Jan 7, 2007 - Cockfight!

Today's photos are all at the bottom of the page due to time constraints. This blog is more interesting than others because it describes a cockfight that we went to. Some people may find this entry to be disturbing: viewer discretion is advised.

Today we planned to just bum around and do nothing and get some work done. We went out for breakfast, where there was the cutest dog tied up outside the restaurant. I couldn’t stop playing with her! Anyway, Emerald (our friend from the Isla de la Plata tour) walked by and joined us for breakfast. She told us about a cockfight that was going on in town that afternoon that she wanted to go to. Cockfighting, like bullfighting, is very popular in many parts of Latin America, and most Ecuadorian towns have a cockfighting arena. Being an animal lover, I never, ever, ever in a million years thought that I would go to a cockfight. But, Dave (who is also an animal lover) really wanted to go, as did Emerald. Emerald had written a paper on cockfighting for one of her classes in university, and managed to convince me of the cultural significance of the event. After all, as Dave said while trying to persuade me to go, how many opportunities in your life will you have to go to a cockfight in Ecuador? How many people can say they’ve done something like that? And after all, it’s not like our presence or absence will affect anything – the cockfight will still occur with or without us. And we won’t gamble – that would be supporting cockfighting! And of course we would never support such cruelty; we just want to observe it…sort of like we are some kind of cultural anthropologists. Reluctantly, I decided to go check it out, at least to see what it was all about.

We asked around and found out that the cockfight began at 2:00 pm, so we met up with Emerald at around 1:30. We walked in the general direction of the arena and found it by asking people where it was. At 2:00 sharp we paid 50 centavos each to the teenaged girl who lived in the house next door and went in. We were the first ones there. We sat on the bleachers and waited, taking in our surroundings. The “arena” was behind a ragged old wooden fence with chipped paint. We could still faintly make out the colourful roosters that had once been painted on it. Inside the fence was a large and dusty yard featuring the cockfighting ring, a pregnant dog, several puppies, many chickens running wild, a makeshift outhouse, and a lot of garbage.

There was a ring (12 - 15 feet in diameter) with a dirt floor enclosed by a low wall (maybe 2 feet high). Three tiers of yellow bleachers surrounded the ring. A roof overhead protected the arena from the elements. There were ads for Pilsener, the national beer, plastered on the posts that supported the roof. A timer and a fluorescent light hung over ring. Behind the bleachers on one side of the ring was a structure with several compartments for holding the cocks; on the other side of the bleachers was the scale where the birds were weighed.

After a few minutes, some guys showed up and weighed each of the cocks one by one. People began to slowly trickle in…and by “people,” I mean men. There were men of all ages: fathers with their young sons, teenagers and 20-somethings in groups, older men, and – most commonly – men in their 30s and 40s. Traditionally, women do not attend cockfights, and for a long time, Emerald and I were the only women there. We didn’t feel uncomfortable, though. The men either ignored us completely, gawked at us from a distance, smiled and waved at us, or came over to say hello. Later, after the stands filled up, other women came: two other backpackers Emerald had met in her hostal, a woman who worked in a local restaurant that Emerald and the other girls had eaten at (she had always wanted to go to a cockfight and never felt comfortable being the only woman there, so she jumped at the chance to attend with other women present) and, last but not least, a local woman with a fabulous mullet (adorned with a Tweety Bird scarf for the occasion) who was there with her husband.

While the stands filled up, the guys who had been weighing the birds continued to weigh them and match them up. A large card game broke out in one section of the bleachers. Gambling plays a huge role in cockfighting, and there was a lot of it going on even before the cockfighting began. A cart selling typical street food (greasy fried pork, grilled bananas, and something like coleslaw, all thrown into a little bowl and eaten with a miniature fork) set up shop outside the arena and Dave and Emerald got some. One really friendly guy came over and started explaining everything to us. We asked him lots of questions and discovered that the cocks are raised to be aggressive…we were unable to discover how exactly this is accomplished, but we did learn that the cocks are fed a special diet of vitamins (I assume this means steroids) and red meat. Ew. We also learned that they are weighed to make sure that no bird is too big or too small and so that they can be matched up accordingly. We also learned that when a cock wins, its owner gets around $50 (although it seemed to us that it was more than that).

Finally, at around 4:00 or 4:30 pm, the cockfighting began. Two guys came out holding their cocks (ha ha, the immature part of me loves saying that…between looking at boobies the day before and cocks the next day, there was no shortage of dumb jokes being thrown around). No play on words intended, the guys were really stroking and kissing their cocks and talking to them quite a lot. I thought, “Oh, how nice, they really like their cocks!” But then the cruelty began. First, they sliced off little the claws that are on the back of the birds’ legs…what I call their “thumbs.” They put iodine on the wound, then briefly held a flame to it to seal the wound and prevent infection, the friendly guy told us. Then, they wrapped tape around the leg and, using the tape, secured a long (2 inches), pointy nail-type thing to the spot on the leg where the claw was. I found this to be the most distressing part of the whole event; for some reason, this disturbed me even more than the actual fight. The birds, however, didn’t make a peep or struggle while this was going on. I have no idea why, but they didn’t seem to mind it. Finally, the men pierced a lime with the sharp nail-like thing to disinfect it.

After this whole process, the two men walked to the center of the ring with their cocks. Final bets were placed frantically and the referee turned on the light above the ring and set the timer. The two men gave their cocks a final stroke, kiss, and pep talk, and one of them made the sign of the cross. The ref blew his whistle and it was on. The two men held out the cocks in front of them and did this thing that reminded me of having a thumb war, except with birds…they kind of introduced the birds to each other by tapping their heads together a few times. The birds started squawking and flapping immediately and the men set them down in the middle of the ring and retreated to the perimeter.

I don’t mean to imply that it wasn’t disturbing, because it was, but the actual fight was a lot less violent than both Dave and I expected. It looked almost like any time we’ve seen chickens fighting, except it lasted longer and was a bit more intense. I think I expected them to be highly trained killing machines who would immediately try to use their dagger-like claw implants to impale each other’s eyes and tear each other to shreds, but that wasn’t what it was like. There was a lot of flapping and pecking at each other’s necks and heads, and it is true that every time they both jumped off the ground and collided in mid air, their claw implants would make contact with each other. But, it wasn’t gory or bloody like we thought it would be; only very violent and disturbing.

The crowd was going wild throughout the fight. Every time the cocks got tangled up and couldn’t detach themselves from each other, the ref would blow the whistle and the owners would run over and separate the birds. I should mention that during the fight, the owners were crouching in the ring going nuts…picture what the coaches look like in a boxing match. Anyway, at the blowing of the whistle, they would do a test to see if the bird could stand up by itself. If it could, the fight would continue; if it couldn’t the fight was over and the other cock was declared the winner. The owners each take their cocks away and they would receive some medical attention. The fights lasted around 10 minutes each.

After the first fight that we saw, the owner of the losing cock walked right by us with the injured bird and we witnessed the bird cough up a huge mouthful of blood all over the shirt of a spectator that was standing nearby. Very, very disturbing. This bird did not respond to the medical attention it was given and it died on the operating table. They took it over to a little clothesline (cockline?) and hung it up by its feet to bleed out. I was extremely disturbed, but I think because I was expecting it to be so much worse than it was, I wasn’t as upset as I thought I would be. We stuck around for two more fights; thankfully, neither of the next two birds died. The crowd was becoming increasingly rowdy and we had seen more than enough, so we got out of there. Both of us agreed that we were glad to have had the experience, but that it’s not an experience that we’ll ever have again.

That night, we had a quiet supper…and I had fish again! I must admit, I wasn’t too keen on eating chicken after the day’s events. This time, we went to the restaurant where Dave had first had the good fish, and not only did I order fish, I actually enjoyed it! I ate every bite! Turns out this yummy fish was swordfish. This was definitely a day that neither one of us would forget.



A guy selling fish - this photo was taken from our breakfast table.













Me petting the cutest dog in town.















Street soccer game on the way to the cockfight.













This is what the taxis look like in Puerto Lopez. Emerald and I were trying to figure out where the cockfight was.













We bought beer from this man's store before the cockfight. It is incrediby common for men to roll their shirts up like this and walk around town like that! It is hot, but why not just go all the way and take it off if you can't handle it? We found it hilarious so after we finished chatting with the guy, we asked if we could take his photo with Emerald. It was really funny, in preparation for the photo, he took off his glasses, but didn't feel the need to pull his shirt down.











A cock being weighed.
















Matching the cocks up before the fight.


















Dave eating the street meat in the arena.


















Even the cops are in on the action.














A photo of the bleachers. This cock was just there to watch (??). Maybe this is part of their training?

















One, two, three, four, I declare a cock war! The introduction of the cocks. The other guy in the ring is the referee.











The fight.


















The poor cock that lost the 1st match. I asked someone if they eat this bird now, and I couldn't understand his response. I think the answer was maybe.
















The blood spattered shirt.



















A guy we nicknamed "Rico Suave" because he clearly thought he was very cool. This is him placing a bet.











The introduction of the cocks in the 2nd fight.















Second fight.

















Note the long spurs attached to the heel.


















Blowing the whistle in the 3rd fight.














3rd fight.













Loser of the 3rd fight.














The beach in Puerto Lopez.













After the cockfight we walked by some shops and bought these crazy hats made out of coconut fibres.