In April 2003, I was flown down to Puerto Rico for a press junket tour of its pharmaceutical manufacturing infrastructure (secret identity, etc.). I called it the “PR for PR Tour”, which wasn’t very imaginative, but hey.
During the flight down, I read the press materials they’d sent, to get an idea of what business advantages the island had to offer. Reading about its relationship to the U.S., I thought, “They’ve got a pretty good deal, all things considered. Lots of benefits without as much of the hassle.” Still, I wondered if there was popular interest in formally joining the U.S. as the 51st state.
As my cab drove out of the airport, I noticed a building that made me think, “There’s no way Puerto Rico’s ever becoming a state.” That building had a billboard-sized sign in front that read, “COCKFIGHTING”.
At dinner with the other press people and our liaisons that night, I mentioned the sign. The liaisons blanched, while the press corps, mainly Europeans, were enthralled, and began peppering the locals with all sorts of cockfighting questions. This was exacerbated when it turned out that the main liaison’s boyfriend came from a family that was the #2 breeder of fighting cocks in PR.
I kicked back and discovered rum, which made the night that much more entertaining.
Why do I bring this up almost two years later? Because of an item I read last week on Page 6 in the New York Post. It seems that over-the-hill, one-time-best-pound-for-pound boxer Roy Jones, Jr. is a cockfighting aficionado, and the Humane Society of the U.S. just got over-the-hill wrestler Hulk Hogan to write to Jones and implore him to give up the sport.
Oh, but that’s not the part that amazed me. No, dear reader, what your Virtual Memoirist finds astonishing is the last line of the HSUS item’s lede:
Louisiana is one of only two states where fighting roosters is still legal.
I had blithely assumed that cockfighting was illegal in the U.S., and that its tradition in Puerto Rico was a major obstacle to ever considering bringing PR in as a new state. Now I realize that, pound for pound, PR matches up pretty well with Louisiana.
Of course, the fact that it’s still legal in Louisiana is only half of the equation. As the HSUS statement reads, it’s legal in two states. This led me and the official VM girlfriend to ponder what the other state was. We were in the car when I mentioned the item, so we couldn’t look up the answer.
“I bet it’s somewhere in the west,” she said. She was already embarrassed, but not surprised, by the fact that it’s legal in her home state.
“I’m going with Florida,” I told her. “They’re lawless, plus they have a big latino population.”
Keep in mind, I’m not a proponent of this sport. It seems pretty cruel to me, and I don’t like to see animals get hurt, even if they are heavily armed. I think it’s pretty funny that HBO Sports employs Roy Jones, Jr. as a commentator, but if another of its employees–like Bob Costas, or an associate producer, or something–owned a cockfighting arena, he’d probably get ridiculed and/or bounced out of his job.
I’m not sure it’s that much crueler than the practices at an industrial chicken farm, and I’m sure as heck not bailing on Chik-Fil-A anytime soon.
Anyway, I was wrong. It turns out that New Mexico was the other state that hasn’t banned it. And the most recent ban, near as I can tell, was in Missouri in 1998. The ban also covered “bear wrestling.”
In 1998.