I lived for a year in Mexico City, helping establish a business down there. Many millions of people densely packed into the plain encompassed by mountains on three sides, the only place in the country, then, where you could count, somewhat, on the American-style amenities that enable complex business transactions. A city of refugees from the countryside, hoping to improve their lot, and often suffering worse on their arrival. Families whose principals could speak only Ottomi, who depended on their children, nimbler in the acquisition of Spanish, to retrieve for them the materials and information to establish some kind of a life there.
Among the people thronging to the City were many lovely young women. The country families would gather their resources and send their prettiest daughters off, to acquire some culture at a finishing school, to acquire a job, to acquire a husband with prospects. Marisol was one of these.
Her family hailed from the subtropical state of Chiapas, where the rebels were and are strong. They owned a ranch carved out of the jungle. Among her siblings was a brother whose job description, translated into English, might be Cockfight Impresario. She invited me to go visit, but I declined, as having too many obligations, and also reservations about the safety of such an expedition. My work took me to many parts of the country, including Oaxaca, recently in some turmoil, and the prevalence of drug smuggling there made me think that going still further into the somewhat lawless south wasn’t a very good idea. The police were bad enough, without having to worry about militia.
Which is all a long prologue to an article in USA Today about the prevalence of the cockfighting tradition in the US, despite its being illegal in all states except Louisiana and New Mexico. For better or worse, we are still allowed to write and publish bad poetry, though it might be argued that it is just as barbaric.
Cock fighting? Did someone mention cockfighting?
<a href=”http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/USATODAY/2007/01/23/2602952?extId=10053″ target=”_blank”>Fixed your URL.
I was eating a hot dog at the Sam’s Club in Santa Fe one day a few years ago, and ended up sharing a table with a guy who turned out to be from Mexico, well-dressed with plenty of jewelry, spoke some English. Turned out he was living somewhere around Espanola, north of Santa Fe, and in the business of breeding and raising fighting cocks, a family trade he had brought north. I don’t remember the amounts now, but I was surprised at how much a good fighting bird is worth, in the ring and at stud. The issue gets framed as a rural, Hispanic legacy tradition vs. urban Anglo incursion, but this is a rural tradition that involves a lot of money changing hands, all based on gambling as far as I can tell.
Bills to ban cockfighting come up every legislative session here (this year no exception, with Bill Richardson supporting the latest one), but they have been turned consistently back. I’d always find that surprising, as it didn’t seem like the pro side could be big enough to have that effect. After talking to this guy, though, I got a sense of the amount of money involved. How that translates into legislative support can only be imagined.
Thanks, Any Mouse.
Byron:
Maybe we could get it televised for parimutuel betting. We could have poetry slams, too.
Chipas is in the tropics (between 23.5N and 23.5S). Subtropic is the area just north of or south of the actual tropics.
Thanks, Huey. Didn’t realize that Chiapas was actually in the tropics. Is Oaxaca state mostly in or out?
You can pretty well figure anything in Mexico South of Mazatlan is in the tropics. The tropics start at 23.5N and extend to 23.5S.
Holy crap. Well, it must have been the aridity of much of the Pacific coast that had me fooled, then. Certainly seemed like the tropics in Frontera, Tabasco.
There is nothing worse than the nasty habits and amusements of the underclass, nor more worthy of the law’s efforts at their suppression.
Amen, brother. Though bad poetry observes no station.
I don’t see a cotton-pickin’ thing wrong with cock-fighting.
Did you know roosters don’t have cocks?
We can slaughter chickens all day long to make fried chicken, but give a rooster a chance to be a winner in the ring, an avian gladiator, and they call it abuse.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
It’s big fun to see the local Progs torn right asunder when confronted with cockfighting.
On one hand there’s the exploitation/cruelty to animals, and on the other hand their sappy love for any culture not their own. Downright juicy.
I recently saw a local Mejicano wearing a hat that proudly proclaimed his love of the sport. I can guarantee that no activists splashed any blood on him.
I spent Christmas in San Miguel de Allende. The women(and there are plenty of them) are uniformly good looking. My sis-in-law mentioned cock fighting. She’s into blood sports and took me to my first bull fight. They hold the cockfights in the seedy men’s bars. In theory women can attend, but they don’t.