean sword work followed, and the crowd awarded him both the bull’s ears and its tail, symbolic of a top performance. For his second fight Girón drew in succession three fightless Ferdinands. Rather than cheat the crowd, Girón stepped out and offered personally to buy a fourth bull (cost: about $500). Again, with a blend of perfect art and courage, he earned two ears and the tail. “This bullfighter,” wrote Critic Curro Castañares, “valiant beyond all possibility of exaggeration, is of the artistic order of the great matadors.”