2022

Every February a local religious festival in honor to the Candelaria Virgin is celebrated in Tlacotalpan, in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. One of the many activities that are performed during these festivities is the running of the bulls. It consists of moving six bulls by boat across the Papaloapan river into the colorful, colonial streets of the town of Tlacotalpan. One by one, they are brought to the riverbank where cowboys on horses from the committee for the bull protection throw a lasso to their necks in order to carry them to the town's main streets for crowds to run from, once they are released. The bulls wander and charge freely for hours while thousands of people chase, taunt, and dodge them. "La suelta de toros", the release of the bulls, is one of Mexico’s most intense, high-adrenaline, and deeply controversial cultural spectacles where music, street food, and alcohol blends in a quite dangerous way.