The Red Farm of the Caribbean: Animal Farm II

At Manor Farm, owned by the negligent and alcoholic Mr. Jones, the animals live under the oppression of hunger, exhausting labor, and abuse. One night, the old pig Old Major speaks to them of a future without human masters, based on freedom, equality, and the shared fruits of their labor. After his death, his ideas inspire a rebellion. The animals overthrow Jones, rename the place Animal Farm, and establish seven commandments that proclaim equality and condemn human practices.

At first, the farm appears to be heading towards a fairer life. However, the pigs, regarded as the most intelligent, take over leadership. Soon, a struggle for power arises between Snowball, who advocates for modernizing the farm through the construction of a windmill, and Napoleon, who aspires to rule without rivals. The latter secretly raises dogs as a repressive force to expel Snowball and establish a dictatorship.

Since then, Napoleon concentrates all power. With the help of the propagandist Squealer, he turns lies into truth, blames Snowball for every failure, and gradually alters the commandments. While the animals work harder, eat less, and live in terror, the pigs accumulate privileges.

Boxer, the strongest and most loyal horse, responds to every hardship by working even harder. When he grows old and becomes useless, Napoleon sells him to the slaughterhouse, although he claims that he died in a hospital.

Finally, the pigs adopt everything that the revolution had condemned: they trade with humans, sleep in beds, drink alcohol, wear clothes, and walk on two legs. Equality is reduced to a doctrine whereby some animals are superior to others.

In the final scene, Napoleon drinks whisky and plays cards with the neighboring farmers. When an argument breaks out because both sides are cheating, the animals watch from the window. They alternately look at the pigs and the men but can no longer tell who is who.

Thus ends the work of George Orwell, the British novelist, essayist, and journalist, and here begins the second part of this story that demands your attention.

Some time after the animals of the first farm discovered that they could no longer distinguish between pigs and men, a rebellion broke out on a fertile farm in the Caribbean.

The rebellious pigs, led by Napoleon II, promised equality, well-being, education, health, abundance, and progress. They declared that every animal would own its destiny and that there would never be hunger or injustices again. The sheep bleated with enthusiasm; the horses stomped the ground with their hooves; the roosters crowed heralding a new dawn.

But the dawn was brief. Napoleon II had secretly raised a pack of Dobermans and bulldogs. He first used them against the former owners; later, against the animals that had fought alongside him. The dogs devoured fighting cocks, tore apart raging bulls, and imprisoned German shepherds who asked when they would begin to experience the promised freedom and prosperity. Some animals were executed next to the barn. Others were confined in damp, dark stables. Many escaped across the sea.

Napoleon II also had many goats always ready to betray unhappy animals and anyone engaging in any economic or social activities prohibited by the pigs.

The commandments began to change, much like in the European farm. Where it once stated that the land belonged to everyone, it was written that it should be managed by the pigs. Where freedom of speech was promised, it was added: “As long as it does not contradict Napoleon II.” And where it was assured that no animal would be persecuted for their beliefs, someone added during the night: “Except when their ideas are contrary to animalism.”

The pigs confiscated the stables, the crops, the workshops, and even the small carts of the street vendors. They called it revolutionary justice. Those who protested were labeled parasites, worms, or agents of enemy farms. Each failure brought a new slogan. First, they ordered the production of ten million sacks of sugar. Then they abandoned the sugarcane fields.

One day, small businesses were banned; later they were authorized. Then they were banned again, and afterward tolerated, until finally so many regulations were imposed that they could barely survive. The economic rules changed so frequently that no one knew by dawn whether they would be a farmer, a criminal, or a self-employed worker.

At first, Napoleon II proclaimed that the animals from bourgeois farms corrupted revolutionary customs. Visiting farms with human practices was forbidden. Possessing foreign currency was considered treason. Associating with exiled animals was unforgivable.

But when the feed, medicine, and fuel disappeared, which had arrived in exchange for animal blood from the distant farm of the heirs of Napoleon I, the pigs changed the commandment once again. They began inviting the bourgeois animals to sunbathe on the beaches, build hotels, and negotiate with the new porcine aristocracy.

They also called upon the descendants of those they had robbed, inviting them to invest their coins in the farm, although without returning a single stolen plot.

The sheep continued to march every May Day. They bleated the learned slogans, voted in elections where they could only choose from candidates selected by the pigs, and repeated that the farm was the freest in the world. Some did it out of fear; others, out of habit; many, in exchange for a small ration of grass.

Lucero, the horse, worked for decades. He harvested sugar cane, built hotels and mansions for the pigs. He received the Medal of Hero of Labor and a photograph alongside Napoleon II. They promised him rest, good food, and veterinary care.

As he grew old, fell ill, and lost his strength, he ended up abandoned in an unsanitary hut. He had insufficient food, no medicine, and no soap to bathe. His medal hung over a cracked wall, while the newspapers for the pigs assured that no animal was left unprotected.

Napoleon II died and left the red farm to his younger brother, Cochina China. Years later, he appointed Puerco Canelo as his administrator. Meanwhile, the children and grandchildren of Cochina China and Napoleon II lived in mansions, traveled to other farms, sailed on yachts, and enjoyed exquisite feasts unknown to most. The very pigs who condemned bourgeois customs wore foreign clothing, drank whiskey, controlled the hotels, and kept their wealth outside the farm.

One night, the hungry animals approached the windows of the grand palace. Inside, the pigs were toasting with foreign businessmen. They were negotiating land, ports, hotels, and crops that did not belong to them.

The animals looked at Canelo and Camarón, the favored grandson of Cochina China, then at the merchants, and back again to the pigs. They recalled all the promises, the dead, the prisoners, the exiles, and the commandments that had been erased and transformed time and again.

Then they understood the bitter truth: the rebellion had not eliminated the old masters. It had merely replaced one set of owners with another, more cruel, who also demanded gratitude, obedience, and applause.

Then the sheep and rams, the cows, bulls, and oxen, the roosters and hens, the ducks and geese, the rabbits, and even the hutias (all the farm animals) understood that the moment had come to make the true revolution. They rushed at the pigs with such force that the latter fled in terror.

Some Dobermans and bulldogs tried to defend their masters; they had been trained to obey those who provided them with bones with little meat in exchange for blind obedience. However, they were powerless against so many animals weary of oppression and misery, and willing to fight for their freedom. Many of their fellow animals joined the rebellious ones.

The elderly Cochina China died crushed by other pigs in the stampede. Puerco Canelo cries inconsolably in prison. El Cerdo Camarón managed to escape and now lives on the farm where Napoleon I reigned many years ago, which was not in England. The real pig Napoleon was Iósif Stalin.