Michele Wucker's analysis of Dominican-Haitian conflict through cockfighting

¶ … Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola

The American writer and free lance journalist Michele Wucker in her first book has written about both Haiti and the Dominican Republic complex relations in terms of their cultures and on the sources of their great effort both in their island home as well as in the United States.

According to the book, the Caribbean island of Hispaniola is home to historic, where this continuing conflict between two countries has been intensely separated by language, race and history. However, at the same time it has been forced continuously into argument by their shared geography. The book is emotional from the beginning with the fighting and posturing of blood sport, as observed by the writer in her first Haitian cockfight (1):

The air cracks with the impact of stiffened feathers as each bird tries to push the other to the ground. Around the ring, the Haitian men shout to one another and wave dirty wads of gourdes in the air, seeking bets.... Soon, the feathers of both cocks are slick with blood (1)."

The journalist Wucker has used the metaphor of cockfighting throughout the book, portraying the countries as two roosters forced to combat in a small and enclosed cockpit. Her clear writing style and brilliant scenes of life at street level make her book a wonderful fascinating feel and experience in the fight and pacification of cultures on a small, beleaguered island (1).

About the book

On the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, there exist two countries: the Dominican Republic - Spanish-speaking and mixed-race; and Haiti- Francophone, black and mulatto. Even though, they have vital similarities, yet their differences are more major and considerable. And despite their rivalry, both share a national symbol in the rooster which is an important activity and favorite sport in the cockfight (1).

Michele Wucker asks:

If the symbols that dominate a culture accurately express a nation's character, what kind of a country draws so heavily on images of cockfighting and roosters, birds bred to be aggressive? What does it mean when not one but two countries that are neighbors choose these symbols? Why do the cocks fight, and why do humans watch and glorify them?"

Thus, Wucker basically has looked at this cultural divide that is between these two neighbors right from the colonial period to the current period. According to her, the root of the conflict is the politically sensitive issue of immigration from Haiti to the Dominican Republic and claimed that this racial difference between the two populations has & is still intensifying the crisis. Both Haiti and the Dominican Republic surrounded by wall of geography and poverty are just like two roosters in a fighting stadium. They together inhabit the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but with separate histories in their cultures (1).

In addition, the author studied not only the cockfight ritual in significant detail, but she has also focused as much on the civilization and past of these two countries as of that period lifestyles and politics. She has given well-cited and complete volume that explored the relations of both nations toward the United States, which during the twentieth century twice occupied both Haiti in 1915 and 1994 and the Dominican Republic in 1916 and 1965 (2).

Wucker argued that just as the owners of gamecocks arrange fights between their birds as a method of playing out human conflicts. In the same manner Haitian and Dominican leaders regularly trigger up nationalist disagreements and overstress their cultural and racial differences as their way of repelling other types of turmoil. Thus, in other words "Why the Cocks Fight" emphasizes the factors in Caribbean history that even now affect Hispaniola, which also includes the frequent clashing policies of the United States (2).

In addition to many positive points of the book, one negative aspect of the book is that Wucker's focus is the repeatedly tortured relationship between Haitians and Dominicans. Wucker contends these cocks fight for territory and control in a ring of an island. Their bets are cultural and psychological to the extent that these are sometimes a matter of life and death - a fight that has been going on for centuries (2).

Conclusion

The name is attractive, but does not justify the matter of the book entirely. Michele Wucker uses her expert journalistic abilities to the best and provides a very readable and insightful look at the Dominican Republic and how it treats the Haitians there. She has stringed together a few journalistic analyses, some more important while others irrelevant, concerning the relationship of the dominant Dominican Republic and the subservient Haitians within their borders (3).

The book "Why the Cocks Fight" is a must read for those who are interested in Hispaniola, as well as for those who would like to know the effects of immigration in the United States and the changes of societies and cultures whose inhabitants have been uncovered.