Creole Pig

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The Creole Pig was a breed of pig indigenous to the Caribbean nation of Haiti. Creole pigs were well adapted to the rugged terrain and sparse vegetation of Haiti. The pig’s resilience allowed Haitian peasants to raise these pigs with little resources. The peasants characterized their pigs as never getting sick.

Creole pigs served as a type of savings account for the Haitian peasant: They were sold or slaughtered to pay for marriages, medical emergencies, schooling, seeds for crops, or a voodoo ceremony. The resillience and boisterous nature of the pigs, as well as their incorporation into voodoo folklore and the oral history of the Haitian revolution, made them a symbol for the independence and personality of the Haitian people.

Creole pigs were well adapted to local conditions, such as available feed and conditions needed for their management as livestock and were popular with the Haitian peasant farmers. However, they were almost all killed off in the 1970s and 1980s, ostensibly in order to prevent the spread of African swine fever virus, which had spread from Spain to the Dominican Republic and then to Haiti via the Artibonite River. According to the United States, by 1982 African swine fever had infected almost one-third of Haiti's creole pig population. Concerned about the spread of the disease into the US and its potential effects on agriculture, the US put political pressure on the Haitian government to slaughter all the pigs in their country.

This reasoning was subsequently questioned by the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as well as numerous academic reports, including a report published in a 1990 edition of "Stretch"[1]. The eradication of the creole pig had gone further to impoverish the already struggling peasants. It forced many children to quit school. Small farmers were forced to mortgage their land. Many Haitians cut down trees for cash income from charcoal. This contributed to the desertification of the Haitian landscape, already begun by overpopulation.

In the Haitian peasant community, the government's eradication and repopulation program was highly criticized. The peasants protested that they were not fairly compensated for their pigs and that the breed of pigs imported from the United States to replace the hardy creole pigs was unsuitable for the Haitian environment and economy.

The new breed of pigs imported from the US, common to large farms in the American Midwest, was characterized as "better" than the creole pig. Unfortunately, they required clean drinking water which is unavailable to 80% of the Haitian population, imported feed (costing $90 a year when the per capita income was about $130), vaccination, and special roofed pigpens. There is controversy over whether the importation of these pigs was encouraged by US agribusiness, as the raising of these pigs was so heavily dependent on imported products. Haitian peasants quickly named the pigs "prince à quatre pieds," (four-footed princes). The repopulation program was a complete failure.

In recent years, Haitian and French agronomists have bred a new variety of pig with the same beneficial qualities as Haiti's Creole pig. An effort to repopulate Haiti with these pigs is underway^[1].