Haiti's small black pigs did more than feed people. Aristide describes them as the savings bank of the countryside, hardy and cheap to keep, sold off to cover a funeral, an illness, or the October school fees, and part of how the soil kept its fertility.

In 1982 international agencies told peasants the herd was diseased and had to go, and within thirteen months every animal was dead. Replacements arrived two years later from Iowa needing clean water, roofed pens and imported feed that cost most of a year's income, which is why peasants nicknamed them four-footed princes. Aristide totals the damage at roughly six hundred million dollars, a third fewer children in rural schools, and less protein on the table.

For much of rural Haiti this was the first encounter with the global economy, and he offers it as the reason talk of privatization now meets shaken heads.