Want to know where that side of bacon really comes from?

The thing that surprised me most was how long it took for it to die. The squealing had already started when I got there. Teofilo had collared his 4-month-old-pig with an old piece of cord, and was in the process of pinioning it to the ground with Ramon, my floppy-haired, 19-year-old neighbor. He probably would have kept if for longer, but it has started eating his chickens’ broods, and really, who needs an excuse to eat pig?

I spent the first few minutes getting in people’s way. Eventually, however, Ramon sat on the pig’s shoulders, his hands locking the creature’s snout to the ground. I sat on the pig’s middle, and Teofilo immobilized its legs.
Then Teofilo handed me a knife, a cheap, but nasty looking curved piece of work. The pig squirmed and squealed, and I could see the whites of its eyes. I passed the knife to Ramon and said something like, “vos – no quiero.” (You – I don’t want to)

And so Ramon stabbed the thing in its chest and twisted it around a bit to give the blood some time to drain out.

“Tiene que sangrar, o el carne no sirve,” Teofilo told me later. (Basically, “The blood has to drain, or the meat won’t serve [for eating].”)

But perhaps Ramon hadn’t stabbed hard enough – the pig continued to squeal and kick. It felt very much alive, very much afraid, and not at all interested in dying. Perhaps Ramon hadn’t hit the actual heart - Teofilo and I both had to stab it before it finally stopped kicking and screaming.

Finally, we put it across two 2x4s, where Teofilo poured scalding water across it and Ramon and I scraped its hair off with dull machetes. The burned skin and scorched hair smelled like wet dog. Teofilo roped it up to a low-hanging branch, and cut off its hooves. We flayed the skin, which Teofilo’s family would use to make chicharron – pork rinds.

We removed the organs and entrails next. The long ropes of intestines seemed to go on forever, and the grass-filled stomach felt like the skin of a new basketball.

Finally, he hacked apart the creature’s backbone. The vertebrae let out a crack, as hack by hack, they split apart. All that was left of that frightened, squealing pig was two sides of marbled pork.

Then we ate liver.