Cockfighters Tenaciously Defend a Legal Enclave of Blood Sport

A sign outside the Otero Private Game Club on the outskirts of town reads, “No Drinking, No Drugs and No Gambling.” The rusty-metal barn-like structure is surrounded by an ominous 10-foot barbed-wire fence.

Obviously, it’s no ordinary barn.

It’s a cockfight pit, an arena where feathered gladiators fight to the death. Every other week, men, women and children pack the pit to participate in a sport that is banned in 44 other states and considered a felony in 17 of those.

Strangers are rarely welcome here, strangers with cameras, never. This is for the people who understand it, who grew up with it, who love it.

Critics call it a blood sport. But for Fernando Viramontes and hundreds of other rooster breeders like him, it’s a way of a life.

“In my family, the tradition has lasted for more than 100 years,” says Viramontes, a high school health teacher and president of the New Mexico Game Breeders Assn. “I am proud to be part of that tradition.”

Jean Burton, president of the Carlsbad Humane Society, says trying to justify the sport by calling it a tradition is ridiculous.

“It was also a tradition to throw the Christians to the lions, but we grew out of that one,” Burton says.

Inside the game club, a band plays Mexican tunes in one corner while men and women line the walls chatting. A concession stand offers sandwiches and soda.

Fifty-two-year-old Bill Wood sits in his wheelchair at the edge of the ring sharpening metal gaffs for $5 apiece. The knifelike devices are slipped over the natural spurs of the gamecocks, to quicken the kills.

At center stage is the large dirt arena, about 20 feet in diameter, encircled by a Fiberglas window streaked lightly with blood.

Breeders enter five birds each, at $300 per entrant, to fight in this Saturday event. The breeder with the most wins takes home the whole pot.

Each bird is weighed by the pit operator and randomly matched with other entrants on a scoreboard.

Handlers place the metal gaffs on the birds and the first two are brought into the pit.

The crowd is restless, and the betting begins. After a quick look at the birds, people rush around the bleachers looking for takers.

“Veinte en verde,” shouts one elderly man, “Twenty on green.”

A referee scratches two lines in the dirt, the handlers shake hands and, without much coaxing, the birds lunge at each other, feathers flying high.

The birds stab each other with their gaffs, which often become entangled and the referee has to separate them. This continues for about 10 minutes before the audience starts to lose interest.

“I’ve got hens who fight harder,” yells one man wearing a bright red baseball cap with a rooster emblem on the front.

The referee shuffles the handlers and their birds into a smaller pit, called a drag pit, to finish the battle to the end. A new set of fighters is brought out to the main pit.

After a fight concludes, with one bird killing the other, the handlers shake hands again and money is exchanged in the stands.

Viramontes lives just across the Texas border on the edge of Anthony. With rows of pecan trees shading the grassy 2 acres surrounding his house, the plush grounds look more like a secret garden than a rooster farm.

About 50 birds are leashed to stakes--spaced out between the trees to keep them apart. Their stark red feathers contrast with the green grass and mirrored water dishes set out before them.

But make no mistake, while Viramontes treats these chanticleers like little kings for the first two years of their lives, he raises them for one purpose only: to fight to the death.

There are eight game clubs throughout New Mexico that operate under Viramontes’ game breeders association, though other breeders say many more exist.

There also is a national organization, the United Gamefowl Breeders Assn., formed in 1975 to protect the interests of cockfighters and game breeders. The organization has affiliates in 32 states.

Viramontes’ group of about 8,000 cockfighters recently lobbied in Santa Fe to stop legislation that would have outlawed the sport in New Mexico.

“Like any other sport, we do have our problems with people that come [to the fights] for drinking, trying to gamble and causing problems,” he says. “But most of the people are like me, there to take care of business.”

That business, Viramontes says, is to test the bloodlines of the birds for their “gameness,” or ability to kill their opponents the fastest. It’s also to make a little money, sometimes winning pots as big as $10,000.

He added that the people who participate in this sport also have a great deal of respect for the birds.

“Then you’re going to ask, ‘Why do we fight them till they die?’ ” he says. “Well, they have an internal instinct to fight and you have to build on that instinct. They would rather be in a fight every day, but I make them wait two years before I fight them.”

Elizabeth Jennings, executive director of Sangre de Cristo Animal Protection Inc., would like to see cockfighting banned.

“This is a heinous act and we don’t need to be encouraging blood sports for entertainment,” she says. “There is something hideous about making money off of two animals destroying each other and enjoying it.”

But getting the sport outlawed is no easy task, something state Rep. Delores Wright of Dona Ana learned when she introduced the bill at this year’s legislative session.

“I received threatening phone calls from people who said if I didn’t pull the bill, I would not be reelected ever again,” Wright says. “So I tried to compromise.”

In the end, Wright gave up.

“In my 26 years of living here, I just had no idea there were so many bird fighters,” she says.

Despite the cockfighters’ swift victory, Viramontes fears there is still a threat to the sport because of misrepresentation by media and animal-rights advocates.

“It is a private business, run by a group of private people who enjoy a sport unpopular with people who don’t understand it,” he says. “But I’d rather my children be raising game fowl than hanging out and joining a gang.”

Albert “Sergeant” York, a retired Army veteran who fights cocks alongside Viramontes, says he was first attracted to the sport in the Philippines during World War II.

Before it was outlawed in Dona Ana County, York operated a pit in Las Cruces that he says was frequented by community leaders and elected officials.

“It’s in my blood and I love it,” he says.

Viramontes says an entire economic community relies on rooster breeders, from feed suppliers to veterinarians. He says he spends $4,000 on labor and maintenance around his rooster farm and up to $500 a year on specialty grains from health-food stores.

He says he will sell about half his 150 roosters at $150 to $300 each to help pay for the costs of running his operation.

The sport was popular in ancient times in India, China and other Eastern countries and was introduced into Greece in the time of Themistocles, 524-460 BC.

From Rome the sport spread northward. Although opposed by the Christian church, it became popular in Italy, Germany, Spain and its colonies, and throughout England.

Cockfighting remained a favorite pastime of the English gentry from the early 16th century to the 19th century.

In the United States today, cockfighting is legal only in parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana and Virginia.

Viramontes says protecting cockfighters’ rights will always be his organization’s top priority.

“People who stay in this sport do it for the roosters--to preserve our rural lifestyle,” he says. “We are as game as our roosters and will fight to the bitter end to protect our sport.”