Word: lagrav
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Kids sometimes get in trouble for breaking a window or an arm while playing a sport, but they rarely cause controversy for their choice of sport itself. Not so with Franco-Mexican boy Michel Lagravère Peniche, 10. Twice over the past weekend, officials in the south of France stopped Lagravère from taking part in his favorite pastime. Such a prohibition might be odd were the kid a soccer or rugby champ. But Lagravère's precocious gift is for bullfighting...
...truly shocking activity at any time, but its cruelty is even more horrible when it's being inflicted by a small child," argues Claire Starozinski, president of the Anti-Corrida Association (ACA), which seeks a full ban on bullfighting in France and was behind the moves to prevent Lagravère from performing this past weekend. "This boy has killed nearly 60 of these animals in Mexico - there's video of him, inflicting death, on the web. We decided to prevent him from fighting in France...
...Strictly speaking, the bullfighting prodigy known as "Michelito" isn't in France to slay any bovine foe. The series of exhibitions he's scheduled to appear in are bloodless becerrada - confrontations with calves, staged by local bullfighting schools. Young Lagravère's participation is intended to provide aspiring matadors a demonstration of technique and skill that falls short of provoking the calves with physical pain - much less a death blow with a sword...
...Bullfighting aficionados, though, are mobilizing to ensure that Lagravère and other student-toreadors can partake in the fighting demonstrations planned for them. The mayor of the southwestern town of Hegetmau vows to push ahead with a youth performance featuring Lagravère this Wednesday. Arles mayor Hervé Schiavetti, meanwhile, says he's rescheduling events cancelled at local schools over the weekend. He says bullfighting is too important to regional tradition to relinquish. "The raising and selling of bulls has played a large role in our economic, social and cultural past, and they still figure large in this...
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