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“So when the mayor and the governor threaten to ban bulls from the fiesta, what does that mean?"

“Bulls have always been a part of La Candelaria. But at times in the past it got really nasty, really ugly. Drunks would throw bottles at the bull, poke them with knives, even cut their ears off with machetes... Sometimes the bulls were in such bad shape at the end of the day that they had to be taken directly to the slaughterhouse -- there was nothing else to do with them. But now we are a World Heritage Site, we cannot behave like this.”

“Do you think it’ll be better this year?”

“I hope so -- there’s more police here than I’ve ever seen before.”