Last night I was over at Cabuto's using his drill and the conversation turned to the spanish saying, "es mi gallo." It comes from cockfighting, where the bird that you're going to bet on es tu gallo, much in the way that an english-speaker at the track might say "that is my horse!" when it's not theirs at all. So to say to a buddy "eres mi gallo" means that he is your boy, your home-skillet, tha man, your cha'DIch. The one you would bet on to win in a fight. However, in english, it doesn't translate well: "You're my cock, man, you really are. You're like a big cock to me."

Both he and Tejas go to the cockfights down at 26th street sometimes, not very often. Back home, Piloto used to train his dogs to fight, and he told me how:

-As a puppy, mess with the dog until it gets angry. Smack it if it bites you, and get an innertube for it to bite instead. As it bites and shakes the tube, say "shake it shake it shake it" so that it learns to bite'n'shake on command.
-As it's biting the tube, smack it in the legs, saying "down down down" to teach it to kneel on command.
-and so on. You train the dogs in its combat moves so that you can direct it during the fight. For example, dogs tend to rear up when they first start fighting. If you send your dog "down" and then tell it to "shake it", it will bite the abdomen or throat of the other dog, and might win very quickly.

Undoubtedly, this is a brutal and terrible sport, mainly because it transforms suffering on one party's part into entertainment on another's, which can't be good for society as a whole. But only the high-stakes matches are to the death. Why would you spend years training a dog from a puppy to expend it in one fight? When one dog gets a good grip on the other, the loser calls it off, and the dog only suffers minor injury. That is, if the people running the match allow it to be cut off. *gulp*

I don't think I could watch a dogfight. But Piloto said it was quite common to have some stranger knock on your door and say, "hey, can my dog fight yours, just for a little bit?" An informal, to-first-blood sort of fight. But he hated to make his dogs fight, they were his pets! He only taught them to fight because so many people would sic their killer dogs on yours just to be mean that a dog that couldn't fight didn't last very long. Similarly, the gay men in Mexico City are supposed to be the toughest fighters around, because they're picked on so much.

He trained roosters to fight just for fun, though. Apparently you gottta flip 'em backwards, again and again, to get them to kick their feet in the air. They get used to this kicking so that when you attach blades to their feet they'll use 'em to fight more readily. Then you pit your rooster against smaller ones to get it used to fighting and the taste of blood. At some point, you've got to get it in a headlock and cut off its comb, as it's like a handle for another rooster to hold while it kicks away. Then you chop up the comb and feed it to the rooster to make it extra tough and mean.

Unlike in Asia, in Mexico you don't eat the loser. So they start to pile up after a big cockfight day. They all have their throats slashed, too- if one rooster goes down, its owner can revive it with a little mouth-to-mouth, and a guy who wants to throw a match can take that opportunity to spit a marble down the rooster's throat so that it chokes to death. Thus the folks who lost their bets want to see that they lost fair and square.

I dunno... while a dog is a being capable of companionship and caring, a rooster deserves to die. I was chased around plenty by the big ol' roosters on the farm as a kid, and pecked, and stabbed with their little leg-spines. If it were me and a rooster in that ring, that rooster's not coming out alive. So if I'll kill 'em, and I'll eat 'em, why shouldn't other roosters get a chance?

Well, once again, this is a bloodsport. It's about watching things kill each other for fun, and suffering=pleasure is a dangerous, but not unmanageable, emotion to develop in someone. At least with a bullfight, there's a chance the bull will win. Heck, a bullfight is more fair than a McDonald's slaughterhouse! I heartily endorse bullfighting, I encourage the death of all *&^%*& roosters, but I wish people wouldn't make their widdle puppies fight. But these are judgements of another culture that I'm making, so I'm only really prepared to form a vague opinion without knowing more about the cultural aspects of the "sport". I can't imagine what someone from another culture would think about a fraternity initiation, or Elimidate, for that matter.