Tucson Citizen

Our Opinion: Convictions welcome here for immoral, illegal and barbaric animal blood sport

Contrary to a Tucson lawyer's courtroom contention last week, cockfighting isn't part of Hispanic culture.

Rather, the practice springs from the cultures of gambling, cruelty and violence.

Pima County's first cockfighting trial resulted in the conviction of Raul Figarolla Padilla last week, a clear message that animal cruelty isn't acceptable in Arizona.

The lawyer for another defendant who had pleaded guilty in the case bizarrely and wrongly contended that the cockfighting charge violated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which settled the Mexican War in 1848.

"If some of the current residents of Arizona are offended by Hispanic culture," lawyer D. Jesse Smith wrote in a court motion, "they can cede Arizona back to Mexico or move back to the colder climes from whence they came."

In Arizona, voters decided 2-to-1 in 1998 to outlaw cockfighting, a ban that is in state statutes.

So jurors swiftly convicted Padilla on Thursday, and he is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 22 to up to 2 1/2 years in prison.

"To use the heritage or culture card in this case is absolutely ridiculous," said former legislator Carmine Cardamone, founder and director of the Tucson-based Animal Defense Council.

Indeed, 95 percent of Hispanic voters polled statewide in 1997 deemed cockfighting "cruel and inhumane."

Asked whether "cockfighting is an important part of Hispanic culture," 70 percent of Hispanics polled disagreed, while only 34 percent of Anglo respondents disagreed.

As legendary Mexican-American Cesar Chavez wrote: "Kindness and compassion toward all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people."

Cockfighting is illegal in Washington, D.C., and every state except Louisiana, where a ban is set to take effect in August 2008.

For cockfighting, roosters are bred, fed and trained to fight, tormented to make them aggressive and outfitted with fake spurs - razor-sharp blades or curved gaffs resembling ice picks.

They're drugged to increase viciousness and reduce blood flow, then dropped into an enclosed pit, from which there is no escape, to fight to the death - "killing machines for people's entertainment," says literature from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Should the gamecocks become tired, handlers pluck on their eyes to incite them to continue fighting.

The birds often are brought into the country illegally, thus avoiding tests and quarantines for diseases such as the Exotic Newcastle Disease. That disease hit Arizona, southern California and Nevada in 2002 and 2003, resulting in the deaths of millions of birds and a loss of billions of dollars for the U.S. poultry industry.

Gamecock imports also could lead to the spread of the dreaded bird flu, which already has killed more than 200 people, mostly in Asia.

In addition, this so-called "sport" usually is accompanied by illegal gambling, with bettors able to win as much as $100,000, depending on crowd size.

Drug dealing is common at cockfights, law officers report.

Children are exposed to the chaos, raising concerns among child welfare advocates about the desensitization of youngsters to violence and cruelty.

For many reasons, from public health to basic human decency in a civilized society, cockfighting is a scourge on our society.

"This barbaric blood sport has no place in modern society," Cardamone says. We agree.

Cockfighting also is illegal. Like Padilla, its practitioners in Arizona will be brought to justice.

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