Trump, Biden And A Parable

-by Nigel Best, reporting from Cuba

It was the screaming of the pig that really caught my attention.

All that high-pitched squeeling turned my head in time to see the flash of the knife, the dark blood start flowing, the thrashing death-jerks from the trussed animal dangling from the tree.

"That's dinner," I thought, "and the pig knew it."

An elbow or knee smashed into my back and I turned back to the real action. Tony, wedged into this heaving crowd of 50 or more men, was shouting in Spanish at me and pointing over my shoulder.

I took a look at two roosters being held high and passing over our heads. 

Deep in the eyes of the one dark, black cock was an anger that I could sense flowed from hell. I began peeling off five-hundred National Pesos and waving them at Tony. He passed it on to the croupier in the crowd indicating me and my choice of potential winner.

The croupier's sunburned farmer's face grinned at me as he folded my money into his thick hands. Has he seen something in the other bird that I've missed? 

He leered at me, and I thought, "That vulture needs a good kicking."

There's a bloodline that runs across this island that stretches back hundreds of years. Further back than most Cuban family names. It's a bloodline burned into the culture, and runs prouder than having fought against the Spanish, slavery, or having been a Castro rebel.

At 6:30 a.m. it's a bloodline that gets angrier than a screaming senorita finding her husband in bed with her sister, and that's an angry you don't mess with!

I looked again into those two fine birds' eyes. Roosters are angriest at this time in the morning, the better to tear at each other. This is a turf war after all, no different than Vegas in the backwinds of a hurricane when the opening bell rings on a boxing match.

We're crammed into this sun-bleached palm-frond round hut hidden at the back of a government-run sugar field. Sweat is pouring, the heat is rising, and this morning there will be only one victor. 

Blood sports.

Every civilization has lusted after them: Romans throwing christians to any animal that will eat human flesh (whilst the crowd talked about current events, or lifted their togas to bare their backsides at the royal box and whatever emporer sat there); bull fighting; or the British fox hunt (reinstated recently when it became apparant that foxes were creeping into quiet villages and stealing infants from their sleeping beds.)

Cuba, no stranger to blood, has its balaya de gallous; Legal only if there's no exchanging of pesos. Today was not legal.

So it was this morning that Tony came to get me in his 1956 Chev-- stolen when abondoned after the revolution-- and I managed to find myself up and ready today to follow in that human tradition to attend a fight between these murderous roosters.

These are proud animals, and now in the rink as they began kicking up dirt, one was about to become king.

I left after the fight, having been pushed to the front, with a fair share of blood on my shins, and enough National than I can buy a new hairdryer.

The croupier wasn't grinning at me as he handed me my winnings.

"Kick the right vulture out of the way, get into the carcass quicker," I said in Spanish.

As I walked away, I noticed the hanging pig, gutted, and swaying slightly in the early-morning breeze.