Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola

by Michele Wucker

Book Overview

Like two roosters in a fighting arena, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are encircled by barriers of geography and poverty. They co-inhabit the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but their histories are as deeply divided as their cultures: one French-speaking and black, one Spanish-speaking and mulatto. Yet, despite their antagonism, the two countries share a national symbol in the rooster--and a fundamental activity and favorite sport in the cockfight...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809097133
• ISBN13: 9780809097135
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Hill & Wang
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

The Hidden History of Hispaniola

The evergoing conflict between the Dominican Republic and Haiti has never been a subject that has captured the international community's attention, due to their third-world status and their political instability. Unlike the only other Caribbean island to be shared by two foreign powers (St. Martin/St. Maarten), Hispaniola's history has always been linked to the topic of race and culture. As a student of Latin American & Caribbean politics and culture, I discovered many hidden truths I never knew when I was living in the cultural melting pot know as New York City. This book gave me even a greater understanding of two communities that are so close in proximity, yet so far apart in everything else.Ms. Wucker definately has done extensive research and has delved into the complexity of racial politics on this island. Her research is not biased (as one reviewer feels it is) but rich in truth. As an author myself, I have written a book that will be published in the near future on the political legacy a famous Dominican politician has left his country, and Ms. Wucker's research coincides with the same exact research I did. Although the author is not Haitian or Dominican, it shouldn't matter because she has done a magnificent job. I always said "it sometimes takes an outsider to understand and resolve the problems of a place he/she has never lived in." Ms. Wucker's work validates this saying. Whether you are in Miami's Little Haiti or in New York City's Washington Heights neighborhoods, or even in some faraway place that is not directly affected by either Dominican or Haitian immigration or politics, this should be a must read for all. By reading this book, you might have understand what U.S. President Ulysses Grant was thinking when he declined an offer to "purchase" the Dominican Republic shortly after the end of the Civil War. Overall, this is an excellent book and a must-read for anyone who is interested in cultural or political studies in the Third World.

A+

The author bravely tackles a tricky, thorny subject that (as you can see from one of the reviews below) is bound to offend many on the island of Hispaniola but in truth is not a condemnation of Dominican culture from a supposedly superior perspective. In point of fact, the author's lucid analysis of the interplay of race and identity on this small but historically seminal island has much to say about the unspoken interplay of race and identity in our own country and throughout the New World. One of the finest of the many rhetorical maneuvers on the part of Ms Wucker is a description of the many supernatural beings thought to inhabit the border between these two countries: blue-skinned ciguapas, the souls of dead Taino women who fled to these mountains to escape the rapacious Spaniards, and bien-bienes, the ghosts of escaped slaves whose cry inflicts all who hear it with perpetual melancholy. Through the clarity of her analysis, Ms Wucker shows us how the ghosts of European conquest and African slavery still haunt all of our cultures five centuries after Columbus.

the single most important book on the subject in recent time

I wish my review to stand as a rebuttal to the earlier mean-spirited and mis-informed commentary (all in caps, in true froth-at-the-mouth illiterate style) that is less of a genuine review and more of an ad hominem attack upon the author, her methods and her intentions.First, my prejudice and qualifications. I'm a former professional colleague of the author of Why The Cocks Fight. I've known the author Michele Wucker for about 11 or 12 years since we first worked together on a newspaper in the Dominican Republic and then later in New York for a Dominican newspaper. During that entire time I've watched her diligent and careful gathering of information and interviews for this book. The most casual reading of the book will reveal genuine and deep affection for both the Dominican and Haitian people. Her book is clearly intended to illuminate and enrich the dialog between those people and to serve their best interests with the hope they will enjoy a better future. She offers no excuses for the failings of the United States in the past and present that have aggravated the problems of the people of Hispaniola. Likewise, she does not spare those in those two lands who have and continue to fail themselves and betray their own peoples. Most important of all, she does not make the mistake of offering some well-intentioned simplistic solution as a substitute for one that only those who must live with it can develop and employ.The book does all of this in excellent style. One may, if one wishes, quibble about the significance of any single reported event compared to another event not mentioned. One may disagree with her emphasis or analysis. But her facts are solid and complete. Her language is rich and evocative.As someone else has said, if you have any love of the island of Hispaniola and entertain any hopes for its future, this is the single most important book on the subject that has been published in recent times in this country or there.

Essential reading for anyone inerested in the Hispaniola

If you wish to learn how history is written in the Dominican Republic and why the Dominicans behave as they do, find the answer in this beautifully written and well researched volume. If you wish to separate fact from fiction in the beautiful island of Hispaniola, this is the book to buy.

Brilliant prose, hard nose reporting, a great read!

After living for almost 28 years in the Dominican Republic, I thought there was not much I could learn about the culture and peoples of Hispaniola, but Michele Wucker's Why the Cocks Fight has opened up a whole new chapter in my knowledge of this enchanting island. Her choice of the cockfights as a metaphore to illustrate the island's struggle through its five centuries of history, is a brilliant way to describe the complex dynamics at work in the two societies trapped within it.For some of my fellow Dominicans, this book will be a tough drink to swallow, because Michele, in this well researched work, has confronted the ghosts that have haunted Hispaniola for 500 years of history, and that have bound together the paths of these two nations. In the early 1900's, Dominican poet Juan Antonio Alix, in his work "El Negro detrás de la Oreja" (The Black Behind your Ear) joked about how every Dominican, no matter how white the color of his skin, could find a black ancestor in his family. That is a truth that Dominicans do not want to face, and something that Michele has shown in her book.Michele's accounts of the treatment of Haitian workers by the Dominican Sugar Cane Establishement is an accurate portrail of a situation which unfortunately roams over the heads of an otherwise friendly and sometimes naive Dominican population. But, as she well points out, the Haitians keep on crossing the frontier with the Dominican Republic, regardless of the abuses, because the alternative is the shark infested waters of the Atlantic ocean.Why the Cocks Fight is a must read for anybody interested in Hispaniola, but also for those interested on the effects of immigration in the United States and the transformation of societies and cultures whose inhabitants have been exposed to the "american way".I can't wait for her next book.