The Colosseum
Something smells funny. Like diesel and iron. Like testosterone.
Look left, look right.
It is the men. It is motokar fuel and rooster blood.
This is a sanctuary. It is late night at the Colosseum. Here, roosters either rise to Gods or crumble into caldo de pollo. The men spend months training their warriors for this moment. Their pride and money on the line.
“You know what to do, Kellogg. Go for his throat.”
The men of the world mark their territories, prove their dominion, show their superiority. In the western world, money and material possessions are the most common display of an alpha male’s worth.
A car, a house, a yacht.
Here, in the Peruvian Amazon, it is his cock.
Cock fighting, a meaningless act of violence to some, a cultural tradition to others.
The biggest insight? Not the first tournament you attend, but the second. You lose the horror at the gore, lose objection to people’s pleasure in the violence. Increasingly, you accept the fight in front of you.
Often we become blind with time, indifferent to suffering as it becomes routine.
