Venezuela's popular sport 'Toros Coleados' is here . . . and not everyone is thrilled

  BY ANDREA ELLIOTT

  The door opens and a startled white bull charges forward.

  Fate quickly follows: A Venezuelan cowboy, or llanero, reaches down from his horse and grabs the bull's tail, knocking it to the ground in a haze of dust.

  ''El toro se cayó! El toro se cayó!'' screams the emcee as the crowd roars. ``The bull is down! The bull is down!''

  The Venezuelan sport Toros Coleados -- loosely translated as ''bull tailing'' -- has found its way to South Florida in tow with Venezuelan immigration, as evidenced by the 1,541 people who attended the Toros Coleados World Championship in rural Southwest Miami-Dade on Sunday.

  ''This is what we do every weekend. This is our baseball,'' said Carlos Barrios, a judge at the competition who lives in Weston. ``It's part of the Venezuelan cowboy.''

  But what Barrios and others call the heart of rural Venezuelan life, some animal rights advocates say is an egregious display of cruelty -- as bad as or worse than
  American rodeos.

  In Florida's version of bull tailing, two mounted cowboys chase a bull up and down an oblong arena, competing to flip the animal over as many times as possible within two minutes. In the Venezuelan version, the chase lasts three minutes and involves four cowboys, flipping a bull up to five times per run.

  The helmet-clad rider closes in on the bull at a full gallop, grabs its tail and then leans in the opposite direction, sending the bull into a fishtail spin and tumble.

  The roots of Toros Coleados go back to 18th-century Venezuelan cattle herding, when llaneros would chase bulls that strayed from the pack and flip them by the tail. The pastime morphed into the country's first national sport in 1959. It is so popular that 100 bulls are flipped daily in Venezuela.

  After one or two falls, most of the nine Brahman bulls showcased Sunday either could not, or would not, get up.

  ''They become so terrified they go into shock,'' said Laura Bevan, regional director of the Southeast Regional office of the Humane Society, which videotaped a competition at the same Southwest Miami-Dade ranch on Dec. 15.

  When the bulls refuse to stand again, out rides Cuban-American equestrian Juan Pérez Rodríguez, his white straw cowboy hat pitched low over his face, to shock them with an electrical rod.

  At a Southwest Miami event last year, the coleadores broke the bulls' tails, according to reports made to the Humane Society, in keeping with an old Venezuelan tradition -- even though the action was officially banned by the sport's federation several years ago.

  ''If they don't break the tail, the bull takes longer to get up,'' said Teresa Molinos, the sport's female world champion and a Miami resident. In Sunday's competition, she fell and was buried under both a fallen horse and bull in one of several violent tumbles.

  But Molinos -- who is the official world ambassador of bull tailing -- has lobbied against the sport's crueler aspects like tail breaking and ensured it did not occur in recent competitions.

  The Humane Society is exploring whether the activity violates the state's law prohibiting animal cruelty. Enforcement is the responsibility of local police. Miami-Dade police said they thought the sport did not violate the statute.

  ''This is a national sport, a sport of tradition,'' said Molinos, 36. ``You never see blood. All they use is electricity to get the bulls up, which cattlemen use all over the world. They do not abuse the animals.

  ``In the American rodeo, when you lasso the head of the animal, that affects the [entire] vertebral column of the animal. In this sport, the animal falls by his own weight and gets up.''

  But on Sunday, the tame American bulls -- a much smaller version of the wild bulls used in Venezuela -- were not keen to get up.

  One young bull suffered a serious leg injury after he was toppled by a horse and rider. The injured rider limped out of the arena with a bloody knee. As no veterinarian was present, the bull's injury went undiagnosed, but the startled animal could not move. He dragged his leg and stumbled, refusing to get up as the crowd jeered. Out rode Rodriguez, bearing his long electrical rod.

  Then, across the dusty track came the intervening scream of 10-year-old Colombian Jaime Andrés Torres: ``Noooooooo!!!''

  Baffled officials froze the competition for an uncharacteristic half-hour, finally strapping the bull onto a wooden plank and pulling it by tractor off the arena.

  The event was a far cry from the way it's done in Venezuela, said Gilberto Silva, 29, a spectator in town on business.

  ''In my country, it's done with wild animals weighing 400 kilos. They're half as small here,'' said Silva, sipping a glass of whiskey as he sat on a wooden fence.

  But to Silva, the crowd felt familiar: women in cowboy boots clutching Herms bags -- a country look framed by urban sophistication, underscoring the sport's high price.

  The sport's cost is such because bulls can't be used more than once because they ''learn to sit down'' -- the coleador explanation for what animal rights activists say is evidence of trauma.

  Reynaldo Rodríguez, the event coordinator, purchased the bulls for Sunday's event at an auction in Arcadia for $7,800. He will sell them at another auction, he said.

  At $10 per ticket, the event generated more than $15,000. Sponsors included Presidente, the Dominican beer company; Panna, a Venezuelan bakery; and several
  Venezuelan newspapers. The next competition is planned for April.