In Puerto Rico, The Days Of Legal Cockfighting Are Numbered

Nobody knows exactly how many fighting roosters there are in Puerto Rico. The breeders who raise them for cockfights say at least half a million. Two hundred and fifty of those live in neatly lined cages in José Torres' backyard in the mountain town of Utuado, and should the police show up to take them when cockfighting is banned at the end of this year, he has no plans to give them up.

"I already told my wife and I told my mother," Torres said, "that anyone who comes and tries to take one of my roosters will have to kill me first. And I'm not the only one. There are thousands of us."

In the rural mountains of central Puerto Rico, cockfighting is culture. It took root during Spanish colonial times. It survived a three-decade prohibition imposed by the United States in the early 20th century. And though the recession that has hollowed out the island's rural towns for the last decade has also taken its toll on cockfighting, the practice has persisted in dozens of family-run arenas across the island, a pastime and livelihood for thousands of families.

But now legal cockfighting on the island is in its death throes. After years of lobbying, animal rights advocates in the U.S. last December convinced Congress to ban the blood sport in U.S. territories, the last