Spanish Legacy Seen as Test for Birds, Men : Cockfights Sunday Sport in Puerto Rico

A swift tropical dawn pries the lid of night off the steep mountain valley.

It is Sunday, Domingo, a day of rest. But the roosters have long been up and crowing their morning song. It rides up the valley on the trade wind that fans the palm trees and dries their dew.

Some of the birds will sing no more. This is cockfighting day in Puerto Rico.

Justino Rodriguez has opened his country grocery store for half a day. He will close at noon, hide for a few minutes from just-too-late customers, then slip out the back door and head over the mountains for the Coliseo Gallisticos in Cayey. He has two cocks fighting this Domingo.

Contests Are Legal

There are over 100 rings in Puerto Rico, where cockfighting is legal. The contest dates back to the Spanish conquistadors who, as the saying is primly translated, “brought their roosters with them.”

The best fighters today are descendants of those birds, sinewy, violent attackers of any male intruder. Eating one is “like biting into marble,” says Randolfo Rivera, a banker who helped work his way through college handling fighting birds for his uncle.

Because Justino must mind the store, he has sent someone else to the Coliseo to arrange a match. It is not for the innocent.

Some 60 birds have been brought in at 9 a.m. this Sunday. The best are about 3 1/2 pounds. The best of the best, the Spaniards, are rust colored on the neck, black on the body. They are alert, feisty, lean; as far from the barnyard as the fighting bull is from the dairy.

They are weighed. Birds fight at equal weights. In seconds the handlers size up the competition. They look for a bird that is shorter than theirs. Height is an edge. They look for inferior feathering. Feathers cushion blows. They look for a shaved spur above the cock’s heel. Such a spur means the cock has fought before. It is where the wicked-looking artificial spur is attached. They look for pronounced rings of callous on the shins. This is how you tell a cock’s age. It does not tell you if the bird is wiser, ring wiser. Nothing does. You must, at the end, guess.

Handler’s Attire

But you take a fast look at the other handler, too. How is he dressed? Have you seen him before?

An owner may wear shabby clothes and cut his bird’s feathers coarsely to delude you into thinking he and his cock are bumpkins, pushovers.

That man there, he looks like a pirate with his black beard. He has come from the city, from San Juan. Why has he brought a bird to Cayey?

All this your eye must take in, for you are here for one thing: to bet. To match your bird with another and to bet on your judgment. Your judgment and a little of your manhood, too.

Justino’s man knows this. A man who thinks he has a superior bird will taunt. “Is that a chicken?” He means the bird. But he means you, too. At the same time, the “chicken” owner may drag his heels, play the coward hoping to pump up the size of the bet.

It is a ceremony of gamesmanship.

Justino’s man finally agrees to match his bird with another for $50. The bearded one from San Juan goads a local into betting $500. The aficianados nod their heads. They won’t miss this one.

Justino’s bird, like all the others, has been bred for one thing: to fight. He has never known a hen.

“It weakens them, just like a boxer,” says Wilfredo, a friend of Justino’s who also fights cocks.

The birds are fed a special diet of high protein dog food and corn. They are injected with vitamins. Once a week they spar, without the deadly spurs and with their beaks sealed, with an inferior partner. When they begin training, at about a year, they weigh four pounds. Training reduces them half a pound to fighting trim.

“When the bird can hold his weight and exercise for 25 minutes without tiring (the fight limit is 20 minutes), then he’s ready,” says Wilfredo. It takes six to eight weeks.

Foiled Robbery

Justino doesn’t look Latin. He looks like Rod Steiger. Not long ago he grappled a gun away from two men who tried to hold up his store. He shot them both. They recovered and are suing him for assault.

In the parking lot of the Coliseo, among the muddy pickups and new Japanese cars, Justino produces a velveteen-lined man’s jewelry box. Inside are six artificial spurs. They are about 1 1/2 inches long, rounded and curved to a sharp point. A spur maker can take a week to turn out a set. They can cost $200.

“The spur makers have nice houses, new cars, a boat in the yard,” says Wilfredo.

Justino holds the spurs up to the bright sun. There are no air bubbles in the plastic and nylon sheathing. “They are good,” says Justino. He passes them around. The others nod.

Scene of Fights

The Coliseo is a plain white cinder block building. It might have been a set for “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” In front there is a cafe. Along one wall is a worn wooden bar. The kitchen is serving fried chicken, barnyard chicken, through a window next to it. Men crowd the bar for a last beer before the fighting begins. They wear flowered sports shirts and embroidered Filipino ones, tails out, and talk animatedly about their bets. There are a few women, one with a babe in arms.

The high rollers, the men who have bought $7 ringside seats, have sized up the cocks, crowing challengingly in cages behind the arena, have sized up who’s betting today, have sized up the wads in their billfolds.

Everything is in cash. The odds change as the fortunes of the cocks in the ring ebb and flow. A bettor may have half a dozen or more bets going at varying odds as the fight progresses. He remembers them all. He pays off, in cash, at fight’s end. It is unthinkable to do otherwise.

“It is the ethics of the sportsman,” says Randolfo.

Bettors Robbed

Several years ago some men who knew the ethics of the sportsman--cash on the barrel head--held up the Coliseo. As the fans entered the cafe, they were waved through to the cockpit by a man with a shotgun. His partners tied the patrons to seats, took their cash, watches, rings, everything. A fan drove into the parking lot an hour or so after the fights were to have begun. Normally the Coliseo on Domingo vibrates like the Chicago Board of Trade when the Soviets are buying wheat, like the Polo Grounds when Bobby Thompson hits THE homer, like the Sack of Rome. The fan heard only silence. He left and called the cops. By the time they arrived at the Coliseo, the bandidos had escaped with over $10,000 in cash alone.

Justino goes into the side room where the cocks are readied. He holds his bird while an assistant, his face creased with ring wisdom, whittles the natural spurs down to a nub. He aligns the wicked-looking artificial spurs just so, then tapes them. The bird is ready.

Just how ready is anybody’s bet. “You don’t know how a bird will react to a wound until it’s hit in the ring,” says Wilfredo. “Then it’s too late.” He remembers a cock that instead of charging flew up to seat 146 on the fifth and top row of the little arena, the one reserved for “Damas,” and stayed there. This is a permanent and fatal loss of machismo for the cock, a temporary and much hooted one for its owner.

Actually, the rooster’s mother is to blame, says Wilfredo. “It’s all in the hen, all the breeding.” The right genes from a hen of the fifth ranked of the 10 breeds that fight in Puerto Rico can make a winner over a cock from the first.

Some Use Tricks

The sly hand of man can also play a role. It is not unknown for an owner to smear hawk fat under his bird’s wings. Even a fighting cock dreads the hawk. Or he might rub poison on his bird’s bill. Or shoot it with hormones or amphetamines a day or so before the fight.

“But 80, 90% of the fights are honest,” says Wilfredo.

Cheaters are easily identified by newly missing teeth. Revenge is primal and prompt.

Justino gives his bird to a teen-ager in a green and white T-shirt. It says “Coliseo Gallisticos, Cayey” across the front. The cock’s comb has been cut off to deprive an opponent of a beak hold. Its legs, lean as a half miler’s, have been plucked to distribute the musculature evenly. So has its stomach, to find and patch wounds should it survive. Its back is plucked, too, to reduce weight.

Ready to Fight

The boys put the birds in facing plastic cages. Confronting each other for the first time, the cocks glare and bob their heads up and down. Ringsiders eye their demeanor, then begin shouting bets at one another while waving their fingers to elicit action. Justino’s bird is deemed a 10-8 favorite. He takes the odds with a flip of the hand.

The cages are lowered to the green carpet of the ring. The judge wears a crimson jacket. He holds an ancient alarm clock with two bells on top. It looks like a $1 bargain from a mainland garage sale, but it is the timer for the fight. If a bird has not responded to an attack for a minute, it loses. If neither bird attacks for a minute, the judge releases a rooster he keeps in a cage at his feet. This is the tie-breaker. The cock is placed in front of each bird. If one responds and the other doesn’t, it is the winner. If neither does, the fight is a draw.

The judge signals to release the birds. They crouch, necks strained forward and down low, cowl feathers ruffled. For an instant they have the frozen tension of a Goya print. Then they strike, leaping into the air breast to breast in a blur of feathers. The spurs jab faster than an eye can follow. The beaks dart. Each time the birds fly at each other, the shouts of the crowd rise with them.

Justino’s bird is bleeding. He wigwags his fingers. He is hedging his bet. Feathers litter the carpet. The judge’s shout starting, then stopping, the one-minute count is hardly heard over the din.

Justino’s bird is recovering. Shouts. Fingers wave frantically in the air. A ringsider pounds the vinyl padding of the ring wall repeatedly. The woman with the baby watches impassively from the ladies’ section. It is a man’s Sunday.

Final Victory

There is no need for the tie-breaker this time. Justino’s bird plants a foot on his fallen foe. Bettors pull out rolls of bills from pockets and wallets to settle up. They leave for the bar to await the next fight.

Justino takes his bird to a sink outside the arena. He and the wise old handler wash the blood off. They look for wounds. There are several. They will be sutured. The bird seems remarkably calm.

“Tonight I will give him cortisone and some bread and milk,” says Justino. “He will fight again in maybe three months. He will be much better next time. Now he knows how to fight.”

Some cocks fight until they are 5 years old or more. One local bird won 29 fights in its career. Instead of settling into retirement with some hens, he was killed and stuffed by his owner.

Justino has won about $100 on the fight. “The drinks are on me,” he says proudly.

Two of his guests, mucho gracias, demur. They return to the city to catch the second half of the football playoffs between the Giants and the Rams. The ball is snapped. The athletes rise up and flail at each other in a manner and ferocity not unlike the cocks of the Coliseo. The crowd in that distant arena roars. It is even possible bets have been made on the game. At the end, Lawrence Taylor crashes into Ram quarterback Jeff Kemp to nail down a 16-13 Giant victory. There will be no field goal, no tie-breaker in California, either.

Domingo in Puerto Rico. Sunday in the United States.