Creole pig

The Creole Pig was a breed of pig from Haiti .

Creole pigs were well adapted to the harsh landscape and sparse vegetation of Haiti. The harshness of these pigs allowed farm workers to keep them with few resources. The farm workers claimed that these pigs would never get sick.

Creole pigs were considered a savings account for Haitian farm workers: they were sold or slaughtered to pay for weddings, medicines, schools, seeds or a voodoo ceremony. The pigs' resilience and boisterous temperament, as well as their inclusion in voodoo folklore and the oral tradition of the Haitian Revolution, made them a symbol of the independence and personality of the Haitians.

The Creole pigs were well adapted to local conditions; they got by with little fodder and were easy to keep, which is why they were very popular with Haitian farm workers. Even so, they were all but wiped out in the 1970s and 1980s, allegedly with the aim of preventing the advance of African swine fever , which had spread from Spain to the Dominican Republic and then to Haiti via the Artibonite . According to the US , African swine fever had infected nearly a third of the Haitian Creole pig population in 1982. Fearing the spread of the disease to the United States and its potential impact on agriculture , the United States put political pressure on the Haitian government to slaughter all pigs in their country.

This rationale was subsequently followed by the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide , as well as numerous academic reports, including a report published in a 1990 edition of "Stretch". The extermination of the Creole pigs also contributed to driving the already struggling farm workers further into poverty. It forced many children to stop going to school. Small farmers were forced to mortgage their land. Many Haitians felled trees to make a living from the production of charcoal. This contributed to the desertification of the Haitian landscape, which was started by overpopulation.

The government's extermination and repopulation programs have been sharply criticized in the Haitian rural labor community. The farm workers protested that they had not received adequate compensation for their pigs. Additionally, the breed imported from the US to replace the tough Creole pigs is not suitable for the Haitian environment and economy.

The new breed of pigs imported from the United States usually came from large farms in the American Midwest. They have been described as "better" than the Creole Pig. However, they needed clean water, which is not available to 80 percent of the Haitian population, imported fodder (US $ 90 expensive, with Haiti's per capita income of US $ 130), vaccination and special pig stalls with a very specific roof. There is no consensus as to whether imports of these pigs have been encouraged by the US agricultural industry because keeping is so dependent on imported products. The Haitian farm workers soon called the pigs "prince à quatre pieds," (four-footed prince). The repopulation program was a complete failure.

Recently, Haitian and French agricultural engineers bred a new variety of pigs with the same good qualities as the Haitian Creole pig. An attempt to repopulate Haiti with this breed is underway.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ African Swine Fever Eradication and Pig Repopulation in Haiti ( English ) STRETCH. Archived from the original on February 6, 2015. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
2. ↑ Grassroots International ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

• 1990 report in "Stretch", on the creole pigs
• The story of the "peasant's piggy bank" - video narrated by Edwidge Danticat in RealAudio format.
• A Pig's Tale - a video by Anne Parisio and Leah Gordon in RealAudio format.