Word: pig
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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...
...essential as the pigs were to the peasant economy, their fate was sealed once the African swine fever was discovered. An acute, febrile, highly contagious viral disease with a 99% mortality rate, it was initially recognized in Kenya in 1909. In 1971 it appeared for the first time in the Western Hemisphere, in Cuba, where 460,000 swine were killed to eliminate the disease. In 1978 it turned up in the Dominican Republic after a local pig supposedly ate contaminated ham from Spain. The vi rus quickly jumped the 200-mile common border into Haiti. Haitians recall seeing pigs fall...
...bounty of $300 is now being offered for any remaining black pig, dead or alive, that can be turned up. That is a huge sum in rural Haiti, but voodoo priests are rumored to be hiding some native swine for use in their rituals. Explains one priest: "Some little gods will accept a black goat in place of a pig, but the important gods will...
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...