2019 I set off to the Island of Siargao in the Philippines. It cured my depression.
I returned a year later to find my street dog, Fluff-Fluff, and reconnect with the people of a place I found to be so special. A secret whisper of paradise.
The secret did not last. Vogue named it the hottest island of the year and upon my return I found 9 ATM’s where before there was one… kind of. The one a year ago usually didn't have any money in it.
Fluff-Fluff and I fled north, deeper into the Jungle. Farther from the crowds, the noise, the commercial yap of piss-drunk Aussies and Americans.
We ventured to a small town called Pacifico, a town with no light after dark. Quiet, peaceful, and small - studded with a few foreign adventurers like myself blended with a hearty mix of rambunctious locals - The Filipino Surfer Boys. Carefree and quick to laugh, teasing and playful, but about one thing they were very serious - cockfighting.
I had to see. I didn't want to. But I had to.
It was in the death throes of a flapping wing that my eyes were opened to the dark side of paradise. The gambling, the greed, the corruption. The layers beneath the sunshine and smiles.
In my curiosity, I wrote.
NSFW
BLOOD AND FEATHERS
Sunday is quiet, the morning’s decibels oddly absent of the Rooster’s Cry.
Blood stained sand as the sad boy carries his lifeless rooster from the pit. The men cheer and yell throwing money quite literally in crumpled balls of colored bills to square up on lost bets. The air is heavy with smoke and the humid sweat of men as loose feathers float in the thermals of their excitement. Electric energy in a storm of brutality; There is no lightning, but the thunder roars when the next rooster falls in a heap of blood soaked feathers as yet another match concludes. Two by two, over 300 roosters will fight today. Likely all will die.
Do birds have souls? I am truly not sure. I never advocate violence, but this is not my place to pass judgement. This is the national sport of the Philippines. Every Saturday of every week of every month of every year of every town and village for as many generations as no one knows.
The thunder crescendos resetting in intervals of short minutes.The next fight begins as the two men carry their prized fighters into the 3 meter ring. They carry the chickens swaddled in a firm grip between their leathery hard-labored hands. The two are brought beak to beak for a staredown. One jet-black, the other snow-white; I am here to look for the grey between.
The man on the left roughly grabs the beak of his rooster and lifts its head, forcefully revealing its neck to the other bird. The opposing rooster instinctively jabs one, two or three quick pecks to its throat. Black feathers fall with each nip to the neck as the crowd eagerly studies the speed and aggression displayed by the contender. The ritual is reversed as the other chicken has its throat forcibly revealed for a vulnerable pecking. The aggression and superficial wounds fill the animals with adrenaline and a bloodlust for combat. It is not the pecks that kill, it is the three inch sickle shaped razor blade tied to the dominant foot, protruding towards the tail and curved downward in menace to the bloody sand. An artificial talon of lethal intent.
The crowd builds in excitement, watching the ferocity of free hits and judging the condition and strength of the two animals. The men study the size and color of the birds, the shine of their feathers, the length and muscularity of their legs - they observe and study, weighing physique against the signaling signs of aggression, temperament and potential ferocity in an attempt to precognate the victor. Coded hand signals communicate bets to the bookies as small children duck between legs and scramble along loose boards around the arena to collect the gamblers money. They carry miniature locking briefcases proportional to their size.
The bets flow as the two farmers continue to push the two roosters beak to beak, keeping the instinct and lust for death as hot as their own.
The two roosters lock eyes, neverminding anything in their surroundings. They want only to kill the other. They grace the Apex of their domain, with no thought of fear. Never have I seen such singular intent in a creature.
The fight starts and both men drop their chickens to the floor. The action is immediate and rabid as the two roosters jump, slash, and strike one another in a flurry of feathers backrounded by hungry shouts of feverous greed. I witness absolute purity in violence.
I sit watching the carnage between the shoulders of two men and glances at my paper writing this note, the only white person in a crowd of maybe 500, not knowing what is being said, only understanding the common language of blood and violence. I sit there in my blue short sleeve button-up adorned with a patterned print of happy french bulldogs. My grey Club Monaco shorts dirtied from sitting on a loosely constructed palm-beam scaffold traversed by a thousand muddied sandals. The beams wiggle, flex and creak in an OSHA nightmare; it's fine.
The fight lasts maybe 30 seconds tops, the white rooster lays dead on the sandy arena floor, its plooms of snow-white feathers coated in dark blood pulsing from an arterial cut. A wing spasms once more and the bird lays still forever, slumped in a heap in the sand, lifelessly indifferent to gravity. My heart feels heavy and the pit in my stomach blinds me to the eruption of chaos and excitement from the men around me. I need a beer.
The brutality shocks my senses; for everyone else, it’s Saturday.
I make my way along the thin plank as locals scooch and dangle to make room for my larger awkward white body. They do so absent minded of my presence or their own action in an automotion undistracted to the next fight’s ritual. I realize now the fight itself was dead quiet, silenced in appreciation of action.
I climb and clamber my way through the crowd and out into the pre-fight lobby.
Rows of cages; a rooster in each. A few dead cocks lie limp dripping blood into the cages below. Tossed above in an afterthought like a value-less backpack atop a gym locker.
I get a Red Horse, the 6.9% strong beer, and wipe away the rust of the cap left at the lip of the bottle with the edge of my unbuttoned shirt. Its fucking hot. I step outside into the sun to grab another roll of film from the storage compartment under the seat of my 150cc semi-automatic motorbike. My bike is white and I think of the rooster and its last convulsive twitch.
Outside small boys run their own ring, fighting spiders on sticks. Catching big ones in small wooden boxes and saving them for days like today. Violence seems ever present here. I try not to judge, but the casualness of brutality unsettles my core. People speak with a deep fear of death, but don't seem to hold the same value of life to anyone outside moderately extended family. Fights don't get broken up; involvement is risk. Stories of violent fathers are the norm. A man threatened my street dog, Fluff-Fluff, with a nail studded board as he lay sleeping at my feet. “It's just a dog” he says.
Routinely my facebook feed is inundated with photos of cracked skulls and the bodies of motorbike deaths, submitted to my feed by my local friends in relative indifference to the gore. Death is ever present here and violence is just a part of that life. It seems a hard contrast to the warm spirit of the Filipino people so eager to share a meal, a drink, and a laugh.
I drink my beer and walk a bit. The clouds are alive, shifting and changing in watchable movements. The chaos of a shifting environment ever present. Sun one moment and a torrential downpour a minute later. You never know what this island will bring. Chaos is all around me.
I finish my beer and return the bottle to the woman who sold it to me. The deposit is worth nearly as much as the liquid inside.
The barbeque is sizzling with one item. Chicken. I don't have much of an appetite, but appreciate that nothing goes to waste. Men snack hungrily on the grilled legs of former fighters, careless of the hormone and steroid infusions, the grease dripping down their fingers as they nibble flesh from bone. I am definitely not hungry.
I walk the pit and study the cages some more. Men sit holding their prized fighters discussing diet and breed while attaching razor blades to one leg. The razors are a sickle shape and face backwards towards the tail. They are maybe 2-3” long and are made safe between fights with caps of solid colors. Something about a blood-caked barbie-pink knife sheath makes me queerly sick. I think I need another beer.
I had thought I would become desensitized quickly; horror for a fight or two and then I had assumed my own innate thirst for violence would bring me into the spirit of the action. My first muay thai fight I cringed at the savage blows, but found myself screaming bets, gambling on fights between 12 year old boys just an hour later, but I don't think I have that in me anymore. Age or empathy, I'm not sure what I feel right now. This is not my world, not my environment, not my culture. Who am I to judge?
There is little industry or opportunity on this island and cock fights represent an eternally lucrative business mixed with a dream of winning big.
In my mind I walk a few miles in their sandals. A winning rooster could afford my imaginary daughter the opportunity to go to school - why would I not participate? How could I not?
The fights are legal with a permit, the gambling is not. But what is a cockfight without gambling? The cops are there too, betting alongside the rest of their community. The two go hand in hand.
The amount of money changing hands is staggering considering how little money there is on the island. People can win tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of pesos at large tournaments in a series of winning bets or by owning a champion rooster.
Most bet small with faded-orange 20-peso bills, red 50s, purple 100s or yellow 500 peso notes (about $10). But as the tournament thins to its peak and egos grow, as the air gets hotter and the smells of blood and adrenaline grow in tandem to the flow of Tanduay rum, the bets grow larger. Tournament prizes are paid to the owners of the victors and frequently reach sums of five or six figures.
But the gambling is a huge problem.
‘My Mother left my father because he wouldn't stop betting all of our money’ I hear time and time again in late night conversations with locals over Tanduay rum and cokes. ‘My brother steals from my father to bet on the fights.’
Systemic and countrywide, gambling is a widespread blight across the philippines and truly across the globe. Many have that demon, but here it is compounded by a lack of opportunity.
There are four industries on this island. Two exist in the light and two in the dark. Tourism is booming and the land sustains the local agricultural needs alongside some export of natural goods like coconut oil. Agriculture and tourism.
Working in agriculture is dominant of labor hours. Tourism is highly lucrative, but difficult to fully break into - requiring either the money to own property and start a business in desirable locales or the experience, education and language needs of catering to foreigners.
Tourism and the vast sums of money imported from travelers breeds the third industry: Corruption. I could go into detail about my friends in jail for crimes they didn't commit, the bribes, the coveting and political maneuvering of high-value land driven by the surge in foreign popularity. I could discuss the assassination committed by the police just outside my room and the erroneous report of falsified lies. I could talk about the hypocrisy of the drug war and The List. But that is another essay.
I finish my second beer and return to this essay and the 4th industry of this island: Cock-fighting. A realm where anyone, no matter his age, experience or education, can change his entire fortune in a day. Or at least that is The Dream.
It is midday and the arena is sweat-drenching in heat. Eddies of cigarette smoke drift through the air highlighted by sunbeams penetrating the patchy tin roof. A small grey feather drifts past me as my mind returns to the present and the roar of the crowd.
I climb and scramble my way back into the thick of it, grabbing grubby planks to hoist myself up higher and higher into the palm-wood bleachers as the colored bills fly in their crumpled bills around me. Most bills are caught by their recipients, but uneven adrenaline throws sends other sums of money short or far of their intended target. No one takes what is not theirs. They pick the money off the muddy ground and hand it to the winner with no thought of theft. Its loosely organized chaos that reminds me of being in an airport - swirling mixing sweaty stress and excitement always moving forward.
A man punches the tin roof, over and over and over. The frustration of his loss echoing across the murmor of overcrowded revelry in the loosely constructed stadium. I hear the words ‘no luck’ and the gambler's illusion is revealed: that winning is done through smart choices and a studious bet, losing wagers blamed on bad luck in a skirt of responsibility. Just one more fight.
An attendant sweeps the loose feathers from the fighting pit with a fan-shaped jungle-made broom as the winning rooster is collected by its owner and the loser is retrieved - the lifeless bird sways with his stride gripped loosely by one leg like a child carrying a teddy bear he doesn't want to hold but cant forget.
I watch a dozen more fights, unsure if the numbness in my mind is a desensitization to the violence or if I'm succumbing to the intense heat. Sunlight filters through the Marlboro haze, the air is stagnant, moving only with the exhalation of cigarettes, the flapping of wings and the unending shouts of excitement.
The next two roosters enter the arena. I like the look of the Red one and pull out my pesos.
