Word: haitianize
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...Haitian peasants, the native black swine, the so-called cochon planche, has long been a combination bank account, mobile garbage-disposal unit and occasional religious prop. Haitian farmers, among the world's poorest, have relied on the pigs to produce income for medical care, weddings, funerals and education. The long-legged, lean porker was also a helpful consumer of weeds and even human wastes. And of no small importance, hougans (priests) regularly appease their demanding Petro gods with the blood of a black pig, the preferred sacrificial symbol of voodoo...
...those Haitian pigs have virtually disappeared, and with them may go the peasant's way of life. Three years ago, when African swine fever broke out among local hogs, the Haitian government, with U.S. assistance, undertook a $22 million one-year campaign that eradicated the country's surviving population of 400,000 black swine. Reason: U.S. agricultural experts feared that the disease would spread and wreck the $10 billion U.S. pig business. Death squads wiped out the pigs of 800,000 Haitian families, paying $30 to $40 compensation for each animal killed. Wildlife biologists are now tracking down...
That favorable result led to the first shipment four months ago of 500 prime Iowa breeding pigs, among them Hampshires and white Yorkshires, to pens outside the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Although they are now thriving in their roofed stys, nobody knows if these pampered replacement hogs will prosper or even survive the harsh life of their new homeland. The imported pigs were eating such food as wheat shorts and soya supplemented by vitamins and minerals, and drinking water from taps-all luxuries unknown to most Haitians, much less the old black hogs. Once the island is declared...
...traditional Haitian black swine, raised on the island of Hispaniola since the 15th century, was a singularly hardy species; it was a cross between Spanish hogs brought over after the voyages of Christopher Columbus and indigenous wild boars. The 70-lb. pig could run swiftly and forage for itself. Indeed, so voracious was its appetite for waste that Haitians did not need outhouses: their pigs kept the neighborhood clean and disease-free. The hogs also rooted in the soil in search of tubers and root-destroying worms, thereby helping turn the earth for planting, ridding crops of insect pests...
Whether the Haitian land and Haitian peasant will also accept a substitute for the black pig remains doubtful. Many farmers, even if they can afford new U.S. stock, may have to wait as long as seven years for replacement pigs. "The loss is in calculable; a whole way of life has been destroyed," says one Haitian economist. "This is the worst calamity ever to befall the peasant...