Why the cocks fight
: Dominicans, Haitians, and the struggle for Hispaniola / Michele
Wucker. - New York : Hill and Wang, 1999. - XVII-281 p. :
map ; 24 cm.
ISBN 0-8090-3719-X
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HILL
and WANG : Like two
roosters in a fighting arena, Haiti and the Dominican Republic
are encircled by barriers of geography and poverty. They co-inhabit
the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but their histories are as
deeply divided as their cultures : one French-speaking and
black, one Spanish-speaking and mulatto. Yet, despite their antagonism,
the two countries share a national symbol in the rooster —
and a fundamental activity and favorite sport in the cockfight.
In this book, Michele Wucker asks : « If the
symbols that dominate a culture accurately express a nation's
character, what kind of a country draws so heavily on images
of cockfighting and roosters, birds bred to be aggressive ?
What does it mean when not one but two countries that are neighbors
choose these symbols ? Why do the cocks fight, and why do
humans watch and glorify them ? »
Wucker studies the cockfight
ritual in considerable detail, focusing as much on the customs
and histories of these two nations as on their contemporary lifestyles
and politics. Her well-cited and comprehensive volume also explores
the relations of each nation toward the United States, which
twice invaded both Haiti (in 1915 and 1994) and the Dominican
Republic (in 1916 and 1965) during the twentieth century. Just
as the owners of gamecocks contrive battles between their birds
as a way of playing out human conflicts, Wucker argues, Haitian
and Dominican leaders often stir up nationalist disputes and
exaggerate their cultural and racial differences as a way of
deflecting other kinds of turmoil. Thus Why the Cocks Fight
highlights the factors in Caribbean history that still affect
Hispaniola today, including the often contradictory policies
of the U.S.
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THE
NEW YORK TIMES, May 2, 1999 :
[…]
Wucker finds in the cockfight
a microcosm for the two sides of Hispaniola: the strongman leaders,
like the Duvaliers and Balaguer, staging bloody fights in the
arena, while the players on the sidelines - the armed forces,
the bourgeoisie, the United States - wager on the outcome. But
she moves beyond this simple metaphor to explore the role of
the traditional cockfight in both national cultures, using as
a basis for comparison Clifford Geertz's studies of Balinese
cockfights. Indeed, she even enlists St. Augustine, who was entranced
by a cockfight he happened upon, and wrote of the deformity of
a bloodied, defeated rooster that « by that very deformity
was the more perfect beauty of the contest in evidence ».
The book's closing scene is,
fittingly, during carnival on the outskirts of the Dominican
capital, Santo Domingo, where Haitian immigrants and peasant
migrants reside. In the neighborhood of Palave, whose name derives
from the French Palais Bel, or beautiful palace, Haitians dance
to the sounds of a bamboo trumpet called a vaksin. Merengue mixed
with hip-hop blasts from a car stereo, and a Dominican youth
from New York break dances.
« During carnival,
the festival that flaunts limits and rules », Wucker
writes, « real conflicts disappear as Dominicans and
Haitians celebrate their differences and their common roots ».
It is a glimpse of the future, a New World moment when magic
and the real intertwine and Hispaniola's history unfolds in a
more hopeful way.
History as a Cockfight,
Review by Patrick Markee
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| mise-à-jour : 4 novembre 2006 |
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