Wonder Girl Bullfighter

In the jampacked Plaza de Toros at Tampico, Mexico, 5,000 aficionados sat stock-still one afternoon last week. In the centre of the ring, glistening in the sunlight, a wisp of a girl stood directly in the path of a charging bull, heels together, her sword poised ready for the kill. With one businesslike thrust over his horns and between the shoulder blades, the bull crumpled to the sand, shuddered, lay dead.

From the boxes on the shady side, elegant ladies waved their lace handkerchiefs. In the sol (sunny side), two-peso fans whistled and yelled, tossed their hats into the ring. Conchita had done it again--with as much skill and grace as the three top-flight matadors who had preceded her on the program, the last big corrida of the bullfighting season. While the stands roared "Ole, Ole!", Conchita received a gold cup for the best performance of the day.

Bull rings have seen lady bullfighters before, but none like Conchita. Not only is she an expert matadora--her capework equal to that of many a top-notch matador--but she is a rejoneadora (equestrienne bullfighter) as well. Earlier in the afternoon, she had given an exhibition of this ancient style of bullfighting (now seldom seen professionally except in Portugal), in which horse & rider maneuver as one, make passes at the bull and elude his charges, until they get him in position for the final thrust.

Ever since she made her first appearance in Mexico last summer (and killed three bulls in one afternoon), Conchita has been first in the hearts of Mexican bullfight fans. Only 17 years old and weighing 108 lbs., she looks like a beautiful porcelain doll. In the ring she is not only exquisitely graceful--especially on her prancing, high-stepping mount--but absolutely fearless.

Most extraordinary thing about Conchita is the fact that she is an American. Born in Chile and reared in Peru, she is the daughter of a onetime U. S. Army officer named Francisco Cintron (a Puerto Rican) and granddaughter (on her mother's side) of U. S. Archeologist A. Hyatt Verrill, descendant of a long line of highbrow, blue-blooded New Englanders.

Conchita was a problem child, demonstrated quite early that she was no sit-by-the-fire. When she was five years old, she unearthed some ancient skulls, put them on sticks and frightened the servants by poking them through the windows. Once, during a Peruvian uprising, she disappeared from home, was found sitting on a curbstone 100 feet from the scene of a bloody battle. When she was eight, she rode out into the desert alone, required a posse to find her.

A natural horsewoman, Conchita out-jumped Peruvian cavalrymen in a local horse show when she was eleven. At 13, her riding master, a onetime Portuguese bullfighter named Ruy Da Camara, taught her the art of the rejoneador--at first with calves, then with more & more ferocious bulls. At 14, she gave an exhibition of equestrian bullfighting at a charity horse show at Lima. At 15, she made her debut--not in society but in a professional bull ring.

Since then, dainty little Conchita has learned the suertes (maneuvers) of the matador, has killed 62 bulls, both as matadora and rejoneadora. On her wrist she wears a charm bracelet, dangling 16 gold bull's ears, presented to her by Manager Da Camara--one for each fight in which she was awarded the bull's ear (for an expert killing).

Last week, while Hollywood made passes at Conchita, Grandfather Verrill, warming his 79-year-old bones in Florida's sunshine, frowned on his granddaughter's monkeyshines: "She's a darn fool and bound sooner or later to get killed." But spirited Conchita Cintron's only complaint last week was that Mexican bulls are not savage enough.

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