Or… maybe dead cocks and dead Bulls.

An opinion piece in yesterday’s Jornada (“Hoy, los toros… ¿Mañana qué?“) questioned whether the courts have a right to intervene in 25 year old regulations on Mexico City’s bullfights on the argument that bullfights violates “·human rights” under the recent Mexico City constitution.

While the author, Javier Jiménez Gutiérrez, is using the legal case to question whether or not judges are “legislating from the bench” it raises another somewhat overlooked constitutiona.l issue. Mexico City’s constitution includes rights for animals, to live as nature intended (not quite the right wording, but close enough). Certainly, a bull in the ring is not going to live as long as one put out to stud, and I suppose there are some environmental concers with disposing of dead bulls and all that bullshit you can smell around the ring in Noche Buena, but then, what’s the nature of fighhting bulls? And given that cattle are raised for slaughter in the first place (and, I’d argue, bullfighting is environmentally sound… fighting bulls needing to be raised in open prairie, preserving the environment that would otherwise be used for feedlots) can the judge “legislate from the bench” as to what is, or isn’t a “natural” life for an animal?

I don’t know.

And cocks… practicioners of Santaria sacrifice animals (mostly chickens) during their rituals, something not many of us are particularly fond of (nor bullfighting, for that matter), but whether they have the right to do so has also come up… leading to a demonstration and a march on the Mexico City Congress over alleged restrictions on their religious rights… something also constitutionally protected (as presumably so are the sacrificial chickens).

Como México, no hay dos… even in courtrooms and the halls of Congress!