by Mike Smith
Daily Lobo
There are as many reasons to talk about the strangeness of New Mexico as there are reasons to avoid talking about it altogether.
As conversational subject matter, New Mexico's ghost and UFO stories can make a person seem crazy or gullible. Sharing vague rumors and yet-to-be-researched legends can cast a person as ignorant or dreamy, while bringing up serial killers and bizarre fatalities can make almost anyone seem death-obsessed and morbid. And then, there are subjects that just make us look bad, make us feel bad, force us to recognize things about ourselves or our state that we are ashamed of, that we would rather not acknowledge at all.
For instance, in Alamogordo, locals get together every April to round up every rattlesnake they can find and throw them into trash cans, buckets and cardboard boxes. Then, they kill and skin dozens of them to cook up and sell to the public. Those snakes that aren't killed are goaded and harassed into striking at objects for onlookers' amusement. Vendors sell balloons to drop into snake pits for the snakes to attack, and snakes are kicked along the floor or dropped while being used in tricks.
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About 2,000 people a year attend the Alamogordo Rattlesnake Roundup, which is combined with a crafts exhibit and a gun show, and more than half of those collecting snakes admit to taking theirs from public land. These snake hunters have gathered as many as 1,000 snakes every year since 1986 - mostly Western diamondbacks - and as most of these rattlesnakes are not listed as endangered species, the area's Department of Game and Fish representatives do nothing to protect them.
Another form of what many consider legal animal abuse has been featured in the news quite often - cockfighting. New Mexico and Louisiana remain the only two states in America where gamblers and enthusiasts can still legally congregate to watch two roosters fight to the death. These fights are held in circular pits, and the birds involved usually wear metal spurs attached to their legs to inflict deeper and more serious wounds on their opponents. According to Alan Dundes' The Cockfight: A Casebook, such fights likely originated somewhere in Southeast Asia several thousand years ago. The first chickens to come to New Mexico most likely arrived with the Spanish colonizer and explorer Don Juan de O§ate in 1598. Today, many New Mexico counties have outlawed cockfighting, and the New Mexico Legislature is now seriously considering banning it statewide, despite loud protests from many New Mexicans who consider it a tradition.
Activists continue striving to end the Alamogordo Rattlesnake Roundup, as well - with protests against it every year, online petitions and an upcoming documentary. The ends of the rattlesnake roundup and legalized cockfighting would undoubtedly make our state a little less strange, but they might also help to make it a place we could be prouder of.
The best part of ending these practices, however, would be that they would allow us all to feel as if we've contributed to something good and moral without the majority of us having to actually make any changes in our lives. These are causes we can get behind, because unlike bills that threaten to drastically reform the typically deplorable living conditions of the chickens that lay our eggs or the cows that provide our beef these causes won't raise the prices of our breakfast foods, force us to re-examine the ways we eat and shop, or affect us personally in any way. These are causes that deserve our lip service, causes we can wholeheartedly support without fear of having to make any changes for ourselves.
Mike Smith is a UNM history major and the author of Towns of the Sandia Mountains, available now from the UNM Bookstore. E-mail him suggestions for future columns at
AntarcticSuburbs@yahoo.com.
