The world's oldest continually touring circus called curtains on itself — for good — in rather anticlimactic fashion Sunday in Mexico City.
The Atayde Hermanos circus, founded in 1888 and playing to audiences all over Mexico ever since, shut down abruptly with a final performance that was only announced that very morning. The closure happened one month sooner than planned, in response to dwindling revenues and shrinking audiences after a citywide ban on the use of animals in circus acts was approved in June.
Opinions were divided over the law, with circus performers protesting in the streets, while animal rights groups . . .
