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Michelito, the 10-year-old bullfighter

By Gilles Bertin
AFP, LIMA
Thursday, Nov 27, 2008, Page 14

My father is a bullfighter and I really like it. I want to be more famous than he is and I want to fight bulls all my life.

— Michelito Lagravere, 10-year-old bullfighter

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Michelito Lagravere is just like any other child who likes playing guitar, surfing the Internet and watching Spiderman, but at just 10 years old, he is also a star bullfighter and has already killed 160 calves.

The pint-sized matador is fearless and dreams of rivaling the best. One of the world’s youngest bullfighters, the French-Mexican is also one of the sport’s hottest stars in Latin America.

Bull-fighting “is my passion. My father is a bullfighter and I really like it. I want to be more famous than he is and I want to fight bulls all my life,” Lagravere said.

Most children his age here dream of following in the footsteps of soccer giants such as the legendary Brazilian player Pele or the Argentinian Diego Maradona. But not Lagravere.

Lagravere, who began fighting bulls when he was just 5 years old, is following in the path of his father, French bullfighter Michel Lagravere.

“The first time, I thought of it as a game. But now I take it more seriously. Even if it’s still a game, it’s more than that,” he said before heading into the ring. “I want to choose something different and become a professional torero starting when I’m 14.”

Born in Merida, where he attends bullfighting school, Michelito practices swishing his red cape every day. “I go to school in Merida and work over the Internet. I send my homework every other day,” he said.

Over a breakfast of fruit and cereal, he talked about his passion for playing the guitar and for cartoon characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Asterix and Obelix and Spider-Man.

At the ancient Plaza de Acho in Lima, the oldest bullfighting ring in South America, Michelito pitted his strength recently against two girls, a 16-year-old Mexican and a 19-year-old Peruvian.

Thrown to the ground by a a young male calf, he recovered his poise quickly, to give a flawless performance with his cape before thousands of spectators.

The young apprentice works mostly in Mexico and other countries in Latin America because he is too young to compete in Spain, where the minimum age for entering the ring is 16.

Anti-bullfighting campaigns have denounced a move in Latin America that has seen a number of children facing off with bulls in the ring, calling for a ban on the fights where young beginners fight calves from 8 months to 2 years old.

“It’s one thing to say you don’t like corrida, but it’s another to call for a ban on something you don’t like,” said Michelito, brushing off the criticism.

“I don’t like football, but I would never criticize that sport.”

Like any fighter, he bows before a statue of the Virgin Mary before entering the arena. And he has only one superstition — on the day of a fight he wears his socks inside-out.

He proudly claims to have never been wounded — “just a few bruises,” he says — during more than 100 bullfights in France, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.

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