There is no nice way to put this. It was slaughter

When I lived in Havana I spent four years renting a flat in the coastal suburb of Jaimanitas. My home was located on the seafront in this former fishing village; it was so close to the sea that I could drop vegetable peelings from my kitchen window right into the water below. From the balcony I often watched the sunset behind the Hemingway marina with its hotel named after one of the author’s most famous books, The Old Man and the Sea. The setting was spectacular and every day that I lived there I was grateful for my good fortune. Elsewhere in the world, a spot like this, on the Gulf of Mexico, would be so expensive to rent that only the very wealthy would have the means to live there.

But there were drawbacks. Jaimanitas was a distance of around 8 kilometres from Old Havana and this meant I had to travel to get into the city. I didn’t own a car, so public transport was my only option. Journeys were often challenging because of the relentless heat and overcrowded buses and taxis that did not run at regular times. Just getting into the city centre was a struggle that required stamina and determination. Buses stopped to pick up passengers even when they were already tightly packed with seemingly no room left, not even for a mosquito to squeeze in and, incredibly, I always managed to insert myself into the crush.

I was conscious of how privileged I was being surrounded by Cubans in my everyday life. This lifestyle afforded me an insight into daily comings and goings on the island that other foreigners didn’t have access to. Many evenings I would sit on the terrace and engage in long conversations with my landlords and their family and friends. Neighbours recognised and greeted me when we passed each other in the street. When I had no work to do and I did not have the energy to undertake the odyssey into the city, I often called on random friends for a coffee and a chat. When evening came, bringing some relief from the heat, I would go for strolls around the area to keep myself occupied. On one occasion that I recall well, I had just set out for a stroll when a few shouts went up that there was a scrap in a parallel street, dozens of us raced around to see what was going on. Two women were apparently clawing each other’s eyes out in a fierce fight over a man, husband of one of the ladies. Police arrived and separated them before any blood was spilt and we were all given strict orders to get moving. The action had ended, so we shrugged our shoulders in disappointment and wandered off into the twilight. Such was the desperate need to escape from the boredom of daily life for many of my neighbours…and me. 

One of my neighbours, Eddy, lived three doors away from me on the coast. From my balcony, I had a good view of the rear of his property where he kept his pig. Every evening as the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico, Eddy would light a cigarette and lean over the creature’s pen, murmuring to it softly. Knowing, as I did, that the pig would be butchered when it was six months old, I found it impossible to understand how he could build up such a gentle intimacy between him and the pig. Others had come before this one and Eddy also established and developed this gentleness with them, but none of them were spared the butcher’s knife, not one.

Eddy's pig in its sty

As I’d been party to the growing tenderness between them, I decided that for once I would summon up some courage and watch this pig being killed. Above all, I wanted to see what Eddy would do when the moment came for it to be slaughtered and carved up. I’d never before forced myself to witness this horrific scene before because I’m squeamish and because I’m a vegetarian, just as I have been all my adult life.

For several reasons slaughtering a pig is something of a ritual, a happy ritual, in Cuba. Pork is considered to be a delicacy on the island and it is eaten on special occasions, so it can be expensive to buy. Each pig that Eddy slaughtered would no doubt have added significantly to his household budget. Before dawn on the designated day, family and friends got up and made their way to Eddy’s house; any children were left elsewhere, most likely with grandparents. The scene that was about to unfold in his yard was considered too gory, too traumatising for them to witness, so it was important they were kept away until the animal was dead.

On that day, voices and the crackling of wood burning under a cauldron of water woke me up. I opened the aluminium louvre blinds and peered through the slats at the scene in Eddy’s back yard. Half a dozen people, all men, were gathered there. One was tending to the cauldron of boiling water; others were staring at the horizon, where the sun was beginning to rise. A tall slim man stood amongst them wearing a leather apron and handling a large knife, which was about 20-25 centimetres long. He seemed intent on keeping his own company while the others were engaged in chit chat which elicited loud laughter from time to time. The crackling of the burning wood under the cauldron had brought the temperature of the water to boiling. But nobody seemed to be in a hurry to move the process along. They would be aware that the sun was rising and every stage of this job had to be completed before the searing heat would start to rot the meat hacked off the carcass and congeal the blood.

Eddy and the butcher walked over to the pigsty with a thick rope, which they secured around the pig’s neck. The door was opened, but the pig refused to leave the safe place within. They tried coaxing it to leave, but the animal wouldn’t budge, and since it weighed around 80-90 kilos, it was no easy job to evacuate the pigsty. Eddy jumped in and tried pushing while the butcher was pulling. Trotters were dug in and haunches were lowered, terrible squeals of panic and fear drew some of the other men over to the pigsty. Three jumped in to help Eddy push the pig out into the open yard while two more helped the man who was pulling it out by the rope. As it was dragged into this open space the squealing intensified and became unbearable to me. The pig sensed that something horrific was about to happen to it. I could see that as I watched from the safety of my flat.

I’d vowed to be a witness to the entire scene; but I couldn’t. As the butcher approached with his knife, the man holding the rope yanked it up and back, exposing the pig’s throat and chest. That was it for me. This was as close as I could get to point zero, when the animal lost its life. I slammed the louvre slats shut and turned the volume of my music up to maximum. I had to get out of the flat soon, before the stink of blood and death invaded my space.

Four hours later I returned home. The stench still hung in the air. Death does not blend well with tropical heat. I crossed the floor of my kitchen, opened the door of the balcony, but didn’t step out. I could see all I needed to see from where I stood. In Eddy’s backyard there were about a dozen people, four of whom were children, standing in their bare feet slushing the blood back and forth, laughing at each other’s antics. Two of the women tipped buckets of water over the floor and with their brooms they slushed the mix of blood out and into the sea below. Many of the adults were passing around bottles of rum to swig from, and three or four of them were dancing to the rhythm of the music coming from a cassette recorder in the kitchen window.

On the worktable the pig lay, emptied entirely of its intestines, probably in the buckets under the metal table where the carcass now lay. Three terrier-type dogs were sniffing the buckets and yapping excitedly while the men continued to take long swigs rum directly from the bottles they were upending. When one of the dogs got too close to the buckets, it was given a swift kick and nearly ended up in the sea below. As the men worked on the offal, hacking, slicing and packaging it in preparation for the freezer. The women were using razors to shave the animal’s hide so that the crackling would be hairless. This may well have been the most important job of the day because most Cubans prize crackling as a the most delicious part of the animal and tend to serve it as an aperitive.

By evening there was very little left of the carcass, although bottles of rum were still circulating and the music continued to play, albeit at a lower volume. It was safe to turn off my own cassette recorder and leave the slats of my windows open for fresh air to cleanse my home of the heavy cloying stink that sickened me. No heavy smell, no panicked shrieking, and no contented grunts from the pigsty in the corner. In the days that followed, I observed Eddy, curious to know what he would do in the absence of his friend, the pig. He never leaned over the pigsty, didn’t even look at it. He sat down, alone with a can of beer and looked out over the horizon. I would never know how he felt or what he felt, if anything.