Chicanonautica: Running with Dangerous Beasts in the Summer of WTF

by Ernest Hogan

By the time this post goes up, the Fiesta de San Fermín will have started, PETA will have protested the running of the bulls, and bullfights will be going on. I will be properly distracted. Good. I'll need it.

The presumptive election has more than just record heat and the usual heat-island zombie-brain effect adding an extra level of surrealism to the Phoenix Metro area. Lots of vehicles are flying huge American flags as they rush down the mural-festooned streets. There's a tension, not unlike that in outlying towns like Payson. 

You don't have to go searching for America these days. Instead, modern easy riders are likely to find their desperate country tracking them down. And in Arizona, it's well-armed.

And the summer sun makes it look and feel like a spaghetti western. Is that Ennio Morricone music I hear?

Donald Trump has damnear nabbed the Republican presidential nomination with the same kind of campaign that has won a few businessmen the governorship of Arizona. “Get a businessman in there!” the voters say. “Get the state making a profit!” Maybe his plan is to make the country one big Arizona. There's even buzz about him wanting Jan Brewer for Vice-President. I wonder if he knows that in the past, the businessman/governor ends up impeached and imprisoned?

But now it doesn't look like Donald will be doing a slam dunk. The Republicans are in turmoil. It's been said that Trump is basically the guy in a bar who will say anything to get laid, only this time he's trying to screw the entire country. I'm reminded of the words of that great Republican, Abraham Lincoln, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

It's hard to predict. November is still a ways off. All kinds of bizarre shit can happen. I'm keeping my overdeveloped imagination on a short chain.

What I can say is that there's going to be a lot of unhappy people after Election Day.

That triggers a flashback, to the night before the election in 2008. I was working at Borders. I guy was stomping through the shelves, talking into his cell phone: “You know if he gets elected the Rapture is happening in a couple of weeks!”

I wonder what life has been like for that guy? I wonder how he feels now?

Better go to San Fermin.com or a site with live TV feed from Pamplona. Concentrate on something more civilized, like bullfighting.

After, we can get back to the Summer of WTF, and as Hunter Thompson said, “watch the real beasts perform.”

Ernest Hogan's High Aztech will be available in a softcover edition soon, and his story “Flying Under the Texas Radar with Paco and Los Freetails” will be in Latin@ Rising next year. Meanwhile, he's contemplating unfinished novels and getting new ideas.

Chicanonautica: The Sun Still Also Rises

by Ernest Hogan

Stuck in Phoenix for another sizzling July, I’m glad I can retreat into the air-conditioning and get on SanFermin.com for vicarious enjoyment the Fiesta de San Fermín (better know as the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, thanks to Ernest Hemingway). But more goes on at the fiesta than bull running and fighting. It is a religious and cultural event. And controversy spills out of the crowded streets into the rest of the world.

As usual, it started with a protest from PETA that has become the unofficial opening ceremony. Why not? Start by acknowledging opposing veiwpoints. Unfortunately, these productions have gone from making Pamplona look like the set of a surrealistic spaghetti western littered with nude human bodies and splattered with fake blood to timid displays that look like zombies celebrating Día de los Muertos.

In advance, Kate Laycy, a runner up in PETA-UK’s World Sexiest Vegan pagent, announced that,  “I'll gladly bare my skin if it will expose the cruelty of the Running of the Bulls and bullfighting.” When the protest finally happened, there was a fully-clothed woman who looked like her, but I couldn’t tell from the one video I could track down. Maybe it was because she wasn’t wearing makeup. Maybe that’s what she meant by baring her skin.

Or maybe she was honoring the city of Pamplona’s official ban on the public showing of breasts. This transplant from New Orleans’ Mardi Gras has taken root in San Fermín. There have also been rapes, so the city has cracked down.

Last year they came out against fountain jumping -- in which people dive off fountains to be (hopefully) caught by the crowd. Though, fountain jumping and breast showing still go on.

A ritual has evolved where a woman rides a man’s shoulders (like a bullfighter being honored) and men crowd around to touch her breasts. This is every bit as brave as running with the bulls or bullfighting. Women who do this deserve to be protected. 

Men should be caballeros and protect women from attack at the fiesta.

Or better yet, women should be caballeras, and protect each other.

Maybe in the future, Amazonesque caballeras will patrol the streets, ready to use martial arts and light weaponry to prevent rapes.

Those who offer their bodies to the bulls, are another story.

There were a record number of injuries and gorings in the encierros this year. It was the Revenge of  the Bulls. Among those gored was American writer Bill Hillmann

Hillmann has just released a book, Fiesta: How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona, that he had written with Alexander Fiske-Harrison and John Hemingway (Ernest’s grandson). Headline writers had fun pointing out the irony. Later, he wrote a first-person account “I Got Gored in Pamplona. But I Will Run With the Bulls Again.” for The Washington Post. And now, no one can deny that he is an expert on the subject.

And of course, there was bullfighting. Juan José Padilla, Borja Jiménez and El Juli wowed the crowds. And despite what the protesters say, everyone know that the bulls die -- it’s done in public, in broad daylight, the press is there, and you can watch videos on the interwebs.

Some people are predicting the end of bullfighting in this century, with the “anti” movements in various countries. But the pendulum swings. 

Spain has declared it an Intangible Cultural Heritage, and is petitioning UNESCO to add it to the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritiage of Humanity.

And even if it’s banned in Spain and Mexico, there are so many other countries. 

Did you know that bullfighting is legal in France? They do it in ancient Roman arenas in Nîmes and Arles.

I wonder if it would ever be legal in the U.S.A, or at least, once again, Aztlán? Not far from were I live is the University of Phoenix Stadium -- it’s been used as many other things, so why not a bull ring? And we could set up a corridor for the encierros in the parking lots . . .

Ernest Hogan moved this year’s report on San Fermín to La Bloga to connect Latino culture with the rest of the planet. !Viva la Raza Cosmica!

Chicanonautica: ¡Viva San Fermín!

I thought I was going to brave the over 110 degree Phoenix heat, go to work, and check in with coverage of la Fiesta de San Fermín online to relax. The week had other things in mind for me. Emails with impending writer biz came in. Suddenly, I was running around, working on the adventures of a Chicano space artist and an Aztec detective, going to work, and trying to keep up with the festival in Pamplona.

Fortunately, Luis Carvajal from Guadalajara, Jalisco sent me a link to es-es.justin.tv where I could watch live coverage of the bullfights. Muchas gracias, Luis!

And it's an especially exciting fiesta.

More women are running with the bulls than ever -- most of them are from Australia. Cross-dressing and gay revelry are happening along with the wine-soaked T-shirts and breast-flashing. And I saw more black guys running.

All this and the cultural cross-pollination between San Fermín in Pamplona and Mardi Gras in New Orleans jazzing things up, it looks like we’ve got diversity and globalization bursting out here.

The energy spilled over into other bullfighting events: Female bullfighters Milagros Sánchez and Conchi Ríos made the news with their performances.

But, of course, it wasn’t all blood-spattered paradise:

One guy tried to run with the bulls, in the nude! Police in red berets stopped him, and SanFermin.com blotted out the faces of the officers, making the photo seem like a scene from a fanciful dystopia.

Then there was the goring. Australian Mitch Davie, after chasing a bull in the ring, rather than getting out of the way, had his femoral artery severed. I hope he knew that foreigners running with the bulls are expected to have insurance.

To quote his poor mother: “Mitch had to tell me over Facebook because his phone ran out of credit, I was just a sobbing mess.”

Then came the highlight of the fiesta, the high-speed, record-breaking encierro in which a bull named Resistón stole the show by plowing through the runners, jumping over them, and knocking them aside with his horns. This is what San Fermín is all about. Words fail here, you have to see it:

Unfortunately, Resistón’s performance in the ring wasn’t up to his run, but still he has made his place in history.

On a sad note, news of rapes, that are usually covered up, broke. Looks like another job for the faceless policemen. Women groups are taking action. Next year should be interesting.

Now that the fiesta is over, it’s back to my writer biz and the day job. I’m feeling energized. Ready to live life to its fullest.

Ernest Hogan’s story “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren’s Song,” that was exploded into his novel Cortez on Jupiter, can now be read free online. Soon it will be available in the anthology Alien Contact, and Cortez on Jupiter will available as an ebook.

Chicanonautica: La Fiesta de San Fermin Online

Another great thing about being a bullfight aficionado in the Twenty-First Century is that you can enjoy the Fiesta de San Fermin, with its famous Running of the Bulls, even if you have go to your day job. With my iTouch I watch encierros in the break room. Isn't progress wonderful?

By the time this goes up on July 7, the Fiesta will be off and running. I'm writing this on the Fourth of July. Funny how I've come to see Independence Day with its fireworks as a warm-up for San Fermin.

This weekend, I was disappointed by PETA protests. They have become unofficial opening ceremonies, but the promising tradition of the Running of the Nudes just keep fizzling. Originally, it was spectacle of naked bodies and fake blood, first running through the streets, then lying down like the climax to a surrealistic spaghetti Western. But then PETA's puritanical instincts kicked in: black cloth covered up breasts and genitals, and last year the fake blood was replaced by paint as they lay their collective bodies in the shape of a giant bull.

This year, they pulled a rerun of the giant bull thing. There wasn't much media coverage. And you have to wonder about how effective their protests are if guys like me are among the few paying attention. Do they really think that lame performance art will discourage people who have come to see bloody, excrement-smeared beasts killed?

What did get coverage was the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Ernest Hemingway, and the revelation that, yes, the FBI was hounding him. Like people are always saying, you're not paranoid if they're really out to get you.

Last year, I reread The Sun Also Rises, and was disappointed that there wasn't more of the Fiesta in it. Granted, Hemingway was going far for the Anglo literary audience of the times – note the way he apologizes for the subject matter all through Death in the Afternoon. San Fermin deserves a novel that pays more attention to it, rather than Jake and Brett and their sexual-mutilation tragedy.

Besides, the Fiesta has evolved, the way Las Vegas has gone beyond Hunter Thompson's wildest hallucinations. Maybe the new century needs a new San Fermin novel. I hope that somewhere in the crowded streets of Pamplona, a young person – not necessarily male, because women do run with the bulls these days – is going wild, Facebooking, Tweeting, and blogging about it, and will get the idea that they have material for a book that will rattle the world.

Meanwhile, if you want to join me in enjoying San Fermin online, the best website for it is SanFermin.com, that provides text, video, and photos in Spanish, English, and Euskara, the Basque language. And the sites of Pamplona area newspapers, Diario de Navarra, Noticias de Navarra, and Que Es, provide coverage in Spanish.

It'll all be over by the 15^th. I'll be reading, watching, taking notes. In two weeks I'll report back. Maybe even do a special report over at Mondo Ernesto.

Meanwhile, may the cape of Saint Fermin, protect you from close calls.

Ernest Hogan, when he's not working at his day job, or enjoying San Fermin coverage, will be getting his novel Cortez on Jupiter ready to be released as an ebook, which includes designing the cover.