Death

The shouting only increases as time passes. I can hardly see what´s happening. There is a flurry of feathers working its way around in a whirling circle.



I can see faces, all of them male, full of emotion, passion, and desire. Surely something important is happening. Freedom or liberty must be being won. Lives must be being protected or enhanced somehow. Nothing short of a historic even could possibly be occuring.



Then a voice rises above them all, ¨ES PORQUE SOY MACHO!¨and repeats this over and over. I catch sight of the face screaming these words. It is gleeful and excited, and attached to a small and weak body dressed in a pink polo shirt and slacks.



The voices reach a fever pitch, screams and rìpped vocal cords from all directions. Nations are freed from slavery with this much excitement.



Then, completely unexpectedly, the shouts and screams turn to howls of laughter. Loud and unsubsiding chuckles, cackles, and wheezes. Something has changed, and looking around at the faces, ranging in color from white to red to black, and in age from toddler to great-grandfather, I can see that the seriousness has gone from the moment. The Berlin Wall has fallen, and now it´s okay to make jokes about it.



Leandro gives me a playful shove and makes a throat slitting motion while opening up his lips into a wide smile that displays his schockingly whit teeth. ¨What do you think? I told you I know what I´m doing!¨



I´m still looking into the crowd. There, in the small space surrounded by laughter and masculinity, are two birds, and half a life.



One cock, barely alive, is walking in circles, while the other, fully dead, is dragged behind him. The winner has just embedded the blade, attached to his claws with tape, into the head of the other. Wearily he stumbles around trying to dislodge his foot from the corpse that follows him, not appearing to enjoy the victory.



What do I say to Leandro when he asks me for my opinion about the two clumps of feathers covered in blood? I say ¨yea.¨ A non-commital commital that neither supports nor debases his pastime. The question I probably should have asked is, ¨You were right, Bird X did win, but do you really know what you´re doing? Or is it me who´s confused?¨ The laughing continues.



We´ve come to Biafara, a small mountain town to the north, just to have a look around. Leandro has been asking me to go with him on the back of his motorcycle. So, I finally came.



This is a pretty little place tucked into the hills surrounding it. Like most small villages it runs on agriculture. There are barely enough kids for a school, and yet this town is the area´s capital for nightlife, women, and cock fighting.



Leandro doesn´t ¨play¨ cocks much. He´s too busy working in the field and as a ¨cobrador¨ for the guaguas that run through. At age 25 he has 3 children, one 10 year old girl, and two young boys. The mother of his girl now lives in spain and his daughter lives in San Juan with her maternal grandmother. The two boys live in Lost Toros with their mother, who is Leandro´s only ¨serious¨ girl. He has introduced me to several other young women he terms ¨mi novia.¨



On our way here we talked alot about agriculture, but mostly about money and women. I´ve learned how to force conversations into wider topics pretty well, but it is impossible to avoid talking about those two. Leandro is a straight-forward guy, and I like that about him. I know exactly what I´m in for when I´m with him, and can therefor prepare for, or avoid, what´s coming.



Today is an exception. ´We stumbled across this scene, and when Leandro asked me if I wanted to have a look, I figured I should do so at least once. Alot of the male Dominicans I know raise ¨gallos¨ (cocks), but until now, I hadn´t seen a fight.



Normally I don´t like to condem things before I experience them or am sufficiently informed somehow. That being said, I walked into this crowd fairly sure I wouldn´t being opened up to the enlightenments of cock-fighting.



¨Gringo!¨they had shouted as we entered into this backyard ring made of stretched out tin cans. They weren´t shouting at me though. Here I´m invisible because the action takes priority. ¨Gringo¨was the name being used for a white bird being sized up. They were declaring that he would be a winner, though Leandro disagreed.



Before the fight had started money was flying around. The ¨trainers,¨ about 6 of them, were walking around the ring and testing their birds on one another to find the matches with the most chemistry. They would pet their birds slowly and carefully, pulling the long shimmering tailfeathers softly to their ends, as if caressing a lover´s hair in a honeymoon suite.



Then they would jut their bird out like a torpedo at another bird, ramming its face into that of the other, to provoke a fight. Some birds seemed to show no interest in the scene, whereas others, such as Gringo, seemed inclined to be gladiators.



The first pair was selected, and the cocks were brought over to the official. This man is serious, and I feel inclined to respect him on account of this. He sits on the only chair present, wearing and old cowboy style shirt and a facial expression of that of a priest performing a rite, or a doctor in surgery. His job is to weigh the birds to ensure they are more or less equal in size. Then he tapes on the blades, his hands nimble and concentrated as he turns the birds´natural form of protection into weapons of agression. He is a doctor of sorts I suppose, performing an operation, but one that hastens death rather than prevents it.



Once armed, Gringo and his opponent were held up. More money had seemed to fly around. Countless hours of field work were put down on these birds by men whose families lack decent water and live in houses with dirt floors. The calmest beings present were me and the birds, who seemed oblivious to the attention.



Then the ring was cleared, and silence was almost achieved. The owners of the two combatants moved closer, and began thrusting their birds at each other once again. The birds took to it, and as they were let loose the quiet was buried by the voices.



I am at the back, and had craned my neck to see, even though I didn´t really want to. They fought like ninjas, half flying and half running, pecking and slashing and pinning each other down. I couldn´t tell who was winning, though Gringo was already covered in blood. A few minutes passed and then I could see an end approaching. Gringo stopped fighting. He stood there as the other bird buffeted him around. He had lost the will to fight and the desire to live.



That was when ¨machö,¨the winning owner, had started to shout. Just before Gringo recieved his final blow and the laughter began. I don´t understand why it was that the time of death, the second a life stopped, was the moment that laughter began. I guess I really don´t understand much of any of this, and that´s why I just struggled to answer Leandro.



Gringo´s owner stoops down and disconnect the bird. He too laughs when, as he removes the blades and tosses the bird outside the ring, someone shouts ¨Make a stew!¨ That person has offered me something to latch onto, that maybe there is a hint of a purpose to all of this. Yet I doubt he´ll make a meal out of the tattered flesh he´s thrown aside.



Another fight begins, and I don´t put much effort into watching. I´m lost in my thoughts, searching around inside of me for answers to questions about life, humanity, and culture.



The fight ends quickly. This bird has died from a punctured lung. His body too, a splash of colors and patterns more beautiful than any human creation, is tossed out of the ring.



I think Leandro senses my feelings, and he asks me if I want to go. I say yes. Back on his motorcycle, we head out of the hills and down to our valley as the sun begins to set.



I don´t say anything. My mind is still inside of itself.



Why does this sport exist, and why do they enjoy it? Who is they? Doesn´t the history of mankind turn up examples like this and worse? A history of fascination with pain and death. War, gladiators, dog-fighting, cock-fighting, wrestling, boxing, sport hunting, and domestic abuse. What do we enjoy about it? Is it a sensation of power? Is it that in seeing another life end we feel like we ensure ours continues, having satisfied the grim reaper for a day?



I don´t find the answers, but I do come across more questions to ask and some that I shouldn´t.



I shouldn´t wonder, ¨What is it about these Dominicans that makes them like this?¨ That would be narrowsighted for two reasons. One, because Dominicans are human and I could simply ask why would I like this, and two, because cock-fighting is just one example of a global and historical trend.



In realizing this I do find one answer. That is that I can´t expect to figure this out on the way back from Biafara if it´s something that has developed and embedded itself in reality over the course of mankind´s existence.



Not despairing, but still feeling a bit overwhelmed, I try to refocus on my surroundings. The fields zip by us in flashes of brilliant green and yellow, and the warm breeze from the ocean buffets our bodies and fills our shirts with air from far away places. Palm trees and coconuts throw shadows across the landscape dotted with grazing animals and tiny houses. The sun, further down in the west, is starting to sink down behind the mountains, casting the sky into a splash of orange, yellow, and red, as if it is exploding on impact somewhere in Haiti. I think to myself, ¨Pure beauty. Life is full of this.¨



It forces me to ask one final question. ¨How does anyone not living in the most horrible of conditions ever get this wrong, revelling in the ugliness of death when life hits them with beauty every second?¨ I smile.



¨Do you want to go again sometime?¨Leandro asks, turning his head to the side so I can hear him over the wind.



¨No thanks!¨I half shout back, without turning my head away from nature´s nightly fireworks, ¨Death isn´t my thing.¨







P.S. I don´t consider hunting and killing for food a part of this, as that isn´t an obsession with pain or death. It´s a pre-occupation with nutrition, a means to an end that can be carried out with respect and minimalized suffering.



P.P.S. Commenting on the amazing sincerity shown by fanatics and trainers also raises questions about all of the ¨Sports¨ out there. Why do we, whether Packer, Badger, Red Sox, or Arsenal fans, treat these games with such importance, to the point of neglecting necesities of ourselves, families, and others?



We get mad or sad when a team loses. We won´t remember that for long, but we will remember forever the times we were seriously injured, lost family members, and other such things. What will we think about at the end of this wonderful life? Not a 30-17 final score.