If a bull fight were to happen in the United States

At the end of September, after being in Spain for almost a month, my roommate, her parents, and I went to a bull fight. We knew that this was something common in and specific to Spanish culture. I had never been to one or really knew anything about it, I had heard that in places they don’t kill the bulls anymore and it is just for show but know they absolutely used to, but still had no idea what to expect when I went. We showed up and everyone was more dressed up then I thought, people were shushing people at certain points and the arena was quiet, other times it was loud and cheering, then they started putting the swords into the bull, then it was bloody, and the horses came out to drag the dead bull out of the arena only for that to happen five more times. We left. We had little to no expectations going into this experience, but this was not what we thought would happen. It was an ethnocentric idea to think that the killing of the bull was cruel, that doesn’t happen in the US, the torture and killing of animals. It violated the expected norm that the idea of animal cruelty had the same definition in every culture. To the Spanish people that were there, the bull fights and the matador were a long-standing tradition and just part of their culture. With the idea that culture is deontic and that cultures are far more specific about what is forbidden than what is accepted, the bull fighting was clearly acceptable in Spain, but in the United States, people don’t think about that or have an accurate picture of what a bull fight would actually entail. If this bull fight were to happen in the United States, it would violate all the cultural norms surrounding the treatment of animals and it would be clear that this would be forbidden in the US culture, but not in Spain. Experiencing this bull fight was good for the immersion into Spanish culture but was a large cultural shock to see people enjoying it but I learned that I did not need to go back and to accept that that is a part of Spanish culture, and it was unfair to expect something that I was used to because I was in a new place with a new culture.

https://murciatoday.com/semi_nude-dutch-bullfight-protestor-breaks-into-murcia-bullring-in-the-middle-of-a-1_minute-silence_1836307-a.html

Article: The dutchman was applying the idea of his culture that bullfighting is torturing animals and proves the ethnocentrism of people’s perceptions. While I agree that bull fights are torture and considered animal cruelty, it is something that happens outside of my culture, and the man in the article’s culture, and therefore, while I am entitled to my own opinion, the cultural context of the event needs to be looked at.