Why the cocks fight

by Michele Wucker

Like two roosters in a fighting arena, the Dominican Republic and Haiti are encircled by barriers of geography and poverty. They share one Caribbean island, Hispaniola, but their histories are as deeply divided as their cultures: one French-speaking and black, one Spanish-speaking and mulatto. And just as the owners of gamecocks contrive battles between their birds (a favorite sport in both countries) as a way of playing out human conflicts, 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. Michele Wucker's reports on these struggles, both in Hispaniola and in the United States, take us through the haunted mountains where sixty years ago the Dominican dictator Trujillo ordered 30,000 Haitians to be killed, to Vodou rituals in Dominican sugarcane fields where Haitians work as near-slaves, and to ringside at cockfights in both countries as well as in the United States. She f