This Friday we start the day with the news of the death of the bullfighter Jose Rivera Perez “Riverita”, son of the bullfighter from Barbate Antonio Rivera Alvarado, older brother of Paquirri and uncle of the bullfighters Canales Rivera, Francisco Rivera Ordonez and Cayetano.
Jose, very dear in all the areas he traveled, had no children, and leaves a family in which he was an emotional reference heartbroken.
Born in Barbate in February 1947 , he was about to turn 74 and was in a terminal condition after years of suffering from an oncological disease.
Owner of a free spirit that led him to live without ties, his career in the ring began in 1962. Three years later he appeared in Madrid, alternating with Aurelio Nunez, from La Linea, so remembered in Chiclana, and with Curro Limones against steers from Benitez Cubero.
He took the alternative on September 1, 1967 in El Puerto de Santa Maria, his godfather was Miguelin and Diego Puerta as witness, with the bull “Sabuco” from Concha y Sierra.
Despite being a very good bullfighter, extraordinary, both the ironclad nature of the bullfighting world and his mercantilism, so alien to his way of being and living, led him to a lack of interest in the competition and rivalry of the bullfighting show , which did not offer incentives to a happy, frugal man who did not require frills or luxuries to live content with himself.
That is why he dropped his poster and -although he confirmed in Madrid in 1971 in a mixed bullfight with Luis Parra “Jerezano” and Sebastian Martin “Chanito” as witness, in front of a running of the bulls by Diego Passanha, in which the rejoneadores Manuel Vidrie and Curro Bedoya- in 1975 he left a profession to which he returned occasionally, becoming a cult bullfighter, who moved the cloths with a naturalness and delicacy, and that we could enjoy in the field like finding a treasure.
His special personality, as affectionate as bohemian, with a great sense of humor and a deep natural knowledge, captivated. What he needed to live he got with the junk trade, coming to have a portable square that exploded on very rare occasions, and always living with the door open to everyone.
He was so free that he even knew how to dodge -rejecting substantial offers from society press producers- the media wave that still floods the Rivera family since the death of his brother Paquirri in Pozoblanco. Precisely in the following season, in 1985, he returned to the ring for more than twenty celebrations with great regularity in an excellent season and, we repeat, he was a very good bullfighter, with a seal as unique as his personality. But it was his last season in a definitive distance from the greatness and miseries of the planet of the bull. Jose was from another galaxy.
Very close to the matador Jose Antonio Canales Rivera, son of his sister Teresa, really enjoyed when Jose Antonio undertook the family profession. He performed in several of the traditional Rivera festivals in Barbate, which his brother Paquirri began, continuing the initiative of his father-in-law Antonio Ordonez in Tarifa. In one of them, in the first public performance of his nephew Cayetano, he enjoyed very much fighting with his nephews in front of his father.
Jose was what is said to be a free, creative and happy spirit. Among his geniuses was that of fighting with two crutches or sustaining the theory that by aromatizing tricks the cattle attack better, a thesis that he defended with great seriousness with his clear, clean and smiling gaze. Or his explanation that bullfighting is like a sevillanas dance in which in each of the four the pair of bale, bull and bullfighter, get to know each other and measure each other.
In the close relationship, in addition to those geniuses, a natural talent appeared that even led him to write a book of poems. We imagine the pain of his brothers Teresa and Antonio and his whole family, of his nephews, including Jose Antonio Canales Rivera, so close and devoted to a man with a free personality and a unique bullfighter. Rest in peace.