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

This book is charged from the start with the violence and posturing of blood sport, as Wucker observes her first Haitian cockfight: "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." Popular in both countries, these fights become a totemic image for the author, who finds in them, as in the many clashes between Hispaniola's two cultures, "both division and community, opposite sides of the same coin." This is a fine historical primer, buoyed along by Wucker's graceful, observant prose style. --Maria Dolan

Product Description

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.


the single most important book on the subject in recent time   June 3, 1999
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

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.


A+   September 28, 1999
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

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.


Almost   October 23, 2003
Kevin L. Nenstiel (Kearney, Nebraska)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful

We've needed a book that addresses Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the context of one another. Both keep cropping up in the news, and both keep trying to tear chunks out of each other. A meaningful study of the two nations together would make all the difference in the world in sorting out the important issues. But this isn't that book.

Oh, it's informative. It's also very close to being up to date, having been published in 1999. Wucker, who has written for Dominican newspapers in the U.S., knows whereof she speaks. But this book doesn't really treat both nations.

There's a great deal on the Dominican Republic. The convoluted history of the nation in the Twentieth Century has never been so eloquently explicated. It's a history of shifting alliances, powerful people, anger, justice, injustice, and more. And every bit of it helps in understanding the ins and outs of why so many Dominicans are coming to America and why we should care.

But Haiti glides by under the radar screen. Most of the material about Haiti in this book is actually about Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. The political information on Haiti seems to come almost entirely out of history books. Wucker travelled extensively in the Dominican Republic, but to judge by the contents of this book, she may have made one or two day trips across the border into Haiti, that's it.

Striking the balance between Dominican and Haitian issues is difficult, both on Hispaniola and in studies thereof. Ms. Wucker has tried to do so, and she's to be commended for that. Indeed, she's come closer to succeeding than anyone else in recent memory. However, this book is almost entirely one-sided, and just can't quite make the leap into usefulness.


ratifico mi opinion de nuevo y no es nada personal   July 8, 2000
Luis Mendez (Republica Dominicana)
8 out of 26 found this review helpful

THIS BOOK HAS SHOCKED ME DEEPLY. I AM NOT SAYING THAT THE BOOK IS BAD, BUT IT LACKS THE COURAGE IT SHOULD HAVE HAD HAD IT BEEN WRITTEN BY A DOMINICAN.SHE GIVES A VERY INACURATE PICTURE OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC AND HAITY, FOCUSING LARGELY ON PETTY STRIFES THAT IN NO WAY INTEREST THE READER SEEKING INFORMATION ON THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC. WORST OF ALL, SHE ANALYZES HISPANIOLA AS A WHOLE INSTEAD OF WRITING SEPARATE BOOKS ABOUY EACH COUNTRY. OF COURSE HER ANALISYS LACKS VALIDITY, FOR SHE IS WRITING FROM A DISTANCE WHERE NOTHING CAN AFFECT HER. WOULDN'T IT BE THE SAME IF I WROTE A BOOK ABOUT HER HOMETOWN FROM MY LIVING ROOM? SHE PRETENDS TO BE DEEP IN HER CRITIQUES, BUT INSTEAD ENDS OF TELLING THE PEOPLE THAT WE ARE A SEMI LITERATE PEOPLE, PEOPLE INTERESTED IN COCKFIGHTING AND RUM,A CULTURE OF ILITERATE ONES AND OF RICH PEOPLE WITH EXPENSIVE AND STUPID TASTES. NOT THAT I HAVEN'T LEARN QUITE A FEW THINGS FROM HERE, LIKE THE PART ABOUT BALAGUER SON, WHICH TOOK ME BY SURPRISE, I CONSIDER THIS INFORMARTION SHOULD HAVE BEEN SAID BY DOMINICANS TO THEIR OWN PEOPLE.. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THE BOOK TO ANYBODY INTERESTED IN DEEP LEARNING ABOUT THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC. THERE ARE MORE

LUIS MENDEZ luismendez@codetel.net.do

ps quiero ratificar aqui que esta es mi opinion y que no tengo nada en contra de la autora, si aparece de nuevo en esta sesion es que estoy haciendo un update de todo lo escrito por mi, y mi opinion respecto al libro no ha cambiado .... luis mendez