Unsure Footing

I love Dutch women. They are intelligent, easy going and they speak perfect English with an ever so slight - which is to say an ever so slightly adorable - accent. It goes without saying that they also have beautiful smiles and are all physically fit. Pull all of this together and what you have is a breed of perfect travel companions. Incredibly good looking, incredibly affable, and physically capable of tackling just about any adventure. In fact the only disagreeable thing about Dutch women is how they are constantly dating or engaged to Dutch men.

Or so they tell me.

Oh I’ve had my suspicions in the past, but I have yet to actually accuse anyone of going though the motions of texting and Skyping an imaginary Dutchman just to keep me at bay.

It should come as no surprise that when I bumped into The Dutchess in the small town of Baños I took an instant shine to her. She must have had similar feelings regarding American men, because I had the sense that it was mutual. We decided to travel together for a bit, first to Cuenca, and after a few days there down to Loja.

Unshockingly, it came out that she had a Dutch boyfriend studying something or other in Arequpia, Peru, and I was inclined to take her at her word regarding his existence. So fine, no fun under the sheets for us, but that just left more time together on our feet.

We watched a football match together, visited a museum and a mirador, toured the inside of several churches and cathedrals and paid a visit to a Panama hat factory. We even completed a 5 hour circuit skirting the rim of the mountains around the Parque Nacional Podocarpus. She didn’t complain once, not when the blasts of wind almost knocked her off the mountainside and not when I convinced her that the quickest way to dry out my wet hiking boots was to walk into a hair stylist and ask to borrow their hair dryers for a few minutes. I submit this photograph taken at the top of the mirador as evidence of the beauty and cheer of The Dutchess. (I have a picture of her drying out my muddy boots too, but will spare her the humiliation of that one)

The time we spent together was, for lack of a more masculine description, quite lovely. Discovering new places and meeting new people - exchanging impressions and opinions along the way. That’s what travel is all about. That was the beautiful part.

She wanted to continue into Peru and I wanted to check out the old gold mining town of Zaruma in the south of Ecuador, so we parted company with the promise to keep in touch.

Even though there was no shot at romance I had been on my best behavior during our time together, as is typically the case around attractive women. So finally having lost something beautiful, it was time to go and find something beastly, but where was I going to look for it in sleepy little Zaruma?

The answer presented itself more easily than I could have imagined, and I was suddenly glad that The Dutchess was no longer with me. How could I possibly explain to her why I was drawn to a poster board just off the main square advertising the local Gallistica - or in English - the local cockfight.

I have never been to one, and now that I had the opportunity to experience it first hand I have to admit that I felt a little giddy, but also a little guilty. Asking for directions was itself an embarrassment. Even though this is a widely enjoyed and conventional form of entertainment in these parts, I couldn’t help but feel the stigma of pursuing something I knew to be wrong, and all of the moral culpability that accompanied it. But make no mistake I did want to see it, and it was not just the curiosity of the spectacle itself. I was interested in the kind of people who would orchestrate and attend this event. Who were they? What were they? Besides, entry was free, so I wasn’t helping to fund the event and no one was profiting off of my appearance. I justified it to myself by saying that I was going to be merely an impartial observer, not a participant.

After questioning half a dozen different people I finally found what I was looking for. The so-called Coliseo Puas Zarumeñas was a rough built cement structure topped with a slanting, corrugated tin roof. The first thing I saw after walking through the chain link fence was a large chalk-board which would later be used to keep track of the contestants, the winners of each bout and the accumulated prize money.

There was a scale hanging from the ceiling with a special harness to hold the roosters steady. Gym lockers lined the walls, but these had breathing holes. Instead of stuffing them full of sneakers and old gym bags, this is where people stored their roosters.

As for the fighting space it was part gladiatorial pit and part little league stadium. A single bright light illuminated the center of the ring while a microphone dangled from the ceiling. They may have been trying to create a sporting atmosphere, but to me it came off like a sad attempt to hang a mantle of respectability on the whole thing.

I arrived on time, which is to say that I arrived an hour early. Punctuality is something of a 4 letter word in this country. So far there were only three men sitting around on stools. One of them wore a hook in place of his right hand.

A man with a missing leg limped in on crutches not long after, and later on another man missing his arm at the shoulder arrived. Ahh, I thought, this makes perfect sense. Of course this type of forced mutilation would appeal to men who are no longer themselves whole. Only they could derive a bitter delight in seeing other living things maimed as they had been.

But as people started to file in the opposite was becoming clear. This was not the fringe rabble of the town. Half of the men or more sported gold watches and expensive looking leather shoes. Some had baseball caps and collared shirts with proud looking roosters embroidered onto them. They looked like lawyers, dentists and assemblymen. This wasn’t the blood-thirsty mob I had expected to see. Even their behavior was a puzzle. Men hung around in loose postures, leaning against walls and reclining on benches. Calm. Controlled. Only a handful of men were drinking, the rest were staying sharp. I suppose the fact that there was over 1000 dollars in the acumulado was an incentive as this is a considerable sum down here. Some of them arrived carrying roosters tucked up under their arms like lap dogs. Some even showed up carrying padded valises with mesh pouches, out of which they each pulled a pair full grown roosters.

g
The time had come to pair up the fighters. Men placed their birds on a wooden table a couple at a time. They calmed and postured the roosters, lining them up in the same pose so that the assembly could evaluate them. They were examining them, but for what exactly? Height? Aggressive attitude? Size of their drumsticks? Only they knew, but it was serious business. Some offered their opinions to their neighbors while others smiled smugly to themselves like they had a secret that they couldn’t wait to reveal. Over by the hanging scale a rooster was being weighed in. His owner adjusted him in the harness while 4 others crowded around, curious to see what weight class he belonged to.

The first fighters had been paired up. The man who owned one of the birds held his rooster with its legs extended. At his shoulder another man was filing something. It was a one inch plastic claw. He was sharpening its edge for the fight. Meanwhile metal fasteners were being strapped to the rooster’s ankles and hot glue was used to adhere the claw to the back of its feet. The bird bucked a little in the man’s arms but he held it fast, occasionally stroking and smoothing its feathers, almost lovingly.

Another rooster was being prepared in the same manner a few feet away. This man brought his rooster to his lips and gently kissed it on the back - out of luck or affection I could not say.

During it all the legs of both roosters were shaking badly. Did they know what was about to happen? Or were they just traumatised by the procedure of having their feet filed down and scalded with hot glue?

Three sharp blasts from the referee’s whistle signaled the start of the fist bout, and everyone filed down and took their seats in the stadium. Some men shouted and gestured across the stands at each other, placing or modifying last minute side bets.

The owners held their fighters up so they could take notice of each other. The birds had been so riled up beforehand that they needed little encouragement. Once released they flew at each other and came together in a fury of flapping wings and kicking claws. After 30 seconds of brutal scratching the owners stepped in. It was hard to distinguish much of anything during the tangle of feathers but one of the roosters was no longer participating. They tried standing him up twice but both times his legs buckled and he collapsed on his side. The match was over.

I hung around for the next bout, curious to see if they all went as quickly or if the speed of the first match was an exception. I am sorry to say that this fight lasted longer. Too long. Three minutes into the contest it became apparent that one of the roosters no longer wanted to fight. He was turning his back to the other and flopping down submissively. When this happened the owners would step in and separate them to reset the action. The owner of the losing rooster would pinch his chest and cuff the top of his head to rile him up and put some fight back into him, long past the point where the bird had any hope of winning the fight. After all, there was money on the line. It was painful to see this being prolonged as it was, and when I noticed someone watching me instead of the fight I was suddenly aware that I was grimacing. With much reluctance on the part of the owner of the losing bird, the fight was eventually stopped.

After the fight I hung around near the owner of the loser, curious about its condition. It was hard to tell between the red blood and the mattered red feathers, but it looked like one of its eyes was now missing. I watched as the prosthetic talons were unwrapped and roughly ripped away. The rooster had struggled when they were first put on with hot glue, but now it was too hurt or insensible to do anything other than lie still. During the process bettors came over and money exchanged hands. The rooster’s blood spilled from its head wound onto the owners hands, which I found entirely appropriate. When he reached into his pocket to get some money, the blood was smeared onto that as well. Again, entirely appropriate. Aggravated that the rooster was making a mess by bleeding over everything, the owner held the rooster by the legs with one hand and shook the blood off him as one would shake the rain off of an umbrella, then he pushed the bird back into the locker, closed and secured the door with a padlock, as if it were in any condition to engineer a daring escape attempt.

Up until this point I had not been very talkative but now I found myself acting downright uncivil. When the next curious somebody came over to ask me where I was from I answered him curtly. When he asked if I was enjoying myself and I almost spat out the reply that we don’t have these types of things in MY country (of course that’s not true but it seemed like a good way to obliquely get my point across at the time).

There were at least three dozen roosters left and plenty of empty spaces on the betting board, but I had had enough so I walked out. One thing I realised in retrospect was that there were no recriminations or angry arguments over crippled birds and lost money. Everyone there was laughing and joking and generally enjoying themselves. These are the sounds that followed me out of the coliseum and down the street as I walked away, the sounds of a happy occasion. There are many things that were beastly about that night, but when I think back upon it, that carefree laughter was the most unsettling of them all.

• Comments (2)