Unlike genetic engineering, the science-fiction imagination knew no boundaries. Kris Juncker explores the popularity of a mixed breed of duck and rooster in turn of the 20th century Cuba.
On inspection, even the most attractive, historically significant books can turn horribly wrong. I recently acquired a copy of the first volume of Our Islands and their People, published in the United States sometime in 1899. This first “elephant folio,” or oversized book, describes both Cuba and Puerto Rico under United States’ military occupation just following the wars for independence from Spain. The volume appears relatively innocuous but authoritative, with over 600 photographs, several color plates and over 300,000 words. However, upon my first leisurely inspection, amidst the images of Cuba and its people, I came upon a sizeable photograph of a Cuban man holding a “patogallo,” or duck-rooster. This photomechanical duck-rooster image made me pause.
Duck-roosters are not real. I contacted a few veterinary specialists to make absolutely sure, because innumerable sensationalist internet sites now discuss sexual intercourse between ducks and chickens and present the possibility of duck-rooster offspring. After corresponding with my expert contacts, however, I can state without a doubt that there are no duck-roosters in Cuba, or anywhere.
Back in 1899, Our Islands and the People effectively exacerbated a curious trend to depict duck-roosters and associated Cuba with preposterous reproductive practices. Throughout Our Islands and their People, both text and image attempt to depict structures of Cuban society and note such threats of transgression of these roles. But the duck-rooster sought to cause even more harm than that: it served to strengthen negative stereotypes, particularly ideas concerning class structure and sexual preference.
By looking at the iconography of the imaginary duck-rooster and its reception, we gain insight into the historical foundation of certain discriminatory practices. In 1899, this photomechanical duck-rooster print required considerable work to produce. This image came from at least two different glass plate negatives, multiple silver gelatin prints, very careful cutting and gluing, re-photographed images and retouched negatives. Even in the printed book, the angular profile of the duck’s breast against his handler’s white shirt betrays the cutting in this process.
The caption underneath the Votaries of the Cockpit image acknowledges this sharpness:
The bird shown in the photograph is known as a “patogallo,” partaking both the nature of a chicken and a goose. Attention is called to its sharpness of beak and length of legs . .. This species of fowl is the most formidable known, and one of them has been known to whip half a dozen ordinary fighting birds in rapid succession.
This description of the duck-rooster leads to two observations: firstly, this genetic mix is spectacular and, secondly, it is very dangerous – it will kill regular roosters.
The duck-rooster is particularly noticeable in the hands of everyday Cuban people. Like all images in this volume of Our Islands and their People, the photograph is an ethnographic portrait intended to present a “generic Cuban” type: a cock-fighter, both literally and metaphorically. All of the men featured in the duck-rooster image are labelled as such, and even if the birds are engaged in the actual battle, the reference to the cock leaves no doubt. Since the Middle Ages, images of cockfighting signify gendered and sexual power.
Cockfighting became a popular and risqué theme in postcards sent by tourists from Cuba to the United States. Among examples, I often come across one early twentieth-century postcard image that had multiple print editions, depicting three, tall, well-dressed gentlemen with brightly-colored clothes and shown supervising a cock-fight.Also in the pictures, the lower-class men and boys that serve as cock handlers and fellow gamblers are shorter and closer to the ground. These regular participants hunch over the male birds otherwise understood to fight over both territory and mates.
Figure 1. “CUBA. –Cock Fight- Riña de Gallos.” Photomechanical postcard. Postmarked April 1910. Unspecified publisher. Figure 2. “HABANA. RIÑA DE GALLOS.” Photomechanical postcard. Postmarked January 20 1913. Unspecified publisher. Figure 3. “Cuban Cock Fight.” Photomechanical postcard. Postmarked March 1910, Published by Harris Bros., Havana, Cuba.
In contrast, Our Islands and their People omits theses wealthy spectators and leaves the lower class Cuban men to hold the irreconcilable cultural motifs of the patogallo. On one hand, the rooster—a virile male chicken—serves as a symbol of pride in the coats of arms belonging to Spanish colonial families, and also appears on the flags of different historic towns throughout Cuba. The motif of the rooster reappears in 1950s abstract paintings by well-celebrated Cuban artist Mariano Rodríguez, and in more contemporary sculptures throughout Little Havana in Miami. On the other hand, the duck has a very different reputation in the Hispanophone Caribbean. There is no documented etymology for the term “pato” as a perjorative word for homosexual men, or “pata” for lesbians, but it is pervasive in everyday speech. Today, authors regularly posit that the slur emerged due to the manner in which ducks waddle. However, I would wager that it is not a coincidence that the slur “pato” emerged among the Caribbean islands discussed at length in Our Islands and their People. The ridiculous image of the patogallo and the slur appear to be symptomatic of political straits of the time.
In the same period that the United States began sending troops to Cuba, U.S. political discourse embraced rather extensive metaphors about ducks. In 1895, James Whitcomb Riley became the U.S. National Poet, and he is said to have originated the phrase, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” United States politicians quoted Riley regularly, and the so-called “duck test” offered rhetoric in support of U.S. neo-colonial interest in Cuba. This duck-test equation provided that Cuba was a U.S. island because U.S. military and political advisors were already present there. In both Cuba and the United States, references to ducks emerged as an insult, albeit somewhat veiled.
This first volume of Our Islands and their People is a beautiful book that appears to have had a significant distribution in the United States and among United States military troops serving in Cuba and Puerto Rico. In the past few years, I once handled a copy of Our Islands and their People that had the most wonderful, rainbow colored marbled paper lining the interior. The marbling effect of that paper lining made the whole book an incredible joy to look at, and served to make the images therein especially vivid, memorable, definitive and, as a result, dangerous.
All images are the collection of the author.