Читать книгу Black Man on the Titanic - Serge Bile - Страница 32

Cockfights.

On some afternoons, Joseph attended cockfights in an open-air arena in the outskirts of the city. The gamblers crammed around a circle to watch two gallinaceans furiously trash each other by striking though the feathers with reinforced spurs.

Cockfighting is an ancient spectator sport that can be traced back at least 6,000 years. It was popular in Persia, India, and China, and spread northward into Europe after being introduced to Greece between 524-460, BC. Eventually, colonization and the transatlantic slave trade introduced it to the Western hemisphere. Cockfighting plays a central role in Alex Haley’s novel Roots. In cockfights, specially bred gamecocks are equipped with metal spurs or knives, which are fastened over their natural leg spurs, and are released into a circular ring where they spar off against other gamecocks, often until one of the birds dies from their injuries. Cockfighting is illegal in most of the modern world but is still a popular pastime for many spectators who place bets on the outcome of the fighting matches. As a youngster in Haiti, Joseph often attended cockfights in open air arenas.