After getting off the banka from the volcano we went across the street to the Talisay Cockpit. The arena seemed rather large for a small town like Talisay but it was filled with local residents. Admission was P20 each which is quite a bit of money for the local residents. These fights are a very common sport in the Philippines and the local population seemed to be taking it very seriously.
I am a little sketchy on the details of the process because everything was done in Tagalog. It looked like one chicken was deemed the challenger and another the defender. They were brought into the pit and held up. This action prompted a flurry of betting activity among the spectators. The scene looked much like the bidding activity on the New York stock exchange floor. People making deals with others, writing things down, making hand signals to others and wadding up bills and tossing them to others. Since I did not understand any of the language or know anything about the bidding process, I was scared to even make a move for fear of accidentally placing some sort of bet. The amount of money changing hands was quite a surprise to me. The average wage for a Filipino employee is in the range of fifty to eighty pesos per day, that is $2.00 to $3.50 US. The minimum bet seemed to be P600 which is $29.00 US or in other words, over a week's wages. From there, the bets went up into the thousands of pesos. Everyone started yelling "meron", or "wala" which literally translated meant "something" or "nothing". This is their method for choosing sides for the contest.
Once
the betting is over, the roosters are prepared for the fight. They have
already been fitted with razor sharp blades attached to the spur on their
leg. Just before the fight a sheath is removed and the referee starts the
fight. He holds both of the roosters a foot or two apart facing each other.
He brings them together until they peck at each other and then they are
released. They fluff their neck feathers to make themselves appear bigger
than they actually are. What happens next is so quick that it is really
hard to actually see. The roosters instinctively hop into the air and spur
their opponent using the razor sharp blades. The fights can legally run
as long as ten minutes but it looked like things were most often settled
in one or two. Fighting continued as long as both birds were on their feet.
Once a bird was down, the other bird typically hopped on top and pecked
at the lower bird's head. When the fight got to this point the referee
intervened by picking both birds up off the ground and starting the entire
process once again. The birds were moved together until they pecked at
each other. The fight was continued if both birds pecked. If one of the
birds failed to peck, the pecking bird is declared the winner. The referee's
determination to continue the contest was not often necessary because one
of the birds would clearly be dead.
There were a number of roosters which survived a losing encounter, and
for them there was an emergency medical facility available. This "cock
clinic" as it was called, consisted of two guys over in the corner
with a needle and thread. They yanked out feathers to expose wounds and
stitched them back together. The conditions were primitive and hence far
from sterile. The medics put a leather cloth over their laps and sat the
chickens there to work on them. In this assembly line process they took
no time to wash and soon had blood all over the leather cloth and all the
way up to their elbows. One bird had it's belly slashed open and it's intestines
had started to spill out: The medic pulled a length of intestine out examining
it carefully for damage, he then poked it all back inside stitching the
wound closed. Lani understood him telling the bird's owner that it probably
would not survive. Over in one corner of the cock clinic underneath the
bleachers I noticed a small pile of chicken feet with no chickens attached.
My guess was that they were on their way to a roadside barbecue grill,
but I did not attempt to ask anyone. In fact, I can't help but wonder how
many of these birds wind up as the daily special in restaurants that night.
Knowing the Filipino people, nothing will go to waste!
The
sheer number of roosters involved in the course of a day amazed me. The
cock fights started at 1:00 pm and continued until 7:00pm. There was a
staging area in the back of the arena where competing birds waited with
their owners for their personal dates with destiny. Fifteen to twenty people
were always lined up with their birds in this area. One fight occurred
every seven to ten minutes on average, and this was just one pit in one
small town. This spectacle was simultaneously unfolding throughout the
entire expanse of the Philippines. The shear number of birds dying these
brutal deaths is staggering.
An interesting side note to this story is that many of the best fighting cocks in the Philippines come from the United States, a country in which the sport is officially outlawed. I can only assume the sport is still alive and well in the United States as well.
We took the reciprocal course of jeepneys, busses and trains making the 2.5 hour trek back to Manila. We did some last minute shopping in one of the clothing districts and then headed to Barrio Fiesta for dinner.
Book Your Trip To The Philippines Right Now!Manila Bacolod Baguio Cebu Davao Palawan Banaue More Airline Reservations Tours Destination Guide |
