Will Cockfighting Ever Be Legal Again
The Last Days of Legal Cockfighting in Puerto Rico
Cockfighting will soon be outlawed, an overdue ban in the eyes of animal welfare advocates. But some Puerto Ricans maintain it is role of their culture.
Credit... A rooster raised for fighting on Hiram Figueroa's farm in Vega Baja, P.R.
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VEGA BAJA, P.R. — Hiram Figueroa rears roosters to fight, a Puerto Rican tradition from the time of the Castilian colonists that he learned every bit a teenager half a century ago and afterwards taught his son. Together, they practise their birds, clip their feathers and give them frail sponge baths.
Now rows of dusty cages lie empty in Mr. Figueroa's backyard, a reminder of his fading livelihood.
He used to go along some 250 game fowl tucked behind their modest home in Vega Baja, a town west of San Juan , the capital. Now he is down to almost half, a drop big enough that a neighbor told him that sometimes he no longer hears the ceaseless crowing. The men who own most of the birds and pay the Figueroas for their care bought fewer chicks this year, knowing they would not need them for long.
Cockfighting will exist outlawed in Puerto Rico and other United States territories in December, a long overdue ban in the optics of beast welfare advocates who consider the practise cruel and outdated. Louisiana, the last state to allow cockfighting , prohibited it more a decade agone, in 2008. Simply unlike state legislation, which was enacted by elected representatives, this ban was passed by Congress, where Puerto Rico's 3.ii one thousand thousand people do non accept a voting member. Lawmakers slipped the ban into last twelvemonth's farm bill, catching fifty-fifty the Puerto Rican government by surprise.
Since then, anxiety has gripped Mr. Figueroa and others who brand a living from cockfighting. A recession has strangled the Puerto Rican economic system for xiii years. The manufacture estimates it directly and indirectly employs some twenty,000 people.
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"This is our life," Mr. Figueroa said on a recent morning as he tossed dried corn kernels into the birds' feeding dishes. "If they take this away from us, what are we going to practice? I'k seventy years old. No one else is going to give me a job."
In a territory where people feel deep resentment over frequent slights from Washington, the imposed ban has struck almost of those who have long engaged in cockfighting here as a violation of Puerto Ricans' rights to make their own decisions and protect their cultural heritage. Some of them sued in federal courtroom, seeking to overturn the ban before it takes effect on Dec. xx .
Last week, Judge Gustavo A. Gelpí of the United states of america District Court in San Juan upheld the prohibition , saying Congress has the power to legislate over the territories, fifty-fifty if an "undemocratic predicament" exists in Puerto Rico. Félix Thousand. Román Carrasquillo , a lawyer for those in the cockfighting manufacture, said the ban suggested that members of the federal government viewed Puerto Rico every bit an inferior, regressive colony unable to fend for itself.
"They think this is a roughshod identify, full of prostitutes and thieves," Mr. Román said.
"In the United states they chase deer, and what harm have they done to anyone?" said Mr. Figueroa, who began raising gamecocks at sixteen. "The birds are going to fight no thing what. Nosotros prepare them to defend themselves."
Breeding aggressive roosters to fight, oftentimes to the death, for the sake of gambling and amusement is barbaric, said Yolanda Álvarez, the former managing director of the Humane Order of Puerto Rico, who is working on a doctoral thesis on the history of cockfighting on the island.
She said embracing the practice merely endorses i colonial power — Kingdom of spain, which brought cockfighting to Puerto Rico in the 1700s — over another. The United states previously outlawed the practice in the territory in the early on 20th century, and Puerto Rico legalized cockfighting in 1933.
"It has nothing to do with our culture," Ms. Álvarez said. "And even if it did, civilisation is non static. Culture transforms itself."
Santos Martínez, a graphic designer who like many others has used social media to support the ban, said most Puerto Ricans would be thrilled to see cockfights terminate.
"Most people hate this and then-chosen sport," said Mr. Martínez, 57, who said that, as a boy, he tried to set free some of his granddad'due south gamecocks.
On a recent evening, a small crowd gathered at the cockpit in the boondocks of Hatillo. Ángel Luis Narváez Rodríguez, the referee, carried a canis familiaris-eared copy of the regulations. A regime inspector whose family began the local cockfighting lodge arrived to monitor the proceedings.
Two birds, identified for the fight as Red and Blue, faced off. They briefly circled each other. So, Blueish attacked. Red jumped. Wings flapped. The feathers around their necks flared. Spectators, some belongings alcoholic beverages in plastic cups, yelled their bets.
"twenty for Blue!" "I pay double!"
Red barbarous. Clumps of feathers flew in the air. Red staggered back up. Three minutes later on, with Bluish down and bleeding, Scarlet was declared the winner.
Blue's eyelids were swollen shut and claret was dripping from its torso. A handler rushed the bird to a back room where Geraldy Rodríguez Pérez, 21, washed information technology in a sink and lathered its crest with anti-inflammatory ointment. Mr. Rodríguez later gave another bird stitches. When a gamecock whose fight ended in a depict came in too badly injured, Mr. Rodríguez bankrupt its neck.
The gamecock — el gallo fino de pelea — is ubiquitous on the island. The mascots of the Academy of Puerto Rico'south main campus are a rooster and a hen. This summer, country lawmakers unveiled a monument to "the gentlemen's sport" behind the Puerto Rican Capitol. It is a bronze rooster statue.
The cockfighting world is made up mainly of men. The wealthier ones — businessmen, doctors — own gamecocks and hire staff to look after them. Some owners take started to motility their birds to the Dominican Commonwealth, where cockfighting remains legal, as it is in a few other places in Latin America .
Andrés Ortiz, 79, who runs an animal feed and supply shop with his son in the town of Cataño, said sales of fowl feed have gone down 40 pct in anticipation of the ban.
Fifty-fifty earlier the coming prohibition, though, the number of registered cockfighting clubs has declined to 71 from more than than 100. Activists say that is an indication of diminishing involvement. Though at that place has been no contained polling, the Humane Society of the Usa, which lobbied Congress for the ban, commissioned a survey of ane,000 Puerto Ricans in 2017 that establish that 43 percent backed the ban and 21 percent opposed it.
"There'south no justification in making money off cruelty," said Kitty Cake, the organization'due south president and master executive. Fights often consequence in pierced optics and punctured organs.
"This is all function of America, and there shouldn't be different standards," Ms. Block said. "It's such a gruesome, tearing life — and end — for these animals."
The prohibition bars hosting and promoting cockfights or using the Mail service to promote the practice. Owning gamecocks and attention cockfights were already illegal earlier final year'south subcontract bill — even if those restrictions practice non seem to have been much enforced.
Many wait fights to be driven surreptitious, equally they accept been on the mainland since cockfighting was banned.
In hopes of providing alternative sources of income, the Puerto Rican government, which legalized sports betting in July, said it would waive licensing fees for cockpits that turn into gambling halls.
For now, cockpits keep welcoming regulars, who insist the pastime already has been fabricated more humane.
The fights are now express to 12 minutes — 10 minutes for younger cockerels — or less if a bird stays down for 60 seconds. Metal spurs that once sold for $200 apiece are prohibited; the plastic ones used now price $5 each. Staff members examination feathers for doping. "We have evolved," said Orlando Vargas, president of Club Gallístico de Puerto Rico. "We are not opposed to modifying cockfights. There is certainly e'er room to better the culture."
In his lawn in Vega Baja, Mr. Figueroa said he cared advisedly for his birds. He tends to their indigestion. He meticulously records their breeding in a tattered notebook. And he notes that his birds live in larger cages than those raised every bit poultry.
One past 1, Mr. Figueroa and his son, José, 28, took the gamecocks to practice in a fenced pen. To build a bird's endurance, Hiram Figueroa chased it with a broomstick with plastic strips attached to one finish, resembling a large squeegee. José Figueroa poked at a bird with a rooster-shaped stuffed brute to get the bird to run from left to right in curt bursts, simulating a fight.
Later, the roosters breathed heavy. They drank a mix of water, honey and orange juice. The Figueroas gave them vitamins and supplements in pills and injections.
The men did non demonstrate a drill in which they let a gamecock exercise pecking at an untrained rooster.
"This is like therapy for me," José Figueroa said. "It's in my blood."
Alain Delaquérière contributed enquiry.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/09/us/puerto-rico-cockfighting-ban.html
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