Thinking of Vick I recalled this afternoon in Caracas

Saturday afternoon at the cock fights and the place smells like chicken shit. The man leaning over flimsly metal railing overlooking the fight pit asks me which rooster I think will win. He is swigging a Polar. The roosters have been placed in a transparent Plexiglas box divided into two compartments. One side is carved with the word "Chávez." I pick that rooster. The man wants me to bet, but I say no, fearing this is some sort of con.

The box is attached to a rope slung over a pulley hanging from a beam above. Slowly, it rises. The awkward dance begins tentatively at first, then, feathers flared, one leaps, spurs and beaks flash across blood-stained industrial grey carpet littered with bits of feather, flesh. Men shout and bang.

Feathers and dust float on beans of sun pouring through gaps in the tin roof.

Bangs and shouts.

They fight to the death or for 30 minute when it ends with the single ring of the judge’s hand-held bell. The judge sits behind a door with a sign reading "juez" along boards ringing the fight pit. The first row of chairs around the pit are cushioned, the seating in the remaining three or four rows are a mix of dented folding metal chairs and concrete steps. Above, other men lean over the railing along the balcony, swigging beers and betting 5,000 to 10,000 (around $2.50 to $5) bolivars a fight.

"It’s my obsession," says Edgar, who raises roosters in Caracas. "You have to feed them three times every day. At 6 a.m., even if you are hung-over you have to get up. At noon, even if your woman has no food, you feed the roosters. And again in the evening."

The pit is about the circumference of a mid-sized above-ground swimming pool. Polar beer banners are strung from the rafters. The marker-scrawled betting board hangs above the betting cage near the entrance.

The roosters are armed with spurs made from turtle shells honed into 2.5 centimeter claws. Before the fight the rooster’s leg is wrapped in boxing tape with a hole cut where the natural spur once jutted, now shaved. The new spur is fastened with silicone and thick thread before it is again wrapped with tape.

The rooster’s beak is sharpened with a file. Dagger-like.

After about 10 minutes, my pick has drawn blood, slicing the neck of its opponent now a mess of twitching feathers sprawled on the carpet. The stronger animal pounces on its prostrate opponent and begins picking at the head, pulling out an eye-ball before the judge ends the fight. The feathers of the beaten chicken are drenched a deep dark crimson. Its owner crouches over the body and lifts up gently, cooing soft words as blood pool in a teardrop at the tip of its honed beak, its body weakly expanding from short gasping breaths.

Of four fights that afternoon, two end this way. One fight runs the full 30 minutes. The judge brings out a white rooster and teases the combatants. He does this three times. If the roosters react and snap back at least once it’s called a draw. If one of the rooster cowers, or fails to react, it loses. The fight is a draw.

The cock fight arena, or gallero, sits in a back corner of El Silencio, a run down central Caracas neighborhood that once housed government offices. Now, the homeless sleep on the sidewalks and the edges buildings are crumbling from the erosion of neglect. I have been told the place is a nest of thieves, ready to slice a stranger’s throat or pump a bullet in their chest for a gold necklace.

A few blocks away sits the National Electoral Council building and beyond that the National Assembly. Nearby is Miraflores, the presidential palace.