In Campeche, the death of a brave forcado

"To show his nervousness was not shameful; only to admit it” - Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (1932)

Guadalajara -
Eduardo del Villar of Hidalgo state died Sunday afternoon while performing as a forcado in Campeche, a small state on Mexico's western Yucatán peninsula.

Villar, 26, was rushed to a local hospital, where died from a massive injury to the femoral artery in his left thigh after being gored by a bull. He bled to death.





The word forcado is of Portuguese origin, not Spanish, and it describes a person who does something far more daring than fighting a bull in the traditional way it is done in Spain or Mexico. This Wikipedia piece describes the dangerous job well, as does the YouTube clip above.

Villar traveled to Seybaplaya, Campeche with a respected group of professionals called Los Forcados Hidalguenses (the forcados of Hidalgo), where they performed by invitation. He had sustained a lesser injury minutes before the fatal one.

Villar was buried today in Tulancingo, Hidalgo.

A bullfight in Aguascalientes, April 2013. This extraordinarily athletic, highly trained horse eliminated much of the danger, exhausting the bull so he could eventually be dispatched by a matador on foot.

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