MEXICO CITY (CN) — Just days after bullfighting returned to Mexico's capital, a judge outlawed it once again, issuing an immediate temporary suspension on Wednesday.
Mexico City's Fifth District Court Judge in Administrative Matters Sandra de Jesús Zúñiga sided with the animal welfare group Todas y Todos por Amor a los Toros, or All For the Love of Bulls, which claims bullfighting violates the city's Law for the Celebration of Public Shows.
Jesús Zúñiga granted the group's request for a provisional suspension.
"The responsible authorities must refrain from executing the contested act. Bullfighting shows must be immediately suspended in the borough of Benito Juárez, as well as the granting of permits to perform such shows," she wrote.
This suspension comes three days after bullfighting's return to Mexico City. In December 2023, a panel of five federal judges reversed a May 2022 prohibition that stemmed from a legal complaint brought by animal welfare group Justicia Justa.
Organizers of bullfighting events and the Plaza Mexico arena have until Friday to file a complaint to reverse the judge's decision.
Otherwise, Jesús Zúñiga will decide on Feb. 7 if there will be a definitive suspension. If so, the decision will go to a higher court for review. The temporary suspension means that, as of now, three scheduled bullfights on Feb. 4, 5 and 6 are cancelled.
Jorge Gaviño, a member of the Mexico City Congress, helped file the lawsuit on Jan. 28 with Todas y Todos por Amor a los Toros.
He stated on X, formerly Twitter, "We are going for the definitive abolition, but for the time being the bullfights in the city are suspended."
In his morning press conference on Wednesday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that "bullfighting's fate must be resolved through democracy."
He suggested a reform to make a citizen vote possible instead of leaving it solely up to the courts to decide.
The legal battle concerning bullfighting and its cultural implications is nothing new in Mexico's history.
The longest ban on bullfighting was in 1867 under President Benito Juarez. It lasted 19 years. One reason for the ban was that Juarez sought to improve Mexico's image by undoing what he saw as a barbaric practice under Maximilian of Habsburg, emperor of the Second Mexican Empire, after Juarez ordered his assassination and became president.
On Sept. 16, 1867, influential radical journalist and writer Ignacio Manuel Altamirano critiqued bullfighting in the newspaper El Correo de México, writing slogans like, "No more bullfights! No more blood! Ink instead of blood! Enlightenment not barbarism!" These are sentiments that animal welfare groups continue to echo over 150 years later.
The other ban occurred in 1916, decreed by President Venustiano Carranza, who viewed bullfighting as impeding on the progress of the country, then in the throes of a revolution.
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