Hispañiola; Atlantic crystal

Here, here and here are three pieces from three perspectives on the contentious issues in the Dominican community around race, color, and Haitian migration. The overall picture I get from the three is that of an upcoming generation of Dominicans, raised in the US and exposed to a different value set around race and ethnicity than their grandparents and uncles on the island. As the views and comments shared show these remain sensitive topics for Dominicans, and one where there are clear generational and perhaps geographic divides. There are also real problems of semantics; what exactly do the words you choose mean to an older Dominican? How are your claims colored by what he or she knows concerning attitudes of white Americans, representations of blackness in American media, etc.? The confusion can be compounded in the case of Dominican Diasporans as even when Spanish was our first language it is not likely to have been the language of our schooling and our academic and intellectual development. This semantic issue is one that needs to be kept in mind as this conversation grows if those of us reared stateside hope to influence those on the island grappling with these issues.

About a year ago I began going onto the forums of an English language Dominican news site. I'll leave my rant on the value of internet forums for another day. In any case I haven't had much choice in the matter regarding this forum. My intellectual curiosity over this period has run to DR and DR history, and this was the only English language forum with participants among whom numbered a few with solid historical knowledge and developed opinions about DR. Unfortunately, my experience there has been largely negative. Instead of celebrating the Dominican there is considerable ferocity on display at this forum regarding the issues of illegal Haitian immigration and Dominican racial complexes. And though many, especially Diasporans, aim to inject a more humanistic perspective to Haitian immigration issue, it runs into a lot of walls. One quickly learns it isn't as simple as increasing the peace; there are not only the usual legitimate economic factors that pit one group against another, not only the layer of colorism which is present throughout the Americas, but there is also the matter of actual Dominican history. If history matters, it does matter that these nations repeatedly battled militarily since their respective births in the age of Atlantic revolutions. These wars are events that our homegrown Dominican cousins will bring up in discussions on the topic. They are not entirely without merit. These events occurred at the foundations of the national psyche, and the fires they started were re-awakened and strengthened by DR's infamous benefactor Trujillo. It may not always be evident how, but the point is these histories are relevant. One problem of the more universal, human-rights based level of values that we Diasporans bring to the table in these conversations is that this level of thought can create blindspots to the positive value of nationalism. Having a more globalist outlook on the world is admirable, and it is on the whole my own viewpoint. Still I have observed that many who operate from this worldview seem to have missed a step on the ladder. They affect to have transcended nation and tribe, but often not in an organic way that would require us to respect, value and embrace the healthy aspects of the older worldview. And it has not been my experience that we Diasporans know, much less embrace, the history of our parents' homeland as well as we could; or if we do, we know it more from a regional paradigm, and might consider DR as just one more example of many in 'post-colonial' history. As with semantics this is another obstacle to understanding between the home-grown and foreign branches of this family that could undermine any positive influence we can have on this discourse. It begs of those in our island Patria the question, who are you to discuss how we identify who do not even know our story?

For now those are my two offerings to the discussion; cautions about potential pitfalls. My feeling is that the kind of violent headlines and uninformed criticism sparking increased discussion of this matter across borders will go on. I think we Dominican-Americans can offer something to this discourse, just as I think the native Dominicans have something to offer us if we really study our story. It is a story that bears the marks of all the hurricanes and vicissitudes that came with the whole of the Atlantic transaction from the age of colonization, through the Industrial Revolution, to the Cold War, through today. Working through these issues together I hope we can one day offer new paradigms to our region, our hemisphere, and maybe even our world.

Dominicans & Trujillo

Another week another title, once again on the old goat Generalissimo Trujillo. I was completely sucked in by Trujillo: Causas De Una Tiranía Sin Ejemplo (Trujillo: Causes of a Tyranny without Equal) by Juan Bosch. Juan Bosch was one of Dominican Republic's most prolific intellectuals, a former President, and a monumental figure in the politics of DR. He wrote this in exile in 1961, before coming to power, and in fact before the ultimate downfall of Trujillo. The book is a must read for those of us American Dominicans who grew up stateside and don't have the best narrative sense of Dominican history. Although the subject of this title is Trujillo, Prof. Bosch in the process outlines in fast moving, incisive chapters the historical eras of the island from the times of Columbus, through Spanish and Haitian rule and into the first of two 20th C. US invasions. I've known for a long time the pieces that come along to us from parents on national holidays, like the upcoming DR Independence Day however this was precisely what I lacked for my assorted jumble of DR historical facts: a set of discrete periods of DR and some corresponding themes, the canvases on which the historical facts become a story. Unfortunately in this particular case it is told with a tragic bent as a decoding of the causes of the rise of dictatorship. As Bosch guides us through these eras he touches on the cultural and social legacies they left, and constructs a genealogy of the causes of both Trujillo the unique man/monster and also his unmatched tyrannical regime. Bosch convincingly argues that Trujillo was the consummation and culmination of the full array of historical forces at work in the colonization of the Caribbean and of DR in particular.

Dr. Bosch's analyses and his prognosis is frighteningly accurate. Ironically the book itself also serves as an example of the prime character flaw Dr. Bosch diagnosed in Dominicans of 1960s (and today?): destructive gossip, el bochinche maligno. Dr. Bosch stresses repeatedly the role of classism and social position in DR. He points to Trujillo's insecurities around his lower class heritage, and to instances of explicit rejection by the Dominican social elites of the highest ranks, as the roots of Trujillo's unquenchable ambition for wealth and power. As I mentioned the book was written just months before the assassination of Trujillo, and the subsequent short Presidency of the author Dr. Bosch himself, aborted by a military coup and an invading US Army. Despite all this ensuing historical drama, in a post-scriptum written in 1991 the only further insights Bosch saw fit to add to the text were more gossip to confirm Trujillo's low class origins.

Unlike the last book this one grabs you and reads quickly and to the point. Unfortunately it is in Spanish and I'm not sure there are translations available. If you are trying to learn Spanish this may not be a bad one to tackle. You will get some useful cultural history of Dominicans and a glimpse into a dark and bizarre dictatorship that nonetheless directly shaped the people who today largely populate Washington Heights & Inwood. Locals can pick it up @ Calliope bookstore on Dyckman Avenue.

el Jefe

It always happens with my job that the coldest week of the year coincides with the busiest time. The last fifteen days I spent tied to my desk, right through my nights and weekends. Dark, cold, lonely days writing TPS reports and cranking up the old RiskMaster3000. Despite all this I did manage, with some starts and stops, to plow through a title. Deprive me of sunlight, exercise, healthy meals and companionship, but don't keep me from my books! What kind of uncivilized brute would I be without them?



Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History by Richard Lee Turits

This book was an eye-opening history of the foundation of Generalissimo Trujillo's long-lasting power. For those unfamiliar it is hard to top Junot Diaz's description of Trujillo as an 'infamous fuckface ... one of the dictatingest dictators that ever dictated'. He was absolute master of the Dominican Republic between 1930-1961. There are some really wild stories out there about the excesses and atrocities carried out under his watch. Those lurid tales weren't what interested me though. I sought to know HOW and WHY Dominicans put up with the guy for thirty years. As with Fidel Castro that long a reign takes much more than troops and torture to maintain. Turits' book offered many lessons on statecraft, nation-building and Trujillo's role in their development in DR. The largest lesson from this book was that despite the cruel and twisted aspects of his story Trujillo was actually a highly effective head of state whose early policies did great good to the infant nation. His regime sped up and solidified economic processes that unshackled DR from being a marginal backwater. Principally this meant 'domesticating' our grandparents who were for the most part stubbornly nomadic ranchers and/or subsistence farmers gatherers. No leader of any stripe had succeeded in encouraging this sedentarization for centuries, despite many attempts. Trujillo also drew and enforced the Dominican national boundaries, both territorially and tragically in the sense of identity. He almost literally created the state apparatus of DR. Most shockingly to me he successfully redistributed land to the common man the way so many Lat-Am movements promised and failed to deliver. This last point is the one around which Foundations is centered. Clearly Trujillo acted out of greed and self-interest, but his cunning was in seeing where his interests aligned with those of our then often impoverished, landless grandparents.

Foundations is written in an academic, densely foot-noted style and doesn't have a thrilling narrative. Unless you bring your own curiosity as I did you won't find it as gripping as titles on Trujillo's dark side. Still all histories ultimately begin with the material and economic facts, the broad determinants as illustrated by documented particulars. Read this book to begin to understand the structural reasons why DR generated, accepted and even needed a Generalissimo Trujillo. Dominicanos you will be surprised to find that contrary to stereotypes around our history the Trujillo regime was not just a puppet government installed over a hapless banana republic by the US State Department. Alongside El Jefe, in this piece of history the unlikely co-protagonist was the Dominican campesino and not the big bad empire.