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spending about a year making contacts, knocking around the stockyards of Juarez and learning tips from an old torero named Bullido.According to her autobiography, del Hierro demanded she not drink, dance or smoke. “The bulls are jealous,” he said. “A matador should be as virginal as the fighting bull. If he is not serious and in good condition, the bull will not respect him and there will not be a good lidia (interaction between bull fighter and bull).”McCormick said it takes at least a year to groom a bullfighter.“But I went in very prematurely,” she said. “I worked with (del Hierro) for one summer and then I was a guest performer doing cape work. rrtiat was August of 1951 and then on a September night I’ll never forget I was a guest performer fighting one small bull.“I didn’t know any better to be scared. I was apprehensive and wanted to see if it really worked because we were always practicing what they call ... running the horns. And they assured me that if I did everything right, the way I was taught, the bull would do the same thing as the running of the horns.”And did he?“No he didn’t, I got tossed,” she said laughing. “I got a lot of tossing on that one, but the heart was there,”Throughout her 10 years as a bullfighter, McCormick got more than just tossed around, she got gored.“Six times.” she said. “In 1954 inBy HANK MURPHY Staff WriterThe matadora graduated from Big Spring High School in 1948 and went on to become one of the world’s great bullfighters — one who might have been recognized as the greatest ever, had the fighter been born male.When Patricia McCormick was 7 she saw her first bullfight in Mexico City. Although fascinated with the spectacle, she was told that only men fought bulls. That was okay, she wanted to do other things.However, the image of lunging bulls, sweeping red muletas and nimble matadors flickered in her mind.“I went to the University of Texas and became very fascinated with it there,” said the silver-haired McCormick. Then, after deciding to change her major, she transferred to West Texas University in El Paso. “Right across the border was Juarez and I just became obsessed with the idea.“I wanted to fight bulls and I thought the only way I could do it would be to fight professionally,” she said.Still, one doesn’t face off against a set of sharp horns directed by a halfton of of raging, charging bull without some training.“That was going to be a problem trying to find an (instructor),” she recalls. She found Allejando del Hierro.Del Heirro was a professional, working then as a banderillero, a member of a team of bullfighters under the command of the matador. She says she met him in Mexico afterVilla Acuna 1 received the last rites of the Catholic Church. I was in intensive care for one week, six months to recuperate (at her parents’ home in Big Spring). The bull caught me and impaled me on the horns and they couldn’t get me off the horns.”She said the experience should have made her quit fighting. “Except that when you learn a profession, and it’s the only profession you know, you get back into it. You feel like if you can survive this one it will never happen again. But I had three more since that one. I had one in Venezuela from the left thigh into the middle of the back.”Despite the tossings, the ramm-ings, the gorings over a 10-year stretch of time, at 56, McCormick says she feels no physical ill effects. “I’ve been very lucky that way.”As a woman in the ’50s, in a male-dominated sport, McCormick said: I was treated with a great deal ol respect but I was heavily chaperoned by my manager, sword handler and sometimes my mother. Sometimes my mother would be with me so 1 always kept this distance, was kind of shielded. The bullfighters respected that.”A bullfight has several phases, McCormick said. The event begins with the running of the bulls so fighters can observe the behavior of the animals and determine what they’re up against. Other elements of the fight include men fighting the bull on horseback and unarmed men called banderilleros challenging the bullMATADORA page 2ABig Spring High School graduate Patricia McCormick stands in full regalia at the bull ring entrance in Juarez, Mexico in 1954. McCormick won acclaim throughout Mexico and South America as the first professional woman bullfighter from North America.
Newspaper Details
Big Spring Herald
Big Spring, Texas, US
Tue, May 13, 1986
Page 1
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 10 Mar 2022
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