"We're not all the same just because we're little people," counters Tommy. "It depends on how we were raised. Some of us aren't happy; some of us are happy all the time. We have good days and we have bad days. But it's not because we're little people."
For Jose, who has a family to support, the rodeo has provided security and even a certain stature, and he doesn't have ambitions beyond it. But most of the others still hold onto larger dreams. Ricardo would like to be a doctor. Juan would like to have his own restaurant. Audelio might return to being a mechanic full time. Tommy is content in his career, but would like to have a family.
"I'd also like to have a family," says Elizabeth. "But I'd like to put on my own show."
"I'd like to be a teacher," says Erika. "As long as they were small kids."
Suddenly, trumpets ring out over the patio's loudspeakers. This is "Los Gallos" ("The Cockfight"), the mariachi ballad and official bullfighting theme of Aguascalientes. As we collectively make hardly a dent in the surfeit of paella, Alfredo and his helpers try to coax two recalcitrant bulls out of a trailer and their inimical adolescent funk and into the open arena. As they pass through chutes as confining as the streets of Pamplona, they dig in every few feet. At one point, a bull reverses field and makes a sudden rush for the backstage holding pen, narrowly missing one of the charros, who is just then relieving himself, scaring the . . . well, let's say suitably alarming him, much to the delight of a couple on the balcony just overhead.
Los Enanitos perform their stock moves, going through the motions yet again, until finally one bull wanders back into the holding pen and the other apparently goes dormant, standing immobile across the arena for a good 10 minutes. I lean against the wood slats of the arena wall, arms resting on the 8-inch banister that serves as a makeshift countertop for a notebook and half-eaten plate of paella.
"The strength is in the neck," Audelio is explaining to me. "The legs are tiny, but the shoulders and neck are where all the power is."
As he moves to demonstrate, I see a blur over his left shoulder. The look on my face causes Audelio to spin around and, in the same motion, to step sideways into a foot-wide enclosure built into the arena wall for just this sort of eventuality. With no backup plan of its own, 140 pounds of infuriated veal slams headfirst into the wall I'm leaning on. I suddenly feel like a human tuning fork, as my bones and teeth absorb the shock wave of mass times speed. I am covered in a light mist of paella, and everything moves in excruciatingly slow motion, like something out of--well, out of "Raging Bull." And I am finally granted the one clear revelation I came all this way to find:
Whatever these people are being paid, it's not enough.
