Rooster Fighting: Awkward, Fun or Totally Awesome?

(Disclaimer: this post was supposed to have pictures but due to technical difficulties that will no longer be the case. Therefore I rely on you, dear reader, to use your power of imagination)

It has been a week and a half since I found myself standing ring side at a rooster fight and I still can't answer the title of this post. I don't know, it's terribly difficult. The best that I can do is to take you through the experience and hopefully by writing it down it will help sort out the intricacies of my dilemma.

Rooster fighting is wrong, or at least I used to think so, which is why I found it odd that I was so enthused to see a fight for myself. Sitting at the ViaVia hostel with Todd and Erin, we had not planned on attending the event although we had discussed going at great length. As we sat there conversing with other travelers who were going, my interest became such that I could no longer ignore it. I had to go. That is how I found myself a few miles outside the city center of Leon traversing a dirt road to a local rooster fighting arena, which was located in someone's backyard, with a Belgium guide named Harry and an assortment of 12 other gringoes who couldn't tame their curiosity either.

As Harry began explaining the expectations he had for all of us while we were there, I was struck by the sheer poverty of my surroundings. Animals were roaming around, everything was covered in dirt, the fighting arena itself was the most impressive structure of all even though it appeared to be cobbled together from material garnered from old pepsi advertising. Despite the lack of material wealth, the pride that the people had in being there was palpable. This was how they spent their Sunday afternoons and they were going to enjoy themselves.

My attention drifted back to Harry as he delved into the mechanics of rooster fighting. Unbeknownst to me roosters are born with a large talon on the back of their leg that is cut off by the farmers. Apparently when roosters meet they fight and if that talon was still attached you would have dead roosters all over your farm as they would slice each other to ribbons. This is what seemed to be the key difference between rooster fighting and dog fighting. In dog fighting you had to train the animals to attack, in rooster fighting the only training you are doing is to build their strength as they naturally attack one another anyway. To this end the owners of roosters would attached little balls to the back of the rooster's leg, where it's talon once was, so that it can fight without hurting itself or it's opponent. When a rooster was set to fight in the ring the owner's would decide on what size blade to attach to the left leg of their roosters. Harry was sure to note that the blades being used were unlike the ones in Mexico and Asia, which could measure two inches, but instead were no longer than a half inch which made it more like a boxing match than a fight to the death. A rooster fight would last until one of the roosters submitted, which would be determined by the referee, or if the fight lasted fifteen minutes and at that point it would end in a draw. After the fight the roosters would be allowed to rest and heal for a month or so before they would fight again. If they won more than eight fights they were considered a champion and retired in order to breed a new generation of champion roosters.

When pressed on why fight with roosters and not dogs the owner of the arena stated that dogs were there to guard your house and eat garbage, roosters were your pets. This comment stuck with me as the first fight began. Despite the smaller blade that was attached to only one leg of the rooster the fight was still pretty bloody but it wasn't the violence that surprised me. About halfway through the match there was a brief break as one of the roosters was down but not quite out. It's owner picked it up and put his mouth on its neck. I asked Harry why the owner would put his mouth on a bloody bird and he said that he was either trying to suck out some of the blood to keep the wound from clotting and potentially harming the bird or he was resuscitating the rooster. It was at this point that my perspective began to change. These owner's were not simply using the roosters for entertainment, they were taking pride in their animals ability to do what it does naturally, why else would they take such care of the animal. It was their pet after all.

Of the four matches I watched one ended in a draw, two ended in wins but with both birds alive and one ended in death as Gallo Pinto triumphed over Sambra. And here I stand still confused about whether or not I should condone such an activity. My western sensibilities tell me that what I witnessed was barbaric, a grotesque display of man's lust for violence thrust upon lesser creatures. On the other hand it is not hard to see this as a ritual of pride, allowing the rooster to be a rooster and to prove itself in an area it is naturally predisposed to embrace. I don't know. What do you think?