Where Bad Catholics Go

In this predominantly Catholic country, most people spend the Holy Week taking part in church activities or at least taking some rest at home or in a serene resort. The bad ones, though, grab the opportunity to meet and gamble, and one of their destinations is a dreary hamlet somewhere in Masiag village, Bagumbayan town.

I was there on Good Friday with the gamblers, so you may judge my moral character. My sin, though, is not as grave as the others’ because I didn’t bet. I just watched the horse-fighting event. It was my first time to watch such an event, though I had plenty of opportunities to do so before. For one reason or another, I would not grab the opportunity.



I had expected a horse fight to be similar to a cockfight, where the opponents would be at each other’s throat almost without rest. To my surprise, the horses spent more time sniffing each other than biting or kicking. I learned from someone, though, that intense fighting do happen but usually between “rated” or high-caliber horses only. The three fights I witnessed were just arranged that day. The owners brought their horses to the venue and spent the whole morning negotiating with one another. The fights took place in the afternoon. One of the three fights was just a “test fight” because the owners failed to find enough supporters to finance the wager.

If you noticed in the video above, there’s a gray horse tied at the center of the arena. It’s a female horse. Male horses will only fight if there’s a female around. To agitate the horses, each of the males are first brought near the female. The owner would let his horse try to copulate with the female, but the owner would cut the courting short. When this has been done to both horses, they are released. They will then fight. They are actually fighting over the female, not to prove to each other who is stronger or who should own the territory. If the males just keep on sniffing each other or standing with the female between them, one of the organizers would hit the female with a stick or loosen its rope so that it would move around and the males would be after her and against each other.

If you listen to the video, you can hear people, including kids, yelling and cheering, demanding more action, more gore, while you don’t hear anything from me. I’m simply not thrilled at the sight of two horses trying to kill each other at the orchestration of human beings. I don’t even watch boxing or mixed martial arts on TV; they’re not sports for me. I went to watch the horse-fighting event just out of curiosity, and now I know that it’s one curiosity that should have not been satisfied. I guess I’m not that bad a Catholic at all.

One of the defeated horses. Its left eye, not seen in the photo, is also bloody. While the owner was tying the horse to a tree, his wife approached him and said, “See, I told you not to agree to the fight. The opponent is much bigger!”