[NYT] Puerto Rico Tries to Preserve Cockfighting Days Before Ban

as a libertarian, I believe cockfighting should be legal--regulated, but legal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/...html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

Puerto Rico Tries to Preserve Cockfighting Days Before Ban
The governor signed legislation intended to sidestep a ban approved by Congress. The law is likely to end up in court.

A cockfighting ban in Puerto Rico has drawn praise from animal rights activists and anger from some who consider the practice part of the island’s culture.Credit...Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

By Patricia Mazzei
Dec. 18, 2019

MIAMI — Cockfights can be wildly unpredictable affairs, and so it is with fights over cockfighting.

For Puerto Rico’s cockfighting enthusiasts, Dec. 20 has loomed as the day when a federal ban of the practice would take effect, forcing them to shut down their lucrative industry or drive it into the shadows.

On Wednesday, Gov. Wanda Vázquez of Puerto Rico promised a reprieve: She signed a bill that keeps cockfighting legal under the island’s laws, in defiance of the ban enacted last year by Congress and President Trump.

“What worries me most is abandoning these people,” Ms. Vázquez said during a signing ceremony about the families who rely on cockfighting to survive. “They don’t have work. They don’t have a livelihood. They can’t pay their bills or sustain their children.”

Some in the commonwealth had seen the federal ban as a violation of Puerto Ricans’ right to rule themselves and protect their cultural heritage.

Washington imposed the ban with little input from Puerto Rico, which had not seen any organized campaign against cockfighting. Members of the industry, in contrast, have marched several times on Puerto Rico’s Capitol, with roosters under their arms, to protest the prohibition.

The last-ditch attempt to save cockfighting comes after the industry failed to overturn the prohibition earlier this year. A federal judge in San Juan, the capital, upheld the ban in October, saying that Congress has the power to legislate over the island. The industry appealed the ruling this month.

“This latest legislative action is a showmanship effort by politicians,” said Wayne Pacelle, founder of Animal Wellness Action in Washington, which opposes cockfighting and is offering cash rewards of $2,500 to tipsters who help federal authorities enforce the ban. “They have no authority to subvert the federal government’s legislative action to forbid animal fighting.”

But left with no other options, members of the Puerto Rico Legislature did what they could do to at least buy the industry some time, said Representative Gabriel Rodríguez Aguiló, one of the bill’s co-authors. Like the governor, he is a member of the island’s ruling New Progressive Party, which supports Puerto Rican statehood.

“We are using all of the tools at our disposal in this case at the legislative level to ensure that the tradition and industry in Puerto Rico continue,” he said.

Lawmakers have asked Congress for a five-year period to wind down cockfighting. Ms. Vázquez, who announced this week that she would run for governor next year, called for “dialogue” with the federal authorities.

In the meantime, people like Hiram Figueroa, 70, who has raised and trained gamecocks since he was 16, said he was thrilled to have a respite of any sort.

“I hadn’t been sleeping,” he said. “I’m calmer now. We can keep playing the birds.”

Patricia Mazzei is the Miami bureau chief, covering Florida and Puerto Rico. Before joining The Times, she was the political writer for The Miami Herald. She was born and raised in Venezuela, and is bilingual in Spanish.
@PatriciaMazzei • Facebook
​

 

the closer analogy would be sport hunting e.g., for deer. There really isn't a cultural tradition of throwing Christians to the lions that anyone is trying to protect in 2019

 

or if you're looking for an example of a cultural practice that has ended and that people want to bring back, you might consider the Makah whale hunt in the Pacific Northwest

 

the bullfight then

 

and if you don't know Joyce Carol's book On Boxing, you really should take a look

 

that's a pretty remarkable comment

I don't even know where to start with the fallacies of relevance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes