Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

As we now know, any Karakul project begins with the importing of pureblood Karakul to be crossed with local sheep. Manuel dos Santos Pereira’s travels in South West Africa made it clear that acquiring purebred animals from breeders in that territory would be impossible, owing to their fear of future competition from their northern neighbor. The first rams were not acquired until after the end of World War II, and then from the US Department of Agriculture’s flock. Only after a second import of Karakul sheep from Germany in 1952—ten rams and two ewes, descendants of the Halle flock—did more encouraging results begin to appear.[147] The Italians in Libya and Abyssinia, and the Germans in South West Africa, had been able to find a suitable local breed to cross with Karakul. No such breed was found in Angola. After several failed attempts to use sheep from other parts of Angola, a large contingent of animals was imported from Tanganyika (current Tanzania), making the operation much more expensive than had initially been predicted. And indeed, importing suitable sheep for crossing would be a constant problem for Karakul farms in South West Angola.

Pureblood Karakul originating in Uzbekistan and arriving in Angola via Halle, crossed with animals from Tanganyika with the idea of reproducing German South West Africa settlement of the desert, are actually strange candidates for embodying lusotropicalism. There were crossings and hybrids, but that doesn’t mean that differences were diluted in a process of acclimation. On the contrary, purity was a central principle of Karakul husbandry. Only pureblood Karakul rams were allowed to inseminate ewes, and male offspring were slaughtered immediately after birth (with the exception of a few lambs that were castrated and then raised for their meat). Decisions whether to castrate or slaughter male progeny were based on evaluation of the quality of their pelts according to the hair standards established by Halle scientists. Pureblood males were separated from the herd, contacting females only for reproduction; hybrid males were slaughtered or castrated.

The same recording practices that were used in Italian colonies, where each animal’s degree of purity was marked on its ear, were also followed in Angola. But what was no more than a plan in Giggiga actually took place in South West Angola. The Posto Experimental do Caracul kept the Halle pureblood rams in its possession and lent them to settlers for purposes of reproduction, thus guaranteeing the distribution of superior germplasm in the entire reserve. By the early 1950s, when the PEC began its operations, artificial insemination was a common technique in animal husbandry. The laboratory that Gilberto Freyre mentioned in his description of the experiment post was actually an artificial-insemination facility in which Manuel dos Santos Pereira analyzed, diluted, and stored Karakul rams’ semen. In contrast with Bonadonna’s air drops, dos Santos Pereira used a Chevy truck to traverse the Karakul reserve and distribute the sperm of the PEC rams. Not only did the new settler community of the Karakul Reserve expand in the landscape from the first nucleus defined by the PEC property; it also grew as a result of the steady supply of pureblood sperm that Santos Pereira distributed. The maintenance, reproduction, and distribution of purity sustained the entire settlement.

The strict surveillance over purity and controlled hybridization of nonhuman animals had direct consequences for colonial relations. The demands of capital and recording operations excluded any consideration of indigenous people owning concessions. The standards defining what constituted an economically sustainable Karakul farm—standards for land extension, management, and genetic purity—limited Karakul farming to white settlers. As in South West Africa, the black population was seen as a pool of cheap wage labor. Blacks, having had their communal lands expropriated, had to work on settlers’ properties.