Conchita Moreno (Caracas, December 8, 1927 – 2007) was a professional female mounted bullfighter from Venezuela.
Early life
Moreno explains that she is named Conchita because she was born on the day of the Immaculate Conception, the second of seven, to Norberto Moreno Mayora (a builder from Ocumare del Tuy, who constructed the famous Las Palomas area of Macuto) and Juana D'Amico del Castillo (a textile worker who may have been the first woman to use an electric loom). Her maternal grandparents were Italian, and emigrated to Venezuela before her mother's birth. Moreno said that she was raised in a very Christian household, and had little means, also living with other older female family members. As a child, she had wanted to be a lawyer, and says that her eldest granddaughter did become one.
When Moreno first sought out bullfighting it was during the Second World War, after having snuck out of school to watch the bullfights in El Valle, Caracas, where she spent most of her childhood. She says that she went in secret with her mother, and that when she expressed her desire to bullfight to her father he wasn't impressed, accusing her mother of "coddling". She says that her father said his objections were because of how masculine the sport is, but she suspects that he wanted her to go to university because she was good in school.
Career
Career beginnings
After dabbling in bullfighting in school and expressing an interest to her parents, Moreno says that her desire became more founded when the cuadrilla of female bullfighters came to show in Caracas. Despite still being in high school, she spoke to the crew and managed to get a "casting" to join the team, in which she was successful. However, it was only after the war ended and normalcy resumed that she fully decided to take up bullfighting, in 1947. However, the 1945 Venezuelan coup d'état maintained a level of disruption in her country, and so she says that she "wanted to quickly learn as much as I could about bullfighting, and leave". Moreno says that she made a deal with her parents, including going to university, to be allowed to train; her father also became one of her harshest critics, telling her before her first presentation that if she was going to fight, she would have to do it well.
It was only the Sunday after her first fight that Moreno had her alternativa. She notes that since Juanita Cruz, a bullfighter from Madrid, had visited Caracas, the sport had grown more popular in the city, and there was a lot of hype around this fight. She faced off in the alternativa with Esther Álvarez, a relative of famous banderillero Cipriano Álvarez. Moreno says that she still remembers this fight with warmth, because it is when she cut her first ear.
In her early years of fighting, Moreno was working in a law firm in Venezuela, having got her degree, taking English classes and fighting at weekends. After some time, her commitments to her cuadrilla meant that she would have to travel abroad for fights, and she says that even though she was an adult by this time and had met all of her father's requirements, he still wouldn't sign the travel documents to let her leave the country — she says that her family were worried she could be hurt and they'd never find out — so her mother signed the papers behind his back, and loaned her some money to make up the cost of the plane ticket.
Tours of Latin America
Moreno's first travels were to Mexico, where she fought in Guadalajara, Tampico, Veracruz, Xochimilco, Tijuana and Acapulco. In Mexico City, Moreno met the bullfighter María Cobián, "La Serranita", who told Moreno of her desire to travel to Spain to fight, but that she would not do so, because in Spain the women were only allowed to fight bulls on horseback.
It was during the Mexico fights that they were hired to present in Colombia, successfully travelling through Cartagena, Barranquilla, Cali, Manizales and Bogotá. The cuadrilla then continued travelling south, and performed in Peru; here in Lima is where Moreno suffered a serious injury to her right leg.
