Photography Nacho Pinedo Styling Natalia Bengoechea

Fuerza

Cayetano Rivera Ordoez is not your abuelos matador.

Suit by Emporio Armani

Shirt and tie by Giorgio Armani
Belt by Olimpo
Shoes by Lotusse

Bullfighting, Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises, was not nice to
watch if you cared anything about the person who was doing it. For Cayetano
Rivera Ordez, however, this is the only way his family can watch the toreros: it
has always been one of their own in the ring.

The Ordez family tree looks something like this: Cayetano Ordez, known as

Nio de la Palma, was the premier bullfighter of the early 20th centuryhe was the
first to be triumphantly carried out the main door of the Maestranza bullring. His
son, Antonio Ordez, rose to prominence in the 1950s, running with the likes of
Hemingway and Orson Welles. He lives on in Hemingways The Dangerous Summer, as does his intense rivalry with his brother-in-law, Domingun, an upstart
matador who tested the legendary Manolete. Antonios daughter Carmen (once lauded
as one of the most beautiful women in the world), married the renowned bullfighter
Paquirri, and the latest in this distinguished line, their youngest son Cayetano Rivera
(along with his brother, Francisco Rivera), continues the family tradition.

Modern times being what they are, this striking Spaniard is treated like roy-

alty, and finds himself on runways, in fashion ads, and tracked by paparazzi. Ordez has also gone Hollywood: in what must have been a surreal ancestral echo, he
trained Adrian Brody in the basics of bullfighting for the actors Manolete biopic. But
Ordezs life is still that of a very real torero. In the summer of 2007, he was gravely
gored three times in the thigh and received emergency ringside surgery. While he survived, his father, who received a similar wound more than two decades earlier, was
not as fortunate. Cayetano Riveras storythat of glamour and bravery, history and
tragedy, recalls Hemingways promise that informs the ageless ideal of the matador:
Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.
Jess Holl