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H. B. KIMBERLEY COOK Cockfighting on the Venezuelan Island ofMargarita: A Ritualized Form ofMale Aggression Approximately twenty miles offthe coast ofeastern Venezuela lies Isla de Margarita. From September 1987through May 1988, H. B. Kimberley Cook carriedout extensive ethnographicfieldwork on that island on the subject ofaggression. Thisfieldwork plus three earliervisits, thefirst ofwhich occurred in 1979, included an investigation ofthe local cockfightingtradition on the island. It was not easy to do so because women were not welcome at cockfights. In her 1991 UCLA doctoral dissertation (pp. 18-19), H.B. Kimberley Cook describes herdifficulties: "Thefact that I am a woman ethnographer made it difficult to study cockfighting but also led to some interesting insights. Cockfighting is a strictly maleactivity andmy informants initially insistedthatI drop thisfrom my study. After three months ofmy incessant nagging, they graciously consented to allow me to attend the cockfights at the gal/era on Sundays. I attended several cockfights and supplemented my data with the help ofthree male informants who I met with individually. My presence at the gallera, however, was an act ofdeviance which gave me apainful yetfirsthand experience on how social control operates in the community. I eventually stopped collecting data on cock fighting because ofthe trouble it was causing. ... " As was the case in Leal's preceding account ofthe Gaucho cockfight, the present female ethnographer's description andanalysis ofthe cockfight in Venezuela are exceptionally insightful. Indeed, it may befair to say that the two essays on the cockfight by women contain morevaluable data leadingto apsychologically illuminatingpictureof this male-centered event than anything hitherto written by men. For other accounts ofcockfighting in Venezuela, seeJ. A. de Armas Chitty, "Les Rinas de Gallos en el Oriente del Guarico, "Archivos Venezolanos de Folklore 23 (1953-1954): 149-158; M. Acosta Saignes, "Introduccion al estudio de la gallina en alfolklore de Venezuela," Tradici6n 6 (1954): 29-46; L. G. Marquez, Reglamento del Club Gallistico de Caracas (Caracas: Tip. Londres, 1954); and Reprinted from H. B. Kimberley Cook, "Small Town, Big Hell: An Ethnographic Study of Aggression in a Margariteiio Community," unpublished doctoral dissertation in anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1991, pp. 79-94. The dissertation is in Antropo16gica 4 (1993) published by the Instituto Caribe de Anthropologia y Sociologia in Caracas. 232 Cockfighting on Margarita G. A. Perez, La Pelea de Gallos en Venezuela: Lexico, Historia y Literatura (Caracas: Ediciones Espada Rota, 1984). Cockfighting is central to the lives of the residents of San Fernando. One fishermen stated that: "You can die ofhunger but there will always be agallera (cockfighting rink)." Others claim that there is one in every town: "You may not be able to get food but there will be a gallera. There is one everywhere. If there is one house built, there will be a gallera." Cockfighting is a strictly male event that involves ritualistic and real aggression . Women are not welcome. In San Fernando, the rink is located on the outside of town so as not to disrupt the course of daily life. Nevertheless, cockfighting is an on-going preoccupation that affects the lives of everyone. My aim in studying cockfightingwas not to gain a true understanding ofthe sport itself. For detailed information on the sport ofcockfightingin Venezuela, see Perez, La Pelea de Gallos en Venezuela. For the purposes ofthis study, I view cockfighting as a context from which cultural values and behaviors could be elicited and observed. In this essay, I will discuss some common themes which underlie cultural patterns ofhostility, and discussprocesses used inthe expression and mediation of aggression during cockfighting. Before doing so, I will describe the nature and scope of data I collected on cockfighting activities. Myinformation on cockfightingis taken mainly from interviews and observations made in the town ofSan Fernando. I relied on three sources ofinformation , which include observations of daily activities related to cockfighting, my attendance at the gallera on Sundays, and interviews with informants. Daily activities include the care and handling ofcocks that aim at maintaining the animal's health and stimulating its fighting, aggressive spirit. Care first ofall involves attention to the animal's diet. According to one informant: "Some people don't know how to take care of cocks. They just throw the corn kernels on the ground, in the dirt. You should take care of a cock just like yourself, like a person. The food should be kept clean, and one should measure out the same amount of kernels each day (exactly forty). Cocks should be fed each day at the same time, in...

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