Roosters with Knives, Guards with Guns
From 4:30am in the morning: the roosters crowing like packet popcorn in a microwave – one after another, until a quick succession of bursts increase per second. One crow followed by a responsive choir of cooing from neighbouring gardens. These animals roam relatively free in the spacious grounds, but their life is short-lived: they’re being raised for sabong (cockfighting).
Yes. That’s right. It’s legal here. Pretty gruesome, but roosters are fitted with a knife, a curved heel blade, and then, yeah I guess picture Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, except Russel Crowe is playing a chicken.
Outside the Sabungan in Antipolo City
We tip-toped our way through the sabungan (cockfight arena) yesterday after passing the guard in suited white, and the big red sign to the left of his head: “DEPOSIT YOUR FIREARMS.” Tip-toeing not because of any visible threat, but because any new and foreign experience warrants that sense of unease and trepidation. (Also the guard – just like any security outside your local mall, pharmacy or gas station in Philippines– has a large firearm strapped around his front). No way would I have any interest in going to a fight. But I was curious about what a Gladiator ring for chickens would look like, and the guard begrudgingly (if not a little suspiciously) let us through.
The empty food hall.
The empty canteen.
Sign reads: NO SPITTING ANYWHERE.
The canteen and arena itself was empty save for a few kitchen workers and a man with a broom. But the ghostly imprints of the members that frequent these spaces loitered in the back of my mind – cries and cheers and yells and fistfights, thousands of pesos passing from hand to hand; where the uber rich and uber poor meet in common purpose. I am told that during Cockfight season you’ll see hundreds of vehicles lined all the way down the main road, from the slick and polished cars of politicians, to the tricycles packed with the urban poor, carrying the prized game fowls that they have been raising for months. The chickens are specially bred and conditioned for stamina and strength, pretty much treated like athletes (special diets, special routines) until of course, they’re flung into the ring to determine their fate.
Cockfight Arena, surrounded by glass walls
A chicken being raised as game fowl.
I’m not here to condemn the gambling and the betting, the cruelty of the blood thirsty sport itself. It confounds me as much as it confounds you. But I have to humbly acknowledge that I’m not part of the 6,000 year old tradition, and I’m certainly not reliant on the industry to feed my family. When I walk through the neighbourhoods of the urban poor, despite the claustrophobia and density of dwellings, I feel very, very small and very, very lost in it all. A young teenage boy passes by us, craddling one of his family’s game fowls, stroking it’s regal feathers affectionately, beckong lady luck. He grinned up at me proudly, snot dripping, dirt smudged across his thin face. What an absurd tableau to imagine myself marching through the dirt towards him, holding a large sign of protest,“BAN COCKFIGHTING NOW!”
It is perhaps an unsavoury observation, but nonetheless a reality, that Cockfighting brings together rich and poor in an unlikely arena of equality; a congressman and a squatter, competing on equal ground.
Barangay (neighbourhood) in Antipolo
The front door of a small home.
Girl in pink, peering through electrical wires.