I think it was not many years after the millenium that this particular circus came to town. I know it was Ash Wednesday. Even the hootchy-kootchy dancer had a smudge on her forehead.
All day there had been a great to-do in the pasture across from the soccer field in San Pancho – the pasture where there is now a densely packed neighborhood of mini-mansions. I dallied as I walked to and from the store, joining clusters of townspeople watching the circus men set up. The elephant, an experienced member of the team, carried heavy things and pulled on ropes. Spindly bleachers appeared along with the ring, a tall center pole, and all around the outside a canvas curtain, split by a ticket booth and narrow entrance. This was a big circus, as Mexican touring circuses go. A giraffe, a pony, and an emu lounged in a corral under the enormous African tulip tree. The gaggle of children were fenced well away from the barred circus wagons containing five tigers and three lions.
At least half the town gathered that night for the eight o’clock show. Our little group, my husband, sister and brother-in-law contemplated ten-peso bleachers or thirty-peso plastic chairs by the ring, and despite feeling a little embarrassed went for the backrest. Our chairs were so close to the wooden blocks forming the ring that we used them as footstools.
After the opening act – a chubby teenager whose sexy moves owed a great deal to a hula hoop regimen – a clown ran around the ring with the emu on a leash. That turned out to be the pattern: an act followed by the emu. There was quite a good tightrope walker on a very high line. She was pretty and spangly and practically overhead as we sat up against the ring. She had a smudge from Ash Wednesday mass, too. Then the emu. Acrobats and jugglers. One slip and we could have been beaned with a club. Again, the emu.
The elephant was brought out. It did the usual elephant tricks: standing on hind legs with trunk curled, balancing on front legs and trunk, four legs together on a small platform. Then it deposited an enormous pile of poop. You know that scene from Jurassic Park? The crowd screamed with delight. At ringside, we too, with our sophistication and advanced degrees, were rolling about and holding our sides. A clown with a wheelbarrow and shovel ran out, loaded up, “accidently” dumped it over, loaded up again. People were all but falling off the bleachers.
Something for the kiddies – a pony ride. Above us a rope passed through a ring on a boom that could swing around 360 degrees. One end of the rope was strapped on a little boy who had eagerly answered the call for volunteers; the other end was in the hands of one of the jugglers. The child was placed on the pony, which trotted off around the ring, but since there was no saddle or bridle, he soon began to slip. Clearly the juggler was supposed to pull the rope and lift him into the air just in time – but he didn’t. The child hit the ground hard, and only then was pulled up, swinging wildly. The crowd thought this was nearly as hilarious as the elephant – we, less so. Unfazed, the laughing mother ran out and caught the child as he came down a second time while the juggler covered this gaffe with a ta-da outflinging of hands, as though he had performed a great feat of skill. I suspect this act was intended to have several little victims but under the circumstances, the emu made another appearance.
There followed a clown comedy act featuring a stuffed phallus – always a crowd-pleaser – and then a girl performed high up on a hanging rope with a very fat woman down below alternately swinging or steadying the dangling cord. The girl was in full costume; the woman, as though invisible to the crowd, wore a none-too-clean t-shirt.
The elephant reappeared to give rides to the children. Despite the pony debacle, kids clamored to be handed up, first to the top of a ladder and then to the broad back. Five at a time, with little legs splayed and holding on to the child in front, they bounced off for a rapid trot around the ring. Miraculously, none fell off.
Naturally, the best was saved for last. Roustabouts, erstwhile acrobats and clowns, ran out with heavy sections of iron caging which they assembled in a circle close against the inside of the wooden ring – about a foot from our knees. Platforms of different heights were placed inside; the circus wagons were pushed up to a door that was raised to let first the tigers and then the lions into the cage. Before leaping to their perches, they paced around the periphery. We realized we didn’t want the blocks as footrests after all.
The lion tamer cracked his whip as the cats roared, snarled, and batted their paws in classic fashion. We were so close we could smell these guys; we could see what looked very much like real annoyance, or worse, in their eyes. It was actually scary. I had never before appreciated the courage of a lion tamer who turns his back and postures for the crowd. No wonder he too had found time that day to go to church for his ashes. The recent mauling of Roy, partner of Sigfried, leapt to mind – a mauling by a tiger, named for one of the most fearsome of the imaginary medieval monsters, Mantacore, “man eater” in old Persian. If you’re not superstitious, go ahead, name your daughter Jezebel.
But I digress. The cats jumped from pedestal to pedestal, rose on their haunches, leapt through flaming hoops. They clearly hated it all. Was it a part of the act when a lion, snarling menacingly, got off her pedestal and wouldn’t get back up? Suddenly, a dog – we recognized our next-door neighbor’s cocker spaniel – decided that enough was enough and ran up to the bars next to us, barking ferociously. The cats turned toward her, and us, in unison. Another lion snarled at the dog and got down from her stand. Things didn’t look good and apparently they weren’t because with that, the tamer made a triumphal posture, gestured for the exit door to be raised, and to surging music, began hounding the cats back to their wagons with lots of whip cracking and chair thrusting, though they went eagerly enough, almost as though chunks of meat awaited them, The show was over. Somehow everyone and everything lived through it.
Thoroughly entertained, if a bit shaken, we dispersed into the sultry night. As we rounded the corner into our street, the dog trotted past us and into her yard, head held high.
A few years later Nayarit and Jalisco and nearly half the other states banned all animals in circuses. Legislation in 2017 ended animal acts all over the country. I think we went to one circus after and were sorry we did. Yes, before the ban you had to try not to think about the animals dragged from town to town, confined in little cages, perhaps beaten and starved if they misbehaved, for all their lives. PETA has posted YouTube videos of mistreated circus animals apparently so awful they merit viewing protections. I decided not to try to get past them. But the animals really made the circus, even as the pleasure began to pall under closer inspection. And then someone we knew made a documentary about a circus family that performed on the no-account-pueblo circuit – in those pueblitos like ours – and we saw a bleakness no piles of elephant poop could compensate for. Not only did the animals look miserable, turned out the kids were not much better off. No fixed residence thus no schooling, illiterate like their parents, spending their time on chores and practicing their little acts featuring their flexible little backbones.
Circuses have tried to succeed, and a few are still trying, with only human performers, but even Cirque de Soleil has had its run. It seems the circus era is really coming to its end, following the Wild West shows with their Cavalry vs Indian mock battles. Bull fighting, yea or nay, can bring down governments. Will we begin to turn away from the terrified calf jerked off its feet at the rodeo? Slowly we wake up and recognize cruelties. And how many there are. While baited bears and bound feet are banned, and bloody gladiator shows aren’t missed; while there are no more iron maidens and enhanced interrogation was caught pretty quick when it sneaked in the back door, we have a long road ahead. The unemployable contortionists and neurotic tigers will pass away. We who screamed with delight at the elephant poop will too. That will help a bit.
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