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 News from Around the Americas | August 2006 
Getting Physical, Talon by Talon, In the Cockpits of Nicaragua
 N.C. Aizenman - Washington Post
| | Pastor Midence, center, clutches his gamecock after it destroyed an opposing rooster and garnered him $2,500. The coffee importer, who raises the birds as a hobby, has been going to cockfights for 50 years. (N.C. Aizenman/Washington Post) |
El Crucero, Nicaragua - It is already 2:30 p.m., yet the dozens of roosters strutting across Pastor Midence's front yard are crowing as excitedly as if it were first light.
Midence takes no notice. He is peering intently at bird droppings on the ground.
"Oh no. This is not good," he mutters in Spanish. "Look at how dry this is."
He narrows thick, black eyebrows at the tall gamecock that just produced the droppings. The bird stares back impassively, its long orange plumes gleaming like flames in the sun.
"I'll give him two sips of water before we leave for the fight," Midence decides. "Maybe four."
A burly man of 55, Midence makes his living importing coffee from a plantation in Nicaragua's northern mountains. Technically he raises gamecocks only as a hobby. But over the last month he has been preparing his birds for this evening's match with an intensity worthy of Joe Gibbs.
He has marched his flock up and down ramps to build their muscles. He has plied them with the rooster equivalent of five-star cuisine: premium gamecock conditioning formula produced in the United States by the Bluebonnet Feeds company, purchased by a brother in Miami and shipped to Midence's home in this quiet town about 15 miles south of the capital of Managua.
Now, just hours before the big event, Midence knows that all that effort will count for nothing if he does not obsessively monitor his birds' every gastrointestinal move.
Give the gamecocks too little food or water and they will be too weak. Give them too much and they will be weighed down by the undigested contents of their bellies.
"This is the true challenge of cockfighting," Midence says. "You want to get the gamecock exactly on point by the time of the fight."
He scoops the rooster into his arms and walks over to a cement-block hut by the side of his white ranch house. Three days ago, he sequestered his most promising gamecocks to this hut for a final regimen of total relaxation.
Inside, the hut is dark and warm and smells of straw. The birds are silent in their cramped wooden cages, possibly lulled by the sound of Olivia Newton John singing from a dusty boombox.
"Let's get physical, physical," she urges the gamecocks. "I wanna get physical."
Midence stuffs the first rooster into its cage and pulls out another for inspection. This rooster fought in a match the night before, slicing its opponent to death with the steel knife, or cockspur, tied to a gamecock's leg.
The victory came at a price. Ugly scabs crisscross the bird's face. Its once-golden feathers are dark and matted, and it is still bleeding from a gash under one of its wings.
"There's no way he can survive," says Midence. "We'll have to sacrifice him."
His tone is matter of fact. As much as he dotes on his gamecocks, he never names them or gets otherwise attached.
"I've been going to cockfights since I was 5 years old," he says. "You get used to seeing roosters die."
Critics in the United States are less blase. Nearly every state in the union has banned cockfighting, partly out of concern that it amounts to animal cruelty, partly because it fosters unregulated gambling. South of the U.S. border, however, the matches remain hugely popular among rich and poor alike. In Managua alone there are at least 45 cockpits -- wood-walled rings surrounded by bleachers in which the birds face off. Every weekend there are matches in towns across Nicaragua.
At 6:50Midence's shiny Isuzu pickup truck rumbles into one of them: Jinotepe, site of a fine neoclassical church and the somewhat less elegant "San Rafael" cockpit. Six roosters can be heard squawking from wooden boxes in the back of Midence's truck.
Mexican ranchera music blasts from speakers mounted on poles above the ring. Dozens of men in baseball hats and a few women in tight jeans stand in clumps, drinking vodka and fruit juice from plastic cups.
Midence wades through them with a grin, slapping backs and cracking jokes as he carries his birds toward a row of holding cages. But his expression sours as he lifts one of his roosters out of its box.
"Still some food in there," he says, rubbing the bird's stomach.
It isn't until 10:40 that Midence feels ready to test his first rooster in the ring. The winner will get 43,000 cordobas -- about $2,500. Midence opens a small wooden box to reveal a set of shiny steel cockspurs arranged on a red velvet cushion like tiny swords. His lips purse in concentration as he selects his weapon and lashes it to a leather booty on the bird's leg.
Then Midence carries his rooster into the ring to an eruption of cheers from the crowd.
"Pongo, Pongo, Pongo!" many holler, indicating that they want to put down a side bet on Midence's bird. "Cojo, Cojo, Cojo!" others cry, signaling their willingness to take the wager.
At the referee's command, Midence and his opponent thrust their birds toward each other. The roosters clash in midair. There is a blur of feathers and talons. After less than a minute, the opposing rooster falls to the ground and slumps forward onto its beak. Even by cockfighting standards, it is an astonishingly quick victory.
Midence pumps his fist in the air and hoots exultantly.
"This!" he yells. "This is what all that preparation was for!" |
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