In a raucous cockpit in the Philippines, Dennis de la Cruz grins from ear to ear as he watches his roosters slash their opponents to death in a frenzy of blood and feathers.
Shut for two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional cockfighting arenas are getting back to full capacity across the nation.
Cockfighting is hugely popular in the Philippines, where millions of dollars are bet on matches every week. Roosters wearing bladed spurs on their legs go beak to beak in a brutal fight to the death, as spectators — mostly men — wager on the result.
Photo: AFP
Supporters defend the blood sport as being part of the Filipino identity and argue the birds would be eaten if they did not fight.
However, opponents maintain it is cruel and should be banned, as it is in many other countries.
“In our village, more than half the residents are cockfighters,” De la Cruz, 64, said at a recent derby in San Pedro, Laguna, where he fell one win short of the 1 million peso (US$16,970) champion’s spot.
Photo: AFP
In a nation plagued by inequality, cockfighting is a unique “neutral zone” where rich and poor mingle and play by the same rules, University of the Philippines anthropologist Chester Cabalza said.
Adhering to a strict honor code, spectators prior to the pandemic used hand signals like stock brokers to lay their bets during a match that can last less than a minute.
It is common for 300,000 to 400,000 pesos to be bet on a single fight, one aficionado said.
When cockpits reopened, regulators wary of spreading COVID-19 through excessive crowd interaction ordered operators to install betting machines, so winners could collect their money from the cashier instead.
“If your cock wins, you stride out of the ring like a tough guy — you exude a macho image,” gamefowl breeder Edwin Lumbres said, thrusting his chest out for emphasis. “But if you lose, you hang your head and shuffle out like somebody whose manhood is suspect.”
Katrina del Espiritu Santo, of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is pushing for cockfighting to be banned as the birds are “forced to fight to the death” — but her efforts have failed to gain much traction.
As cockpits fell silent at the start of the pandemic, many small breeders could not afford to feed their flocks and were forced to sell roosters at firesale prices — or throw them in the cooking pot. Others admitted staging illegal fights to make ends meet.
To revive the sport and get revenue flowing into government coffers drained by the COVID-19 response, former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte issued permits to seven outfits to operate online cockfighting.
Known as e-sabong, fights were held in empty arenas and streamed 24 hours a day, allowing people to place minimum bets of 200 pesos per fight on their mobile phones.
The sport’s popularity exploded — and so did the earnings.
People who had never watched cockfighting before began betting, while large breeding farms saw demand for their fowl surge.
Duterte said the national government was raking in 640 million pesos a month in fees — even as the economy tanked.
It was also lucrative for e-sabong operators. Charlie Ang, who runs Lucky 8 Star Quest, told a Senate inquiry this year that Filipinos wagered between 1 billion and 2 billion pesos on his platform every day, which he claimed accounted for about 95 percent of e-sabong bets.
However, the disappearance earlier in the year of 34 cockfighting workers, who are feared dead, and reports of gamblers being driven to financial ruin revealed the seedy side of e-sabong. Some punters reportedly killed themselves, while a woman was arrested for allegedly selling her baby to pay off debts.
Under growing pressure from the public and lawmakers, Duterte reluctantly shut down online cockfighting shortly before his term ended in June.
However, as pandemic restrictions eased in the past year, local governments began giving traditional cockpit operators permission to resume fights — to the relief of millions of Filipinos.
“People were angry because their favorite pastime was taken away,” said Dondon Clanor, 45, a cockfighting enthusiast. “Now everyone is happy.”
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