From The New York Times:
New Mexico may not have any major league teams, but members of the New Mexico Game Birds Association, the state’s largest cockfighting advocacy group, say it is proud of the sports it does have. One is cockfighting, a practice, particularly popular among Hispanics, that is believed to have originated in ancient Greece and Persia, pitting gamecocks against each other with metal spurs attached to their legs. The birds often fight to the death.
Massachusetts was the first state to ban cockfighting, in 1836, and has been followed by 47 others. But New Mexico’s “galleros,” as cockfighting practitioners here call themselves in Spanish, are determined that their state will not be next, even as they face their strongest challenge yet from animal rights activists and some celebrity friends.
…Purses in New Mexico can reach more than $10,000, making the loss of a prized gamecock, bred through generations of pedigree to fight to the death, a risk that most galleros are prepared to take.
Nor is cockfighting the only practice involving roosters that some outsiders would find shocking. Another, common in some Hispanic villages or Indian pueblos until a couple of decades ago, was “correr el gallo,” the rooster pull, in which the bird was buried up to its neck in a dirt mound and men on horseback competed to uproot it. The rooster was usually killed in the process.
Usually.