Day: February 11, 2023

When Enrique Vera opens the door to his workshop, an array of gleaming gold and silver matadors’ jackets shine in the sun.

“It is little bit like a cave full of treasure,” he says.

Vera painstakingly fashions the brilliant trajes de luces (suits of lights) which are worn by bullfighters when they face half-ton bulls in the ring.

One of only seven sastres (bullfighting tailors) in the world, he used to be a matador. But he swapped the sword used to kill the bull for a needle and followed a family tradition to become a tailor.

The iconic status of the matador’s suit has meant it has passed from the bullring to mainstream popular culture.

Vera and his mother, Nati, also a seamstress, were called on to make matadors suits for films and the catwalk, working with Pink Panther star Peter Sellers, designer John Paul Gaultier and the late ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

From the moment a matador steps through the door into Vera’s office in Seville, southern Spain, it sets in motion an intricate process of measuring, sewing, ironing, and finally fitting the suits which can cost as much as $6,000 each.

Meticulous process

Vera’s team of 15 specialist seamstresses spend a-month-and-a-half making each suit, which is made to measure. Up to 300 drawings are made before a suit is finished.

The golden, blue or red jackets, trousers and capotes de paseo — the huge cape which the bullfighter carries when he emerges into the ring — are filled with rhinestones, beads and gold or silver thread.

One essential quality is all Vera’s suits must withstand bloodstains — from the bull or the matador.

“It is like drawing a work of art. You must capture the vision of the bullfighter for his suit, then make it a reality. It must be like a second skin,” Vera says in an office filled with photographs of famous bullfighters wearing his creations.

Ancient art dying?

But as attitudes toward bullfighting change in Spain, confecting these suits, whose design has remained the same for the past 150 years, is an art in decline.

Some Spaniards consider bullfighting to be an essential part of the culture, while others say it is a cruel spectacle.

In recent years, the number of bullfights has declined partly because of the pandemic, but also because Spaniards have a raft of different ways to amuse themselves and the animal rights movement is on the rise.

“The problem is that we have changed the concept of animals to humanize them. There is no one more environmentally conscious than breeders of fighting bulls,” Vera told VOA.

“The bulls spend three or four years living free. They are not being slaughtered for meat. But there are plenty of bullfights in Spain, Latin America, and France.”

He was not so sure, however, about his own job.

“There are less sastres because it takes a lot of time. The older ones are retiring and not being replaced,” he admitted. He hopes his 14-year-old son will follow him into the trade.

Polls show less support for bullfighting in recent years.

Some 46.7% of Spaniards were in favor of prohibiting bullfighting, while 18.6% backed the tradition and 34.7% had no opinion, according to a 2020 survey for Electomania, a polling company.

The number of bullfights fell from 1,553 in 2017 compared to 824 in 2021, according to government figures. Only 8% of the population attended bullfights in 2018-2019, compared to 45% who said they went to the theater or 70.3% who said they spent spare time reading.

The first bullfight in Spain was held in 711 A.D. in honor of King Alfonso VIII. Originally, the pastime was reserved for the nobility and took place on horseback. The present version of bullfighting started in Ronda at the start of the 19th century.

A bill to end bullfighting in France failed last year after a member of parliament withdrew the proposed legislation. Portugal allows fights where the bull does not die.

In Latin America, the tradition has been banned in some Mexican states, but is still legal in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Tradition breaking

Paco Ramos, who runs trajesdeluces.com, which sells second-hand suits of lights, fears a younger generation of tailors may not emerge to replace the likes of Vera.

“For younger people it takes too long to make each suit and is too much work. But for now, there are not many tailors and there is enough demand,” he told VOA.

However, he was confident there was no chance bullfighting would be banned any time soon.

In 2013, the then conservative government introduced a law which declared bullfighting part of the national heritage which should be protected throughout Spain, effectively preventing any attempts to ban the practice.

Animal rights groups are planning to challenge the legal protection of bullfighting by introducing a bill through a people’s petition.

Marta Esteban, president of Torture Is Not Culture, an animal rights collective, told VOA she believed that public opinion was behind banning bullfighting.

“There is no doubt that it is coming to an end, but governments are not willing to give it a coup de grace,” she said.

Aldara Arias de Saavedra, a tour guide who grew up within the shadow of La Maestranza bullring in Seville, has never been to a bullfight.

“I can understand why some people like it. My father did. But it is not for me. You have to kind of grow up with it to be into it. It is like football, I suppose,” she told VOA.

Walk around the narrow streets near the bullring and there is a mini-economy which depends on this pastime, from bars to restaurants to those selling souvenirs like fake suits of lights.

“I think down here in the south, not everyone will go to bulls, but it is so associated with the big ferias and smaller ones in villages that it is not going to be banned soon,” said Marcos Alvarez, a cinematographer.

Source: Voice of America

While others in her Zimbabwean village agonize over a maize crop seemingly headed for failure, Jestina Nyamukunguvengu picks up a hoe and slices through the soil of her fields that are lush green with a pearl millet crop in the African country’s arid Rushinga district.

“These crops don’t get affected by drought, they are quick to flower, and that’s the only way we can beat the drought,” the 59-year old said, smiling broadly. Millets, including sorghum, now take up over two hectares of her land — a patch where maize was once the crop of choice.

Farmers like Nyamukunguvengu in the developing world are on the front lines of a project proposed by India that has led the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization to christen 2023 as “The Year of Millets,” an effort to revive a hardy and healthy crop that has been cultivated for millennia — but was largely elbowed aside by European colonists who favored corn, wheat and other grains.

The designation is timely: Last year, drought swept across much of eastern Africa; war between Russia and Ukraine upended supplies and raised the prices of foodstuffs and fertilizer from Europe’s breadbasket; worries surged about environmental fallout of cross-globe shipments of farm products; many chefs and consumers are looking to diversify diets at a time of excessively standardized fare.

All that has given a new impetus to locally-grown and alternative grains and other staples like millets.

Millets come in multiple varieties, such as finger millet, fonio, sorghum, and teff, which is used in the spongy injera bread familiar to fans of Ethiopian cuisine. Proponents tout millets for their healthiness — they can be rich in proteins, potassium, and vitamin B — and most varieties are gluten-free. And they’re versatile: useful in everything from bread, cereal and couscous to pudding and even beer.

Over centuries, millets have been cultivated around the world — in places like Japan, Europe, the Americas and Australia — but their epicenters have traditionally been India, China, and sub-Saharan Africa, said Fen Beed, team leader at FAO for rural and urban crop and mechanization systems.

Many countries realized they “should go back and look at what’s indigenous to their agricultural heritage and what could be revisited as a potential substitute for what would otherwise be imported — which is at risk when we had the likes of pandemic, or when we have the likes of conflict,” said Beed.

Millets are more tolerant of poor soils, drought and harsh growing conditions, and can easily adapt to different environments without high levels of fertilizer and pesticide. They don’t need nearly as much water as other grains, making them ideal for places like Africa’s arid Sahel region, and their deep roots of varieties like fonio can help mitigate desertification, the process that transforms fertile soil into desert, often because of drought or deforestation.

“Fonio is nicknamed the Lazy Farmers crop. That’s how easy it is to grow,” says Pierre Thiam, executive chef and co-founder of New York-based fine-casual food chain Teranga, which features West African cuisine. “When the first rain comes, the farmers only have to go out and just like throw the seeds of fonio … They barely till the soil.”

“And it’s a fast growing crop, too: It can mature in two months,” he said, acknowledging it’s not all easy: “Processing fonio is very difficult. You have to remove the skin before it becomes edible.”

Millets account for less than 3% of the global grain trade, according to FAO. But cultivation is growing in some arid zones. In Rushinga district, land under millets almost tripled over the past decade. The U.N.’s World Food Programme deployed dozens of threshing machines and gave seed packs and training to 63,000 small-scale farmers in drought-prone areas in the previous season.

Low rainfall and high temperatures in recent years in part due to climate change, coupled with poor soils, have doused interest in water-guzzling maize.

“You’ll find the ones who grew maize are the ones who are seeking food assistance, those who have grown sorghum or pearl millet are still eating their small grains,” said Melody Tsoriyo, the district’s agronomist, alluding to small grains like millets, whose seeds can be as fine as sand. “We anticipate that in five years to come, small grains will overtake maize.”

Government teams in Zimbabwe have fanned out to remote rural regions, inspecting crops and providing expert assistance such as through WhatsApp groups to spread technical knowledge to farmers.

WFP spokesman Tatenda Macheka said millets “are helping us reduce food insecurity” in Zimbabwe, where about a quarter of people in the country of 15 million — long a breadbasket of southern Africa — are now food insecure, meaning that they’re not sure where their next meal will come from.

In urban areas of Zimbabwe and well beyond, restaurants and hotels are riding the newfound impression that a millet meal offers a tinge of class, and have made it pricier fare on their menus.

Thiam, the U.S.-based chef, recalled eating fonio as a kid in Senegal’s southern Casamance region, but fretted that it wasn’t often available in his hometown — the capital — let alone New York. He admitted once “naively” having dreams making what’s known in rural Senegal as “the grain of royalty” — served to honor visiting guests — into a “world class crop.”

He’s pared back those ambitions a bit, but still sees a future for the small grains.

“It’s really amazing that you can have a grain like this that’s been ignored for so long,” Thiam said in an interview from his home in El Cerrito, Calif., where he moved to be close to his wife and her family. “It’s about time that we integrate it into our diet.”

Source: Voice of America