500 KILOS OF FURIA
The Huamantlada of Huamantla, Tlaxcala
By Zaidee Rose Stavely
©2003. All Rights Reserved

Huamantla, Tlaxcala

- As the bull charged towards me I lost my footing and fell backwards. As I leaped off behind the wooden fence, the bull began to butt against the plywood. Once, twice, three times.

I hold my breath.

Every year in this town, on the first Saturday after August 15, 20 bulls are let loose in the streets for two hours for locals to try their hand at fighting, a tradition that has lasted for fifty years in what is known as the Huamantlada, a Tlaxcatleca version of the Pamplonada (the running of the bulls) in Spain.

Around 11:30 in the morning, the people standing on rooftops here in Huamantla, hanging onto wooden fences and climbing the walls of the low adobe buildings begin to whistle, first one side of the street, then the other, building anxiety.

The whistles move down the street in waves, anticipating the firecrackers that will go off three times before 12 noon, the signal to let the bulls loose.

Everywhere, Huamantla feels like bull country. In the hours before the bulls are released, the streets fill with people wandering, selling cotton candy, pistachios, pulque and felt horns, red or brown, to velcro around heads and hats.

One small boy holding a tiny pink cape swirls in the street yelling "¡Toro! ¡Toro!" to a young cousin, who holds his hands to his head like horns and runs at the other child.

Teenage couples walk down the middle of the street in cowboy boots and hats, ready for the rodeo.

A young man, with a brown leather cap and a pink cape draped over his arm converses with another boy with long hair pulled back into a jazzy ponytail, boasting a black vest and a sword.

Two men with felt horns that read "Huamantlada" climb the fence near us and wait to watch the bulls. One of them stands on the top of the fence and grabs onto the telephone wires to keep balance.

On the corners of the streets, in closed red metal boxes, the bulls await their exit patiently. I glimpse the jagged edge of a broken horn.

Posters in the bus station announced "500 kilos of fury await you in the middle of the street". 500 kilograms?, I wonder, incredulous.

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