Assignment 300 words

The Dominican Racial Imaginary

Critical Caribbean Studies

Focused particularly in the twentieth and twenty- first centuries, although at- tentive to the context of earlier eras, this series encourages interdisciplinary approaches and methods and is open to scholarship in a variety of areas, in- cluding anthropology, cultural studies, diaspora and transnational studies, en- vironmental studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, and sociology. This series pays particular attention to the four main research clusters of Critical Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University, where the co- editors serve as members of the executive board: Caribbean Critical Studies, Theory, and the Disciplines; Archipelagic Studies and Creolization; Caribbean Aesthetics, Poetics, and Poli- tics; and Caribbean Colonialities.

Series Editors: Yolanda Martínez- San Miguel, Michelle Stephens, and Nelson

Maldonado- Torres

Giselle Anatol, The Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the

Circum- Caribbean and African Diaspora

Alaí Reyes- Santos, Our Caribbean Kin: Race and Nation in the Neoliberal Antilles

Milagros Ricourt, The Dominican Racial Imaginary: Surveying the Landscape of Race

and Nation in Hispaniola

The Dominican Racial Imaginary

Surveying the Landscape of Race and Nation in Hispaniola

M I L a g R o S R I c o u R T

RuTgeRS uNIveRSITy PReSS

New BRuNSwIck, New JeRSey, aND LoNDoN

LIBRaRy of coNgReSS caTaLogINg- IN- PuBLIcaTIoN DaTa

Names: Ricourt, Milagros, 1960– author.

Title: The Dominican racial imaginary : surveying the landscape of race and nation in

Hispaniola / Milagros Ricourt.

Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, 2016. | Series:

Critical Caribbean studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016008278| ISBN 9780813584485 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN

9780813584478 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780813584492 (e- book (epub)) | ISBN 9780813584508

(e- book (web pdf))

Subjects: LCSH: Dominican Republic— Race relations— History. | Racism— Dominican

Republic— History. | Ethnicity— Dominican Republic— History. | Nationalism—

Dominican Republic— History. | Blacks— Dominican Republic— History. | Creoles—

Dominican Republic— History. | Cultural pluralism— Dominican Republic— History.

| Anti- racism— Dominican Republic— History. | Dominican Republic— Social life and

customs. | Dominican Republic— Social conditions.

Classification: LCC F1941.A1 R53 2016 | DDC 305.80097293— dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016008278

A British Cataloging- in- Publication record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Copyright © 2016 by Milagros Ricourt

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press,

106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this

prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.

Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu

Manufactured in the United States of America

for the women de piel color de azabache who gave me life and knowledge: my great- grandmothers, gregoria Rodriguez

and Quita Diprés; my great- grandaunt, elisa Diprés; my grandmother, esperanza Rodriguez; and my mother, andrea Diprés

c o N T e N T S

Preface ix

1 Introduction 3

2 Border at the crossroads 22

3 The creolization of Race 45

4 Cimarrones: The Seeds of Subversion 71

5 Criollismo Religioso 103

6 Race, culture, and National Identity 135

Notes 155

Bibliography 171

Index 183

P R e f a c e

Today more than ever, the Dominican Republic is in the eye of the storm of racial relations. The current debate on citizenship denial to Dominicans of Hai-

tian ancestry; the thousands of undocumented Haitians facing deportation; the

spreading of anti- Haitian sentiments; the violence against Haitians throughout

the Dominican territory each poured a drop unleashing a national and inter-

national storm. The storm’s winds blow against the Dominican Republic gov-

ernment, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the oligarchy, and their media.

Rather than receive total acceptance from the Dominican population, the poli-

cies of the government are questioned. An important number of Dominican

women and men from different social backgrounds and organizations abhor

the government, and several international institutions have sanctioned it.

The Dominican diaspora has pronounced against the Dominican government

through a series of articles in newspapers, including the New York Times; dem-

onstrated in front of Dominican embassies and consulates; and sought advo-

cacy with the United States Congress and Black Caucuses. The response of the

Dominican government has been to accuse Dominican protesters of being anti-

Dominican. And because he spoke and wrote against the government, Junot

Díaz, a Dominican American writer and winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize,

received threats that he would be stripped of the honor the Dominican govern-

ment had awarded him back in 2009.

The Dominican Republic has always been in the eye of the storm. Domini-

cans are known for their racism against Haitians and their understanding of

themselves as whites— a burlesque of negrophobia and white supremacy that I

never doubted was totally dominant. But in spite of violence, surveillance, and

a fierce socialization process, many Dominicans battle against the continuity of

white supremacist values, accept their blackness, and consider themselves part

of the Caribbean archipelago.

I was one of them. I remember walking amid ackee trees on the Jamaican

Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, looking at men and women

wearing dreadlocks and listening to a different language, and not feeling lost in

translation. I felt I belonged. I was connected to the hot weather, to the rhythm,

to the ocean view, to the loud voices, to the drum beatings, to the anguish of

x P R e f a c e

poverty, to the bloody sound of violence, and to the ackee tree, transported

along with the people who brought it in slave ships from West Africa.

My experience and the experience of other Dominicans are unknown to

many, and telling about these disparate narratives became an obsession with

me. But how could I explain all this? A long process of reading, traveling to

Haiti and other Caribbean Islands, visits to archives, observation of Dominicans

both in country and throughout the diaspora followed, and through the years I

accumulated hundreds of pages of historical facts, ethnographic observations,

summaries, and quotations from books and chronicles. The result, a chaotic

tome, sat sadly on my desk.

In the middle of my frustration over what to do with all this, I met my men-

tor, Professor Roger Sanjek, during a reunion of our Queens College project

group (the New Immigrants and Old American Project). He asked me about my

research. I told him that I had written this manuscript that was lost in words

and going nowhere, and he told me to mail it to him. I did, and afterward we

started an intense academic dialogue. For two years Professor Sanjek pushed

me to reflect further on the direction of the manuscript and its main ideas, do

some reading here and there, and rewrite. And the professor’s own editing skills

moved the words beautifully, producing, finally, a coherent manuscript. This

book is the result of that working process, and it’s not only mine but Roger’s.

And thanks to Loni Sanjek, Roger’s wife, for her kind words of encouragement.

I’m also thankful to other colleagues who kindly read parts of the manu-

script and provided me with very worthwhile suggestions and criticism. Pro-

fessor Michaeline Crichlow provided many helpful suggestions for chapter 1,

Professor Kathleen López read chapter 2 with a critical eye, and the contribu-

tions of Distinguished Professor Laird Bergad greatly strengthened the historical

argument in chapter 3. Theologian Hector Laporta carefully reviewed chapter 5.

This book states strongly that a more complex Dominican national imagi-

nary exists and that it is advancing in the Dominican Republic. The voices of

Dominicans rejecting racism and xenophobia are louder than ever, and white

supremacists are being subverted by the practices and knowledge of the people.

Africa is nearer.

The Dominican Racial Imaginary

MaP of HISPaNIoLa

Haiti is on the left of the dashed line; the Dominican Republic is on the right side. There are several locations on the Haitian side that are important to highlight. First, all mountain ranges in the Dominican Republic extend into Haiti, including Plaine du Nord (which is a continuation of the Septentrional Mountain Range), Massif du Nord (a continuation of the Central Mountain Range), Montagues Noires (a continuation of the Neiba Mountain Range), and Massif de la Sella (a continuation of the Bahoruco Mountains). These are not labeled on the Haitian side of the map because of space issues, but they do bridge the national divide. And just like the mountain ranges, Maroonage during the Spanish colonial rule of the entire island in sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries extended into what is today Haiti. When the western side of the island was granted to France in 1697, there were maroon villages already established in these mountains. Second, the village of Anse- à- Pitre is in Haiti across from Perdernales on the Dominican side. I walked into Anse- à- Pitre during my research to talk and photograph RaRa assemblies and to visit several Vodou altars. The village of Oaunaminthe, or Juan Mendez in Spanish, is across from Dajabon in Haiti. Oaunaminthe was the place where many Haitians sought refuge when fleeing from the 1937 massacre.

Source: NASA. Map by Michael Siegel, Rutgers Cartography Lab, 2016.

3

1

Introduction

This book starts with a simple question: Why do Dominicans deny the African component of their genetic DNA, culture, and history? This question has been

raised before: authors from myriad disciplines have investigated the meaning

of race in the Dominican Republic, many of them concluding that Dominicans

profess European ancestry, deny their blackness, and, correspondingly, despise

their neighboring Haitians’ African origins.1 It is assumed that all Dominicans

are equally in denial of their racial ancestry and that, although largely a national

populace of mulattos and blacks, they envisage themselves as ancestrally white,

or perhaps as somehow decolorized.2 These assertions locate Dominicans, who

occupy the eastern portion of the island of Hispaniola, as victims of a distorted

history that claims their nation to be Hispanic and Catholic in opposition to

an African and “barbaric” Haiti, which occupies the western part of the island.

This critical perspective on “official” Dominican history, a history in fact

embraced by many Dominicans, remains largely uncontested, even today. Thus,

a racially anomalous, Peau noire, masques blancs country with a deep Fanonian

psychological schism apparently persists; yet at the same time it is one side of a

coin that has its Haitian counterface. Haitians are les damnés in Dominican eyes,

envisaged within an ideology of racial stereotypes, anti- Haitian attitudes, and

historical distortions.

These critical viewpoints, however, are at odds with my experience across

five decades living in and out of the Dominican Republic. Was it I, as I began to

ask myself, who was in denial? Were the people I encountered in the southern

Dominican Republic countryside also in denial? Were my mother, grandmother,

and great- grandmother in denial as well?

I grew up hearing what were understood to be African drums during funer-

als, in celebrations of the Virgen del Carmen (Virgin of Mount Carmel) in the

rural community of Doña Ana, and when taking long walks with my grandmother

4 c H a P T e R 1

from the city of San Cristóbal to visit my great- grandmother in the nearby rural

community of Samangola. Located in what used to be the center of a slave plan-

tation in colonial times, the designation “Samangola” was believed to have been

created by enslaved Africans who arrived on Hispaniola from the Angola region.

As a child, I remember walking behind a bakini, a funeral procession for

an infant, and trying to understand the lyrics, a mixture of African and Span-

ish words, that people were singing. Anthropologists trace this tradition to Cen-

tral Africa, but did those singers, or anyone else involved, ever think about the

connection?

There are other instances of this. Frequently, I recall, I had seen large altars

for San Miguel, or Saint Michael, in my mother’s friends’ houses. Saint Michael,

also known as Belié Belcán, is a mystery (lua), or deity, in Dominican Vodou.3

The term “Dominican Vodou” (or “Vodú,” “Vudú,” “Vudu,” or “Vodun,” but rarely

anymore “voodoo”) has a long genealogy, dating in print at least to the 1970s.

Later in my adult life, between 1980 and 2000, I spent several years in the

Dominican countryside conducting research about one of the largest peasant

organizations in Latin America, Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesi-

nas (National Confederation of Peasant Women), which has as its identifying

symbol the black face of Mamá Tingó, or Florinda Soriano, a peasant who fought

for her land when the military seized it illegally but then was arrested and exe-

cuted in 1974, during the regime of Joaquin Balaguer (1966– 1978), after mobiliz-

ing the peasantry of Yamasá, a rural area several kilometers north the capital

city and within the province of Monte Plata. Mamá Tingó was a black woman

whose only photograph shows her with a bandana overing her head and a pipe

between her lips.

Then, in meetings and parades in the Dominican countryside, I heard

members of the organization play palos, African- derived drum ensembles used

in Dominican Vodou, as they sang salves,4 called by Martha Ellen Davis musical

versions of archaic prayers to the Virgin Mary, that are characterized by antiph-

onal verbal and musical repetition, in a strong African rhythm, and are used in

sacred celebrations in Dominican Vodou.5

But it is in the Dominican diaspora to the United States, in which I have lived

and studied since 1984, that I have often heard youngsters say, “I am Domini-

can of African descent,” and I have observed Dominicans wearing dreadlocks in

radical acknowledgment of their supposed historically denied black ancestry.

My experiences have also included ethnographic research between 1989

and 2011, when I spent from one month to four years in villages in the Domini-

can provinces of San Cristóbal and San Juan de la Maguana; in neighborhoods of

the capital city, Santo Domingo; and in towns near the Haitian- Dominican bor-

der. And I have conducted interviews in still other regions of the country and

among Dominicans in New York City.6 My ethnography in communities of the

country’s south has revealed ongoing cultural production with strong African

I N T R o D u c T I o N 5

components; and my interviews conducted among individuals of varying urban

and rural social backgrounds have illuminated the complicated relationship

between cultural practices and individual identity.

My research also encompasses ethnographic observations on public buses

traveling back and forth from Santo Domingo to the Dominican- Haitian bor-

der towns of Pedernales, Jimaní, and Elias Piña. Both Haitians and Dominicans

ride these buses, which provide an opportune setting for observing Dominican-

Haitian relations at the grassroots level, beyond the “official” discourse of

national essences and African denial.

Finally, I have also spent many months in the Archivo General de Indias

(AGI) in Seville, Spain, and the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) in Santo

Domingo, Dominican Republic. The AGI is a trove of historical documentation

on the conquest, colonization, and administration of Spain’s possessions in the

Americas, and the AGN is the main historical archival repository in the Domini-

can Republic.

It was my personal experience that first pushed me to ask my initial ques-

tion about African denial. Then, over my extended ethnographic and archival

explorations, I found myself navigating from initial personal curiosity through

history, music, sociology, literature, anthropology, religion, and public health to

synthesize and construct the subject matter of this book— the historical career

of bifurcated notions of race in the anything but racially bifurcated Dominican

Republic. As a result of my research, I now see the formation of the Dominican

nation, not as a single historical trajectory of sociocultural dynamics and racial

identity formation, but rather as a series of overlapping tendencies always in

contradiction. Although what I identify as the “official” history of the Dominican

Republic retains its bifurcated racial fundamentalism, I argue that Dominican

racial self- perception in fact divides into different “imagined communities.”7

Here I use Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined community yet am tak-

ing certain liberties: in my view of a split Dominican nationality, I go beyond

Anderson’s assertion that authenticity in identity is solely conceivable in terms

of nationalism.

Following Edward Said, I use an approach to nationalism that takes into

consideration its overall thematic continuities and at the same time consid-

ers its historically specific cultural particularities and discontinuities. Still fol-

lowing Said’s approach, I argue that there are different national imaginaries

within the same national space- time framework— first, the colonized imaginary,

representing the continuity of the colonial framework of power, and, second, a

subversive imaginary, defined by those who see themselves as black and ready

to fight against slavery— thus exposing shifting discontinuities in the colonial

racial and cultural system.

The imaginary of Criollo/New World– born colonial plantation masters,

rich mulattos, Catholic authorities, and local intelligentsia, all influenced by

6 c H a P T e R 1

intrusive US racialization, was nurtured by the values of the former Spanish

rulers, who intentionally generated an anomalous historical narrative that dis-

torted the on- the- ground essence of Dominican racial and cultural makeup.

This has evolved into the contemporary constructions of the Dominican Repub-

lic as the “most Spanish nation in the Americas”8 and “the oldest Christian

people of the Americas.”9 This imaginary indexes the apparent triumph of the

Dominican elite, who retain colonial values and behaviors encysted within a

modern structure of power and domination. It has erased Africa within the

“official” Dominican racial imaginary through many decades of socialization,

utilizing discursive, print, and visual media and artifacts, as well as reflecting an

assumed Euro- Christian epistemological base.

An underacknowledged and parallel imaginary, however, has resisted the

imposition of these values, which kept ancestral Dominicans in physical slavery

and their descendants in prolonged psychological denial. This second imagi-

nary fed upon the values of ancestors who acted upon their desires for freedom.

Their resistance to colonial rule is exemplified by significant movements: insur-

rections of enslaved Africans in the early sixteenth century; the creation of

alternative maroon societies surviving over centuries; the role of blacks and

poor mulattos in the achievement of independence in 1844; and their leader-

ship in the War of Restoration in 1865. These submerged values survived as well

in religion, aesthetics, and peasant movements and other forms of resistance in

the twentieth century, and they continue today. I unequivocally affirm in this

book that the elite imaginary failed to penetrate the entire Dominican social

tissue. Abhorred and persecuted, Dominicans, from the southern rural areas in

particular, preserved their African- Taino- Spanish religion, sacred music, and

traditional instruments along with other cultural elements and orientations.

In a country with longstanding racial hybridization, the historical move-

ments, assertions, and responses I will examine are too complex “to be captured

in simple equations of domination and resistance,”10 or with a binary black/

white formula. In this sense, race will be understood here within a dialecti-

cal process that throughout history incorporates and accommodates spaces

of resistance. People and their movements redraw the boundaries of principal

contradictions creating new zones of conflict and collective actions. Several

examples illustrate my point.

First, the border dividing the island was the embryo of contradictions both

in colonial and republican times. In spite of governmental policies, ideologies,

violence, and surveillance, the border is space where ordinary people, both

Dominicans and Haitians, engage in the creation of an alternative community

of cultural fusion, cooperation, and achievement of citizenship. People in the

border have developed a counter- logic of shared meaning disrupting the racial

divisions encapsulated in the official ideology. In fact, the social formation of

the Haitian- Dominican border, as we shall see, incorporates the active presence

I N T R o D u c T I o N 7

of mulattos and blacks in its gestation and maturation processes. Today, when

the Dominican government is stripping the nationality of Dominicans of Hai-

tian ancestry and hate emanates from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church,

the oligarchy, and government- dominated mass media, the Dominicans’ per-

ception of the situation is radically divided. For example, social media discus-

sions reflect struggles of Dominican and Haitians for human rights and mutual

respect, several sectors of the Catholic Church deviated from the racist teaching

of the Church hierarchy, and the Dominican diaspora has expressed its discon-

tent with racist policies.

Second, the slave resistance to colonial rule did not stop the blending of

races. These complexities of race, as Roger Sanjek (referring to Brazil) argues,

encompass transgenerational social and biological melding and its com-

pounded results, which include the blending of blacks into dominant European

cultural groups “frequently at low social status, but occasionally in elite circum-

stances.”11 This array of colonial history, resistance, social transformation, and

biological melding are mutually implicated factors in the social construction of

race. In the Dominican case, one can argue that a hybrid nation of longstand-

ing racial and ethnic complexity generates spaces of accommodation, resis-

tance, and negotiation of racial identity simultaneously, at both individual and

community levels. Rich mulattos, for example, took the political control of the

country at the creation of the Dominican Republic, and in alliance with former

Creole slaveholders, appropriated the elite’s racial discourse of Hispanidad and

Catholicism. On the other hand, ordinary people construct their own way of

thinking, in terms of racial identity, according to their rural/urban background,

social class, and education.

Third, enslaved Africans’ resistance in the early life of the Spanish colony

of Hispaniola is essential to decoding the continuing dynamics of race and cul-

tural production. The lessons of freedom in the sixteenth century did not end

with the comparatively short- lived plantation system created by the Spanish,

and they generated an underground culture perpetuated in maroon commu-

nities that survived for centuries, initially blending with indigenous Tainos

and later with other ethnic components. These maroon spaces re- created

social and self- emancipation, as well as alternative knowledge, through their

counter- colonial histories and practices. Still, ongoing sociocultural processes

manifested in many Dominican settings, and refashioning of Dominican Vodou

emanate from maroonage. Here ordinary people subverted the neat location

of the Catholic Church, and their black bodies dancing to the rhythm of palos

reimagined the national.

Fourth, although insufficiently acknowledged, previous writers, histori-

ans, social scientists, politicians, social and cultural organizations, merengue

singers, and human rights advocates have been instrumental in resisting the

“official” Dominican imagination. Starting in the 1970s, a wave of thinkers and

8 c H a P T e R 1

activists rewrote history searching for Dominican African component. The

works of Carlos Andújar Persinal, Celsa Albert Batista, Franklin Franco, Blass

Jimenez, Fradique Lizardo, Dagoberto Tejada, Hugo Tolentino Dipp, and Rubén

Silié have fiercely challenged the official historical narrative in arguing for the

relevance of Africa in the racial and cultural formation of the Dominican Repub-

lic.12 These Dominican scholars joined the Slave Route of the United Nations

Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). They opened a

new space of dialogue to break the silence about slave trade in the former Span-

ish colony of Hispaniola. Black politicians such as Maximiliano Gómez and José

Francisco Peña Gómez were also instrumental in understanding the acceptance

of regular Dominicans of their African heritage. In the diaspora, the recent work

of Silvio Torres- Saillant and Ginetta Candelario refutes the “official” Dominican

imaginary.13

This book examines each of these spaces of resistance, negotiation, intimacy

between Dominicans and Haitians, cultural production, and academic challenge

to the ruling class’s negrophobia. It is an effort to understand the Dominican

nation both ethnographically and historically along with the struggles of people

against the imposing racial and cultural values of the country’s elite.

The Evolution of “Official” Intellectual Discourse

“If there is something black or African in the Dominican Republic it came

from Haiti.”

“Dominicans are essentially Hispanics and Tainos.”

“Unfortunately, Haitians have to be our next- door neighbor, tainting

Dominican Hispanidad.”

“Haitians are a threat to our sovereignty because Haitians want to impose

what their Constitution says: ‘the island is one and indivisible.’”

“I don’t know why are we waiting to send them all back to Haiti, and if

they resist, kill all of them.” [My translations from the Spanish]14

These Dominican Internet posts reflect the “official” Dominican history in

which Haiti, tragically, is the central point shaping the idea of Hispanidad. The

Spanish colony has been falsely described as a place of harmonious mixing of

Spaniards and Tainos until African slaves fled from the French side to the Span-

ish side of the island, and then, later, repeated invasions by Haitians brought

further black menace to the Hispanidad of Dominicans. What are the deeply

embedded reasons that push one nation to harbor hate, racism, and genocidal

sentiment against a neighbor nation? What factors inspire a nation to construct

its identity by celebrating its racial superiority over another nation? Does the

I N T R o D u c T I o N 9

Dominican elite have a historically interpretable and understandable reason

to express such a virulent anti- Haitianism, or did Dominican intellectuals just

wake up one morning and decide to build a racist discourse merely for the sake

of being racists? Were there only external forces, such as the United States’

nineteenth- century racialization of Dominicans versus Haitians that provoked

the mentality of these individuals? Are these elite so- called intellectuals the

only island voices regarding the relations between Dominicans and Haitians?

I will argue that the voice of the Dominican elite— formed by slavehold-

ers and educated mulattos in colonial times, and by former slaveholders and

the Catholic Church after independence— arose in the midst of interwoven

cultural, political, and economic forces over the island’s long historical devel-

opment. During these times, the elite developed strong negative sentiment

against France and then against Haiti. The economic success of the eighteenth-

century French colony on the western side of the island was viewed with resent-

ment by the Spanish Criollo elite, a resentment exemplified in the work of the

eighteenth- century educated mulatto Antonio Sánchez Valverde. His book, Idea

del valor de la isla Española y utilidades que de ella puede sacar su monarquia [A Con-

ception of the Value of the Island of Hispaniola and of the Use which the Mon-

archy Could Make of It], published in 1785, urged Spain’s monarch to restore

the splendor of the early Spanish colony. In what Pedro L. San Miguel calls the

tragic narration,15 Sánchez Valverde recounted the prior glory of Hispaniola in

the sixteenth century, deplored the depopulation of the western side of the

island during the early seventeenth century, and requested intervention by the

crown to invest and compete with the island’s French colony. In sum, this Jesuit

author promoted love for the Iberian motherland, idealized the “glorious” days

of the founding of Spain’s first Caribbean island colony, and harshly criticized

the motherland for abandoning it.

Sánchez Valverde both championed the Creole Hispanic class and demanded

new migration of European settlers to further develop the island. Interestingly,

Sánchez Valverde also petitioned the monarch to import enslaved Africans to

boost productivity, as had the more recent neighboring French colony. In the

eyes of Sánchez Valverde, Africans were solely a commodity, not a component

of the racial and social makeup of the colony’s populace. His work consolidated

the intellectual foundation of what would later become the Dominican Repub-

lic as imagined by its national elite: a Hispanic and Catholic nation. The Jesuit

priest’s influence on the Dominican elite was reflected in their unquestioned

patriotic admiration of Spain. Sánchez Valverde, though a mulatto himself, also

promoted the belief of an Indo- Hispanic race and inspired a nostalgic sentiment

about its supposed foundational role in the colony’s past.

Sánchez Valerde’s request to the Spanish crown did not come to fruition,

due to the French Revolution in 1789 and, in 1791, the onset of the Haitian Revo-

lution, which ended with creation of the first black nation, the Republic of Haiti,

1 0 c H a P T e R 1

in 1804. To Sánchez Valverde’s admirers, the “barbarians” burning fields, killing

whites, and creating their own free nation were a threat to the very foundations

of the slave system. Yet to others the Haitian Revolution became an inspiration

for ending slavery, not only on Hispaniola but also on other Caribbean islands

and the two American continents, and a model for later independence move-

ments. However, the racial fear, the economic threat, and the possibility of a

government and nation ruled by self- liberated slaves mortified both minds in

Europe and slaveholders in the region.

While other colonial rulers did not immediately confront the “barbar-

ians” face to face, the Spanish slaveholders next door did. The island’s elites on

the eastern side actually lived under the authority of Haiti for more than two

decades, from 1822 to 1844. During this period, Haitian policies disfavored plant-

ers, cattle ranchers, and the Catholic clergy: slavery was abolished, land was

confiscated, slaveholders fled the country, and the Catholic clergy was expropri-

ated of land, houses, convents, and hospitals, and their salaries were reduced.

Land was distributed among blacks and poor mulattos. The colonial elite’s

humiliations under the Haitians created a furious resentment, given voice in

the writings of clerics, among the white and rich mulatto intellectuals and own-

ers of cattle ranches who became the post- 1844 Dominican national political

class and intellectual elite.

The resentment fed upon the writings of Sánchez Valverde and their own

twisted understanding of the Haitian Revolution. With historian José Gabriel

García’s three- volume Compendio de la Historia Dominicana [Compendium of

Dominican History], published in 1878, the resentment became word. García

shared Sánchez Valverde’s lament for the lost splendor of the early colonial

period, regret over Spanish neglect of the colony, and call to import Europeans

into the island. García also used “Dominicans” anachronistically, prior to cre-

ation of the Dominican Republic in 1844, to designate the Creole slaveholding

group. This nationality label has since been employed to identify “Dominicans”

as victims of Haitian “barbarism” and to make Toussaint Louverture, Jean-

Jacques Dessalines, and Jean- Pierre Boyer enemies of “Dominican” sovereignty.

School texts, history books, and newspapers to this day use the term “Domini-

can” to refer to the inhabitants of the Spanish colony before the creation of the

Dominican Republic and a “Dominican” nationality in 1844.

Concomitantly with the writings of García, the United States sent a series

of diplomats to investigate conditions in Haiti and in the Dominican Repub-

lic preceding official US recognition of their independence.16 These diplomatic

envoys informed the US president and Congress about how they perceived racial

differences between Haitians and Dominicans. In their writings, they expressed

contempt for the former enslaved Africans who had dared to destroy the slavery

regime and govern themselves. In the eyes of these Americans, Haitians were

African and barbarian, and, in contrast, Dominicans were light skinned and

I N T R o D u c T I o N 1 1

white. This US racialization of Haitians and Dominicans became a catalyst in

the evolving “official” Dominican racial discourse, adding ideological ammu-

nition to the resentment harbored by the Dominican elite. The US diplomats’

racialization reinforced the Dominican elites’ virulent contempt for Haitians;

both parties envisioned them as predators and disruptors of the natural order

of white supremacy.

In this shared US and elite Dominican disdain toward Haiti, Sánchez Val-

verde’s conception of an Indo- Hispanic race became the favored origin myth of

Dominican peoplehood. Manuel de Jesús Galván’s novel Enriquillo, published

in 1882, fictionalized the ethnic origins of Dominicans, which he portrayed as

acculturation of the indigenous Taino population to the customs and tradi-

tions of Spain.17 Scholar Doris Sommers contends that “novelas” promoted by

the state, such as Enriquillo, try to nationalize their heterogeneous populations.

In the particular case of the Dominican Republic, Galván’s novel silences the

voices of Africans in the Dominican national discourse. Galván, secretary to the

commander of the 1863 Spanish annexation forces, depicted with emphatic fer-

vor the travails of the Tainos early in the colonial era when, led by Enriquillo,

the indigenous population in the region of Jaragua revolted and escaped to the

mountains of Bahoruco, where they declared war against the Spanish. Eventu-

ally conflict ended, and racial reconciliation then ensued. In fact, this romantic

vision distorted one of the bloodiest episodes in island history, when thousands

of Tainos were massacred in Jaragua and the extermination of the Tainos of

Hispaniola soon followed.18

Sánchez Valverde’s glorification of Spain, García’s anti- Haitian and anti-

black racism, and Galván’s Hispano- indigenous racial romanticism all had tre-

mendous impact on the later thought of Dominicans. The idea of being whites,

with a tinge of Taino, provoked a disjuncture between nationalist ideology and

their black or mulatto bodies. This was reflected, as Frantz Fanon contends,

in the shame over their mixed white and black identity, occasionally acknowl-

edged by Dominican intelligentsia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centu-

ries.19 Several writers indeed advocated incentives for European immigration in

order to lessen Dominican racial inferiority and “whiten the race,” and thus fos-

ter economic development. For example, José Ramón López, in La Alimentación

de las Razas (The Feeding of the Races, 1896), argued that Dominican economic,

political, and social backwardness was due to this biological blemish, resulting

in laziness, violence, and love of gambling, which blocked the path to progress.

Federico García Godoy, in El Derrumbe (The Downfall, 1917), asserted that the

hybrid nature of the Dominican people was a determinant of their country’s

backwardness. And Moscoso Puello, in Cartas a Evelina (Letters to Evelina, 1941),

portrayed an image of the Dominican as a racial mixture and therefore of infe-

rior nature, to the country’s detriment.20 As the contemporary Dominican his-

torian Roberto Cassá observes, “Regarding the racial problem, positivists of the

1 2 c H a P T e R 1

beginning of the twentieth century had a common factor on which to blame the

country’s misfortunes: the racial composition; or, in other terms, on shortage of

whites and the mixing of blacks and whites.”21

During the early twentieth century, Dominican authors advanced the idea

that there was a racial democracy during and after Spanish colonial times. For

example, the early twentieth- century Dominican writer Américo Lugo extolled

the “sweet manners” of Spanish masters toward slaves.22 Quite probably, Lugo

borrowed his notion of racial democracy from writings emerging and consolidat-

ing in Brazil during these same years.23 The invented notion of racial democracy

operated to obscure the maintenance of white supremacy in that country and

has done the same for the Dominican Republic. To this regard, Francine Wind-

dance Twine argues that Brazilian claims of racial democracy succumb before

the everyday discourses and material practices supporting white supremacy

and demeaning millions of black Brazilians.24 Dominican sociologist Rubén Silié

contends that the function of the racial democracy argument is to conceal the

reality of slavery as a two- class system dependent on violence as the means of

submission and obedience.25

The idea of a racial democracy in Spanish Hispaniola began with the writ-

ings of Médéric Louis Elie Moreau de Saint- Méry, a French chronicler who in

1797 concluded that masters and slaves in the Spanish colony lived in relative

harmony as compared with the brutal system in the island’s French colony.26

Certainly there were fundamental differences between slavery in the Spanish

portion of the island, where cattle raising prevailed, and the sugar, indigo, and

coffee plantation economy in the French portion, based on intensive slave labor.

The work the enslaved did in the two parts of the island vary, but the concept

of master and slave was the same. The conclusion propounded by Moreau de

Saint- Méry has been unexamined until recent times, and historical knowledge

about slavery in the Dominican Republic has relied too much on his interpreta-

tions and prejudices.

It is sometimes argued that the numbers of freed slaves and of mulattos

contributed to racial “democracy.” However, the manumission of enslaved per-

sons on the Spanish side of the island did not represent a change in the overall

slavery system. In fact, the freed and mulatto population of the French colony

was larger than in the Spanish colony, where, in spite of the numbers, the fun-

damental contradictions of slavery remained strong. Spaniards, French, and

also Portuguese and English, all developed their own slavery regimes, yet the

basis of the system everywhere was violence, coercion, and virulent discrimina-

tion against free blacks.

Countering the argument of Dominican racial democracy is the fact that,

for over a period of three centuries, significant numbers of enslaved laborers

in the Spanish domain escaped to form or join independent maroon commu-

nities. The first runaways fled the plantations in the early 1500s, and the last

I N T R o D u c T I o N 1 3

independent maroon village was described by traveler William Walton in 1810.

Why would enslaved workers prefer to escape the “sweet manners” of their

Spanish masters to live in the mountain wilderness? Clearly, the daily exploita-

tion, lack of freedom, and brutal punishment stipulated in the Caroline Black

Code dissuaded them from even considering any return to their former masters.

A lack of attention to these topics has served the “official” Dominican imag-

inary’s contention of early racial harmony, as well as its claim that disruptions

by blacks in the Spanish colony derived from, first, the French colony, and then

Haiti, downplaying the reality of slavery in the Spanish domain. Blaming Hai-

tians for all traces of African influence in the Dominican Republic, and exalt-

ing a largely fictitious Spanish- Indian race, became pillars of twentieth- century

state policy.27 The exaltation of Tainos is particularly problematic since they

had physically disappeared by the late sixteenth century. Enslaved Africans, on

the other hand, were present in the colony as early as 1503, and they remained

numerically important, producing the interracial mixture visible in today’s

Dominican population. Moreover, what survives of Taino culture as manifested

in religion, language, food, and music has been transmitted until present time

by blacks. Yet, focusing the history of Dominican national origins on Spain, and

on ethnic interaction between Spaniards and Tainos, became a recurrent “offi-

cial” theme.

The strands of elite Dominican thought that included resentment toward

Haiti, praise of the Iberian motherland, disdain and shame for blackness, and

desire to augment the country’s white population were distilled into state policy

during the 1930– 1961 regime of mulatto dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. In tune

with Sánchez Valverde, García, Galván, and Lugo, the intelligentsia of the Tru-

jillo period dedicated their efforts to strengthening the nation by reinforcing its

“Hispanic” attributes: white skin color, European ideals of female pulchritude,

the Spanish language, Catholicism, and intense devotion to motherland Spain.

The two leading exponents of these values among Trujillo supporters were Man-

uel Arturo Peña Batlle (1902– 1954) and Joaquín Balaguer (1906– 2002).

In reviewing the history of the island’s two nations, Peña Batlle concluded

that Haiti “is a society without history, without a tradition or cultural background,

without a point of departure, and without spiritual roots.”28 His reactionary

thinking positioned the Haitian people in opposition to Dominicans: whatever

qualities Haitians did not possess, Dominicans did. This anti- Haitianism was a

deliberate counterweight to Dominicans’ white- Indian “mestizaje,” Hispanidad,

and Catholicism.29 Anti- Haitianism was carefully crafted through distorting his-

torical accounts of Haitian “invasions,” construing Haiti as a threat to Domini-

can sovereignty, assigning blame to Haiti for any African blood in the Dominican

people, and declaring Haitians a racial menace. This racialized scenario was

compounded in rationalizations for the regime’s massacre of thousands of Hai-

tians in Dominican/Haitian border towns in 1937 and subsequent violations of

1 4 c H a P T e R 1

the human rights of Haitians resident in the Dominican Republic. Instilling both

“Hispanic” national values and anti- Haitianism in the minds of the Dominican

citizenry became pervasive in state policy throughout the Trujillo dictatorship

and during the repressive 1966– 1978 regime of Joaquín Balaguer.

Although intellectuals in other Spanish- speaking Caribbean countries also

defended the values of Spain and the Catholic faith and downplayed the African

presence in the formation of their nations, such ideas never became active state

policy. The viewpoint of José Antonio Saco in the 1830s, envisioning a Cuban

nation based on Spanish culture and without African roots, extended into the

twentieth century in the work of other Cubans. And in Puerto Rico, Antonio

Pedreira’s Insularismo (1934)30 were similar to the ideas of their Dominican con-

temporaries Peña Batlle and Balaguer in claiming that Puerto Rican national

identity was based on the values of Spain and in disdaining their island’s African

cultural roots. In Cuba and Puerto Rico, however, dissident voices also emerged

in opposition to such exclusively Hispanic claims. For Cuba, this included long-

standing collaborations and exchange between Afro- Cubans and African Ameri-

cans, from the era of slavery onward and especially after US intervention into

the Cuban war for independence in 1898, as well as the intellectual and artis-

tic production of Cubans Juan Gualberto Gómez, Rafael Serra, Nicolás Guillén,

Nancy Morejon, Victor Fowler, and Juan René Betancourt, among others, who

created marked resistance to African denial by the Cuban elite. In Puerto Rico,

intellectual resistance to Insularismo in the poetry and writings of Luis Palés

Matos, José Luis González, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Isabelo Zenón, Isar Godreau, and

Magaly Fequiere contributed to alternative ways of conceptualizing Puerto Rico

in racial and cultural terms.

These Cuban and Puerto Rican voices benefited from less politically repres-

sive environments than the Dominican Republic, where parallel dissident voices

were long ignored or suppressed and did not emerge until the later twentieth

century. The writings of Juan Pablo Duarte (1813– 1875), Pedro Francisco Bonó

(1828– 1906), and Gregorio Luperón (1839– 1897), however, do testify to an alter-

native narrative centered on a Dominican nationalism based not on race but

inclusive of the country’s racial diversity and emphasizing the role of its entire

people in the country’s transformation. Duarte’s movement for independence

from Haiti, for example, included whites, mulattos, and blacks and was founded

not on racial hatred but in the widespread desire for an independent nation.31

Pedro Francisco Bonó saw the racially hybrid nature of Dominicans as an asset

for development.32 Gregorio Luperón was the leader of a war considered a racial

war (the masses of blacks and mulattos against the country’s annexation to

Spain in 1863). Moreover, as we shall see, concealed in their daily life practices

and negotiations of identity, ordinary Dominicans, too, have long continued to

resist the “official” dominant ideology.

I N T R o D u c T I o N 1 5

The Burlesque Caribbean Other

Presidents, Catholic bishops and archbishops, the oligarchy, the official intel-

lectuals, and its controlled mass media are the best ambassadors of the Domini-

can official imaginary. The discourse and practice of dictator Rafael Leonidas

Trujillo (1930– 1961) showed the world of Dominican whiteness and fidelity to

the Catholic faith and their intolerance of “savage” Haiti. President Joaquín

Balaguer (1966– 1978/1986– 1994) exhibited internationally his loyalty to Spain

and his preoccupation of Haitian blackness infiltrating the white Dominican

Republic. Contemporary Dominican Republic presidents such as Leonel Fernán-

dez and Danilo Medina have enacted laws that violate the human rights of hun-

dreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian ancestry, gaining the rejection and

criticism of the international community.

Most scholars, journalists, and international observers unquestioningly

accept the Dominican/Hispanic versus Haitian/African discourse of Domini-

can elite. For example, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series Black Latin

America conducted by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has one chapter

on the Dominican Republic titled “Haiti and the Dominican Republic: A Divided

Island.” In this documentary all Dominicans are lumped into the denial of their

blackness and are oblivious of their own history. David Howard affirms that

“Dominican nationalism has been colored by a pervasive racism, centered on

a rejection of African ancestry and blackness.”33 And Michelle Wucker uses the

patriarchal metaphor of the cockfight to characterize the oppression and abuse

Dominicans (all of them, undifferentiated) exercise against Haitians.34 As Silvio

Torres- Saillant puts it, there is a willingness to “pass judgment on the Domini-

can population’s ‘backwardness,’ ‘ignorance,’ or ‘confusion’ on account of their

inaccurate self- definition.”35

I must report that many of these narratives fail to expose the complexi-

ties of Dominican history and national identity formation. Major components

of Dominican sociocultural dynamics remain submerged. Moreover, such out-

sider narratives, written with transnational academic authority, inadvertently

legitimize extant structures of power by uncritically representing the “official”

narrative of the Dominican nation as if it was uncontested and embraced by all

Dominicans. For instance, as I show in this book, a richer historical and contem-

porary panorama of Dominican representations can add layers of complication

and conundrum to Dominican identity, both past and present.

The acceptance of the Dominican Republic as a monolithic nation of

racial retrogrades amounts to the creation of a unique Caribbean other. This

Dominican other both exists beyond and sidesteps the global other constructed

by European power and superiority to embrace the world’s many powerless,

“inferior,” and racialized colonial others. The construction of the Dominican

1 6 c H a P T e R 1

Republic as a nation of retrogrades is a burlesque otherization, depicting a peo-

ple who believe themselves to be superior by mimicking Europeans’ original

othering. It depends upon academic outsiders accepting the “official” historical

racial discourse as authoritative and authentic and concluding that Domini-

cans, oblivious of the African component of their racial makeup, and universally

contemptuous and abusive to their Haitian neighbors, accept it as well.

The narrative of Dominican denial clearly is very dangerous. Informing

outsiders of the burlesque other paradoxically supports and legitimizes the tor-

tured historical unfolding of the “official” Dominican racial imaginary. Further,

these academic interpretations isolate Dominicans from the rest of the “normal”

Caribbean, obscuring the role of Hispaniola and the Dominican Republic in the

development of dissident identities and cultural struggles in its wider region.

The Centrality of the Plantation

The exceptionalism of the Dominican Republic for many academics is further

indexed by the apparent absence of plantation- system dominance as exhibited

by other Caribbean islands. In fact, Spanish Hispaniola was the first colony in

the “New World” where sugar plantations were established, although the exis-

tence of the plantation there was short lived. During the first quarter of the

sixteenth century, the Spanish colony was the site for the emergence of sugar

plantations, using thousands of enslaved African laborers, and producing and

exporting tons of sugar to Europe. This plantation system did not last for long,

however, due to slave insurrections, the emigration of many Spaniards to the

newly discovered lands of Mexico and Peru, and management failures by Span-

ish royal authorities. A second attempt to revitalize plantations in the Spanish

portion of the island during the eighteenth century was also short lived, ended

by the successful Haitian Revolution.

Lacking an extended plantation society history, the Dominican Republic (but

not Haiti) has been sidelined by scholars who, like Sidney Mintz, saw the rich and

fascinating complexities of the slave trade and plantation production as pivotal

to the emergence of capitalism. The Caribbean plantation system has been widely

discussed by historians and anthropologists, and the most well- known academic

works on the topic are from North American scholars.36 However, a relatively

undeveloped plantation system history does not exclude the Dominican Republic

from the same rich sociocultural dynamics that characterize other people of the

Americas, and particularly the Caribbean. In the case of the Dominican Republic,

slave resistance against the abuses of Spanish masters was the main wellspring

of popular cultural production and identity. Moreover, as Michaeline Crichlow

explains, our view of Caribbean cultural production must be expanded beyond

plantations to include cultural practices in other spaces and locations, inside and

outside the Caribbean.37 Crichlow argues throughout her book, Globalization and

I N T R o D u c T I o N 1 7

the Post- Creole Imagination, that Caribbean sociocultural practices must be liber-

ated from the plantation framework in order to explain the production of culture

in the present- day Caribbean and, moreover, to extend the process of cultural

creolization to other vulnerable regions in the world. This argument opens the

possibility to consider cultural production that does not emanate directly from

the macroeconomic relations of plantation social structures.

Many Dominicans themselves are oblivious of the Dominican Republic

position as a gateway of knowledge of the deep and rich processes of Carib-

bean cultural dynamics. Hispaniola’s glorious, and early, movements of free-

dom place the terrain that would later become the Dominican Republic at the

very dawn of modernity. This five- and- a- quarter- century trajectory has been

obscured and distorted by “official” narratives.

The Dominican experience connects to the process of evolving cultures in

the Caribbean. Paraphrasing Edouard Glissant’s “The Open Boat” I can say that

Dominican ancestors were also in the womb/abyss of the boat and in the depth

of the sea, in the apocalyptic eternal debasement, and in the remaking of the

unknown in actual experience of Relation, and Dominican also cry the cry of

poetry.38 Dominican histories are grounded in the Antilles sociocultural dynam-

ics, in creolization processes of cultural production and struggles exploring the

circuits connecting the Antilles across language barriers in an ever- evolving

Antillanité as proposed by Glissant.

Transparency/Opacity

I will argue that the Dominican populace has not lived and survived under totaliz-

ing intellectual bondage to the historic Dominican intelligentsia’s “official” abso-

lute sense of racial superiority, its uncompromising cultural fundamentalism, or

its exclusion of overlapping local subjectivities. There are other stories to tell, not

simply in contraposition to Haiti, but emanating from a longer history beyond the

coloniality of Dominican “official” thought or the representations of foreign intel-

lectuals. To explain my stance in bringing to the surface stories of other Domini-

cans and their contradictory imaginaries, I draw upon Martinican writer Edouard

Glissant’s concepts of transparency and opacity in his Poetics of Relation.

Transparency no longer seems like the bottom of the mirror in which West-

ern humanity reflected the world in its own image. There is opacity now at the

bottom of the mirror, a whole alluvium deposited by populations, silt that is fer-

tile but in actual fact indistinct and unexplored even today, denied or insulted

more often than not, and with an insistent presence that we are incapable of

not experiencing.39

In engaging Glissant’s opacity (the other, the different) and transparency

(the refusal to see difference or dominance of Western values), I propose to

reformulate the fallacy that Dominicans are Hispanic and Catholic and nothing

1 8 c H a P T e R 1

more. The alluvium deposited by other Dominican stories— of freedom, cultural

creativity, identity formation, and daily life— must be explored. However, opac-

ity and transparency are intricately linked and blended in the hybrid essence

of the Caribbean and, in particular, in the case of the Dominican Republic, its

eldest Creole child. In Cuban writer Antonio Benítez Rojas’s provocative meta-

phor, “the painfully delivered child [of the] Caribbean” combines the “civilized”

West with “savage” Indians and Africans, both genetically and culturally.40 This

painfully delivered Caribbean child, a unique product of elements merged and

fused in the Americas, speaks, in Glissant’s words, with an “African- derived

grammar and European- derived vocabulary,” which is the base for a Black Cre-

ole Caribbean identity.41

For too long, this painfully delivered child of creolization on Hispaniola

has been confined to the bottom of the mirror and silenced, leaving the shad-

owy sociocultural dynamics of resistance, freedom, and Dominican identity in

a limbo of obscurities. To liberate and hear the child, and to give voice to sub-

jectivities redefining the possibilities of the Dominican nation, discussion must

begin at the intersection of power and history. I support Haitian anthropologist

Michel- Rolph Trouillot’s affirmation that “human beings participate in history

both as actors and as narrators.”42

Too many of the dramas of Dominican history have been narrated exclusively

from the perspective of former slaveholders with loyalties to Spain, silencing

other narrators and distorting major historical episodes. The nation, national-

ism, and national identity have been “somehow invented” through exclusion of

marginal groups and actors who remain outside the “official” national discourse.

Truoillot argues that the basis upon which the nation is claimed is always part

fiction and that “nationalism always appears somehow invented.”43

Who are these marginal ones? Where has the painfully delivered child been

socially located and nurtured? What can this child/adult tells us?

Organization of the Book

Chapter 2, “Border at the Crossroads,” explores the roots of Dominican imagi-

naries. The chapter examines the Dominican- Haitian border as a site of con-

flicting national imaginations and the source of contradictory, complicated,

and still ongoing vectors of struggles for freedom, racial separation, violence,

cooperation and cultural blending, and hope and disillusion.

The argument underlying my discussion of the border follows accordingly.

On one hand, the physical border separating Haiti and the Dominican Republic

evolved into a cultural signifier in the Dominican official imaginary, a marker

of the racial separation of African- Haitian and Spanish- Dominican. The border

became the line dividing civilization from barbarism, not only from the official

Dominican point of view but also from that of the United States and leading

I N T R o D u c T I o N 1 9

European powers.44 In this sense, the Haitian- Dominican border became a con-

glomerate of factors— power, abuse, survival, and negotiation— mediated by

social actors, both locally and internationally. It has been essential to the for-

mation of national subjectivities.

Following Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the border as a social location, chap-

ter 2 further argues that a psychological border emerged, placing Dominicans here

and Haitians there, divided by a racialized boundary that was reinforced with a

persistent and politically driven anti- Haitianism initiated during the Haitian uni-

fication of island from 1822 to 1844. This reached a climax in what I call Hispaniola

Holocaust, the massacre of thousands of Haitians in 1937. However, notwithstand-

ing the process of creating a national subjectivity reflecting the Dominican elite’s

point of view, alternative developments have contested this “official” imaginary.

In spite of violent confrontation and separation, in spite of genocide and surveil-

lance, the social location of the border also diminishes the opposition of here and

there, unites us and them, and preserves binational community.

Chapter 3, “The Creolization of Race,” provides an overview of slavery in

the Spanish colony and includes a discussion of racial creolization— the birth of

the painfully delivered child and its subsequent racial identification. Yet, as we

shall see, a large segment of Dominican intellectuality has long argued that the

African component of Dominican racial ancestry, and cultural practices as well,

derives from Haiti. For example, Joaquín Balaguer’s book La Isla al reves (Upside

Down Island), published in 1982, asserts: “The erosion of Dominican national

identity, steadily underway for more than a century through dealings with the

worst of the Haitian population, has made worrying advances. Our racial origins

and our tradition as a Spanish people must not stop us from recognizing that

our nationality is in danger of disintegration if we do not take drastic measures

against the threat to it from the proximity of the Haitian people.”45

This “official” twentieth- century Dominican view of blaming Haiti for

blackness and the transmission of uncivilized ways to Dominicans, thus taint-

ing their Spanish roots, resonates with Michel Foucault’s discussion of how

earlier travel narratives of non- Western societies prefigure later knowledge of

these societies.46 Foucault further argues that traveler tales have contributed

to Western knowledge of indigenous people. Edward Said, on the other hand,

draws on Foucault’s intellectual archeology to conclude that knowledge of the

East was based on Western narratives. In the case of the Dominican Republic,

such reports became a centerpiece of a history of racial denial. However, as

Linda Tuhiwai Smith argues, “Indigenous people across the world have other

stories to tell which not only question the assumed nature of those ideals and

the practices that they generate, but also serve to tell an alternative story. . . .

These counter- stories are powerful forms of resistance.”47

Chapter 3 demonstrates that Africans were present from the creation of

the Spanish colony, and from then onward they fused biologically and culturally

2 0 c H a P T e R 1

with Spaniards and native Caribbean peoples. Thousands of enslaved Africans

were brought to work together with indigenous Tainos in Hispaniola’s mines

and sugar plantations. By the end of the sixteenth century, the racial composi-

tion of the colony was overwhelmingly mulatto and black. Further mixing, and

the arrival of more enslaved Africans, perpetuated this racial composition as

against the “official” Dominican myth of continuous Hispanidad.

Chapter 4, “Cimarrones: The Seeds of Subversion,” traces the movement of

people in search of human dignity, freedom, and security through insurrection

and maroonage and illustrates the continuity of a subversive national imaginary

from colonial times to the present. With documents from the Archivo General

de Sevilla and the Archivo General de la Nación, collections of letters, and the

writings of colonial chroniclers, I reconstruct stories of resistance by enslaved

Africans, confirm the predominantly black and mulatto population profile of

the Spanish colony during and after colonial times, and outline the struggles of

slaves and freed persons to end slavery and preserve freedom in the nineteenth

century. This chapter concludes with the twentieth- century story of Oliborio

Mateo and his resistance movement in the Dominican Republic’s Maguana

Valley and Central Mountains range, for which he was persecuted and killed.

According to his followers, however, he did not die and in 1962 was reincarnated

in Las Matas de Farfán, where his followers were massacred by the national army

led by invading US troops.

Chapter 5, “Criolismo Religioso,” moves to the contemporary rural commu-

nity of Najayo, in San Cristóbal Province to the south of the capital city, Santo

Domingo. The stories I gathered and episodes I witnessed there from 1990 to

2011 concerned things as varied as herbal and root remedies for illnesses rang-

ing from depression to cancer, to men and women serving as prêt- savannes, or

“bush priests,” identified by Maya Deren as those who know “the Catholic lita-

nies so well that [they are] often invited by the hougan . . . to invoke the bene-

diction of the Christian deity.”48 I saw women dancing while possessed by snake

spirits people “mounted” by deities, and I saw wooden three- cross calvarios in

front of houses. I heard the sound of drumming and witnessed visits to the

cemetery at midnight to consult the deities. Najayo’s rich culture reflects a long

history though which indigenous, Spanish, and African elements have blended

“into a common pool of signifiers,”49 and the community, as a dialectical urn,

contains all these traces of a hybrid culture that is constantly forming and trans-

forming, amid local and global dynamics.

It was in the altars, the deities, and the crosses that I grasped the essence

and life of the religion that Dominican social scientists call Dominican Vodou.

It survives today manifest in devotion to luas (mysteries, saints that have both

Christian and African names); in sacred African drums and the singing of salves,

with their mixture of Spanish and African words; in funeral ritual; in the heal-

ing power of herbalists and “servers” of deities; and in the belief in coexisting

I N T R o D u c T I o N 2 1

spiritual, natural, and human worlds. Here the cross, saints, symbols, and prayers

of the Spanish conquest and colonization have been historically refashioned,

employing Christianity to empower the oppressed.

Dominican Vodou has never been deeply traced historically or fully stud-

ied ethnographically,50 yet it has been commonly assumed that Vodou practices

in the Dominican Republic derive from Haitian influence. My ethnography in

Najayo and other communities in the country’s south confirmed that Domini-

can Vodou retains a distinctive and lasting heritage of symbols and practices

unique to the eastern side of the island. For example, Taino influence is notice-

able throughout the south. Here water, stones, and the forest are intrinsic to

practices of the Indian Nation and to portions of the three other remaining

Vodou Nations— Rada, Guede, and Petro.

Chapter 6, “Race, Identity, and Nation,” synthesizes points developed

throughout the book, draws upon interviews with Dominicans of different social

backgrounds about their racial self- perceptions, and relates my arguments to

recent political history. The chapter addresses the political and cultural evo-

lution of academic and practical narratives that challenge the officiality and

examines the lives of José Francisco Peña Gómez and Maximiliano Gómez as

examples of Dominican acceptance of their African component. These themes

articulate an intrinsic connection between practice and identity, the historical

dialectic that lies at the heart of a Dominican racial fusion and its contrasting

“official” and subversive imaginaries.

Although most Dominicans in the present identify as white or mixed Indian

and white, a significant and growing number recognize their African roots. I ask

what it is that may cause some Dominicans to acknowledge Africa as an impor-

tant component of racial and cultural dominicanidad and what makes other

Dominicans oblivious of their African roots. I consider why some Dominicans are

still antagonistic to Haitians, and why Haitians continue to be vilified and perse-

cuted within the present- day Dominican Republic. The final chapter dives as well

into the current complexities of racial reconciliation and how it may be possible

to build an alternative nation without excluding Africa. The political and racial

fundamentalism of the Dominican intelligentsia has its base more in myth than

history: it is now threatened with present and future generations of Dominicans

who recognize and appreciate the genesis and beauty of their own hybridity.

This book opens other lines of conversation in which we can finally prove

that the white supremacy of the Spanish Caribbean is not totally predominant.

Although there is a strong official discourse, present as well are the people’s

practices and ways of knowing.

2 2

for more than five hours, packed with other passengers like sardines and listen- ing to loud music and sharing one another’s sweat and body odors, I traveled in

a public minibus from the capital city Santo Domingo to Pedernales, a town on

the southern end of the Haitian- Dominican border. In the bus were people of all

ages and colors, speaking in both the island’s languages and its several regional

accents. There were Dominicans traveling to the border for the first time;

Dominicans who lived along the border; Haitians returning to Haiti; Haitians

who lived on the Dominican side of the border; members of Dominican- Haitian

families visiting relatives; Haitians with business at the Dominican consulate in

Pedernales— in short, a microcosm of Dominican and Haitian relations.

During these five hours, I heard Dominicans, including soldiers with their

constant racial profiling, insult and demean Haitians, all of them reproduc-

ing the official Dominican discourse of racial and ethnic exclusivity. But to my

surprise I also observed intimacies among the travelers. I met an interethnic

married couple living in Pedernales; heard Haitian Kreyòl spoken both by a

Dominican woman with her Haitian friend and by the bus driver, in greeting

a man on a motorcycle; and saw a Dominican woman watching over a Haitian

woman’s children while the mother bought lunch during one of the bus jour-

ney’s many stops. I also witnessed Haitians defend their rights to soldiers and

bus drivers, similar to what I’d observed on other trips I’d taken from the capital

to different destinations across the border and back.

In chapter 1 I approached Dominican- Haitian relations from the perspec-

tive of the construction of Haitian otherness by the Dominican elite. In this

chapter I document and critically analyze the historical evolution of the Haitian-

Dominican geographical border, as well as the historical and ongoing creation

of national subjectivities and the cultural borders separating Dominicans from

Haitians. I argue that the geographic and sociological Dominican- Haitian border

2

Border at the crossroads

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 2 3

is today a key to the history of intersocietal and intergroup exclusion/inclusion

and “difference” between two peoples.

This chapter explains that the Haitian- Dominican physical border was ini-

tially the product of the religious confrontation of Spain and France in Europe

and the contest for territorial control in the Caribbean. However, the colonial

power struggles devolved into an entangled mix of political and economic fac-

tors that eventually produced the border as a physical and symbolic space sepa-

rating two nations in terms of race, culture, and history, as well as one marking

Dominicans as superior and Haitians as inferior. I further argue that the founda-

tion of anti- Haitianism and the creation of a psychological border germinated

during Jean- Pierre Boyer’s 1822– 1844 unification of the island. The resentment

of the colonial and postcolonial elite class arose in the midst of the economic,

political, and social revolution promoted by Boyer. The elites, including slave-

holders, planters, and Catholic clergy, were humiliated and expropriated, while

at the same time slavery was abolished. Rage against Haitians, which began to

grow among the elites, later permeated their academic work, creating rather

than reconciling differences between the two nations.

The elite discourse stressed hostility, antagonism, and conflict. The Domin-

ican state has used violence, genocide, and coercion to destroy interconnections

between Dominicans and Haitians and to control the border. Still, in spite of

many historical interventions and episodes, the border as social location today

remains a confusing liminal space where ordinary people engage in ongoing

sociocultural dynamics, creating an alternative community of cultural fusion

and cooperation.1

I will examine the Haitian- Dominican border from this entire conglomera-

tion of factors, including history, politics, national imaginations, and people’s

daily experience, all with the aim of distinguishing “official” Dominican anti-

Haitian discourse from people’s lived experience of the border as a social location.

The History of the Haitian- Dominican Border

The history of the geographical border dividing the island of Hispaniola begins

in the seventeenth century with disputes between the Spanish and French colo-

nizers over the status of the island. According to Manuel Arturo Peña Batlle, the

rivalry between Spain and France started in Europe, where Spain was defending

Roman Catholicism during the advent of Protestantism and the Enlightenment.2

Peña Batlle further searches for the causes of Spanish colonial decline in His-

paniola and blames Spain for abandoning Tortuga Island. Yet he also praises

Spain as the savior of the Catholic faith.

Over the course of more than two centuries, the two colonial powers would

co- create a border on Hispaniola that separated the French and Spanish por-

tions of the island— the former power occupying the western third and the

2 4 c H a P T e R 2

latter the eastern two- thirds.3 Here I borrow American geographer Richard Hart-

shorne’s categories of “superimposed” and “natural,” using “superimposed” to

characterize the border demarcated in 1731 as one imposed by colonial powers

on a region under its control, as well as a natural demarcation aligned with the

physical features of the region, in this case two rivers.

This separation of the island involved a zigzag series of events and histori-

cal processes that included repeated conflicts between Spain and France; the

abolition of slavery; the independence of Haiti and struggle by Haitians to main-

tain their freedom; Haitian president Jean Pierre Boyer’s temporary unification

of the island; the creation of an independent Dominican Republic and ensuing

negrophobia advanced by the Dominican ruling class and intellectual elite; the

mass murder of Haitians in 1937 in what I call the Hispaniola Holocaust; the

deplorable conditions of Haitian immigrants working in the Dominican Repub-

lic; ambivalent diplomatic relations between the two countries; and the cre-

ation of distinct cultural boundaries between the two nations.

Each of the two separate states that resulted from this superimposed colo-

nial border emerged with distinct linguistic attributes— Haiti with French and

Kreyòl, the Dominican Republic with Spanish— and each with distinct historical

ties to its former imperial metropole. Over time these differences have been

transformed into internal island inequalities.

Today borders require strict scrutiny. In Europe, in spite of integration and

borderless world,4 the refugee crisis and aggressive migration from poor nations

maintain borders as a site of vivid, living tensions, and in the New World main-

taining a border such as that between the United States and Mexico would

require an investment of millions of dollars in the construction of walls or fences

and the employment of security forces to keep potentially thousands of immi-

grants from poor Latin American nations at bay. Beyond their physical reality as

geographical lines dividing nation- states, borders also create symbolic divisions

“invisible to the human eye” to distinguish “us” from “them.”5 For their part,

the Dominican Republic and Haiti apparently maintain rigorous scrutiny of the

persons and goods that cross their border. And the practices through which this

border is demarcated encode not only a painful colonial past, which still haunts

both nations, but also the ways in which borders are managed and perpetuated

to benefit political and economic elites, to the detriment of nonelite groups.6

The Haitian- Dominican border is a construct of powerful forces, both for-

eign and national. These power relations have been essential in the construc-

tion of Dominican national subjectivity in contraposition to Haiti as the other.

In this sense, through the Dominican official discourse, Haitians have become

the Dominican nemesis in terms of skin color, religion, morality, and condi-

tions of health. This racist colonial discourse officially defines Dominican- ness

in terms of Hispanic roots and Catholicism in opposition to Haitian blackness

and Vodou religious practices.7

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 2 5

In spite of this inherited divisiveness, I observed instances of solidarity both

at the border and beyond. To make sense of this, I draw on Gloria Anzaldúa’s con-

cept of borderland, a space where vulnerable, excluded, and marginalized peo-

ple exchange and blend culture, history, geography, identities, memories, and

personal experiences. Borderland, or “frontier,” as defined by David Chidester is

a zone of contact rather than a line or a boundary.8 Chidester envisions a fron-

tier as a region of intercultural relations. The social location of the frontier is

not a static site but rather involves constant economic and cultural movements

of people, thus subverting their separate cultures, their historical locations, and

their politically constituted selves. It is in this transhistorical, and sometimes

incoherent and confusing, liminal space that borders are irreverently crossed

and recrossed, thus diluting the meaning of “here” as a location of racial supe-

riority and civilization and “there” as a location of inferiority and uncivilization,

and constructing “us” as a locus of rich cultural interaction. At the same time,

governmental policies, ideologies, violence, and surveillance, intertwined with

global processes, are constantly sabotaging these liminal transformations, cre-

ating in the mix many crossroads of contradictory encounters.

Frontier and Borderland and the Physical Border, 1697– 1935

The frontier dividing the two nation- states occupying the Caribbean island of

Hispaniola only emerged two centuries after the arrival of Christopher Colum-

bus in 1492. It predated by more than a hundred years the birth of the Haitian

state, in 1804, and by nearly a century and a half the creation of the Dominican

Republic, in 1844. From that early point onward, animosities between Spain and

France, and later between Haitians and Dominicans, have dominated the his-

torical evolution and physical demarcation of this border for more than three

hundred years of animosities that would become central to the eventual emer-

gence of the “official” Dominican national discourse.

Yet also since early colonial times, and at least a century before the earliest

Spanish- French engagements, there were other social agents of change and cul-

tural production on the island that have been largely ignored by scholars. Here I

call attention to the indigenous Tainos and the African maroons who throughout

the sixteenth century, prior to the first French incursions in the late 1500s and

long before the official creation of the French colony in 1697, escaped Spanish

oppression to settle in the wilderness along and in between the three mountain

ranges that run east to west through the western half of the island (see fig. 2.1).

The mountains of the island served maroons as bases from which to both

fight the persecution of the Spanish and serve as refuge zones to create alterna-

tive communities free from abuse and exploitation. Archival data documents

the several insurrections of Tainos and Africans in early 1500s, the constant

escape of slaves, and the creation of maroon communities in the mountains.9

2 6 c H a P T e R 2

These communities extended into what would become Haiti on the western

side of the island and occupied a vast interior terrain that fostered greater free-

dom and tranquility after the Spanish began to abandon the western portion of

the island in the late 1500s and early 1600s. The French, going first to Tortuga

Island off the western end of Hispaniola’s northern coast, then gradually began

to populate the abandoned lands, producing food and engaging in trade.

Consequently, the history of the frontier and borderland reflects two dis-

similar developments: on one hand, a struggle between contending colonial

empires for control of the island, and on the other, a largely forgotten history of

indigenous and black resistance and the creation of alternative communities in

the island’s interior. I see in these maroon communities the genesis of a border-

land rich in resistance and self- directed cultural creativity. I will examine this

maroon frontier history and its contribution to island cultures more closely in

chapter 4. But, first, in this chapter I will trace the development of the imposed

physical border on a prior frontier and borderlands zone and focus on its role in

cultural production and interaction, in the construction of the official Domini-

can national imaginary and in the trajectory of Haitian- Dominican relations.

Let us examine the most basic historical contradictions that shaped and

reshaped the border dividing the island. The central social imbalances in His-

paniola derived from the conflict between Spain and France in Europe and its

impact on people in both sides of the island.

fIguRe 2-1. 1756 map (archival image)

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 2 7

France and Spain were involved in a series of religious wars in Europe for

centuries. In Hispaniola across the Atlantic the first consequence of the conflict

was felt in the early seventeenth century, taking the form of abandonment of

land in the northern and western part of the island. Admitting that illegal settle-

ment by buccaneers on the offshore island of Tortuga constituted a threat to

its colonies, the Spanish crown ordered the depopulation of the imperiled ter-

ritories. In 1603 the island’s governor relocated the populations of the towns of

Montecristi, Puerto Plata, Yaguana, Bayaja, Neiba, and San Juan de la Maguana

to an area near the colony’s capital of Santo Domingo in the southeast. After this

depopulation, the abandoned northern part of the island became an attractive

site for incursions by French and English filibusteros (pirates).

By 1638 these abandoned lands had been resettled by French entrepre-

neurs. Then, in 1697 in Europe, nine years of the War of the League of Augsburg,

between France and Spain, culminated in the Treaty of Ryswick, in which Spain

recognized French control of some Caribbean territory— Tortuga and the west-

ern side of Hispaniola. The French entrepreneurs already on the western side

then inaugurated the colony of Saint- Domingue, for which they imported thou-

sands of enslaved Africans for the development of sugar and coffee plantations,

and they soon created the wealthiest colony in the Americas.

The border dividing both colonies continued to be negotiated in Europe.

The first step in delimiting the border was the Inter- Colonial Protocol of 1731,

which adopted the valleys of the Massacre and Pedernales rivers in the north

and south, respectively, as the accepted line. (The Rio Masacre had received its

macabre name earlier in 1728, when Spanish soldiers killed a number of French

settlers along it.) In 1777, the Treaty of Aranjuez established an official border,

beginning with the Massacre in the north and ending along the Pedernales in

the south, and leaving an interior frontier zone in between. This borderland,

crossed by other rivers and by mountain ranges, was left undermarcated, cre-

ating a constant source of future dispute and conflict. The frontier zone issue

then disappeared for a time in 1795, when Spain ceded its eastern portion of the

island to France in the Treaty of Basel, which ended the Franco- Spanish War

(1793– 1795).

A second threshold, linked to France, was on the horizon. The French Revo-

lution’s commitment to liberty and equality, and the subsequent abolition of

slavery in all French colonies, ignited the longing for freedom in the slave and

mulatto population of the French colony of Saint Domingue, which embodied an

internal contradiction— between slavery and freedom— that was irreconcilable.

During the years after the French Revolution and the ensuing Haitian Revolu-

tion, and through subsequent historical developments, the border was crossed

and recrossed by the French and the Spanish, by slaves moving back and forth

between both territories seeking refuge, and later by Haitians and Dominicans.

For example, General Toussaint Louverture, in his mission to abolish slavery,

2 8 c H a P T e R 2

crossed the border into the east to reclaim the Spanish- speaking side for France.

In doing so, he encountered little opposition as Spanish troops, fighting with-

out a strong desire to win, actually welcomed his arrival.10 Toussaint reached

the city of Santo Domingo on January 26, 1801, and after receiving honors from

the colony’s governor, he summoned the city’s population and proclaimed a

general abolition of slavery on the Spanish side of the island, which occurred,

according to Emilio Cordero Michel, on January 26 or 27, 1801.11 A new momen-

tum now came to the fight for abolition. After the triumph of the Haitian Revo-

lution, the border was crossed once again. In 1805 the Haitian Army, under the

command of Jean- Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe, and Alexandre Pétion,

crossed to the eastern territory to stop the French, who had retreated there

after their defeat in the west, from hunting black children in the border area to

sell as slaves, General L. Ferrand, governor of the Spanish side, having decreed

that all male and female children captured from the side of the newly created

Haitian Republic must remain in the Spanish colony and work as slaves.12 Chris-

tophe and Dessalines confronted only weak resistance in Santiago, as did Pétion

in Azua, but arriving in Santo Domingo in March, they had to abandon their

plan of defeating the French on land when a report arrived that a French naval

squadron was near the island’s coast.

Dominican history books assert that on their way back to Haiti, Christophe

and Dessalines attacked and burned the towns of Monte Plata, Cotuí, and La

Vega and killed four hundred in Santiago and the entire population in Moca.

Charles Mackenzie, a British consul in Haiti in 1826, later wrote in his travel

diary during a visit to Santiago, “He [Christophe] violated his pledge, set fire

to the churches and convents, among which there was an ecclesiastical school

for priests, and the best parts of the town, deliberately murdered six priests,

and carried off several wretched people prisoners. His more extensive atrocities

were stopped by his immediate commander.”13 It is not clear, however, how the

targets were chosen: Were they killed without regard to class position and skin

color? Were planters, slaveholders, and Catholic clergy targeted, those whites

who in the Haitians’ eyes were responsible for slavery and its human degrada-

tion? This slaughter of planters and burning of fields by the Haitian generals has

been ingrained in the Dominican “official” imaginary as savage acts of Haitians

against “Dominicans,” although the Dominican Republic was not actually cre-

ated until 1844.

While Haiti lived the aftermath of the war against France and the troubled

initiation as a nation, eastern Hispaniola was involved in its own social and

political predicaments. On one hand, Spanish Creoles had secured control of

the eastern part of Hispaniola from France in 1809. On the other hand, some

Creoles were confronted by rising and contradictory nationalist sentiments.

White and rich mulatto Creoles favored, if not rule by Spain, then independence

as part of “La Gran Colombia” under Simón Bolivar, although he never took

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 2 9

them seriously. The black and mulatto masses, however, inspired by the Hai-

tian Revolution, favored unification with Haiti, and the island’s governor, José

Núñez de Cáceres, a Spanish Creole fearing mulatto and black insurrection, on

December 1, 1821, proclaimed the eastern portion of Hispaniola independent, as

the Independent State of Spanish Haiti. This independence, which proved only

short lived, is referred to in Dominican history books as Independenica efimera

(“the ephemeral independence”).

The economic situation in the former Spanish territory was disastrous, and

many, including Núñez de Cáceres, did not believe the new country could survive

on its own. On February 9, 1822, the situation changed yet again when Haitian

president Jean- Pierre Boyer crossed the border, marched into the city of Santo

Domingo, and unified the island by annexing newly independent “Spanish Haiti”

to the Haitian Republic, thus fulfilling the Haitian Revolution’s ideals of human

equality, the abolition of slavery, and the unity and indivisibility of the island.

This unification encountered support and approval throughout most provinces

of the island’s eastern side, as exemplified by the letters, presented in his book

by Jean Price- Mars, that document the desire of several provinces and munici-

palities on the eastern side of the island to be unified under the government of

Boyer.14 Moya Pons states that Núñez de Cáceres welcomed the Haitian president.15

After unification, Boyer abolished slavery for good in the former Spanish

colony and initiated an agrarian reform that involved expropriation of land

from large landowners and the Catholic Church and redistribution of land to

poor and middle peasants.

Let us pause here to consider in more detail the significance of Boyer’s

occupation for the emergence of anti- Haitianism in the Dominican Republic.

The period from 1822 to 1844 is critical in understanding the development of

conservative Dominican intellectual and negrophobic thought.

In 1822 the social formation of the former Spanish colony included a large

mass of blacks and poor mulattos, many of whom were still enslaved, and a

small proportion of white Creoles and rich mulattos. The blacks and poor mulat-

tos, both slave and free, had advocated protection by Haiti during the uncertain

year of weak government under Núñez de Cáceres. As Moya Pons puts it, the

“majority of the population was mulatto and saw with good eyes the unification

with Haiti and the promise of land and abolition of slavery.”16 The other bloc,

including Núñez de Cáceres and the so- called pro- colombianos, had lobbied for

the protection of Simón Bolívar and annexation to La Gran Colombia.17

After Boyer’s arrival in Santo Domingo, his first action was to abolish slav-

ery and promise land to the freedmen. Boyer created a commission to conduct

an inventory of all land and movable and real property abandoned by its own-

ers. These lands passed to the state and were distributed among peasants. As

a further move, the government confiscated all properties belonging to Spain

and the Catholic Church; convents, land, cattle ranches, houses, and hospitals

3 0 c H a P T e R 2

belonging to the Church thus became state property. Clerical salaries were

suspended, and the government directed the clergy to support themselves on

their ecclesiastical income. The Catholic Church was deprived of its role in the

government, and with this action Boyer created the first lay state in the his-

tory of Latin America and the Caribbean. Boyer also expelled the clergy from

the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino as an attempt to secularize education.

Condemned to live in poverty, the Catholic hierarchy began to conspire against

Boyer to return the island to Spain, but this attempt failed.

The portrayal of the period between 1822 and 1844 by several Dominican

historians is tainted with patriotism and allegiances to the Catholic Church’s

point of view; however, reading between lines and going back to the original

sources, one can obtain a better understanding of the period. Emilio Rodriguez

Demorizi, representing the elite, dedicated his life to collecting historical docu-

ments, and in his Invasiones Haitianas one finds letters written by Boyer concern-

ing expropriation of property and land.18

Boyer’s policies hurt deeply the interests of white landholders and the Cath-

olic Church, resentment intensifying among these groups, and the reaction by

landowning elites and the Church to the expropriation of their lands and the

abolition of slavery produced a hatred of Haitians that eventually converted

into a racist negrophobia that permeated the intelligentsia. These sentiments

would solidify into intellectual rhetoric and state policy during the rest of the

nineteenth century, and they persist today.

Boyer came under duress when, in exchange for recognizing Haitian inde-

pendence, France demanded a large monetary indemnification for the loss of

its former colony. This payment created a major economic and political crisis

that led eventually, in 1842, to Boyer’s ouster. On the Spanish- speaking eastern

side of the island, a strong nationalist movement led by liberal Spanish Creoles,

mulattos, and blacks, and known as the Trinitarios, emerged. They were sup-

ported at first by discontented former landowners and the Catholic Church, and

in February 1844 these forces declared the “Dominican Republic” to be a new

independent nation.

After independence, conservative interests turned against the leaders of

the Trinitarios, who had few resources of their own, and many of these were

exiled while others were executed. The conservatives, under the political lead-

ership of rich mulattos and protective of Spanish Creole and Catholic Church

interests, have, with few exceptions, constituted the ruling class for the dura-

tion of the Dominican Republic’s history.

Between 1844 and 1929, both of the island’s nations tried several times to

mutually resolve the border issue, but negotiations succumbed to revolutions,

coups, a short- lived annexation of the Dominican Republic by Spain, and mis-

understandings about where precisely to draw the line. The most disruptive

event was the 1861– 1865 Spanish annexation brokered by Pedro Santana and

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 3 1

a group of other conservative mulattos who did not believe the newly created

republic could survive on its own. The annexation was reversed by an army of

mostly black and mulatto Dominicans, who during 1863 to 1865 defeated the

Spanish forces in a popular movement termed the War of Restoration.

In 1867 the Dominican Republic signed what was to be called the Treaty of

Peace, Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation with Haiti, but political struggles

in that nation did not permit ratification. A new treaty signed in 1874 stipulated

that both countries must preserve the sovereignty and integrity of their ter-

ritories and that they should work on the restitution of border commercial tax

collection. An additional agreement for final demarcation of the physical border

was still required, but it did not become reality as internal political struggles in

both nations, and disputes over posesiones actuales, or the effective control of

territories that each nation claimed, impeded agreement.19

In 1896 Pope Leo XII was asked to mediate, but papal intervention never

took place. In 1912, under the auspices of US president William Howard Taft, a

modus vivendi arrangement stipulated a de facto border until the dispute could

be resolved.20 Then, in 1915, the United States occupied Haiti and, a year later,

the Dominican Republic. Although both nations tried to restart negotiations

while under US control, successful border discussions did not occur until 1929,

when President Horacio Vazquez of the Dominican Republic and President Louis

Borno of Haiti signed the Border Treaty of 1929. In its first article this treaty

stipulated that the line between the two nations was the Massacre River and its

outlet in the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Pedernales River and its outlet

in the Caribbean Sea to the south. An additional provision called for the cre-

ation of a commission of three Dominicans and three Haitians to place markers

along the border, with any disagreement to be appealed before an international

commission of five members representing Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the

United States, Venezuela, and Brazil. This work started immediately, but discor-

dant views soon emerged. According to Dominican historian Franklin Franco

Pichardo, the 1929 border treaty process was not successful because of struggles

between Haitian and Dominican landowners and political turmoil during 1930:

the fall of the Dominican Vasquez presidency and a student revolt that ousted

Haitian president Borno. Economic distress resulting from the Great Depression

then paralyzed further demarcation efforts.21

Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo came to power in 1930, and in

1933 he restarted negotiations with Haiti’s president Sténio Vincent to complete

the 1929 treaty agreement. Signed in 1935, it finally settled physical demarca-

tion of the border. The agreement assigned the disputed internal territory of La

Miel (more than thirty- seven thousand hectares) to Haiti, with an international

highway to be constructed linking the villages of Bánica and Restauración, and

it awarded the territory of Mas Gros- Mare (seven thousand hectares) to the

Dominican Republic.

3 2 c H a P T e R 2

While the 1935 treaty established a definitive physical demarcation of

the Haitian- Dominican border, a process of cultural and psychological border

demarcation under Trujillo was also set in motion. The climax of this process

was Trujillo’s massacre of thousands of Haitians in 1937.

The Road to a Preconceived Genocide

Scholars have contextualized the Haitian massacre within a complex series

of factors: labor unrest and popular outrage over high unemployment rates

spawned by the Great Depression, with Haitians used as scapegoats to shift

attention from underlying problems facing the Dominican Republic.22 I do not

contest this analysis, but we need to examine the Haitian genocide as well in

the light of polarized notions of Dominican Hispanidad and Catholicism versus

Haitian Africanity and “uncivilized” religious practices. Many have also argued

that the massacre reflected Trujillo’s efforts to whiten the Dominican Repub-

lic.23 This claim has recently been reexamined by historian Richard Turits, who

argues that the massacre resulted less from a desire of the Dominican govern-

ment to whiten its population than from its decision to eliminate Haitians from

the Dominican border zone and to establish a clear political, social, and cultural

boundary between the two nations.24

My argument incorporates these complementary positions. On one hand,

from the nineteenth century onward the Dominican intelligentsia and politi-

cians had certainly been interested in whitening the population, and Trujillo

was clearly a fierce advocate for expanding European migration to the country.

On the other, the establishment of rigid national boundaries, the reinforcement

of political control, and the elimination of bicultural Dominican- Haitian com-

munities were deemed essential to national sovereignty and Dominicanization

of the border, in accord with the “official” Dominican imaginary endorsed by

Trujillo, of Hispanidad and Catholicism as opposed to Haitian blackness and

barbarism.25 In this sense, the process of nation- state control of the border was

guided by racist ideology.

In support of my point, I will argue that the process of border negotiation,

which started in 1933 and ended in 1935, was saturated with political maneuvers

orchestrated by the Dominican dictator. This episode may be interpreted as

part of a preconceived plan for the 1937 genocide. Before Trujillo’s true agenda

regarding Haiti and the border would be unveiled, his political maneuvering

included manipulation of Haiti’s most influential political figures and his gain-

ing the trust of the Haitian populace.

By 1934 Trujillo had established alliances with the three major figures on

Haiti’s political scene: mulatto president Sténio Vincent; mulatto Elie Lescot,

Haiti’s foreign minister in Santo Domingo and a former member of the Hai-

tian cabinet; and black Demostenes Calixte, commander in chief of the Haitian

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 3 3

National Guard. Trujillo supported Vincent’s desire to remain in power, largely

in order to prevent the rise of the Dominican dictator’s Haitian opponents. For

his part, Vincent expelled eleven senators and seven representatives from Hai-

ti’s Congress, figures who both opposed his ambition to remain in office and

opposed Trujillo’s antidemocratic policies, and he also deported many Domini-

can dissident exiles who had taken refuge in Haiti.

Trujillo, who paid Lescot to keep a close eye on Vincent, at the same time

was nurturing Lescot’s political ambitions, eventually helping him succeed

Vincent as president of Haiti. Trujillo established a similar close relationship

with Calixte, who took refuge in the Dominican Republic to plot against Vin-

cent. Throughout the border negotiations, and apparently during and after the

massacre, Trujillo maintained the loyalties of each of these three Haitian politi-

cal figures, and his strategy of cooperation would prove beneficial when, after

the Haitian massacre, Lescott testified favorably on Trujillo’s behalf before the

United States Congress and the Dominican dictator received a lenient sentence.

These Haitian and Dominican diplomatic moves during the time of Trujillo

were based on mutual protection.

Concurrently, Trujillo made efforts to gain the support of Haitians at the

popular level. While the border negotiations were in progress, Trujillo and Vin-

cent visited each other’s countries, publicly exhibiting friendship and solidarity.

In October 1933, for example, both presidents met at the border town of Juana

Mendez (Ounaminthe) to sign the border treaties. During this meeting, Trujillo

and Vincent also signed a mutual agreement to avoid attacking each other’s

country.26 In November 1934 Trujillo traveled to Haiti to continue negotiations

and met President Vincent. During their meeting, Trujillo said to Vincent: “This

long awaited visit, for me so longed- for, reached one of my deepest desires, trea-

sured since the moment I shook your hand at the Masacre River.” It was at the

conclusion of the meeting that he ratified the ceding of the La Miel land parcel

to Haiti, and it was on Vincent’s February 1935 visit to the Dominican Republic

that both presidents reached the final border agreement under which the Gros

Mare lands were ceded to the Dominican Republic. In March 1936 Trujillo again

visited Haiti and signed an amended La Miel protocol. In his speech Trujillo

said: “I am very proud to declare before my fellow Haitians, compatriots, and

before the world, that a high proportion of African blood runs in my veins.”27 He

then proceeded to kiss the Haitian flag.

Although Trujillo embraced his African heritage while in Haiti, at home

he also declared himself to be a pure European. He continued his “Dominican-

ization” of the border, which had begun immediately after he seized power in

1930. He announced a new law banning immigration of people of color, and he

encouraged the immigration of white people. He also embraced Nazism and

Spanish Falange ideology, at the same time gratuitously accusing Haitians of

promoting crime in the border region.

3 4 c H a P T e R 2

The policy of Dominicanization of the border contained five interrelated

aspects: economic, racial, moral, political, and military. Economic Dominican-

ization entailed the development of a local border agricultural economy that did

not rely on Haiti and would orient border production into the general Domini-

can economy. Joaquín Balaguer referred to this economic refocus, based on rice,

peanut, potatoes, corn, and other products, as the economic conquest of the

border.28 By 1932, there were nine new agricultural colonies near the border

towns of Pedernales, Restauración, Capotillo, Hipolito Billini, Mariano Cesteros,

and Trinitaria, all under military supervision.

Trujillo’s Dominicanization policy included a racial component: the new

agricultural farms were owned by European immigrants whose settlement in

the border towns was intended to solve the so- called “problem” of the African-

ization of the country. In this sense, the policy of the Dominican state deliber-

ately fostered “whitening” the Dominican population through the immigration

of white people. The desire of the elite to promote white immigration had

first been put into practice by Dominican president Horacio Vasquez in 1926,

with the clear aim of reducing the number of Haitians entering the country.29

Trujillo continued this effort, conducting negotiations with several European

countries, as well as Japan. Under Trujillo, hundreds of families from Spain,

Italy, Japan, and the Jewish diaspora migrated to the Dominican Republic.

Ironically, Jews fleeing Nazi genocide in Europe arrived immediately after the

Haitian genocide in 1937. Both authors Allan Wells and Marion Kaplan offer

detailed accounts of the arrival of 750 Jewish settlers in Sosúa following the

Haitian massacre of 1937.30

The moral component of the Dominicanization of the border consisted

of a campaign to promulgate the Christian religion by constructing numerous

Catholic churches in the border region and by supporting the Roman Catholic

border mission of San Ignacio Loyola, which was established in 1935. The main

goal of this Christian campaign was to expiate the “evil” practices of Vodou. The

moral component also included the systematic construction during 1932 to 1935

of border- zone schools in which teachers were instructed to cultivate a nation-

alistic spirit among their students.

The political component consisted of renaming towns, villages, and other

sites to commemorate both battles with Haiti during 1844, 1845, 1847, 1855, and

1856 and the names of Dominican heroes who had fought or died in these clashes.

As Balaguer states, “The permanent evocation of these events, along with patri-

otic propaganda in the border schools, contributed without any doubt to for-

tify the national sentiment in the soul of new generations and to return to the

Dominican people of the border towns the consciousness of their personality and

of their Hispanic origin.”31 Finally, the military component of Dominicanization

was pursued through the construction of military posts along the border. These

posts still exist at points along highways and roads crossing the border today.

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 3 5

During the first years of Trujillo’s regime, when he cultivated an embrace of

Spanish Falange and Nazi ideology, members of the Falange regularly visited the

Dominican Republic and established a branch in the country. The creation of

the Dominico- German Scientific Institute, a student army modeled on Hitler’s

Brown Shirts, and publication of Fabio A. Mota’s book, New Ideas about the Recon-

struction Work of Trujillo: Neosocialism and Dominicanism, indicated the influence

of Nazi ideas on Trujillo’s regime.32 By 1937 Trujillo had developed strong alli-

ances with the German Nazi government, exemplified by the gift of a copy of

Adolf Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, sent to Trujillo by the author. Today the Museo

de las Casas Reales in Santo Domingo exhibits an iron window grate, also a pres-

ent to Trujillo from Hitler, in which swastikas are visibly featured.

The ideology of Dominican racial superiority was firmly established in

the thinking of Trujillo’s intelligentsia and was central to his regime’s propa-

ganda. The underlying irrationality of racism in the island context could only

be sustained by action, and this would result in violence against Haitians. Once

Dominicanization of the border was in progress, popular mobilization to move

against the Haitian population within the Dominican Republic came next.

There were two groups of such Haitians: the migrant workers, or braceros, in

the country’s sugar plantations, and the residents of the border zone. Trujillo

implemented different policies to deal with each group.

In order to reduce the number of Haitians working in the Dominican Repub-

lic, the government reduced the bracero quotas assigned to each sugar cane

plantation, and thereby created a legal basis for deportation. By 1932 Trujillo

was already seeking the reduction of the braceros quota. The Immigration Law

of 1932 stipulated that in order to enter the country foreigners had to pay US$6

and an additional $US6 each year to stay in the country. However, for people of

African descent the initial amount was US$300 and US$100 payable annually

thereafter, and failure to comply with the law was punishable by imprisonment

and deportation. This law was modified only when the US State Department

and sugar cane plantation owners protested to Trujillo that it harmed business.

The official justification for the deportation of Haitians now was that larger

numbers than permitted under the quota system were crossing the border,

including many Haitians whom the dictator Fulgencio Batista had deported

from Cuba. The Immigration Law of 1937 reduced to 40 percent the proportion

of Haitian workers permitted to be employed on Dominican sugar cane planta-

tions. The law also required all foreigners to register at their consulates within

six months or face deportation, and when thousands of Haitians failed to regis-

ter, they were subsequently deported.

To deal with the Haitians residing in the border towns, Trujillo spent

the month of August 1937 traveling personally on horseback over a consider-

able portion of the border area. He inspected the construction of the interna-

tional highway, witnessed the presence of large number of Haitians living in

3 6 c H a P T e R 2

Dominican territory, and listened to complaints from peasants about Haitians

stealing cattle, occupying land, and abusing Dominicans.

Trujillo now had his excuse to move against the border zone Haitians. The

official argument was that deportation measures had failed and that repatri-

ated Haitians had found ways to return to the Dominican Republic. In reality,

Haitians in the border areas were not primarily recent immigrants— most of the

Haitian families there had lived in the frontier region for many years33— and the

letters Trujillo brandished denouncing Haitians and complaining about rob-

beries committed by them were forged.34 Nonetheless, massive “violations” of

the border by Haitians, and their supposed ongoing criminal activity, became

justifications for mass murder.

Hispaniola’s Holocaust

The slaughter of Haitians— also known as El Corte (the cutting), La Masacre (the

massacre), or Operación Perejil (operation parsley)— commenced on Septem-

ber 28, 1937, and continued for four days. According to one contemporaneous

eyewitness account, the soldiers tied the hands of the Haitians behinds their

backs and made them walk toward the pier, then hit them with the back of their

rifles or stabbed them. The bodies fell into the sea, where most were eaten by

sharks. Those who were not eaten by the sharks swam back to the beach, where

they could be seen in great numbers. There was a case of torture— a Haitian boy

taken to Montecristi, buried alive, and then killed with machetes.35

The events have been dramatically reconstructed by several Dominican and

Haitian poets and novelists. At one extreme, the Dominican Freddy Prestol Cas-

tillo wrote dismissively that the perpetrators were “drunken soldiers” who could

not have committed these crimes if sober. In contrast, the Haitian Jacques Ste-

phen Alexis describes how his main character Hilarion is hit by a bullet and then

lies dying in the sun as horrors occur around him. Edwige Danticat, also Haitian,

recounts that “groups of Haitians were killed in the night because they could not

manage to trill their ‘r’ and utter a throaty ‘j’ to ask for parsley, to say ‘perejil.’”36

The actual number of Haitians killed has never been established.37 Some

place it as low as twelve thousand and others as high as twenty- five thousand.

The slaughter has produced many interpretations, and most of them place

blame on Trujillo. Yet the Haitian genocide was not the act of an isolated mad-

man. It was also the culmination of an anti- Haitian ideological campaign that

was advanced by Dominican intellectuals for nearly a century, a development of

negrophobic beliefs that “otherized” Haitians and led to the 1937 massacre. As

the Massacre River reddened with Haitian blood, the question of the physical

border was provided a decisive resolution. Moreover, what had been a long-

standing frontier zone, a social location of cultural conjunction and intimacy,

was violently attacked.38 Consolidation of the Dominican nation- state’s racist

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 3 7

ideology would emerge from the event, and its sharply demarcated psychologi-

cal and cultural borders have prevailed since.

Otherization of Haitians: The Cultural, Ideological, and Symbolic Border

“Dominicans are constitutionally whites . . . and not like Haitians [from a country] where men eat people, speak patois, and the Luas abound.”

— francisco e. Moscoso Puello, cartas a evelina (my translation)

After the massacre, the process of institutionalizing anti- Haitianism acceler-

ated. The foremost exponents of Trujillo’s anti- Haitianism were the writers and

public figures Manuel Arturo Peña Batlle and Joaquin Balaguer, who champi-

oned the construction of a psychological border dividing the two nations. Both

authors dedicated most of their intellectual work to strengthening Dominican-

ness, emphasizing the Hispanic attributes of light skin color, Roman Catholi-

cism, European images of female pulchritude, devotion to the Spanish language,

and an unquestioned fervor toward the “motherland” of Spain. Both authors’

conclusions might be seen as comical at best had their elaborate set of rac-

ist beliefs not become the justification for state policies. Based on a distorted

account of the island’s history, as we saw in chapter 1 and will examine further

in chapters to come, these beliefs permeated the entire fabric of Dominican

society, with schools, the Church, and mass media the most important vehicles

of their propagation. This institutionalized ideology exemplified what Frantz

Fanon called the “psychopathology of colonization.” Simply stated, Dominicans

in general are socialized as subjugated beings who wear white masks to hide

their negritude, complex feelings of inferiority, and deep self- shame.39

The official construction of the Dominican identity has also created and

intensified complex symbolic borders within the Dominican populace. Skin

color differences create barriers among Dominicans themselves, at the same

time that they produce a morbid component in their relations with their mostly

African- descended island neighbors. Experts commissioned by the United

Nations concluded in 2007 that in the Dominican Republic there remains a

“profound” and “entrenched” problem of racism and discrimination against

Haitians, Dominicans of Haitian descent, and blacks in general.40

The wounds of the border massacre more than seventy years ago have been

constantly reopened, with massive deportations, violations of human and labor

rights, and even killings of Haitians. According to official statistics, among the

country’s population of 10 million, an estimated 800,000 Haitians live in the

Dominican Republic, including 280,000 Dominican- born individuals of Haitian

descent. Harsh economic conditions, political instability in Haiti, and the 2010

earthquake have precipitated massive migration of Haitians to the Dominican

3 8 c H a P T e R 2

Republic in search of a better life. This Haitian presence creates tensions in a

country with 40 percent of its population living in poverty. In the midst of these

tensions, Haitians for decades have been randomly selected for expulsion.

While many contend that a nation- state has the right to deport undocu-

mented foreigners, the pressing current issue is not the right to repatriate but

how these repatriations occur. According to various international and UN bod-

ies, these expulsions violate the American Convention on Human Rights, the

Protocol of Understanding on the Mechanism of Repatriation, the International

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 13, and the Covenant on the Elim-

ination of Racial Discrimination Articles 4(a), 5(b), 5(d), and 6.41 These con-

ventions, protocols, and covenants prohibit the collective expulsion of foreign

nationals, as well as the expulsion of legal residents who are denied the oppor-

tunity to challenge their expulsion and to have their case reviewed by legiti-

mate authorities. Deportations are often accompanied by extraordinary human

rights violations, and in 2003 the Inter- American Court determined that the

Dominican Republic has used excessive force against Haitian migrants.42

Since 2004 the Dominican state has tried to build a legal foundation to

deny citizenship to children of Haitian parentage born in the country. The gov-

ernment of Leonel Fernández rewrote migration laws in 2004, and in 2007 it

issued directives to expand this legal groundwork. The country’s constitution

was amended in 2010 to provide that children born in the Dominican Republic

have automatic citizenship only if at least one parent is a legal resident. The sit-

uation for Dominicans of Haitian ancestry was further undermined on Septem-

ber 23, 2013, by the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling, 168– 13, which

negated the Dominican nationality of hundreds of thousands of Dominicans

with Haitian ancestry. This ruling stated that all children of undocumented

Haitians parents born since 1929, and their descendants, would be stripped of

Dominican citizenship.43

Despite the record of hatred and abuse of Haitians that led to the recent rul-

ings, right- wing leaders of the Dominican Republic and Haiti historically have

often been allies. As noted, in the early 1930s the dictators Trujillo and Vincent

established an alliance to protect their respective territories from dissidents.

In 1963 a pro- Trujillo Dominican cabal and Haitian dictator François Duvalier

together staged an occupation by the Haitian army of the Dominican Consulate

in Port- au- Prince, meant to destabilize the Dominican government of left- wing

president Juan Bosch. His successor, the conservative Joaquín Balaguer, was

intimate friends with both Duvalier and his son Jean- Claude Duvalier, who took

power after the death of his father. When the younger Duvalier was overthrown

in 1986, and the left- leaning Jean- Bertrand Aristide won election, Balaguer

responded by deporting thousands of Haitians and was widely presumed to be

collaborating with Haitian strongman Raoul Cedras in the coup that ousted

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 3 9

Aristide. Later, after Cedras was himself overthrown, he sought refuge in the

Dominican Republic.

In sum, although physical, cultural, political, and symbolic borders divide

the Dominican Republic and Haiti, dictators and antidemocratic forces have

cooperated across it. We now turn to far less exalted or powerful voices that,

within this separation and turmoil, reflect the “us” of cultures intersecting or

fusing at the borderland crossroads.

Breaking Cultural Boundaries: The New Frontier

Traveling in buses with Dominicans and Haitians in both directions between

Santo Domingo and the Haitian- Dominican border, I witnessed two different

narratives performed. One is the official story of elite dominicanidad and hatred

of Haiti “otherness.” The other is a story of the borderland that has evolved since

colonial times to the present. My ethnography testifies to this twofold reality.

On one occasion I was on a bus that left Pedernales at 8:00 a.m. All seats

were occupied. The passengers exhibited all shades of colorfulness, from very

black to very light. I could not distinguish by sight who was Dominican or

Haitian. Only when instead of proceeding straight ahead, the bus turned and

entered the town’s army headquarters entrance and stopped, was it Haitians

alone who were asked to step down. They were told: Morenos afuera con pasa-

portes en mano [“Black people come out with passports in hand”]. More than

fifteen women and men left through the back of the bus and were taken inside a

building, where they stayed for about half an hour. Afterward they returned one

by one and entered the bus, retaking their seats silently. When all were inside,

the bus took off.

The breathtaking beauty of the landscape along the Pedernales to Barahona

Road could not be easily enjoyed. The bus was stopped every ten or fifteen min-

utes by army sergeants, who were as black as most Haitians, demanding that

the morenos identify themselves and show their passports. The American and

Peruvian foreigners on the bus were not molested. The bus was stopped eleven

different times.

This racial profiling climaxed when a black Dominican sergeant forced a

black man, in the middle of the bus, who refused to show his passport to speak in

order to determine his nationality. This recalled to me how dark- skinned people

were forced to pronounce perejil to determine their nationality during the 1937

genocide. People in the bus told the sergeant that if he didn’t want to show his

passport, it was because he was Dominican. The sergeant insisted, but the man

remained silent until the sergeant at last permitted the driver to continue.

I had noticed the driver and his assistant giving money to the soldiers. Later

I found out that Haitian passengers are extorted monetarily by both bus drivers

4 0 c H a P T e R 2

and soldiers. Even before they could get into the bus they had to give the driver

money in addition to the bus fare.

On another occasion, when I was traveling with my son, Miguel, and my

friend Mireya, the minibus we were in arrived at Jimaní, close to the border,

around five in the afternoon. The three of us and the other thirty- five people,

all wet with perspiration, descended from the bus with suitcases, boxes, and

bags of groceries. Outside we found the temperature to be not less than ninety

degrees. More than a dozen motorcycle- taxi drivers were there, offering their

services to the arriving passengers. I wanted to reach the border before dark,

so we took two motorcycles, one for Miguel and me and another for Mireya.

I pressed against the back of the driver to leave space for Miguel to sit and

we drove for about ten minutes, until we reached the Dominican post at the

border. The post consisted of a long, high wire fence with an entrance in the

middle, two large Dominican flags on each side, an army headquarters building

to the left, and another small building to the right. To the right of the border

post was Lake Azuey, with mountains behind it; due to flooding, it now extends

across the Dominican side of border.

Two soldiers were posted at each side of the entrance, clearing smaller

trucks, SUVs arriving in both directions, and long- haul trailers with food, water,

medicine, and clothing to be taken to Port au Prince for the earthquake victims.

As each vehicle was inspected, money was passed to the soldiers, and in an

undisguised, open manner. The border crossing point for people on foot was

also casual and fluid. A young Haitian young woman had brought food for one

of the soldiers, and a group of Haitians talked laughingly with three Dominican

men outside the small building. People interacted naturally, with familiarity

and intimacy.

After crossing through the Dominican border post, our motorcycle- taxis

took us to the Jimaní Hotel, a 1950s- style one- story building dating to the

time of the dictator Trujillo, our overnight stop on the way to back to Santo

Domingo. Upon our arrival, I spoke a little with our motorcycle- taxi drivers. One

was Dominican and the other was Haitian. Both were bilingual in Spanish and

Kreyòl and had girlfriends of both nationalities. When I asked the Dominican

driver about the difference between Haitians and Dominicans, he said simply

that Haitians were French and we are Spanish. And in speaking to the manager

of the hotel, a slim Dominican woman who seemed to play every staff role in

the hotel except that of chef, I discovered that she was fully bilingual and was

married to a Haitian man.

On another day, the bus I was on left Santo Domingo late in the morning

for the border town Elias Piña. The bus was completely full. I sat on the left side

of a row of five seats— two fixed seats on each side of the bus and one movable,

improvised seat in the center beside a woman who looked Haitian to me. A man

and a woman with a child were on my other side. In the row ahead were two

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 4 1

Dominican men and a couple with their ten- or eleven- year- old daughter. In the

row behind me were five Dominican men. Altogether there were five fixed rows,

plus two additional rows behind the driver’s seat, and a seat for two passengers

next to the driver. The heat and sweat and the loud merengue and bachata

music were equally uncomfortable to me and my travel companions.

The bus stopped first in Baní, a southern city about forty miles from Santo

Domingo, the bus driver announcing loudly: “You have fifteen minutes to eat

and go to the bathroom.” Outside I talked with the couple sitting on the right

side of my row. She was Dominican and he was Haitian. Both spoke Spanish

with me and introduced me to their daughter, Ezili. “Beautiful name,” I said,

then asked them, “Why Ezili?” They looked at each other and smiled but gave no

answer. I did not persist.

Ezili is an Iwa (mystery) in the Dominican Republic and can represent love,

lust, and motherhood, for which of these attributes she takes different names:

Ezili Dantò, Ezili Freda, Ezili- je- wouj, or Marinè. In all of her manifestations, Ezili

is considered one of most powerful and arbitrary in Vodou. Ezili, known on the

Dominican side of the island as Anaisa, is identified with the Catholic Saint Clara.

The parents of the girl Ezili lived in Elias Piña and offered to help me find

a place to stay. While walking back to the bus, I overheard them talking to each

other in Kreyòl.

As we continued our journey, I initiated a conversation with the woman

next to me. She told me she was Dominican, although she had a pronounced

Kreyòl accent. She had been born on El Central Barahona, which was one of the

most important sugar cane plantations in the Dominican Republic and located

near the southern city of Barahona. The bateys, the housing for the Haitian

workers, of El Central Barahona were considered to be among the most segre-

gated in the nation. Residents of these bateys had a Haitian priest, but no school

and very little interaction with the outside world. The woman, born to Haitian

parents, had moved to Elias Piña after marrying a Dominican man who sold

used clothing in that town’s market. They had four children, three boys and one

girl, all between the ages of nine and fourteen. We kept talking for a while about

the hot weather and other inconsequential matters.

We had already passed the city of San Juan de la Maguana when the man in

front of me started to talk to the men behind my row, saying that he was very

tired. The man behind me answered, “Don’t worry. As soon as we get there,

we buy a liter of Brugal [a popular Dominican rum considered by some to be

an aphrodisiac] and get a Haitian girl of eight cylinders— with tight muscles,

big breasts and butt— and we forget about tiredness.” The man in front of me

replied, “If it is a Haitian, we must drink kleren [a strong illegal alcoholic bever-

age made from sugarcane and known to be produced at the border]. And you

know what I would do with that Haitian girl— I would rip her clothes off, turn her

upside down, submerge her in a tank of water, and tie her and. . . .”

4 2 c H a P T e R 2

“Tie her and . . .” were the last words he uttered. The man in my row inter-

rupted him, asking him to show respect. They then began arguing, the second

man accusing the first of being a rapist, to which the first replied, “It’s none of

your business.” Finally the driver’s assistant standing next to the door of the

bus asked everybody to shut up. The men talking about drinking and finding

a Haitian girl were construction workers, hired to repair the sewage system in

Elias Piña. All lived in Santo Domingo and had never been in the border zone

before.

This conversation made me wonder about sexual violence against Haitian

women during the genocide and after. I lack the evidence to demonstrate the

number of women raped during the days of the genocide, but what I can dem-

onstrate is that the anti- Haitian policies are highly gendered. The “maternal

labor” of Haitian women— that is, as mothers producing more Haitians— is the

major danger in the reproduction of more Haitians in the Dominican Republic.

Headlines for newspaper articles frequently read “Haitian Women Cross Border

to Give Birth.” The case Dilcia Yean and Violeta Bosico v. the Dominican Republic,

taken before the Inter- American Court of Human Rights, is illustrative. Violeta

Bosico and Dilcia Yean were two girls born in the Dominican Republic of Haitian

mothers whose birth certificates were denied by local Dominican officials in

1997. The Inter- American Court of Human Rights found in 2005 that theirs was

a case of racial discrimination. Women have also being affected by anti- Haitian

violence. From the testimonies of survivors, Catholic father Emile Robert col-

lected a list of 2,130 names of dead Haitians. The majority of dead people were

wives, mothers- in- law, sisters, nieces, friends, domestic servants of the attested.

I counted the number of women in a summary of Father Robert’s list published

by Jose Israel Cuello, and in the 109 testimonies 79 women were mentioned as

murdered by the Trujillo’s soldiers.44

Border Crossings

Fortunately, the racist colonial construction of Dominican identity continues

to be contested in many disparate arenas, both in the Dominican Republic and

Haiti and in their diaspora communities. Although this “official” ideology has

prevailed in terms of Dominican state policies toward Haitians, new critical

voices and actors have emerged to challenge many of these notions.

Dominican civil society, represented in organizations such as the Mov-

imiento de Mujeres Dominico- Haitiana (Movement of Dominican- Haitian

Women), has taken the plight of Haitian women and their Dominican- born

children to international forums to demand respect for universal human rights.

The work of the late Sonia Pierre, founder of this organization, has had a tre-

mendous international impact. Dominican organizations joined efforts with her

to stop the violations of human rights; feminists worked hand in hand with

B o R D e R a T T H e c R o S S R o a D S 4 3

her, denouncing discrimination and protecting her when the government of

Leonel Fernández attempted to strip her of Dominican citizenship. The Cen-

tro de Investigación y Acción Femenina (Feminist Research and Action Center)

and the Colectivo Mujer y Salud (Women’s Health Collective) have been active

throughout the struggles of Sonia. Other institutions, such as Centro Bonó and

Solidaridad Fronteriza (Border Solidarity), have also worked to ensure respect

for Haitians as fellow human beings.

Dominicans living outside of the country have played an important role in

advancing new ideas and perspectives on the question of Dominican- Haitian

interrelations. From a scholarly perspective, Silvio Torres- Saillant, for example,

offers searching analyses of anti- Haitianism and Dominican negrophobia.45 The

fictional work of Junot Díaz, as in his novel The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar

Wao (2007), envisions Dominican- Haitian relations through the metaphor of

el cañaveral (the sugar cane field), and engages both Dominican and Haitian

calamities. Today Dominican intellectuals, activists, artists, and others convey

in their writings about identity that they are breaking new paths in the creation

of a new frontier, one of mutual inclusion.

Although Dominicans at the popular level have been socialized within a

negrophobic “official” ideology, it is undeniable that Dominicans and Haitians

can and do cross the island’s cultural and language boundaries. For example, in

the summer of 2007 I visited the Haitian- Dominican market in Dajabón. On that

occasion, this location between Dajabón, Dominican Republic, and Juana Men-

dez (or Ounaminthe), Haiti, was crowded with people, chickens in their arms,

blocks of ice in front of them, and stocks of eggplants, onions, cucumbers, corn,

perfumes, clothes, and cosmetics to be sold. As people interacted in the market,

I asked myself: What is today’s ongoing imaginary of the Massacre River separat-

ing the two cities, and forming the boundary that separates the two countries? Is

it remembered as red with blood or that the wounds are healed, as the characters

in Haitian novelist Edwige Danticat’s Farming of Bones experienced it?

No signs of hatred or disdain were evident on the marketgoers’ faces. The

Dajabón market, open twice a week for Haitians to enter the Dominican Repub-

lic for commercial exchange, is just that, a site of commercial exchange between

the two peoples. Moreover, during visits to the border towns of Elias Piña and

Bánica, I observed a significant number of intermarriages and much bilingual-

ism and codeswitching between the island’s two languages.

This evidence of interaction suggests a lively social space in which the two

nationally differentiated groups interact and blend their cultures in many ways.

The social spaces of the border, such as at Dajabón, exist at the “conjuncture

of two cultures” that “fuse” and “blend.”46 If in the Dominican capital city Hai-

tians are despised, and at the border crossing points the military presence still

represents a bloody past of mass murder and ongoing coercion, in Dajabón

and in other parts of the country a fusion of languages, commercial exchange,

4 4 c H a P T e R 2

intermarriage, music, everyday cooperation, and religious syncretism challenges

the “othering” efforts of Dominican elites.

Deep questions remain. How does the Dominican- Haitian borderland oper-

ate as part of the ongoing social, cultural, and political negotiation of meaning?

How does the geographic border continue to represent “us” and “them,” “here”

and “there”? In terms of Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of reimagining culture— of

living without frontiers and being at crossroads— contemporary authors and

activists are constructing the new frontier, as also are Dominicans and Haitians

as they interact in daily life. All represent a reality of individuals of differing

languages and ethnicity together creating “intimacy.”

4 5

3

The creolization of Race

The entrance to the Museo del Hombre Dominicano contains three large statues of figures from the sixteenth century: Enriquillo, the Taino Indian who

revolted against the Spanish colonizers; Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, the Roman

Catholic priest who defended the indigenous people against Spanish abuses; and

Sebastian Lemba, the enslaved African who declared war against the colonial

regime. These three symbolize Dominican society in embryo, with the presence

of Taino, Spaniard, and African as cultural and racial starting points. The figure

of de Las Casas stands between those of Enriquillo and Lemba: is this intended to

symbolize Spain as the central or most important element of the set? And do the

open arms of Lemba signify the promise of freedom for the enslaved?

When I entered the building, I walked through a beautiful exhibition of

carnival dresses and masks representing each region of the country. While it

seemed to me that these colorful gowns had to be linked to Africa, none of the

materials explaining the exhibit indicated that this was so. Since the creation

of the museum in 1978, it is only the former director, Carlos Andújar Persinal,

an anthropologist, who has any track record of research on or publications

about the African element within the Dominican Republic’s syncretic culture.1

Nowhere in the museum did I find acknowledgment of the clamor for freedom

symbolized by Lemba’s open arms. The Museo del Hombre Dominicano is, like

most of the country’s historical markers and texts, a reflection of the official

Dominican imaginary. The carnival exhibition and Lemba’s open arms are there

perhaps only to confuse critics.

Yes, with Lemba Africa is present in the museum, but the center is Spain,

and the historical substrate is Taino, whose heritage is celebrated on the muse-

um’s third floor. The museum recalls what Manuel de Jesús Galván extolled in

his 1882 novel Enriquillo: the island’s foundational Indo- Hispanic race. In analyz-

ing the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, sociologist Ginetta Candelario comes

4 6 c H a P T e R 3

to the following conclusion: “Through its technologies— its architecture, display

strategies, and ‘narrative machinery’— the Museo del Hombre Dominicano not

only links past to present in a seamlessly progressive continuum from pre-

Columbian to Dominican, but also promotes a ‘simultaneously bodily and men-

tal’ subjectivity that conceptualizes Dominican identity as naturally indigenous

and historically Hispanic.”2 Indeed, the museum substantiates what dictator

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo affirmed: “The Negro in the Dominican Republic . . . has

been absorbed completely, has given up any African atavism and has adjusted

to the system of Dominican culture which has deep Spanish roots.”3

The museum’s symbolism, Trujillo’s pronouncement, and the official imag-

inary are all interlocked in denial of the African component in the Dominican

Republic’s racial and cultural amalgam. A simple look at the faces of people work-

ing in the museum, however, or at the photographs of present and former direc-

tors, or at the daily visitors, does not corroborate the idea of an Indo- Hispanic

race. What skin color I could observe was not that of Indo- Hispanics— as, say, in

Mexico or Peru— but a wide range from the darkest black to the lightest mulatto.

Undeniably, Dominican heritage is a hybrid built upon early genetic and

cultural fusion of Spaniards, Tainos, and blacks. This mixing of races and eth-

nic groups was further complicated by the arrival of other ethnic and racial

groups during the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, adding new

elements to the Dominican racial mosaic: Haitians during the unification of

the island in 1822 and in contemporary migration from Haiti to the Dominican

Republic; African Americans in the nineteenth century; black people from the

English- speaking Caribbean, known as Cocolos, in the late nineteenth century;

and Arabs, Jews, Europeans, Chinese, and Japanese in the twentieth century. All

became integral parts in the racial formation of the Dominican Republic.

The genetic mingling of these groups is represented in the racial rainbow

of Dominican society today. However, the problem is the official Dominican

imaginary: it still informs us that the racial origin and subsequent homogeniza-

tion of the people is Indo- Hispanic, and in refuting it in this chapter I hasten to

say that what I’ve written here is not a roar of suppressed negritude but rather

an attempt to delve into the complexities of Dominican racial DNA and to trace

how Africa became an important component of it. History here becomes a space

of interrogation. When and how did Africa become part of the Dominican racial

mix? When and how did a group of elite Dominicans begin the process of denial?

Answering these questions forces us to confront the limitations of the

archival record of this first Spanish Caribbean colony’s uneven development.

Documentation of the social, economic, and political evolution of the colony

is meager, freeing the imagination of historians to reconstruct the historical

course of the island, even to interpret the presence of Africans capriciously,

according to ideological beliefs. Spanish- Dominican historian Carlos Esteban

Deive, for example, researched the available information in the Archivo General

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 4 7

de Indias (AGI) in Seville, a repository for all Spanish documentation on the

Americas, and wrote several historical books about slavery, maroonage, and

religion.4 According to his early work, Africans had little lasting impact on cur-

rent Dominican racial or cultural configurations; Spaniards occupied the cen-

ter, dominating all that followed, as exemplified by what is displayed at the

entrance of the museum. Yet the open arms of Lemba, rather than merely being

part of an ornament of the past, may guide us to riches of information not fully

plumbed by Deive, even within the limited archival data.

To accept Lemba’s invitation to reread this limited record, we must also

confront the chaotic and uneven manner in which slavery developed in Hispan-

iola. While during the sixteenth century the colony’s economy initially rested

on enslaved labor, it entered a period of economic stagnation during the seven-

teenth century. The eighteenth century witnessed the recovery of the island’s

economy and the resurgence of the African slave trade. This recovery, however,

was aborted by the Haitian Revolution and the final and total abolition of slav-

ery following unification of the island by the Republic of Haiti in 1822.

From being a slave society in the sixteenth century, the colony devolved

into a society with slaves in the seventeenth century, and then once again it

attempted to reinstitute a full- blown slave plantation economy. This uneven-

ness, plus the limits of the archives, has permitted Dominican historians to

assert that slavery was episodic, blackness came from Haiti, and the Spanish

colony was never a slave- based society. Moreover, relying on the observations of

European chroniclers who compared slavery regimes in the island’s French and

Spanish colonies, these historians have maintained that slavery under Spanish

domain was softer than in the French colony.5

According to this perspective, the benevolent slavery of the Spanish

attracted slaves in the eighteenth- century French colony and caused them to

escape to the Spanish side.6 This contention of Dominican lawyer and writer

Américo Lugo served to advance the belief that blackness came from the French

colony, and that the Spanish colony enjoyed a racial democracy in which both

slaves and masters shared the predicament of poverty, an interpretation also

promoted by the twentieth- century Dominican politician and writer Juan

Bosch.7 The supposed kindliness of Spanish slaveholders, and a constant influx

of slaves from the French colony, form the basis on which the “official” Domini-

can conception of race has been constructed.

In the spaces between archival limitations and historical unevenness, how-

ever, one finds glimpses of Dominican racial hybridity that mirror the present-

day spectrum. This chapter, in looking into these spaces, “pinpoints the precise

point in the present”8 of contemporary “official” Dominican denial concerning

the formative cultural dynamics of skin color, and thus opens a door to the past.

It is essential to acknowledge that by the end of the sixteenth century the island

population already resembled today’s Dominican racial mosaic. Here I argue

4 8 c H a P T e R 3

that an established social segment of rich mulattos held political power at the

moment of Dominican independence, yet because this sector was not equal in

societal prestige to the former Spanish Creole slaveholders, the mulattos’ sense

of racial ambiguity increased. The mulatto sector seized on this ambiguity to

exalt white values and to ally with white elites, thus bolstering a discourse of

white superiority.

The Spanish Creole exaltation of whiteness, now embraced by racially ambig-

uous Dominican mulattos, encountered an ally in the interventionist colonialism

of the United States, which during the nineteenth century racialized Dominicans

as lighter in color than Haitians.9 This racialization of Dominican national iden-

tity was reinforced following the US invasion of 1916, became an integral part

of further Dominican- US relations, and became state policy under the mulatto

dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo during his 1930– 1961 rule. Through ideology,

violence, and surveillance of people’s behavior, the Indo- Hispanic racial myth

was imposed on the Dominicans, and by publicly acknowledging and expressing

their racial identity and African- derived cultural practices, poor mulattos and

blacks were marginalized.

In opening this door to the past, “refiguring it as a contingent ‘in between’

space that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present,”10 we can

envisage the evolution of racial and ethnic blending on Hispaniola. In follow-

ing the traces of Lemba, as well as those of his two companions, we may move

toward an understanding of the mystifications and injustices of the present. In

renewing the past, rather than the imposed Indo- Hispanic racial homogeniza-

tion narrative, we might see something more: the historical creation of a mul-

tiracial rainbow.

This chapter utilizes both archival resources and materials by Dominican

and Spanish scholars to document the presence of enslaved blacks on the island

from the late fifteenth century until the abolition of slavery in 1822. It examines

racial inequalities and mixing, the social position of different racial groups, the

importance of Africans in the societal structure, and emergent forms of identity.

Slavery

Sometime prior to 1501, an African woman in the newly established Spanish

settlement of Santo Domingo started to offer health remedies to the poor in

front of her hut, located at the later site of the Virgin of Altagracia Church at

the corner of Hostos and Mercedes Streets. We can imagine that she brewed

herbs, prepared baths, and smashed dry coconuts to calm fevers and rid bodies

of parasites and other ailments. Later, at a site not far from the woman’s hut,

Governor Nicolás de Ovando, who was appointed in 1501 and arrived in Hispan-

iola in 1502, began to build the first hospital in the Americas, San Nicolás. The

woman had been brought to Hispaniola directly from Spain, where she lived for

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 4 9

many years after being sold there by Portuguese merchants.11 Southern Spain

and Portugal were multiethnic and multiracial regions long before the “discov-

ery” of the New World, and many Africans, free and enslaved, participated in the

Iberian Peninsula’s conquest and colonization of the Americas.12

In contrast to the erasure in “official” Dominican history of others like

her, the story of this unnamed African woman epitomizes the experiences of

unknown numbers of enslaved persons who arrived on Hispaniola after living

for years in Spain. These Africans— European- acculturated and frequently bap-

tized Christian— were known as Ladinos in the late fifteenth and sixteenth cen-

turies, while enslaved persons brought directly from Africa were called bozales

(from the word for “muzzled”). Unlike in the Museo del Hombre Dominicano,

where their art is displayed two floors removed from the statute of Lemba, the

indigenous Taino population of the island became the intimate workmates and

companions of enslaved Africans, exchanging both culture and bloodlines.13

It was with the arrival of Christopher Columbus that slavery came to the

island he called Hispaniola. An early sixteenth- century reference to Africans

on Hispaniola is in a letter from the Spanish crown to newly appointed gover-

nor Nicolás de Ovando, advising him to transport only enslaved Ladinos to the

colony in order to avoid heretical influence on the Indians— although Chilean

historian Rolando Mellafe states that Columbus had Africans on his sea voyages

to Hispaniola.14 Slavery lasted for more than three centuries until finally abol-

ished by Haitian president Jean- Pierre Boyer in 1822; abolition was later ratified

in the constitution of the newly created Dominican Republic in 1844. Before the

abolition declared by Boyer in 1822, the Spanish colony enjoyed a brief moment

of freedom during 1801– 1802, after Toussaint Louverture abolished slavery in

the eastern side of the island and before Napoleon reimposed it.

When slavery was imposed in 1492, it was inflicted first on the large popu-

lation of indigenous Taino inhabitants— 600,000 of them, according to Frank

Moya Pons, although Franklin Franco states that Columbus encountered a pop-

ulation of 100,000— who were forced to work in mines and agriculture.15 Soon

they were joined by Africans, and both were subjected to overexploitation and

cruelty in gold mines, on estates, in production of sugar, and in the construc-

tion of cathedrals, palaces, and houses and the colonial port of Santo Domingo.

Many Tainos died in the fields of hunger and abuse; many others contracted

fatal infectious diseases from the Spaniards. Still others committed suicide or

were massacred. The Royal Order of 1511 authorized the seizure of indigenous

peoples in Caribbean islands where no gold was found,16 and this led to the

capture of Caribs in the Lucaya Islands, today the Bahamas, to work in the His-

paniola mines. As the indigenous population diminished, more Africans arrived

to join them, together sharing harsh abuses and cruelties.

The indigenes were distributed among the Spanish colonists to work in

agriculture, construction, and gold mines in a coerced labor regime called

5 0 c H a P T e R 3

repartimiento, which in the early sixteenth century assigned a number of indi-

genes to each Spaniard. The abuses against Native Americans were criticized

by the priest Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, and competition among the Span-

ish for more land and more Taino labor led the crown to replace the so- called

repartimientos with the supposedly less harsh encomienda system. This regime

awarded Spanish settlers a number of indigenous subjects to work the land and

extract gold from the mines but required the encomendero to instruct them in the

Catholic faith and Spanish language, recognizing that even if treated like slaves

the Tainos were vasallos (subjects) of the crown. The encomiendas did not last

long in Hispaniola, due to the rapid annihilation of the indigenous population

following the establishment of sugar plantations, and by the 1520s the economy

of the colony was centered on sugar production and the labor was mostly Afri-

can. Tainos and Africans, however, had labored together and intermingled from

the time of the conquest. Both subaltern groups, moreover, engaged in insur-

rections, flight, and the creation of pueblos cimarrones, or maroon communities,

which we shall examine more fully in chapter 4.

The earliest enslaved Africans probably came with Columbus during his

second voyage in 1493, and while the initial number of this group is unknown

due to lack of documentation, by the end of the fifteenth century the African

presence on the island undoubtedly was a reality. Archival information reveals

that in 1501 the Spanish crown decreed that as many blacks as needed could be

transported to Hispaniola.17 The gold fever of the late fifteenth and early six-

teenth centuries had led the crown to open the slave trade and to authorize

settlers to buy and import more slaves. Some twenty- five hundred Europeans

arrived in 1503 to join the colony’s new governor, Nicolás de Ovando.18 With

them they brought enslaved workers, who were used to mine gold, expand the

settlement of Santo Domingo, and perform domestic labor in their masters’

homes and in convents. Still other Africans entered the island as free persons,

to work in construction and gold mining.

The first enslaved blacks were purchased in Lisbon, Portugal. Some had

been transported there from the West African Guinea coast, and others had

been born and raised in Portugal or Spain.19 Since the Spanish believed that

Africans worked harder, and better survived the conditions in the mines and

construction, than the indigenous Indians, the influx of these Ladino slaves to

Hispaniola continued through the mid- sixteenth century.

In the sixteenth century, the production of sugar on Hispaniola greatly

expanded the availability of this much- appreciated commodity in Europe. In

the preceding century, sugar had been imported from the European and African

Atlantic coastal islands of Madeira and São Tomé.20 Columbus introduced sug-

arcane to Spain’s new Caribbean island possession in the late fifteenth century,

and almost immediately the plant propagated widely.21 In his chronicles, de Las

Casas wrote that by 1506 a man from La Vega on Hispaniola was cultivating cane

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 5 1

and producing sugar using an animal- powered grinding mill, or trapiche.22 After

the island’s gold mines were exhausted and new venues of gold production in

other New World regions appeared, sugar production became Hispaniola’s main

economic asset.

One of the first sugar plantations was created, in 1515, in the vicinity of

Yaguate in the south of the island, about thirty miles from Santo Domingo, by

a small landowner named Velloso.23 Velloso obtained the cane seedlings from

the grower, who had already produced melaza, or molasses, in La Vega, the same

person who had introduced the trapiche to process cane into sugar in 1505.

Buoyed by increasing sugar prices in Europe, Velloso made investments to raise

the level of production. To upgrade his operations and technology, he imported

technicians from the Canary Islands. They advised him to move the mill to a

more suitable location, and with assistance from Spanish crown officials, he

relocated to the lower Nigua River near Haina where, just a few miles from

Santo Domingo, there were better transportation facilities. Velloso’s new estate

started sugar production in 1517.24

A year earlier, three priests of the Order of Saint Jerome had been assigned

by the Spanish monarch to govern the colony. The priests noted the falling gold

production, and saw agriculture, specifically sugar, as a profitable replacement.

With the consent of the crown, the priests offered five hundred pesos to plant-

ers who dedicated their land to the production of sugar. Additionally, through

his royal Cedula of August 18, 1518, King Charles V authorized acquisition of

four thousand slaves from Africa.25 In 1519 the priests were succeeded by Gov-

ernor Rodrigo de Figueroa, who provided further incentives: loans, customs

exemptions to import machinery, assistance from specialized technicians, and

imports of even more enslaved Africans.26

These measures proved highly effective. Sugar production was concentrated

near Santo Domingo, the capital and administrative center of the colony, where

the port was located. By 1520 there were as many as forty sugar plantations, four

with trapiches. They were concentrated primarily in the south of the island,

where Santo Domingo, Haina, Nigua, Nizao, Azua, and San Juan accounted for

85 percent of sugar production. The other facilities were located in La Vega,

Bonao, and Puerto Plata in the north and Higüey in the east. African labor now

supported a booming economy. From 1548 to 1555 an average of thirty ships

from Hispaniola arrived annually in Seville, and between 1568 and 1584, some

125 tons of sugar were exported from the island each year.27

Sugar remained the pillar of the colony’s economy until the last quarter

of the sixteenth century. Production of other commodities, however, was also

important during this period, including cattle and ginger, which rivaled sugar.

Ginger began to be produced in large quantities for export to Europe in 1581; by

the beginning of the 1600s, the colony produced more than seventeen hundred

tons of ginger a year. Cattle ranching was facilitated by the large tracts of unused

5 2 c H a P T e R 3

land on the island. Historian Rubén Silié argues that the abundance of unculti-

vated land had no monetary return other than for cattle grazing, which required

little labor or technology.28 Cattle production, then, emerged as a complement

to the sugar industry, producing the animal power needed to pull carts of sugar

cane and operate trapiches, and it would become the most important compo-

nent of the colonial economy for more than two centuries.29

The Spanish colony of the sixteenth century was a slave society; sugar

production was based on enslaved labor. The enslaved population numbered

between twenty and thirty thousand in the mid- sixteenth century and included

mine, plantation, cattle ranch, and domestic laborers. A small Spanish ruling

class of about twelve hundred monopolized political and economic power,

and it used ordenanzas (laws) and violence to control the population of color.30

According to contemporary documents, the majority of the enslaved group were

black, but significant numbers of free blacks and racially mixed people were also

present. The chroniclers cited by historian Fernández de Oviedo asserted that a

large proportion of the population was of mixed racial and ethnic background,

with Spanish categories used to designate racially mixed individuals, including

mestizo (Indian and Spanish), mulatto (black and Spanish), grifo (mulatto and

black), and cuarterón (mestizo and Spanish).

We may conclude that by the end of the sixteenth century the colonial pop-

ulation was already hybrid, with a racially mixed group between the small num-

ber of Spaniards and large number of blacks. We may also surmise that the black

group included some racially mixed offspring. Moreover, there were a signifi-

cant number of free blacks and mulattos.31 Beyond these groups, there were also

Indian and black maroons who had fled to the interior mountains from the early

sixteenth century onward and lived there unmolested for most of that century.32

Colonial Decline

The seventeenth century saw the collapse of the sugar plantation economy and

the general decline of the colony. This decline was the result of several inter-

connected and contradictory factors: the Spanish planters’ falling labor supply,

royal restrictions on free trade and land ownership, European religious strug-

gles, infiltration of French filibusteros, or pirates, into western Hispaniola begin-

ning in the early 1600s, and slave insurrections.

The island’s Spanish colonizers struggled with the crown to acquire more

enslaved workers and the freedom to trade with other European nations.

Because enslaved laborers did not survive long, dying of diseases, overexploita-

tion, and hunger, the planters needed constantly to replenish their supply in

order to operate and expand their plantations. Moreover, there was a steady loss

of enslaved Tainos and Africans, who fled the mines and plantations to establish

their own communities of resistance in the wilderness and who maintained a

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 5 3

state of war against the Spanish. The opportunities to import additional enslaved

workers were limited, and few incentives were offered by the crown. Freedom to

trade openly with other European nations was crippled by the royal monopoly,

the Casa de Contratación de Sevilla, which did not permit individuals to trade or

compete on their own, thus offering little scope for private capital accumulation.

In addition, the religious wars undertaken by Spain against European Protes-

tant nations were disastrous. Spain lost all of these contests, and this significantly

affected both the home economy and the crown’s ability to support its overseas

colonies. To make things worse, the clergy and a handful of Spanish administrators

controlled most of the fertile agricultural land in the vicinity of Santo Domingo

and in the eastern part of the island. All these factors pushed the majority of

the island’s white population to emigrate to Spain’s other colonies on the main-

land, mainly to Mexico, as news circulated about the availability of new sources of

gold and the possibilities for private capital accumulation far greater there than

within Hispaniola’s plantation regime. Emigration was so extensive that by 1598

the population of five settlements on the island had all but disappeared.33

The mounting incursions by French pirates, first from Tortuga and then

from Hispaniola’s western region, hurt the economy of the colony and led to

armed confrontations, which became another factor in Spanish Hispaniola’s

economic decline. The pirates— mostly French, but many of them Dutch or

English— kept the colony in an unsettled state; indeed, the invasion of English

privateers Sir Francis Drake in the late sixteenth century, and William Penn

and Robert Venables in 1655, instilled fear among Spanish island residents.

The buccaneers based on Tortuga succeeded in penetrating the western side

of the island to establish an illegal commercial base that deprived the Spanish

authorities and clergy of potential revenue. In 1785 Antonio Sánchez Valverde

contrasted the faded splendor of the Spanish colony in its sixteenth- century

heyday with the precarious situation in the seventeenth century, blaming colo-

nial mismanagement of the French infiltration.34 This mismanagement eventu-

ally resulted in the official creation of the French colony of Saint- Domingue in

1697 on Hispaniola’s western side.

At its height, the Spanish port of Santo Domingo shipped millions of pounds

of sugar, ginger, and fruit to be sold in Spain. The economic vitality expressed

by the number of ships within the port contrasts with Santo Domingo in 1640,

with far less economic activity.

The Dominican historians Rodriguez Demorizi and Manuel Arturo Peña

Batlle blame the decline of the Spanish colony on the French corsairs and the

inability of Spain to stop them.35 To these proponents of the “official” Domini-

can imaginary, Tortuga was the seed of apocalyptic consequences: the end of

sixteenth- century Spanish colonial splendor, the creation of the French col-

ony, the Haitian Revolution, and the resultant shame of negritude that sullied

the purity of Dominican blood. These authors do not acknowledge that by the

5 4 c H a P T e R 3

beginning of the seventeenth century the Spanish colony was already predomi-

nantly black and mulatto.

There is no doubt that Spanish mismanagement of the situation allowed the

French corsairs to penetrate further onto Hispaniola, but this must be contex-

tualized against local and international developments. Internally, Spanish island

authorities were concerned with the loss of revenue due to illegal trade between

pirates and Spanish subjects, including the mulatto and black majority. Their con-

cern was intensified by their aversion to Protestantism, considered a heresy by the

Spanish crown, then in the midst of the Counter- Reformation.36 Both concerns

impelled the crown to initiate a movement of people, cattle, and property to the

south of the island surrounding Santo Domingo. The attempt to stop commercial

exchanges between Spanish settlers and pirates, and to prevent smuggling in both

directions, eventually forced the Spanish governor, Antonio de Osorio, to relocate

all inhabitants from the western side of the island to the southeast.

Another factor in the decline of the Spanish colony was the slave insur-

rections. There were sixteen such revolts, lasting from one month to fifteen

years, between 1501 and 1587. Enslaved workers, both indigenous and black,

first started to revolt in the early sixteenth century. Spanish rule was deeply

impacted in particular by the insurrection of Enriquillo, a Taino leader who

between 1511 and 1531 waged war against the colonists. Further insurrections

severely dislocated the plantation system when self- liberated black leaders, such

as Sebastian Lemba, Diego de Gúzman, Juan Criollo, Juan Vaquero, and Diego de

Ocampo swept over portions of the island with their rebel armies during the

years between 1530 and 1548. These episodes created a widespread atmosphere

of unease due both to the violence that ensued and to the mounting expense of

the surveillance and persecution of the slave labor force. The crown blamed the

problems of the island on two calamities: hurricanes and black insurrections.37

In the wake of the rebellions, by the mid- sixteenth century thousands

of maroons had created their own communities in the island wildernesses,

especially in the Bahoruco, Neiba, and Cordillera Central Mountains, which

extended into the western region of the island, including territory later to be

occupied and claimed by the French. During the seventeenth century, Spanish

authorities learned of more than nineteen maroon villages in these mountain

areas. The gravity of cimarronaje (marronage) forced the colonial government

to enact laws against slave escapes and to create specialized military forces to

harass and recapture the maroons. During the sixteenth century, several laws

detailed harsh punishments for fleeing the plantations.38 These laws also cre-

ated military units, organized in groups of six men with dogs and a captain, to

patrol the towns of the colony.39 To pay for these measures, the colonial govern-

ment allocated large amounts of money, including funds raised through local

taxation. In 1522 sales of enslaved persons were taxed two dollars per transac-

tion; salt, wine, sugar, meat, and other foodstuffs were also taxed. The crown

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 5 5

itself contributed one quarter of the expenses to combat cimarronaje. In the war

against Enriquillo, costs amounted to more than eight thousand ducados, the

colonial Spanish currency, and during the battles against Ocampo and Lemba,

more than fifteen thousand ducados.40

The slave insurrections created racial anxiety among the Spanish. The

vecinos, or colonists of the island, were in such fear that they did not venture

from their plantations and towns in groups of fewer than fifteen to twenty.41

The island population fell to less than eleven thousand at the beginning of

the seventeenth century— which on Hispaniola would be called “the century

of misery”— including a little over a thousand colonists, who now lived in ten

towns.42 In Governer Osorio’s census in 1606, their numbers in these locations

are cited in table 3.1. The far larger enslaved population, nearly ten thousand in

1606, outnumbered the colonists by nearly nine to one. Enslaved workers were

enumerated by their economic activity, as shown in table 3.2.

The enslaved population had declined from as many as thirty thousand in

earlier years, and blacks and mulattos continued to comprise the overwhelming

majority of Hispaniola’s population. An additional number of blacks inhabited

both the interior and the depopulated region in the west of the island. In the cen-

tral part of Hispaniola, where the population was now concentrated, numbers

TaBLe 3.1

1606 Governor Osorio’s Census

Population Province

48 Santo Domingo

155 Santiago

40 La Vega

24 Cotúi

46 Azua

7 Seibo

22 Higüey

115 Bayaguana

83 Monte Plata

13 Boyá

Source: Census of Governor Antonio de Osorio of Octo- ber 1606, in Américo Lugo, Edad media de la isla Espa- ñola: Historia de Santo Domingo después de 1556 hasta 1608 (Santo Domingo: Librería Dominicana, 1952), 145– 148.

5 6 c H a P T e R 3

would decrease considerably further, as Spaniards who migrated to more prom-

ising territories in the Americas often took their enslaved retainers with them.

On Hispaniola, hunger and misery for the majority would remain a constant.

Colonial Recovery

If by the end of the seventeenth century the Spanish colony was at its nadir,

during the course of the eighteenth it entered a process of recovery. It was also

during this century that the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico began

to expand their production of sugar. Both islands differed from Hispaniola in

reaching their highest levels of production and technological development in

the mid- nineteenth century, when Cuba became the world’s largest producer

of cane sugar, with fourteen hundred sugar mills operated by steam power and

advanced processing equipment and with an enslaved population of almost half

a million.43 In the colony of Hispaniola, this trajectory did not come to fruition

due to the Haitian Revolution, as well as the creation of the Republic of Haiti

and the Dominican Republic.

Three factors aided Hispaniola’s eighteenth- century sugar plantation expan-

sion: abolition of the Casa de Contratación de Sevilla trade monopoly; legalized

privateering activities by the Spanish colony’s residents; and trade with the new

French colony in the western part of the island. In 1778 King Charles III abolished

the Casa de Contratación de Sevilla and allowed merchandise from the Americas

to be sold in any Spanish port. These measure boosted agriculture and cattle

production, increased island revenues, and expanded resources to purchase

TaBLe 3.2

1606 Governor Osorio’s Census: Enslaved Population Economic Activity

No. of Slaves Economic Activity

800 Sugar plantations

88 Domestic service on plantations

550 Cattle ranching

6,742 Agriculture and farms

1,468 Domestic service

Source: Census of Governor Antonio de Osorio of October 1606, in Américo Lugo, Edad media de la isla Española: Historia de Santo Domingo después de 1556 hasta 1608 (Santo Domingo: Librería Domin- icana, 1952), 145– 148.

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 5 7

slaves. Many Spaniards and Hispaniola- born Creoles also then became pirates

and privateers. The Cédula Real of 1644 allowed private armed ventures against

foreign pirates attacking Spanish vessels or ports. However, it was not until after

1739, when the so- called Italian War between Spain and England broke out, that

Spanish privateers, particularly from Hispaniola, began to troll the Caribbean

Sea, a development that lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. During

this period, Spanish privateers from Hispaniola sailed into enemy ports looking

for ships to plunder, thus harming commerce with England and New York. As

a result, the Spanish obtained stolen merchandise— foodstuffs, ships, enslaved

persons— that were sold in Hispaniola’s ports, with profits accruing to individual

sea raiders.44 These practices of human traffic and terror facilitated capital accu-

mulation. The revenue acquired in these acts of piracy was invested in the eco-

nomic expansion of the colony and led to repopulation from Europe.

The island’s French colony in the west, which came into official existence

in 1697, proved another source of capital accumulation. The French developed

an extensive sugar plantation regime based on enslaved labor and left little land

to produce commodities like meat and other foodstuffs for daily consumption.

These items were abundant on the Spanish side, and French demand was an

incentive to smuggle them from the Spanish territory. Eventually, after the 1777

Treaty of Aranjuez established the boundaries between the colonies, trade was

regulated, and this led to additional, and now legal, commercial exchange. In

order to regain Spanish control over border areas, three hundred families from

the Canary Islands arrived to repopulate old villages and create new ones. The

objective was to reinforce border settlement, erase illegal trade, and create a

legal and controlled economic relationship with the French colony. Hatos, or

cattle ranches, the main source of contraband, were now taxed. With these

actions, the Spanish colony became the main supplier of cattle, horses, leather,

and food to the French colony. In exchange, Spanish residents obtained cash,

enslaved workers, and equipment for land cultivation, thus augmenting eco-

nomic growth in their portion of the island.

The Spanish colony’s recovery can be assessed by the growth of towns, popu-

lation, and means of production. By 1739 the population had grown to more than

seventeen thousand people, and new interior towns, such as Hincha, had been

founded on the border with the French colony. Bánica a border town populated

by blacks and mulattos, was created in 1504, and in 1704 it received new immi-

grants from the Canary Islands.45 It is significant that these border areas were

sites of major cattle ranches, and that the owners of these operations likely were

mulattos. Between 1770 and 1780, there were a total of twenty- two restarted and

new Spanish sugar plantations with trapiches, and the production of coffee, cot-

ton, cacao, and tobacco had expanded, particularly in the southern region near

Santo Domingo. By the end of the eighteenth century the population of the Span-

ish colony was over ninety thousand, including thirty thousand enslaved persons,

5 8 c H a P T e R 3

thirty- eight thousand free blacks and mulattos, and thirty thousand whites. Since

slave labor was central to the operation of sugar cane plantations, of hatos spe-

cialized in raising and slaughtering cattle and production of hides, and in domes-

tic service in plantation houses, it was obvious that a slave society was once again

emerging, but the Haitian Revolution would soon halt its progress.

The Population in the Eighteenth Century

The recovery of Hispaniola was assessed in 1785 by Sánchez Valverde, who com-

piled an inventory of those resources of the Spanish colony that could promote

further development and help restore the splendor of the past. He saw the

acquisition of more slaves as essential to raising the Spanish colony to the same

economic standard and vigor of the island’s French colony. According to Sán-

chez Valverde, economic prosperity rested on the enslaved laborers who worked

in sugar and cacao plantations and other agricultural enterprises, and on cattle

ranches; to further this development, the colony needed more enslaved workers.

These human means of production were obtained through the trans- Atlantic

slave trade, as well as through exchange with other colonies, apprehension of

runaways from the French colony, and untaxed human smuggling.

France became the main provider of enslaved workers on the island during

the seventeenth century, supplanting earlier Portuguese and Dutch sources.46

The Spanish crown also granted permissions, in the form of licencias or asientos,

to England and France to sell enslaved persons to the Hispaniola colony, first

to the French Company of Guinea and later, in 1713, to the English South Sea

Company.47 These trading companies supplied enslaved Africans directly to His-

paniola, which also served as a central distribution point of African laborers to

Spain’s other Caribbean and mainland colonies.48

The Spanish colony also obtained enslaved workers locally, from the

island’s French territory. Although runaways from the French areas were appre-

hended by Spanish authorities,49 the main avenue was commercial exchanges,

where the Spanish offered cattle, meat, and hides as payment for human and

other commodities.50 In addition, the Spanish government granted permission

to Spanish privateers to capture ships of enemy nations. Reports and letters dat-

ing from 1739 to 1765 indicate that several Spanish privateers brought hundreds

of enslaved Africans seized from English ships into the colony.51 Hundreds more

were purchased with licenses from the Spanish governor in Caribbean ports

that included Saint Eustatius, Barbados, Veracruz, and Saint Vincent.52 However,

the largest number of enslaved workers was smuggled onto the island by unli-

censed Spanish, Dutch, English, and French privateers. One approximation of

the magnitude of this smuggled human cargo is provided by the results of the

amnesty granted by the Spanish crown in 1756 and executed by Governor José

Solano y Bote in 1776. In consequence, a total of more than eleven hundred

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 5 9

smuggled enslaved persons was then reported in areas of the colony beyond the

major concentration of plantations, ranches, and farms in Santo Domingo and

adjacent communities, such as San Cristóbal and Baní.53

From the beginning of the Hispaniola colony in the late fifteenth cen-

tury, enslaved Africans had been transported from all regions of the conti-

nent’s Atlantic coast. Africans from the western Guinea coast arrived on the

island from the late fifteenth century onward, while those from the Congo and

Angola regions arrived primarily during the sixteenth century and later during

the eighteenth century. As table 3.3 indicates, the recorded African origins of

smuggled enslaved persons in the eighteenth century were varied,54 although

those from Congo accounted for some two thirds and a wide range of locations

in West Africa for the other third.55 As we shall see in later chapters, this shift in

origins to Central Africa would have an impact on the sociocultural dynamics of

religion and music on the island.56

The Slave Society of the South

Sánchez Valverde’s 1785 inventory allows us to examine the core zone of His-

paniola’s reconstituted late seventeenth- and eighteenth- century colonial slave

TaBLe 3.3

The African Origins of Eighteenth- Century Contraband Slaves

Origin Number

Congo 503

Bambara 59

Nago 21

Arara 14

Boruco/Ibo 10

Mandinga/Mina 79

Carabalí 19

Senegal 10

Pular 5

Chamba 10

Source: “Libro de indultos de negros de mala entradadel 16 de diciembre de 1776,” Ultramar, libro 764, fols. 3r– 3v.

6 0 c H a P T e R 3

society, located in the south of the island. There the areas of growing slave labor

deployment— San Cristóbal, Baní, San Juan de la Maguana, and Azua— contained

significant numbers of cattle ranches and plantations.57 Using Sánchez Val-

verde’s inventory plus additional archival data,58 I examined El Partido de los

Ingenios de Nigua, the Nigua plantation region, which is today the province

of San Cristóbal, to assess the importance of sugar production, farms, and cat-

tle hatos in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1785 there were

six plantations with trapiches, a church, and cemetery; thirty- one lesser farms

without sugar mills; and eleven cattle- raising ranches. These enterprises pro-

duced sugar, cacao, cotton, and indigo, as well as meat and hides.

Several of the Partido plantations and farms listed in the Sánchez Valverde

inventory were mentioned by earlier chroniclers, such as Fernández de Oviedo

in 1546, and others were listed in the Osorio census of 1606. In 1785 the names

of the owners of Partido plantations and farms were all Spanish: Pedro Serrano,

Juan de Ampiés, Antonio Alvarez Barba, Emeterio Vilaseca, and others. Among

the merchants and public employees, there were several French surnames, such

as Renvilli, Fevrier, Coiscou, and Cordavid, suggesting some migration from the

French to the Spanish colony. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

centuries, the Partido was booming, due both to efforts by Spanish planters to

increase production, and also because of the migration of slaveholders from the

French colony during the years of the Haitian Revolution and the creation of

the Republic of Haiti. To these French slaveholders, the Partido was similar

to the plantation system they had left behind. The Treaty of Basel in 1795, in

which the slave- holding Spanish colony was ceded to France, moreover, cre-

ated a conundrum: France had abolished slavery, but with lax French rule amid

revolutionary uncertainty, slavery continued in the former Spanish territory.

The total number of enslaved persons in the late eighteenth- century Par-

tido is unknown, although several of the records state the number on individual

properties. San Cristóbal, for example, the largest of these plantations, had 87.

Slaveholders, however, were evasive about the actual numbers because many

had arrived through smuggling. The slave insurrections of Boca de Nigua in

1796, and Gamba Arriba in 1802, in which hundreds of enslaved workers par-

ticipated, indicate that the actual number was larger than records show.59 For

example, according to these records,the Boca de Nigua plantation was smaller

than San Cristóbal, but roughly 200 of its enslaved labor force participated in

the revolt. The insurrections at Gamba Arriba and Gamba Abajo in 1802 included

an unknown number of enslaved participants, yet a force of 150 was mustered

at Baní to combat the remnant of this rebellion, providing some indication that

the number of insurgents was considerable.60

Reputed actions by Toussaint Louverture, and later by Jean- Pierre Boyer, to

honor the bravery of these rebels point to the Partido as an important site of

struggle for freedom in the Spanish colony. Oral tradition recounts that when

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 6 1

Toussaint left the city of Santo Domingo after abolishing slavery in 1801 (to be

reinstated by Napoleon in 1802), he stopped in Boca de Nigua to honor the

enslaved worker insurrection there. And oral history, recorded by Felix Reyes,

relates that two decades later, when Boyer marched to Santo Domingo, he

stopped near Gamba Abajo and fired his cannon as if to salute the spark of free-

dom ignited by this community’s former slaves.61

Boyer’s unification of the island in 1822 transformed the Partido. Slavery

was at last abolished, and most slave owners abandoned their properties and

fled the country. Land was distributed to former slaves, and Boyer encouraged

the migration of Haitians to boost the economy in the area. He also elevated the

plantation of San Cristóbal to a común of the capital, Santo Domingo, in 1843.

During the struggle for Dominican independence from Haiti, San Cristóbal

played a major and controversial role. Former enslaved residents of Santa María,

a San Cristóbal rural community, as well as residents of a nearby former maroon

settlement, opposed independence and refused to join the army fighting against

Haiti. Several former slaves, known as Congos, revolted, killing a member of the

Spanish Creole- led separatist forces before they were caught and executed.62

And during the drafting and ratification of the newly created Dominican Repub-

lic’s constitution, former enslaved persons in the Partido area objected that the

constitution did not contain an explicit clause abolishing slavery.63 Present- day

San Cristóbal still preserves an aroma cimarrona, with its slavery- era landscape

and maroon- inspired sites of cultural production.

Manumission, Racial Mixing, and Racial Democracy

By 1606 more than two thousand enslaved island residents had obtained man-

umission.64 Nearly two centuries later, some thirty- eight thousand free blacks

and mulattos were counted in the Spanish colony, attesting to a continuing pro-

cess of manumission, racial mixture, and growth of the population of color.

Fragmentary data I located in the Dominican Archivo General de la Nación for

the towns of Higüey, Bayaguana, and El Seibo in the eastern region of the colony

document both ongoing purchase and sale of human beings as well as the mod-

est number of manumissions (see tables 3.4 and 3.5).65 In the Spanish colony of

Hispaniola, attainment of freedom depended not on the willingness of the mas-

ter to grant manumission but rather on the effort of the enslaved to buy his or

her freedom. The records of Higüey, El Seibo, and Higüey show that 90 percent

of manumissions were in fact due to self- purchase.

Manumission was already a fact in the sixteenth century when laws were

enacted to control free blacks and mulattos. For example, the crown enacted

a Cedula Real in 1549 stating that no mulatto or mestizo could hold property,

and that they must reside near a known amo (master).66 During the years of

the depopulation of the western side of the island and the contraband trade,

6 2 c H a P T e R 3

resources were accumulated by enslaved persons and, in many instances, used

to buy freedom. It is important as well to acknowledge both the racial fear on

the part of whites provoked by the bloody insurrections in the island during the

sixteenth century and the decline and misery that prevailed in the colony dur-

ing the seventeenth century. Masters were obliged, not always without reluc-

tance, to grant freedom if an enslaved individual paid their own market value,

indeed, the money obtained from such manumissions was sometimes used to

sustain an impoverished white former owner.

Over the centuries, the issue of manumission tormented the Spanish

authorities. Laws were enacted to control freed persons; also, opposition to

manumission was constant, and it was reinforced during the eighteenth cen-

tury when the colony’s economic recovery rested again on enslaved labor. In

this regard, Sánchez Valverde argued that slaves should remain slaves, and that

TaBLe 3.4

Purchase and Sale of Slaves

Bayaguana Seibo Higüey

1694– 1772 1600– 1788 1773– 1780 Total

Men 32 74 34 140

Women 13 24 14 51

Total 45 98 48 191

Sources: Fondos del Archivo Real de Bayaguana, ACI; Fondos del Archivo Real de Higüey, ACI; Fondos del Archivo Real del Seibo, ACI.

TaBLe 3.5

Manumissions

Bayaguana Seibo Higüey

1694– 1772 1600– 1788 1773– 1780 Total

Men 7 19 6 32

Women 6 17 9 32

Total 13 36 15 64

Sources: Fondos del Archivo Real de Bayaguana, ACI; Fondos del Archivo Real de Higüey, ACI; Fondos del Archivo Real del Seibo. ACI.

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 6 3

the Spanish authorities should imitate the cold rationality of the French; in his

view, freed slaves only filled the towns with thieves and prostitutes.67 From the

Spanish colonial perspective, manumission should not result in social mobility

for people of color, and it certainly did not alter the stigma of black skin color

and African ancestry. Free blacks and mulattos remained at the margins of soci-

ety, suffering the imposed burden of racial inferiority and subjected to laws that

restricted their movements.

The Evolution of Population in the Spanish Colony of Hispaniola

When they arrived on Hispaniola, a population of fifteen hundred Spanish con-

querors and future colonizers confronted a hundred thousand or more Tainos.

Within fifty years the Tainos were reduced to less than to a hundred individuals,

while the African population had reached more than thirty thousand. Through

the colony’s first two centuries, the Spanish population quickly rose, then fell,

and later rose again; during the same period, the increase in black and mulatto

population outpaced that of the whites. The numbers for people of mixed race

are not fully determinable, and many are probably included in the “free Afri-

cans” category in table 3.6.

In tracing the colony’s population growth over its first century and a half,

the “official” Dominican imaginary’s culprits of negritude— the French colony

and Haiti, both not yet in existence— are exonerated. Neither privateers on Tor-

tuga, the French sugar colony, nor the Republic of Haiti was responsible for the

overwhelming majority of mulattos and blacks then or for their descendants in

the present- day Dominican Republic. Africans were on the island at the begin-

ning of colonization. By the end of the sixteenth century the colonial racial pro-

file had revealed ethnic and racial mixing, and substantial additional numbers

of African maroons sustained themselves in the island’s wilderness. Many more

Africans would arrive during the eighteenth century, contributing a further

infusion of blackness to the colony’s racial panorama.

Population data do not identify the number of mixed- race individuals in

the island’s demographic evolution. However, the chroniclers’ accounts leave

little doubt about their growing presence. In his sixteenth- century narra-

tive, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz reports large numbers of racially

mixed people and lists the racial labels assigned to them (see table 3.7) as

well. 68 These labels reflected the sixteenth- century Spanish colonizers’ rac-

ist ideology— their view of racial blending as degradation of humanity. Thus,

“mulatto” is mule- like; “zambo” meant a knock- kneed person; “grifo” is

engrengeñao, a person with tightly curled hair; “cuarterón” is a person lack-

ing three- quarters of his or her humanity; “saltapatras” has “jumped back”

or regressed; “cabra” is a goat, an animal rather than a human. According to

6 4 c H a P T e R 3

this categorization, racial mixing was equated with the creation of monstros-

ity: it sprang from a racialized European understanding of the Caliban- like

“others” of the world. In spite of obvious prejudice, this categorization at the

same time affirms social awareness of ongoing racial and ethnic blending. In

this regard, Franco maintains that, in addition to the ruling Spaniards and an

African majority, the island’s sixteenth- century demographic universe already

contained this hybrid component.69

In the eighteenth century French chronicler Moreau de Saint- Méry stated

that the majority of the population of the Spanish side of the island was white,

and we may assume “whites” included light mulattos. He also affirmed that free

men and women of color outnumbered enslaved Africans. In the nineteenth

TaBLe 3.6

Spanish Colony Population, 1492– 1796

Africans

Year Aborigines Spanish/whites Enslaved Free

1492 100,000

1493 95,000 1,500

1507 60,000

1514 30,000

1520 14,000

1533 4,000 5,000 20,000

1542 200 1,100 30,000

1606 0 1,557 9,648 2,729

1783 14,000

1794 35,000 30,000 38,000

Sources: For the period from 1492 to 1552, the chroniclers Christopher Columbus, Bartolomé de Las Casas, and Ramón Pané; and Juan López de Velasco, Geograf ía y descripción universal de las Indias (Madrid: Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Madrid, 1804). Reports to the crown: Juan de Echagoian, “Relación de la Isla Espa- ñola enviada al Rey Don Felipe II, 1557,” Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación 19 (1941): 441– 461; “Relación de Luis Gerónimo de Alcocer, 1650,” Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación (1942); Carta de Fernández de Navarrete to the crown, August 26, 1683. Census data: Osorio Census of 1606. Traveler diaries: Médéric Louis Elie Moreau de Saint- Méry, A Topographical and Political Description of the Spanish Part of Saint- Domingue, trans. William Cobbet (Philadelphia: Printed and sold by author, 1798); William Walton, Present State of the Spanish Colonies; including a Particular Report of Hispaniola (London: Longman, Hurst, Reis, Orme, and Brown, 1810).

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 6 5

century the Britain consul in Haiti, Charles Mackenzie, attested that the people

of the Spanish portion of the island were of mixed African and Spanish descent.

In his estimation, the population of the Dominican Republic in 1826 was fifteen

thousand whites of pure Spanish stock, fifteen thousand Africans, and seventy-

three thousand mulattos.

Social Stratification

As figure 3.1 shows, at the top of the island’s socially stratified pyramid was a

Spanish elite of colonial administrators, clergy, and the owners of sugar planta-

tions, slaves, and hatos. Below them were poorer farmers and waged workers,

including soldiers, of Spanish descent. The third category consisted of freed

Africans, mulattos, and various mixed groups, and at the base of the pyramid

were the slaves. Numerically, small numbers of whites ruled the colony, and

mulattos and freed Africans, together with the enslaved, formed the majority of

the population.

Can this pyramid be categorized and analyzed as a “slave society”? I follow

Claude Meillassoux in viewing “slavery” as a notion that does not contain any

larger theoretical status or implication in itself.70 I argue that the Spanish colony

was a chaotic and changing, rather than rigid, slave society, one in which the

plantation system underwent a complicated evolution.

Spanish Hispaniola was never solely a sugar plantation island. Other types

of production, cattle ranching in particular, made for an additional mode of

TaBLe 3.7

Racial Labels Assigned to Racially Mixed People

Spanish + Taino = Mestizo

Spanish + African = Mulatto

African + Taino = Zambo

Mulatto + African = Grifo

Mestizo + Spanish = Cuarterón

Grifo + African = Saltapatras

Taino + Grifo = Cabra

Sources: Juan Jorge and Antonio Ulloa, Relación Histórica de un viaje a la America Meridional, vols. 1 and 2, (1764; repr., Madrid: Dostin, 2002); Ilona Katzew, Casta Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

6 6 c H a P T e R 3

production and distribution of power. In the sixteenth century the colony had

embraced a regime of sugar production that utilized the labor of thousands of

enslaved workers, yet the plantation mode of production under the direction of

individual owners was limited in its opportunities for accumulation of capital,

both by the trade monopoly of the Spanish crown and by the unpredictability

created through resistance, insurrections, and flight.

In the midst of the plantation system, hatos emerged to complement sugar

cultivation, and over time this sector shifted from ownership by whites in the

sixteenth century to ownership by blacks and people of color in the depopu-

lated region in the seventeenth century. Dominance then moved back to white

and mulatto control as the growing commercialization of cattle and hides to

supply the neighboring French sugar colony transformed hato production from

smuggled contraband items to legal trade.

Power relations were also in flux. The enslaved worker insurrections of the

sixteenth century provoked racial fear that caused whites to become somewhat

more benevolent with their human property, as indexed by manumission. At

the same time, colonial authorities were pursuing the violent persecution of

self- liberated slaves and enacting laws to forcefully punish enslaved laborer

misconduct. And alternative societies of runaways were being created in the

mountains, enduring over the centuries with their own social, political, and

economic structures.

The eighteenth- century Spanish colony attempted to reinstate a slave econ-

omy, and dozens of new sugar plantations emerged, as did new cattle ranches,

with thousands of enslaved laborers under a more rationalized, French-

influenced system of slavery and power relations. But this new regime failed, as

the struggle for freedom in the neighboring French colony infected the Spanish

bureaucrats, clergy, and owners of plantations and hatos

small merchants, waged workers, small planters, and farmers of

Spanish descent

freed blacks, mulattos, and other mixed groups

enslaved laborers fIguRe 3.1. Social stratification in colonial Hispaniola. Chart by Milagros Ricourt.

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 6 7

colony with slave insurrection, and the initiative was finally killed with the abo-

lition of slavery in 1822.

Another element of the chaotic and changing Spanish colony was the

large number of freed blacks and mulattos. This group was officially impeded

in their aspirations for social mobility, for as early as 1549 the Spanish crown

had enacted laws prohibiting free mulattos from acquiring property. Similar

laws regulated the movements of freed slaves, forcing them to live near white

masters. Through the course of the centuries, however, some mulattos and free

blacks managed to ascend the colonial economic and social ladder through

accumulation of capital and acquisition of education. It was the depopulation

of the west of the island that allowed for such accumulation of capital by mulat-

tos and former slaves, who remained or had fled there and who trafficked first

with European privateers and smugglers and later with French colonizers. To

thwart this, Hispaniola’s rulers, during the economic recovery of the eighteenth

century, moved thousands of Canary Islanders to border towns, thus reducing

the economic opportunities for blacks and mulattos.

Many mulattos and blacks married or formed unions with Spaniards and

Creoles. The case of the noted eighteenth- century author Antonio Sánchez Val-

verde illustrates this point. His grandfather, Pedro Sánchez, was a soldier from

Spain who came to work in the Santo Domingo precinct in 1692. There, in 1694,

he married María Martínez de Rivera, the natural daughter of a woman named

María Cuello (none of Sánchez Valverde’s biographers mention her father).71

They had six children, and Cipriano de Utrera lists the profession of three: Man-

uel was a second lieutenant of artillery; Pedro, a sergeant of artillery; Juan, a

surveyor. Juan married Clara Ocaña, the daughter of the town militia’s sergeant

and Francisca Frias (known also as La Calderona), and Antonio was born of

their union. He studied theology under the Jesuits and law with the Dominicans,

but despite Antonio’s degrees, he never obtained a high position in the Catho-

lic Church. He applied for the Canongia of the Cathedral of Santiago de Cuba

in 1769 and the Cathedral of Caracas in 1796, but both positions were denied

him— in Caracas, he was even booed— because of his skin color, which betrayed

his family’s mixed heritage. People of color were prohibited from ecclesias-

tic positions in the Church. Yet, in spite of discrimination, Sánchez Valverde

remained a staunch defender of the Spanish crown.

The stigma of mixed race was an ever- present obstacle to the political

and economic advancement of people of color. In 1797 Moreau de Saint- Méry

wrote that if their color made a person’s origin evident, men and women, even

though free, were nonetheless permitted to enter only certain professions,

which did not include public service and the military, and were refused inter-

marriage with whites. Still, in comparing the two island colonies, Moreau de

Saint- Méry believed there was less racial animosity among the Spanish than

the French.

6 8 c H a P T e R 3

It was only after Jean- Pierre Boyer’s unification of the island in 1822 that

a social cohort of mulatto hateros took on greater public prominence, because

in spite of capital accumulation, mulattos had hitherto been unable to ascend

the social ladder. A case in point in this new era was Buenaventura Baez, son

of a Spanish slaveholder father and an enslaved African mother, who, prior to

becoming a leading political figure following the creation of the Dominican

Republic in 1844, took advantage of his father’s position to study in Europe.

Pedro Santana, an example of mulatto access to capital through cattle ranching,

was another post– Dominican Independence political figure. At the same time,

however, Boyer’s abolition of slavery and expropriation of Church properties

had provoked the emigration of some Spanish slaveholders and produced a last-

ing resentment toward blacks and mulattos among the clergy and white former

slaveholders remaining on the island.

The Creolization of Race

The free mulattos were numerically and economically an in- between social sec-

tor. They faced the insecurities of rejection by whites yet shared the whites’

fear of the marginalized enslaved masses. To paraphrase Karl Marx, this mulatto

“middle class” was a potential enemy of the proletariat, and in spite of the white

elite’s contempt, tended to ally with them in order to preserve their own power,

thus perpetuating colonial ideology.72 This ambivalence of the mulatto segment

was abetted by the racialization imposed by nineteenth- century US envoys

negotiating recognition of the Dominican Republic and Haiti as independent

nations. These diplomats resented the successful Haitian Revolution and the

creation of a black republic, and they viewed the Dominican Republic as racially

superior to Haiti.73

Five U.S. envoys visited the new Dominican Republic between 1841 and 1877.

The first was sent to investigate whether the Dominican Republic should be

officially recognized by the United States, and later envoys were dispatched to

negotiate the possibility of annexation of the Dominican Republic by the United

States. The diplomats reported that there were few pure whites in the Domini-

can Republic and that more than half of the population was mulatto, varying in

skin color from dark brown to white. All recommended that the United States

support the new Dominican Republic because its people were whiter than Hai-

tians and because, unlike in Haiti, whites and mulattos held power there. To

the envoys, Dominicans had been subjects of Haiti’s rapacious, tyrannical, and

unnatural rule and were seen as victims of Haitian brutality.74

The diplomats’ comparison of the island’s two nations is worth repeating:

Haitians were French, black, irreligious, barbaric, unnatural, brutal; Domini-

cans were Spanish, white, Catholic, civilized, with power in the hands of light-

skinned mulattos. And this portrayal of Dominicans from the outside has been a

T H e c R e o L I z a T I o N o f R a c e 6 9

catalyst for the local white, light- skinned, and mulatto social and political class

to perpetuate both their “whiteness” and their hatred of Haiti until the present

time. Apart from the creative fiction of the US view, the social formation of the

black and mulatto classes and identities in the Dominican Republic is differ-

ent from that of Haiti, although both were based in the experience of slavery.

Before the Haitian Revolution, the productivity of the French colony made it the

most valuable colony in the world.75 This immense enterprise was made up of

a social pyramid that was capped by the fewer than thirty thousand whites who

controlled the means of production. Below them were small farmers, some forty

thousand petit blancs and mulattos, and at the bottom an enslaved labor force

of half a million supported the colonial economy. Mulattos in Haiti formed a

powerful economic group of coffee planters who developed during the Haitian

Revolution what anthropologist Michel- Rolph Trouillot calls an “ambiguous

mélange” with blacks,76 both to abolish slavery and to liberate themselves from

the economic domination of the French. After the elimination of whites, Haiti

became a country of two contradictory racial groups: a minority of mulattos

and a majority of blacks, each with different political and racial agendas. The

Haitian mulatto sense of intellectual, racial, and national superiority clashed

with the strong African cultural identity of the majority of the population. The

African culture eventually become the dominant cultural identity of Haiti.

In the Dominican Republic the mulattos were an ever- growing major-

ity group, their racial ambiguity impacting their politics, and in essence they

took over the entire Dominican Republic, with no organized black opposition.

Mulatto political control after Dominican independence crystallized in the lead-

ership of Buenaventura Baez and Pedro Santana, who killed the initial national

project— to create a nation that integrates all races— led by a white (Juan Pablo

Duarte), a black (Francisco del Rosario Sánchez), and a mulatto (Ramón Matías

Mella). Instead, they transposed their racial insecurities into the dominant

political course of the new nation, and ultimately they ceded an independent

Dominican Republic back to Spain in 1861.

The new Dominican Republic’s nineteenth- century Spanish Creole elite,

composed of descendants of the former slaveholders and clergy who had suf-

fered appropriation of land under Jean- Pierre Boyer in 1822, initiated a process of

intellectual production that exalted the Hispanic and Christian roots of Domini-

cans, instilled hatred toward Haitians, created the myth of an Indo- Hispanic

race, and reproduced the US- sanctioned white racial fiction. It was twentieth-

century mulatto dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo who further institutionalized

and forced upon Dominicans the idea of a nation defined by whiteness and the

values of Spain. Ironically Trujillo’s grandmother was Haitian: his mother, Julia

Molina Chevalier, was the daughter of a Haitian woman. Trujillo’s delusions

over whiteness were supported by the intellectual efforts of other light mulat-

tos, including Joaquín Balaguer, also of Haitian origin. Balaguer’s mother was a

7 0 c H a P T e R 3

paternal first cousin of Dominican president Ulises Heureaux, who held office

during 1882– 1884 and 1887– 1899 and was the son of a Haitian man.

As Silvio Torres- Saillant argues, the negrophobic and Eurocentric notions

of Dominicanness can be expected “to live as long as those who are in power

remain there, controlling the official tools of cultural definition and the institu-

tions that shape public perceptions,” as reflected in museums, billboards, tele-

vision shows, newspaper society pages, and other media and cultural artifacts.77

Yet in spite of this ruling class’s successful attempts to conceal Africa as a major

component of Dominican identity, parallel imaginations— other imaginations

that are not the official imagination of racial denial— have resisted the impo-

sitions of the political alliance of white and wealthy mulatto leadership. The

development of this subversive imaginary is the topic of chapter 4.

7 1

The Africans and Tainos who led Hispaniola’s slave insurrections occupy the most concealed spaces of Dominican history. Several Dominican authors pio-

neered the study of maroonage in the Dominican Republic, yet they do not pres-

ent maroonage as a central tenet of the island’s creation of race or cultural

production.1 The names of the Tainos Caonabo and Enriquillo are known to

many Dominicans, but their acts of subversion have been romanticized. The

names of sixteenth- century African freedom fighters Sebastian Lemba and Juan

Vaquero are unknown to most Dominicans, as unknown as the many maroon

villages that existed across the island’s interior mountainous wilderness, or the

later insurrections of enslaved plantation workers at Nigua in 1796 and Gamba

in 1802, or the revolt led by José Leocadio, Pedro de Seda, and Pedro Henriquez

in 1812. Also remaining unknown to most Dominicans is the early twentieth-

century, maroon- inspired revolt of Oliborio Mateo. And although the Spanish

colony of Hispaniola was the earliest cauldron of resistance to slavery in the

Americas, it is a fact of the island’s history that finds no place in the official

Dominican imaginary.

The word maroon derives from the Spanish word cimarrón, meaning “wild

animal,” that later evolved into the French marron and eventually became the

English- language “maroon”; 2 there is also, according to Webster’s International

Dictionary, an English word “cimarron” that means “descendant of an escaped

slave: maroon.” Unlike in other Caribbean and Latin American countries, the

maroon experience is absent in “official” Dominican historical narratives and

cultural media. Yet Richard Price’s valuable edited volume, Maroon Societies:

Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, begins by noting that it was into the

mountainous interior of Hispaniola that the first New World African maroon

escaped after arriving in 1502.3 From that time on, groups of runaways, often

aided by Tainos, sought refuge in the mountains, forests, and adjacent islands,

4

Cimarrones

The Seeds of Subversion

7 2 c H a P T e R 4

and they formed maroon villages that survived for decades and even centuries.

These maroon villages are also known as manieles, also quilombos and palenques.

For example, Manuel Alexis Ortiz Read explains how the town of Ocoa, located

north of the Peravia Peninsula and south of the Northern Range Mountains, was

originally known as Maniel, a testament to its establishment by maroons in the

sixteenth century. Less contemporary observers also testify on the longevity of

maroon villages.4

These maroons lived beyond the control of the Spanish, flourishing in com-

munities with self- organized economic, political, social, and cultural structures.

Some maroons staged armed struggles against white colonial authorities. Other,

still enslaved blacks challenged colonial domination through sabotage or by

depleting their masters’ workforce through unauthorized temporary absences.

Dominican historian Celsa Albert Batista argues that enslaved female domestic

workers not only disrupted households but also stole for the runaways, and on

some occasions they murdered their masters— acts she terms “domestic cimar-

ronaje.”5 Although the Hispaniola colony witnessed the very first instances of

maroonage in the Americas, other newly discovered and colonized territories

also produced maroon societies and armed resistance against the colonial sys-

tem. The United States, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico,

Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, and Surinam all offer examples of maroon

communities that secured freedom and territorial integrity and made provision

for meeting their economic needs.6

The South

“Si fuera possible— if it were possible, what questions would [I] ask of our elders,

our story tellers, our ancestors, our scribes”7 about the five hundred years over

which cimarronaje has been a component of sociocultural life in Hispaniola and

the Dominican Republic? What would I ask about their resistance struggles and

about their lives in freedom as cimarrones?

I left Santo Domingo driving along the south coast toward Haina, in the

province of San Cristóbal, in hope of finding answers among the impressive

sugarcane fields, the cañaverales, bordering the Haina River. To my surprise,

I did not see a single cane stalk. In my mind I returned to a time when Hai-

tians replaced the enslaved workforce of earlier centuries— a time when one

could identify the seasonal cycle of sugarcane production by the appearance of

small shoots in burned soil; by the growth of immense fields of cane extending

beyond the eye’s reach to the horizon; by the Haitians, machetes in hand during

cane- cutting time, lost in the midst of canebrakes with itchy, sword- like leaves

cutting them like sharp knives under a scorching, ninety- degree sun; by the

cane wagons hitched to a train engine, with Haitian laborers hanging from the

side; by the smell of melaza (molasses) wafting from the mills.

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 7 3

How did these images, painful now, vanish? I understood that sugar produc-

tion was no longer important to the Dominican economy, but I never imagined

that El Central de Haina would be in ruins. For centuries these sugar plantation

fields were landmarks, shaping the landscape as well as the racial and cultural

configuration of people in the San Cristóbal region and its municipalities, like

Haina. The birth of sugar production in the Americas in the early sixteenth cen-

tury was in Haina, Nigua, and other plantation communities in their vicinity. As

Silvio Torres- Saillant puts it, this region was the cradle of blackness and sugar in

the Americas.8 I would add that it was also the cradle of freedom.

After finding no cañaverales in Haina, I drove toward Nigua. Arriving in

town, I crossed Lemba Street on my way toward the ruins of the colonial- era

Boca de Nigua sugar mill. This mill was first constructed and used in the six-

teenth century and was returned to use in the eighteenth century. In the 1970s

its ruins were discovered, cleaned, and partially restored. Before then, the mill

had been covered for more than a century by undergrowth, brambles, and bri-

ers. It had become part of Hacienda María, one of the many estates the dictator

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo owned in the province of San Cristóbal. Although rela-

tively neglected in Dominican history classes and texts, Boca de Nigua was the

site of an insurrection in 1796 when, led by the self- liberated slaves Ana María

and her husband, Carretero, more than two hundred enslaved workers seized

the mill, killed several Spaniards, burned cane fields, and constituted them-

selves a people’s government.

In these magnificent architectural ruins, amid huge polygonal cane burn-

ers, storage vaults, basements, patios, arches, and gardens, Dominicans can find

their elders, storytellers, ancestors, and scribes. The spirit of black queen Ana

María is right there, before one’s very eyes, ensconced in the mountains, lakes,

rivers, and abundant vegetation of this island, in the places where cimarrones

had escaped the abuses of the colonizers. It was there, in the wilderness, that

the genetic and social fusion of Africans and Tainos produced a hybridity still

evident in present- day cultural dynamics. It is in these same mountain ranges

that, during the eighteenth century, slaves from the French colony escaped to

maroon villages within Spanish territory. In the late eighteenth century, fol-

lowing the French and then the Haitian Revolutions, the movement reversed,

with slaves in the Spanish colony escaping to the French portion of the island in

search of freedom, thus adding further to genetic and cultural fusion. In more

recent times, the heritage of cimarronaje persisted into the early twentieth cen-

tury with Oliborio Mateo and the Palma Sola twins.

In spite of the imposition of a racialized Dominican national identity, the

south is still marked by antithesis to colonial values rooted in slavery and their

continuation in the official Dominican imaginary; it remains the location of a

heroic challenge to white authority and to the continuing ubiquitous reality of

the social dominance of whiteness.9

7 4 c H a P T e R 4

This chapter examines the creation and unfolding of an alternative Domin-

ican national imaginary. It revisits the geography of the island in relation to the

history of maroon resistance, to new forms of struggle and production of social

space and to contemporary resonances of cimarronaje.

Human Geography: Land, People, Resistance, and Culture

In 1962, Manolo Tavares Justo, a supporter of democratically elected Dominican

president Juan Bosch, who was then threatened by a coup staged by conserva-

tive elements, announced: “Yo se donde se encuentran las escarpadas montañas de

Quisqueya [I know where the mountain peaks of Quisqueya are].” In evoking

the Sierra Maestra mountain base used by Cuban guerrillas to overthrow the

dictator Fulgencio Batista, he was implying that he and fellow Bosch support-

ers would similarly resist a coup, which did arrive the following year, in 1963.

Yet these words also evoke a time, centuries earlier at the close of the fifteenth

and the dawn of the sixteenth centuries, when Tainos and Africans fled to the

mountains of Quisqueya, an alternative, mythical name for Hispaniola, to pro-

tect themselves from the abuses of forced labor and enslavement and to fight

against the Spanish colonizers. These maroons gave new significance to an old

Taino name for the island, Ayti, which meant “highlands.”10

fIguRe 4.1. Nigua Plantation ruins. Photograph by Milagros Ricourt (2009).

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 7 5

The western two- thirds of the island comprise a mountainous terrain where

several ranges traverse the Dominican Republic and Haiti from east to west. For

more than three centuries, these mountains were a stage for insurrections and

the creation of independent maroon villages, as well as a site for cruel persecu-

tions of these dissidents.

In the center of the island, the Cordillera Central range runs from the south-

ern coast near Santo Domingo, with the Dominican towns of Azua, San Juan,

and Elias Piña, and Bonao, La Vega, and Santiago, situated respectively along its

southern and northern foothills. It then travels across northern Haiti to the far

northwestern corner of the island near Cap- à- Foux in the Caribbean Sea. Stories

are told of Oliborio Mateo crossing the Cordillera Central in the early twentieth

century to escape persecution by Dominican authorities, then under the direc-

tion of US occupation forces. He first entered and left Haiti, then he ascended

the highest summit in the Caribbean, Pico Duarte, some 3,098 meters above sea

level. His final move was to descend to the San Juan Valley.

In the southwestern corner of the island, south of the Cordillera Central,

are two other ranges. The Sierra de Neiba, the more northerly of the two, enters

Haiti and divides into a north fork that runs into the Cordillera Central and a

south fork that runs through the center of Haiti, ending at Saint Marc. In the far

south, the Sierra de Bahoruco, site of maroon communities in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, arises near Enriquillo, Barahona, and Pedernales in the

Dominican Republic and continues into Haiti as the Massif de la Selle, skirting

the capital Port- au- Prince and running across that nation’s southern peninsula.

On the Dominican northern coast, and running parallel to the Atlantic

Ocean, the smaller Cordillera Septentrional range extends from the Samaná

Peninsula westward to the near Haitian border. There are also other, minor,

mountain ranges in the eastern Dominican Republic, including the Cordillera

Oriental, Sierra Martín García, Sierra de Yamasá, and Sierra de Samaná.

The Cibao Valley lies between Cordilleras Central and Septentrional. The

San Juan Valley, in the middle of the island, is on the south flank of the Cordil-

lera Central. The Neiba Valley lies tucked between the Sierra de Neiba and the

Sierra de Bahoruco. The Enriquillo Basin, which skirts the northern flank of the

Sierra de Bahoruco, was the location in 1517 of the rebellion of the Taino leader

Enriquillo.

Tainos and Africans walked into these mountains and valleys in rebellion

against Spanish colonial power. They crossed back and forth over the island’s

mountain ranges, ascending to the Pico Duarte, and descending into the Cibao

and San Juan valleys. They established maroon communities in remote locations

within the island’s mountainous interior landscape, as well as on nearby tiny

islands in the Caribbean Sea and on the island in the middle of Lake Enriquillo.

An intrinsic relation between people and land has been central to the

processes of cultural creation in the Dominican Republic. Here geography and

7 6 c H a P T e R 4

topography, as Yi- Fu Tuan and Hoelschen Tuan assert,11 have played a major role

both in shaping the relationships between people and the environment and in

underpinning people’s perceptions, creativity, personal beliefs, and experience.

The geography and plant cover of the island, offering jagged mountains and

dense vegetation, were accomplices in the escapees’ anticolonial resistance.

These allies of geography and nature were near to each other. From the

capital Santo Domingo, one is almost in the shadows of Hispaniola’s mountains.

We can imagine Africans and Tainos transporting stones to construct the colo-

nists’ palace and cathedral, or working in gold mines along the Nigua River, or

cutting sugarcane in the fields and looking up and seeing these mountains. By

looking they envisioned the promise of freedom, and to achieve that freedom

they took the action of walking. The journey/walking of Africans and Tainos

shook the colonial system of Hispaniola while reclaiming their autonomy from

the deadly pain of colonial exploitation. Walking— cutting trees, crossing rivers,

climbing mountains, befriending the wilderness, and defending their space—

led to their self- determination as free human beings. I am borrowing Michel De

Certeau’s notion of walking as disruptive of efficiently planned locations.12 By

walking people also make their own history. The mountains of Hispaniola more

than geographical locations are impregnated with the stories of these journeys.

The spatial appropriation of the wilderness also attached old and new cul-

tural and social meaning to the mountain space. Here I employ Henri Lefebvre’s

concept of social space to interpret the process by which Tainos and Africans

bestowed meaning on the island’s mountainous interior. Lefebvre considers

the concept of “space” beyond its simple geometrical definition and advances

the notion that human action is key in the creation of socially and culturally

meaningful spaces.13 Situated within physical, material mountain spaces, the

women and men in maroon communities produced social space by mobilizing

the ideas, structures, and codes acquired over their lives prior to fleeing colo-

nial oppression and then accommodating and transforming them within a new

environment.

Discovering geography, walking toward autonomy, and creating spaces in

the wilderness gave a new and unique genetic, social, and cultural meaning to

Hispaniola. This new social space was the embryo of an alternative island cul-

ture, still manifest in present- day music, religion, community structures, food,

and social behavior. It was different from the equally new social spaces created

by enslaved persons in towns, plantations, and cattle ranches, and different also

from the spaces of a mulatto class accommodated to dominant colonial values.

The maroons claimed autonomy from the bondage of colonialism with its

long- lasting consequences. At the heart of the colonial system, maroons not

only threatened the dominant order but negatively affected the economic,

social, and political equilibrium of the colony, and both the loss of them and

control over them altered the mentality and material production of the colony.

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 7 7

In the contemporary Dominican Republic the preservation of the maroon social

space of resistance has empowered unique forms of identity, food production

and preparation, recreation, music and dance, and worship and healing. At the

same time the maroons’ legacy has created a counteridentity that, up to the

present, has coexisted with and subverted the official Dominican imaginary.

Throughout a trajectory of more than five centuries, however, power has been

used to thwart that counteridentity. First, colonial power was used to destroy

maroon communities, and then postcolonial power was used both to erase the

legacy of cimarronaje from the national imaginary and to marginalize former

maroon regions economically and politically, leaving the southern Dominican

Republic today the least developed region in the country.

Caonabo’s Arrow: The First Anticolonial Resistance

In 1542 the Spanish chronicler Bartolomé de Las Casas included the following

passage in his Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies:14

On the Island Hispaniola was where the Spaniards first landed, as I have

said. Here those Christians perpetrated their first ravages and oppres-

sions against the native peoples. This was the first land in the New World

to be destroyed and depopulated by the Christians, and here they began

their subjection of the women and children, taking them away from

the Indians to use them, eating the food they provided with their sweat

and toil. The Spaniards did not content themselves with what the Indi-

ans gave them of their own free will, according to their ability, which

was always too little to satisfy enormous appetites, for a Christian eats

and consumes in one day an amount of food that would suffice to feed

three houses inhabited by ten Indians for one month. And they com-

mitted other acts of force and violence and oppression which made the

Indians realize that these men had not come from Heaven. And some

of the Indians concealed their foods while others concealed their wives

and children and still others fled to the mountains to avoid the terrible

transactions of the Christians.

And the Christians attacked them with buffets and beatings, until

finally they laid hands on the nobles of the villages. Then they behaved

with such temerity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of

the islands had to see his own wife raped by a Christian officer.

From that time onward the Indians began to seek ways to throw the

Christians out of their lands. They took up arms, but their weapons

were very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense.

(Because of this, the wars of the Indians against each other are little more

than games played by children.) And the Christians, with their horses

7 8 c H a P T e R 4

and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruel-

ties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the chil-

dren nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only

stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as

if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who,

with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off

his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They

took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and

pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms

and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the

babies fell into the water, “Boil there, you offspring of the devil!” Other

infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else

who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which

the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their

victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve

Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive.

To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and

set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive,

they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck, saying,

“Go now, carry the message,” meaning, Take the news to the Indians who

have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and

nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed

on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smol-

dering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed

in despair and torment, their souls would leave them. . . . After the wars

and the killings had ended, when usually there survived only some boys,

some women, and children, these survivors were distributed among the

Christians to be slaves.15

Almost as if he foresaw the evil of colonization, Caonabo, the cacique, the

leader or chief, of Maguana, one of five Taino geographical divisions on His-

paniola, attacked Columbus on January 13, 1493. Shooting arrows and wound-

ing a few Spaniards, the Tainos halted the invaders’ collection of provisions for

Columbus’s return trip to Spain. Caonabo struck again when his forces attacked

and burned a fort built by Columbus, killing forty Spaniards. During the last trip

of Christopher Columbus, in 1495, the Taino leader Guarionex, supported by

Caonabo and other Taino leaders, staged the battle of La Vega Real against the

Spanish in 1495. But while more than ten thousand Tainos fought against the

Spanish, they succumbed to the power of the Spanish weaponry. When Guari-

onex attacked the Spanish again, in 1497, both he and Caonabo and Guarionex

were caught by the Spanish and both shipped to Spain; on the journey Caonabo

died— according to legend, of rage— and Guarionex drowned. His wife, Anacaona,

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 7 9

moved to the Xaragua division, where her brother, Bohechio, was cacique. After

Bohechio’s death, she became cacique and subsequently extended refuge and

assistance to runaway enslaved Tainos and Africans.

In 1503 Anacaona and hundreds of her people were massacred by Spanish

governor Nicolás de Ovando. The terror of this Xaragua massacre was repeated

in the Taino division of Higüey, where the Spanish massacred seven hundred

Tainos, including their cacique, Cotubanamá. Those Tainos who survived the

killing were subjected to rape and torture, then forced to work in mines, con-

struction, and plantations.

To the Europeans, the indigenous inhabitants were not perceived as human

beings. This description of an Indian woman by Girolamo Benzoni, an Italian

fortune- seeker who traveled widely throughout the Spanish American colonies

during the 1540s and 1550s, is illustrative:

She was quite naked, except where modestly forbids . . . ; she was old,

and painted black, with long hair down to her waist, and her ear- rings

had so weighed her ears down, and to make them reach her shoulder, a

thing wonderful to see; she had them split down the middle and filled

with rings of a certain carved wood very light. . . . Her nails were immod-

erately long, her teeth were black, her mouth large, and she had a ring in

her nostrils . . . so that she appeared like a monster to us, rather than a

human being.16

Benzoni also described the ordeals confronting the thousands of indige-

nous people enslaved on other Caribbean islands and the mainland, then trans-

ported to Hispaniola:

[When caught,] the merchants carry them elsewhere and sell them again.

Others are sent to the island of Spagnoula [Hispaniola], filling with them

some large vessels built like caravels. They carry them under the deck,

and being nearly all people captured inland, they suffer severely the sea

horrors, and not being allowed to move out of those sinks, what with

their sickness and their other wants, they have to stand in the filth like

animals; and the sea often being calm, water and other provisions fail

them, so that the poor wretches, oppressed by the heat, the stench, the

thirst, and the crowding, miserably expire there below.17

The Tainos of Hispaniola and indigenous people from other New World

locations were joined by enslaved Africans brought forcibly to the island from

the early 1500s onward. Tainos were not considered slaves after the Catholic

Church recognized they had a soul; then they became encomendados, or the

property of a rich Spaniard called encomendero. Africans were slaves. The brutal-

ity of colonization for all these peoples was evident in exploitation and terror-

ization. Deployed in gold mines, sugarcane plantations, cattle ranches, and in

8 0 c H a P T e R 4

slave owners’ houses, the enslaved and the Taino were the motor of the colonial

economy. The ownership marks, or carimba, branded on African bodies pro-

duced countless screams from the continent to Hispaniola. The wars, kidnap-

pings, trans- Atlantic and internal Caribbean trafficking, the invasive palmeo

measurement— by buyers touching the muscles, teeth, genitalia of the slaves

they determined their health— and the carimba branding were the initial “ritu-

als” of a slavery system based on calculation and cruelty. Resistance by enslaved

persons, both indigenous and African, for whom the violence of colonialism

was unbearable, took several interconnected forms: the subtle resistance of

enslaved domestic workers; armed offensives against the colonizers; and escape

to the mountains and free communities.

Taino and African Insurrections: The Anticolonial Hurricane

Early Spanish colonial authorities complained constantly about hurricanes dev-

astating the island. They soon also started to complain about slave insurrec-

tions, which became even more destructive than the fury of nature. By 1531 an

official letter to the king of Spain had stated that the island was at risk of being

lost to the maroons.18 Historical records from as early as 1502 show Nicolás de

Ovando, the Hispaniola governor, reporting to the king that enslaved Africans

were fleeing to the mountains and teaching “bad manners” to the “Indians.”19

Both Tainos and Africans were able to survive freely in the wilderness because of

the colonizers’ limited availability of forces to find and recapture them.20 With

the arrival of more enslaved persons, escapes and insurrections mounted, and

internal rebellion and wars against the Spanish authorities continued through

most of the sixteenth century. The numerous insurrections, some lasting sev-

eral years, emptied the colonial treasury and instilled fear among Spanish plant-

ers and residents, many of whom left the colony.

The chronology of documented insurrections is as follows:

In 1502 the first African and Indian maroons were reported to have fled their

worksite.21

In 1503 Spanish colony’s governor complained about African and Indians fleeing

to the mountains.22

In 1513 colonial authorities complained that slaves were continuing to flee from

mines and farms.23

In 1517 colonial authorities asked to import female as well as male slaves to

appease men and prevent fleeing.24

Beginning in 1517, Enriquillo began an insurrection that led to a long war against

the Spanish.25

In 1521 bozales fled the Diego Columbus plantation, burning fields and killing

Spaniards.26

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 8 1

From 1528 to 1544 Taino insurrections led by Tamayo, Ciguayo, and Hernandillo

el Tuerto disturbed the colony.27

In 1530 Spaniards from Cotúi attacked maroon settlements, killing Indians and

blacks.28

In 1544 the appointed resident judge Alonso Lopez de Cerrato attacked manieles

and killed dozens of maroons.29

In 1546 Diego de Guzman and Diego de Ocampo led insurrections.30

In 1548 Sebastian Lemba, leader of an insurrection lasting several years, was

killed,31 Also in 1548, Juan Criollo and Juan Vaquero led an insurrection.32

From 1560 to 1578 the disturbances continued.33

In 1580 the Holy Thursday rebellion happened in Santo Domingo.34

In 1587 the Creole slave Perico rebelled.35

In 1517, some sixteen years after the conflict between the Spanish and

Tainos led by Caonabo, Anacaona, and Cotubanama, a war between the coloniz-

ers and Taino and African forces was initiated by the Taino leader Enriquillo. My

recounting of this episode is based on the work of sixteenth- century chronicler

Fernández de Oviedo, who utilized the contemporary testimony of Bartolomé de

Las Casas; on Dominican- Spanish historian Cipriano de Utrera in his Polémica

de Enriquillo; and on letters to King Charles I of Spain from Hispaniola authori-

ties. These are the same documents used by authors of the “official” Dominican

history that romanticizes Enriquillo, constructs the notion of an Indo- Hispanic

island race, and demonizes Africans. In rereading the same sources from an

alternative perspective, I find a different story to tell.

Enriquillo was a Taino who, as a child, survived Governor Ovando’s Xara-

gua massacre of 1503. He was an encomendado awarded to an abusive Span-

ish master who experienced the injustice of a colonial system that ignored his

outrage when this master attempted to rape his wife. In 1517 he escaped to the

Bahoruco Mountains, where he recruited hundreds of Indians and Africans and

mounted an armed offensive against the Spanish that continued for several

years. Descending from the mountains with his troops, Enriquillo killed Span-

iards, devastated farms and property, and took Africans back with him. The

first counterattack on Enriquillo, in 1523, was a failure. Then, later, after a Span-

ish force of eighty men established a headquarters near Enriquillo’s settlement,

Enriquillo pretended to accept a truce but secretly relocated his followers on the

other side of the Bahoruco range. In the subsequent attack on the Spanish, the

defeat was aided by Spanish troop desertions resulting from the troopers’ lack

of payment by the crown.36

After this defeat, Spanish authorities considered new strategies to stop

Enriquillo, including deploying an African force to fight the Taino leader. They

also requested additional resources from the king, even as island residents were

complaining about the increased taxes on meat and wine to pay the troops

8 2 c H a P T e R 4

fighting against Enriquillo.37 In the meantime, elsewhere on Hispaniola still

more Tainos and Africans rebelled and fled enslavement, killing more Span-

iards. In the north the Tainos Ciguayo, Murcia, and Hernandillo el Tuerto joined

forces with Africans to raid colonizers in the region of La Vega and Santiago;38

between the Neiba and Bahoruco mountain ranges, a Taino leader, Tamayo,

formed a band of Indians and Africans who harassed the Spanish for more than

ten years; and in the south Enriquillo continued to raid farms, both killing Span-

ish and recruiting more slave followers.39

The crown appointed General Francisco Barrionuevo, a veteran of many

battles in Spain, as captain to lead the war against Enriquillo. Barrionuevo opted

to negotiate, realizing that violence had not worked and that resources for more

armed actions were scarce. In 1533 he met Enriquillo on what is today’s Cabrito

Island, in the middle of Lake Jaragua (now Enriquillo Lake) and reached a peace

agreement that granted Enriquillo and his troops freedom and land. According

to the official record, in exchange for freedom Enriquillo pledged to capture

other of the islands’ Indian and African cimarrones, and he fulfilled this agree-

ment by defeating the Indian and African forces led by Tamayo.40

Enriquillo’s willingness to fight other maroon rebels on behalf of the Span-

ish crown has been enshrined in the “official” Dominican imaginary as the hall-

mark of the unity between the two races— Spanish and Taino— that has resulted in

the island’s distinctive Indo- Hispanic biological and cultural heritage. However,

there are reasons to be suspicious of this story. While Enriquillo claimed to defeat

Tamayo, there is no record of either Tamayo or his Indian and African forces being

captured. Did Enriquillo actually protect Tamayo? Was Enriquillo’s persecution

of cimarrones a Spanish myth? After the peace agreement was signed in 1533,

Enriquillo and his followers moved to land granted them near Azua in the south.

He died in 1535, two years after his surrender, at a relatively young age of perhaps

forty years. Was he then already infirm and unable to hunt and capture maroons?

Another suspicious element that undermines the romanticized unity

between Indians and Spanish is that Barrionuevo asked that the king deport

to Spain all mestizos (Spanish- Indian hybrids) younger than eight years old to

avoid their participation with Indians and Africans in future insurrections.41

If Enriquillo’s peace agreement ended Indian- Spanish animosity, why was

there any reason to expatriate mestizos? In fact, slave and maroon insurrec-

tions continued through the sixteenth century, an indication that the storied

unity between Tainos and Spanish enjoyed little reality. Moreover, by the mid-

sixteenth century Tainos were disappearing as a distinct group, although they

survived biologically and culturally through blending with Africans, who were

by then the main protagonists of colonial resistance.

The first known armed rebellion of enslaved Africans, bozales of “Jelof”

or “Jolof” origin, occurred in 1521.42 On Christmas Eve two hundred enslaved

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 8 3

workers fled the plantation of Diego Columbus, located on the Isabela River

near Santo Domingo, and headed south toward Azua. Others from plantations in

Nigua, San Cristóbal, and Baní joined them on the march, burning plantations

and killing several Spaniards. According to official records, they stopped next

at the Ocoa plantation, with the intention of killing more whites and recruiting

more enslaved blacks and Indians, then moved on to Azua.

After being informed of the insurrection, Columbus recruited a small army,

which, mounted on horseback and shouting their battle cry “Santiago [Saint

James],” headed south in pursuit. In the meantime, the rebels entered the plan-

tation of Melchor de Castro near the Nizao River where they killed one Spaniard,

sacked the house, and freed more enslaved persons, including Indians. Colum-

bus’s army confronted the rebels at the Nizao, the Spanish shooting at them

with guns and the rebels responding by throwing stones and logs. According to

the records, the Spanish killed six but the rest escaped. Five days later the Span-

ish attacked again. They caught several rebels, whom they executed by lynching

along the colonial road, but many more had escaped to face later attacks, in

which more were killed or apprehended.43

From the official story one can infer that this was a well- organized insur-

rection. The day chosen, Christmas Eve, was not coincidental but rather a time

when the Spanish would be preoccupied with celebration. Networking with

enslaved compatriots from adjacent plantations is implied by their having

joined the rebels’ march for freedom. The records indicate that many of the

enslaved who had escaped from other plantations probably joined Enriquillo

or settled in their own maroon communities. The Spanish pursuers’ war cry,

“Santiago,” is also interesting, since this saint was later appropriated by His-

paniola’s African slaves and maroons into their religious pantheon under the

African name Ogun Balenyo, which signifies “warrior.”

Both Tainos and Africans kept the Spanish in constant watchfulness over

escapes and revolts. In correspondence between Hispaniola authorities and

the crown we learn of the apprehension and fear among Spanish colonists that

these disturbances caused. I select a few illustrations of fear and apprehension

(my translation):

1518: “The Spanish king authorized the importation of female African slaves as a

measure to calm male slaves.”44

1525: “There are many blacks in this island, but few Spanish because they move

away. We could confront many dangers and much damage to this island.”45

1546: “The shameless slaves reached near to Santo Domingo, robbing and killing

Spanish.”46

1547: “The escaped slaves force the Spanish to travel in groups of fifteen and

twenty men because of their fear of attacks.”47

8 4 c H a P T e R 4

1548: “They can multiply and make a lot of damage.”48

1578: “Soldiers must be sent to patrol the island to stop daring blacks.”49

During the 1540s, letters to the crown from the resident judge López de

Cerrato describe a series of organized insurrections.50 Reading them, we learn

about campaigns against the followers of African maroon leaders Sebastian

Lemba, Diego de Guzmán, Diego de Ocampo, Juan Criollo, Dieguillo de Ocampo,

and Juan Vaquero. By the mid- sixteenth century there were an estimated seven

thousand maroons beyond Spanish control on Hispaniola. The Bahoruco Moun-

tains were their main area of concentration, although Africans had escaped to

other areas of the island as well. From their refuges, they descended to attack

the Spanish.

In 1546 the slave Diego de Guzman led an insurrection that swept through

the San Juan de la Maguana area, after which he escaped to the Bahoruco Moun-

tains. After his capture, Cerrato relates, Diego de Guzman was savagely killed and

some of his fellow rebels “were burned alive, others burned with branding irons,

others hung, and others had their feet cut off.” Also in 1546, Diego de Ocampo,

another maroon, raided the regions of La Vega and San Juan de la Maguana and

then escaped to the Cordillera Central and Bahoruco ranges. Cerrato claims that

after de Ocampo surrendered he was deployed to capture other runaways.

The most extended insurrection was led by Sebastian Lemba. For fifteen

years Lemba attacked Spanish towns, plantations, and farms with an army of

four hundred Africans. A ballad of the period spoke of his exploits:

The Negro Lemba has formed an army of more than four hundred,

and with virility commanded.

He was a Negro of impressive intellect,

bold, sagacious, strong, and brave,

and in rebellion for many years.

The land suffered much damage.

A man without education, cautious,

in all his tricks he was the best.

In the assault of any target,

he was diligent, furious, cruel, and brave.51 [My translation]

Lemba was eventually caught and was executed in 1548. His head was

mounted on the door that connected the Fort of San Gil (today Fort Ozama) to

Fort Conde, and for centuries it was called “the Lemba door.” His legacy is found

in poetry and stories that survive until the present. He became a focus of cimar-

ron pride, evident in the rivers, hills, and villages named after him. Even today,

several towns in the south, like Nigua, have a Lemba Street.

After the capture and execution of Lemba, insurrections continued to bur-

den the colony’s tranquility and economy. From 1548 to the end of the sixteenth

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 8 5

century, maroons attacked farms, plantations, and villages. Among the most

notorious leaders of these decades, although there were others who conducted

raids throughout the island, were Juan Criollo, who operated in the area of Higüey

in the east; Juan Vaquero, in the vicinity of San Juan; and Perico, in Yaguana

in what is today northern Haiti. The uneasiness and fear the Spanish residents

experienced was compounded by the precarious economic situation of the col-

ony, intensified by the expenses of the war against the cimarrones. By 1560 the

colony was unable to recruit and pay troops to pursue the rebels. Many Spanish

planters abandoned the island, and mestizos, mulattos, and blacks in the north-

west region— today Haiti— openly traded cattle hides with pirates and smugglers.

The seventeenth century witnessed depopulation of the colonial settle-

ments bordering the northwest zone. However, the maroon villages grew

stronger, and many enslaved laborers refused to abandon their villages and

accompany their Spanish owners as they withdrew. Although records state that

some rebel leaders were killed by the Spaniards, an unknown number of blacks,

mulattos, and mestizos remained in the northern and western areas during and

after the time of these desvastaciones. So did those residing in maroon commu-

nities in the southwest along the Bahoruco mountain range and its westward

Massif de la Selle extension.

The situation of blacks and mulattos in the regions abandoned by the

Spanish can be gauged by the following events. In 1639 news arrived in His-

paniola that a group of island mulattos and blacks had written to the Dutch

Prince of Orange requesting five hundred soldiers and promising to help them

conquer Hispaniola. However, no aid from Holland ever arrived. In 1655, dur-

ing the invasion of English pirates William Penn and Robert Venables, the

Spanish offered freedom to cimarrones willing to defend the island, but no

one responded.52 In 1662 the colonial government attempted to recruit Canary

Islanders to settle near the Bahoruco Mountains and help pacify the maroons.

That year the Spanish colonial government also offered freedom to blacks who

abandoned their maroon villages. The cimarrones responded that they did not

trust the island’s whites.53

During this seventeenth “century of misery,” the Spanish on Hispan-

iola continued to persecute maroons living peacefully in the island’s interior

mountains and valleys. With little to show for it, this policy of armed harass-

ment added more public expense to a weak colonial economy, and the finan-

cial recovery of the Spanish colony in the eighteenth century led to increased

slave insurrections and cimarronaje. Also, the creation of French plantations

throughout the western side of the island brought a type of slavery that was

more brutal and labor intensive, with the result that French enslaved workers

fled eastward to the Spanish areas and joined existing maroon communities.

Insurrections in the French colony in the late eighteenth century, which even-

tuated in the Haitian Revolution and creation of the Republic of Haiti, inspired

8 6 c H a P T e R 4

their counterparts in the Spanish colony, and it was at this point that enslaved

persons from the Spanish east fled to the French west, and after 1804 to Haiti,

in search of freedom.

La Isla Cimarrona (The Maroon Island)

Over these centuries, the island of Hispaniola was a battlefield between armed

maroons seeking to sabotage colonial domination and protect their freedom

and the violent responses of the Spanish. At the same time,the island was the

location of manieles, maroon communities, where women and men lived a

relatively peaceful life, despite the many attempts to destroy them. (In other

colonies, such maroon settlements were termed palenques or quilombos.) There

were, in fact, more manieles established during the sixteenth, seventeenth,

and eighteenth centuries than colonial towns. According to the limited testi-

mony of colonial officials, clergy, and travelers, manieles were found through-

out the island, from rural areas near the city of Santo Domingo to mountain

ranges, offshore islands, and coastal towns, including ones in present- day

Haiti.54 The locations included settlements in Santo Domingo, Sabana de la

Mar, the Bahoruco Mountains, Neiba, Los Naranjos, Lake Jaragua (Enriquillo

Lake), the Cordillera Central Mountains along the Yuna and Yaque rivers,

Baní, Seibo, Rio Iguamo, Ocoa, Puerto Plata, Samaná, Cayos Siete Hermanos

near Montecristi, Islet Beata near Pedernales, Carrera de Higuero in San Juan

de la Maguana, and several places in what later became Haiti, such as Cabo

Tiburón, Salva Tierra de la Sabana, Caimito Yaguimo, and Santa María de la

Verapaz in the south, and Tortuga, Puerto Real, Lares de Guava, and Cabo San

Nicolás in the north.

The maniel populations ranged from forty to eight hundred. Many man-

ieles established in the early sixteenth century were only “discovered” by Span-

ish authorities after a century of existence, and several would become ordinary

rural communities during the 1800s. Archaeological identifications of some for-

gotten sites occurred in the late twentieth century. A peasant in the province

of La Altagracia in the eastern portion of the island, for example, discovered

several artifacts in the 1980s, and at a site in the community of Jose Leta archae-

ologists found metal daggers, bracelets, arrows, lances, clay jars, and conch and

bamboo trumpets.55

For nearly three hundred years there was no documented contact by peace-

able literate outsiders with maroon communities in the mountain areas.56 There

are no recorded oral histories and no contemporary anthropological studies of

their descendants. The only archival surveys are by historians Carlos Esteban

Deive and Carlos Larrazábal Blanco, who provide a compilation of information

available in the Archivo General de Indias.57

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 8 7

Here I reexamine the limited documentation on the economic, social, and

cultural life of the maroons to shed light on how present- day Dominican culture

and identity germinated and evolved in this unique social space. In this journey

to Hispaniola’s cimarron past, I found especially illuminating the testimonies

of hostile colonial officials and clerics— Mejia Villalobos in 1611, Francisco de la

Cueva Maldonado in 1662, Juan Bobadilla in 1785— as well as a few accounts of

military antagonists and some European chroniclers and travelers of the seven-

teenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The stories told by Spanish colo-

nial officials express a point of view casting maroons as savages, with much of

their information collected during bloody and bitter confrontations, and the

accounts by Catholic priests demonize religious behavior and family life in the

manieles. Yet using such sources we may get a few glimpses into the defensive

logistics, economy, family structure, religion, and political organization created

in these refuges.

Logistics of Defense

The Spanish Division commences [referring to the border between today’s

Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti] on the S. side, from the Rio

Pedernales . . . , flowing at the West side of the Stupendous mountains

of Bahoruco . . . that rise majestically from the Spanish lines, and face,

with a gentle slope, the sea to the S. opposite Beata Island, forming La

Bahia de Las Aguilas, or eagles bay. [F]rom their elevations they decry, at

a great distance every vessel arriving. . . . [I]n consequence of there being

little or no population in the small harbours of Cabo Roxo and Abujas, the

[maroons] are unnoticed. . . . [T]he whole number of these maroons does

not exceed 600, principally Spanish runaways. . . . [I]t would be difficult to

overcome these maroons by force of arms, or to hunt them down. . . . They

are about 200 men in arms; and with knowledge of the defiles and local

advantages by the spot are a deadly foe to regular troops.58

Nature was the accomplice of cimarrones who, with creativity, mounted

effective protection of their manieles. In this respect, as Price argues, “to be via-

ble, maroon communities had to be almost inaccessible, and villages were typi-

cally located in inhospitable, out of the way areas.”59 The island of Hispaniola

was rich in natural defenses, with steep precipices, swift rivers, jungle vegeta-

tion, heavy rainfall, and even hurricanes, all of which made reaching a maroon

community a daunting mission.

In addition to nature, traps were hidden within the abundant leafy ground

cover, causing intruders to fall into holes in the ground where wooden spikes

waited to penetrate feet and bodies.60 If any unwelcome stranger was spotted,

fututos (bamboo trumpets) were blown to alert the community. If the intruders

8 8 c H a P T e R 4

reached the village, its residents posted themselves in higher defensive loca-

tions surrounding the settlement and attacked with guns, when available,

or spears, stones, and logs. Blacksmiths in the communities made machetes,

spears, and gun components, and guns and gunpowder were exchanged with

smugglers and other maroons.

Villages were located strategically, anticipating attack. The maniel of Neiba,

for example, was built, in the form of an amphitheater, in a small, deep, can-

yonlike valley on the slope of a high hill and surrounded by lower hills; from

here any intruders had difficult access and could be spotted. In Bobadilla’s

1785 account of Neiba, his map traced the village’s physical structure, which

was located in the Bahoruco mountain range opposite Bahoruco Viejo, where

Enriquillo had established his maroon community in 1517. The Nieba maroons

situated their dwellings in the valley’s deepest recesses, and the surrounding

area was filled with precipices impossible to scale. As Bobadilla noted, there was

only one way in, and he mentioned as well that the maroons called the river that

ran between the mountains the “Lemba” River.61

During the eighteenth century, maroon communities attracted runaways

from the severe cruelties of French planters in the west as well as from the

Spanish colony. The maniel of Neiba was an example of this mixing of French

and Spanish escapees, and consequently it faced hostilities from both direc-

tions. The maroons had long endured the fruitless Spanish attempts to vio-

lently dislodge them and had developed strategies of offense and defense in

response.62 The French added the new pressure of bounty payments, offering

twelve pesos for each maroon captured in the southern and northern flanks of

the Neiba valley.

Caught between two fires, the maroons proposed negotiations with the

Spanish and French, and it is worth noting that they met separately with each.63

These efforts were an attempt to play both sides and take the best proposal.

In the Spanish negotiation, the maroons sent a proposal with a mulatto

cattle rancher, Felipe Frómeta, to the Spanish border commander of the Neiba

Valley. Forty- six cimarrones, Frómeta, and Neiba Valley Roman Catholic priest

Juan Bobadilla met in Hato San Cristóbal, near Neiba village. During the nego-

tiations, a maroon named Felipe demanded freedom, sufficient land to culti-

vate in a location in the vicinity of Neiba, and assurance that all maroons could

remain in the Spanish colony, fearing re enslavement if they were returned to

French territory. The proposal was accepted by Governor Isidoro de Peralta

y Rojas of the Spanish colony who, in light of past failed attempts to crush

the maroons, wished to prevent future maroon attacks and to stop escaped

French slaves from seeking refuge in maroon settlements on the Spanish side

of the island.64

To avoid a rush of self- liberated slaves from the French colony before the

final agreement, Peralta demanded a census of the population of the maniel to

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 8 9

determine age, carimba mark, name of former owners, and Spanish or French

colony of origin. He told Frómeta to instruct the maroons that they must

report any new escapees arriving at the maniel and that they would be settled

under white supervision on tierras realengas (land of lesser quality).65 Peralta

also informed M. Bellacombe, governor of the French colony, who delegated an

envoy to the final negotiations with the maroons.

In March 1785 representatives of the two colonies— Luis de Chávez for the

Spanish and Jean Marie Desmarattes for the French— met with 16 maroon men

and women. The maroons told the negotiators they wanted freedom and that all

wished both to remain on the Spanish side of the island and to create a village

on the Pedernales River at a location called Panzo. A census was taken of 133

maroons, representing 48 families.66

After this meeting, the French governor’s delegate told him that the

maroons did not want to settle on the French side. Bellecombe responded that

the French maroons must first be repatriated to the French colony and that

then they would be granted freedom and land.67 On May 10, 1785, Chávez, Des-

maratte, Bobadilla, and six maroon leaders met at Hato San Cristóbal and signed

an agreement to grant freedom and protection to all maroons who consented

to report to the hato with the intent of following a civilized, Christian life. The

document was signed by the six maroon leaders— Santiago, Juan Francisco,

Julian, Lorenzo, Gabriel, and Juana— who expressed their desire to remain in

Spanish territory. However, none of the other maroons had come to the hato as

the negotiation stipulated. A mission led by Bobadilla was sent to the maniel to

convince the others to reconsider. The maroons underlined their desire to stay

on the Spanish side of the island, but they refused to respond to Bobadilla’s call

to report to the hato.68

In the meantime, the French representative met with the cimarrones in the

town of Anse- à- Pitres, across from the Spanish town of Pedernales. (Moreau de

Saint- Méry’s narrative concerning the meeting is brief, without the abundance

of detail collected in the Spanish archives.) The maroons requested land near

the Pedernales River, but negotiations ended due to their mistrust and their

fear of repatriation to French territory. Their uncertain situation would soon

change radically with the abolition of slavery in the French colony following the

French Revolution in 1789 and with the unification of the island under French

rule in 1795.

Economy

They are tranquil, confined to their own limits, and only visit the neigh-

bouring towns of Saint John’s and Azua, when they have tortoise shells, a

super abundance of cured game, or a few ounces of gold . . . to dispose of;

which they exchange for powder and cloathing; as tobacco and rum, their

chief luxuries, they grow among themselves. . . . They cure with salt from

9 0 c H a P T e R 4

the immense mountain of mineral rock situated near Neyba. They drink

from the mineral springs [,] hunting is the occupation of men [, and]

the cultivation of roots, and washing of gold from the mountains, that

of women and children. . . . Describing this astonishing Eden which they

have chosen for abode [, I] found in their gardens luxuries rarely known

in the other part of the island, and that their resting huts for the night

were covered with cabbage- leaves of a much larger size than . . . ever met

with in Europe.69

Each maroon community provided its own food, clothing, recreation, and

healing practices. Small plots of land known as conucos were assigned to each

family, and here they grew corn, yucca, sweet potatoes, plantain, rice, peanuts,

sugar cane, oranges, a variety of fruits, and tobacco. Chickens, goats, and pigs

were raised for eggs and meat. Trapiches to produce sugar were found in larger

manieles— the maroons of El Naranjo, for example, possessed a sugar mill in

1810.70 In these larger manieles there were also cattle and horses. Cowhide

was used to make shoes and other domestic articles, and, like the quantities

of gold collected in the island’s rivers, they were commodities used in rescate,

or exchange, with pirates and smugglers. In letters written by island governor

Diego Gómez de Sandoval between 1609 and 1611, for example, he informed the

king on rescate activities by maroons in different parts of the island and that

many of these had enlisted on English and Dutch ships.71

This extralegal economic exchange became an avenue for recruitment of

cimarrones by pirates and privateers. For example, in a letter to the king of

Spain in 1644, it was reported that a Ladino maroon was among the French

raiders who attacked the Hispaniola town of Azua and took several enslaved

persons with them.72 Pirates were also involved in direct commercial exchange

with maroon producers. The manieles with access to the Spanish colony’s

Caribbean southern coast at Salva Tierra de la Sabana, Tiburón, Azua, and Baní,

and its Atlantic northern coast at Puerto Plata, provided the seaborne raiders

with meat and hides and in return obtained guns, powder, clothing, food items,

and cash.

Maroon ingenuity was employed in the preparation of their meals, which

blended African, Taino, and Spanish food items, cooking techniques, and cui-

sines. Corn, for example, a New World cultigen, was an integral part of maroon

diet. Today the southern area of the Dominican Republic enjoys several corn

dishes, such as chenchen (salted, grated corn) served with beans and stewed veg-

etables; chacá (sweet grated corn cooked with coconut milk); and arepa (corn-

bread). Other southern dishes include sweet potato bread (seasoned with salt or

sugar, covered with plantain leaves, and then cooked on the fire) and pasteles en

hojas (grated plantain, green bananas, and yautia stuffed with meat, wrapped in

plantain leaves, and boiled). Another cooking staple that has survived until the

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 9 1

present is coconut oil. The maroons also made peanut butter, collected beeswax

to manufacture candles, and used tobacco for recreational smoking as well as in

the treatment of various illnesses.

Family Structure

The maniel located in the mountains of Ocoa and described by Cueva Maldo-

nado in 1662 housed about 600 families divided into 4 villages, with a total

population of 4,000. The Neiba census in 1783 enumerated 133 people in 48

households. It appears that a lack of women, as reported in other maroon societ-

ies in the Caribbean and the North and South American continents, was not a

problem after the Spanish king encouraged the importation of enslaved female

Africans to Hispanola in 1518.

In the community described by Cueva Maldonado, women and men were

present in equal proportion. He offers no information on the size and composi-

tion of each household. If one divides the total population by the number of

families, however, it can be inferred that households had an average size of 6

people, but there is no way to determine if they were nuclear or extended fami-

lies, or what the number of children per household was.

For Neiba, we have information about the size and composition of each

household (although the age of children is not available). Most of the adult

maroons were called French Criollos; descended from French colony escapees,

they had been born in the maniel— a total of 26 individuals. Also, 9 were called

Criollos del Maniel, persons whose origins were in the Spanish colony and had

been born in the maniel.73

This census showed there were 15 households with children; 12 were nuclear

families, and 3 were single adults with children. The rest of the maniel popula-

tion consisted of single- person households. The average number of children

was 2 per family.

One wonders how reliable these data are, however, and whether the maroons

hid the actual size of the population to protect themselves.

Religion

The colonial narratives about maroon communities reveal Dominican Vodou

present in embryo, many years before the creation of the French colony or the

Republic of Haiti. They speak of evil rites contrary to the Christian faith, of

superstition, magic, and of drumming during worship. In 1662 Cueva Maldo-

nado pejoratively described a group of blacks as mimicking the Catholic Mass

by reciting memorized prayers and distributing a pretend communion wafer

inside a churchlike building where people prayed to idols.74 According to these

narratives, the maroons believed themselves to be Catholics because they

placed crosses in front of their houses, recited the Rosary, and prayed to the

Holy Father, even if they openly committed the sin of idolatry.

9 2 c H a P T e R 4

The dismissive observations of Cueva Maldonado three and a half centuries

ago are similar to contemporary views of the religion practiced in the south of

the Dominican Republic today. As we shall see later in this and the next chapter,

here people continue to recite Catholic prayers, distribute the Catholic commu-

nion wafer, worship before images of luas, dance to drumming, and sing praises

to the Virgin.

Political Organization

Bobadilla wrote that as he entered the maniel of Neiba, members of the com-

munity guarded their chiefs, two elders called Papá Pioró and Papá Santiago. A

century earlier, Cueva Maldonado had written in 1662 that the community lead-

ers of the maniel were Ladinos and were also called capitanes (captains). The

inhabitants had both rules and leaders who oversaw community life and social

relations. Transgressions such as theft were punishable, and if a culprit fled, he

or she was pursued and executed. In 1810 the English traveler William Walton

wrote that maroons in El Naranjo had a republican form of government, with a

president and an advisory board or cabinet.75 They also had an army, and their

captain, named Ventura, was “the oldest and most respectable amongst them,

and chief civil and military.”76

Abolition

The dawn of the nineteenth century witnessed the abolition of slavery in the

French colony. During the course of twelve years, between 1791 and 1804, and

through a combination of interconnected and bloody events, the enslaved

workers of the French colony revolted and achieved their desired freedom. In

an attempt to imitate the actions of self- liberated slaves in the French colony,

a series of insurrections occurred as well on the Spanish side of the island. For

example, enslaved laborers in Hincha revolted in 1793. A black man named

Dimini joined his enslaved companion, Tomás, in sending a letter to “Jean Fran-

çois,” meaning to Toussaint Louverture, stating that they would initiate a revolt

in Chamuscadillas with the aim of killing all whites. Blacks in Samaná rebelled

in 1795, but the largest of these revolts occurred when hundreds of enslaved

workers at the Boca de Nigua plantation orchestrated an insurrection aimed to

abolish slavery and create a popular government.77

On Sunday, October 31, 1796, under the leadership of the couple Ana María

and Carretero, the Boca de Nigua workers seized weapons, including two can-

nons. They tried, and sentenced to death, the plantation overseers, and as other

enslaved persons joined them, they burned sugar mills and cane fields and then

escaped to the interior wilderness. The Spanish governor ordered the colony’s

military battalion, joined by volunteers, to end the insurrection, and after a cam-

paign that lasted for months, the Spanish captured sixty- nine rebels, including

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 9 3

leaders Ana María, Carretero, Sopo, Pedro Viejo, and Tomás Congo. These five

were hanged and their bodies dismembered. Other male and female rebels were

beaten, jailed, and then forced to work in chains in the sugar mill they had

attacked.78 Six years later, in 1802, the enslaved labor force of the Gamba Abajo

plantation, also in the area called El Partido de Ingenios de Nigua, revolted, but

they were captured within days and executed.

In spite of the crushing of the Boca de Nigua and the other rebellions, the

idea of freedom spread within the Spanish colony. In a letter Governor Joaquin

García y Moreno informed the king that Santo Domingo was filled with agita-

tion on the day of the five Boca de Nigua ringleaders’ execution. Fearing more

violent unrest inspired by events in the French colony, he had instituted harsh

measures to control the many blacks, slave and free, as well as resident foreigner

sympathizers, caught up with the idea of freedom in the air.79 In 1801, now that

the abolition of slavery was a tangible reality in the neighboring French colony,

the movement of Toussaint across the border to the Spanish side of the island

brought hope to enslaved blacks and mulattos.

At this point, the counterrevolutionary Napoleonic army landed in 1801

to reverse Toussaint’s achievements. In Haiti the forces of blacks and mulattos

defeated the French, but the eastern side of the island fell again under French

control, and in 1802 slavery was reinstituted. However, the seed of freedom had

been planted and was growing on the Spanish side. In 1812 a group of blacks and

mulattos in eastern Hispaniola staged a rebellion, with the goal of annexation to

the Republic of Haiti. On August 15 and 16, mulattoes José Leocadio, Pedro Seda,

and Pedro Henriquez, with other conspirators, attacked the Mendoza hacienda

in Mojarra in the municipality of Guerra near the capital. Seda and Henriquez

were apprehended and executed; Leocadio was captured within days, hanged,

dismembered, and boiled in oil. A year later enslaved laborers in the rural com-

munity El Chavón also rebelled, but they were quickly caught and executed.80

While these and other blacks and mulattos longed for freedom and annexa-

tion to Haiti, the island’s Spanish Creoles sought national independence from

Spain modeled on the program of Simón Bolívar in South America. In January

1822, a group of Creoles led by José Núñez de Cáceres proclaimed independence

as the Estado Libre del Haiti del Este (Free State of Eastern Haiti). Mulattos and

blacks reacted to this move with distrust and petitioned the Haitian president

to demand annexation. This became a reality later in 1822 when Haitian presi-

dent Jean- Pierre Boyer marched into the former Spanish colony to secure con-

trol and unite the island under Haitian rule.

Boyer abolished slavery, and the island remained one republic until 1844,

when the group led by Juan Pablo Duarte, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, and

Ramón Matías Mella declared independence from Haiti and establishment of

the new Dominican Republic. This action provoked two responses from for-

mer enslaved persons. On February 28, 1844, one day after the declaration of

9 4 c H a P T e R 4

independence, in Monte Grande near the capital, Juan Basora, born in Africa

and chief of Monte Grande, led an outbreak to demand formal declaration of the

abolition of slavery as a precondition to national independence. Tomás Boba-

dilla, one the leaders of the new Dominican Republic, traveled to Monte Grande

and promised Basora and his supporters such a decree would be issued. It was

announced the very next day.

The second outbreak occurred a year later when a group of formerly enslaved

men in the rural area of Santa Maria in San Cristóbal refused to join Dominican

army forces attacking Haiti. David Dixon Porter, an officer of the US Marines who

observed these events, wrote in his diary: “People were mostly black and jealous

of having a white commander placed over them; and that once since their sepa-

ration from the Haytiens, it has nearly produced a revolution in Saint Christovall.

A white General was once sent here to take command and the blacks laid a plot

to throw off the authority of the present government.” The conspirators were dis-

covered the same night they were to execute their plans. Three were condemned

to death, and their execution ended the conspiracy.81

The annexation of the newly created Dominican Republic to Spain in March

18, 1861, changed the political scenery of the country. Conservative Pedro Santana

maneuvered the annexation amid political contradictions and the opposition

of the Trinitarios. The objection to the annexation led to irreconcilable differ-

ences between the Spanish rule and different social sectors of the Dominican

society, at the center of which was the issue of race. Spain, still a colonial power

based on slavery, considered white- skinned persons superior to dark- skinned

Dominicans, who were constantly reminded that in Puerto Rico and Cuba they

would be slaves.82 In this regard, Franklin Franco Pichardo wrote, “Elder blacks

remembered those sad days in which they did not enjoy freedom.”83 Based on

color, officers of the Dominican army were left out of the Spanish militia, and

the merchant class suffered the Spanish government’s refusal to redeem old

paper money as promised before the annexation. The Spanish army required,

without return, all beasts of burden to mobilize their military mission— in other

words, peasants were required to give their mule carts to transport the armys

weaponry. This system was called bagajes, and it “pose[d] an economic threat to

the whole peasant population.”84 A third, and equally offensive, aspect of the

annexation was the role of the Catholic Church. Dominican priests were sent to

the poorest towns, and people in general were obliged to end concubinage and

renounce their Masonry association.

For Haiti, the annexation was dangerously threatening, since Spain had not

abolished slavery and Puerto Rica and Cuba, under Spanish control, was always

harassing Haiti. Now it had a slave power neighbor, and the hostile of Cuba and

Puerto Rico extended to their own territory. Haitian president Fabré Nicolas

Geffrard offered his help to Dominican revolutionaries fighting to overthrow

the Spanish rule in the Dominican Republic. One revolutionary, Francisco

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 9 5

del Rosario Sánchez, left from Haiti in January 1861 to fight the Spaniards, and

although he was unsuccessful, his effort paved the way for others. Crossing the

border from Haiti, a group of men started the War of Restoration in the Domini-

can Republic on August 16, 1863, and from that moment a guerilla movement

with a rural base and led by blacks and mulattos conducted the war successfully.

Though black general Gregorio Luperón was leading an army of ill- equipped

troops, sometimes only with logs or machetes, he did so with knowledge of the

terrain and counting on the support of the peasantry.

The Twentieth- Century Macandal

The spirit of cimarronaje in colonial times was never lost. The story of Oliborio

Mateo, a light- skinned mulatto who initiated the most long- lasting Dominican

peasant resistance of the twentieth century, is an example of the strong maroon

tradition of freedom and community solidarity that survives until the present

time. Under his direct leadership, Oliborio created a community of followers who

practiced collective labor and property ownership. Then, after visiting the spiritual

world of God and the luas of Dominican Vodou (see chapter 5), Oliborio opposed

the attempts of the Dominican state and the US occupation forces of 1916 through

1924 to modernize the countryside, especially in his rebellious home region of San

Juan de la Maguana. This made Oliborio the target of a campaign to destroy him

and his movement, and although he was killed in 1922 by US- led forces, to his fol-

lowers he did not die, and they awaited his reincarnation in bodily form.

In the southwestern area of the Dominican Republic, Liborismo became

a religious movement that survived and grew through the years, attracting

thousands of followers. In 1962, two of his descendants, known as Los Mellizos

(“the twins”), were recognized as the incarnation of Oliborio, now reborn. They

attracted a community of thousands of followers in the rural village of Palma

Sola in the province of Las Matas de Farfán. The Dominican national army mas-

sacred an unknown number of their followers in Palma Sola that year; some

believe between two hundred and six hundred people were killed. Today Olibo-

rio survives as a respected lua in the Dominican Vodou pantheon, and his legacy

includes a rich heritage of religious music and songs.

In 2009, I visited San Juan de la Maguana, the place where the Taino leader

Anacaona and her followers were massacred in 1503, where later insurrections

of enslaved workers occurred, and where maroon communities were estab-

lished. I wanted to stop at the Aguita de Oliborio, the Well of Oliborio, located

outside the city of San Juan de la Maguana on the edge of the Cordillera Central

range, to see for myself the physical and social terrain where the activities of the

man I will call “the twentieth- century Macandal” had transpired.

The original Macandal is a legendary figure in the history of the west of the

island. He began the insurrection of enslaved persons that eventually ended

9 6 c H a P T e R 4

French colonial rule and created the Republic of Haiti. After losing an arm,

Macandal abandoned the plantation where he was a slave and learned the prop-

erties of the herbs, roots, and trees of the island wilderness. He then returned to

poison his master. Legend relates that Macandal was caught and burned alive,

yet instead of dying he became a mosquito and remained on the island to con-

tinue the struggle for freedom.85

Some five miles before I reached the city of San Juan de la Maguana, I

encountered statues of the island’s historical Taino caciques on each side of the

road to mark the remaining distance to the city and to commemorate the indig-

enous heritage of this region. At the entrance to the city I found a large statue

of Caonabo, surrounded by motorcycle- taxis waiting for passengers exiting the

buses arriving at the adjacent transit depot.

I then drove through the center of the city, passing another large statue, one

of the Taina Anacaona, and continued on to the road toward Maguana, located

near the Cordillera Central range. I passed two villages, enjoying the view of the

San Juan Valley and the palpable nearness of the mountains, the same terrain

raided by Sebastian Lemba and Juan Vaquero in the sixteenth century and the

same space that hosted maroon villages. Trios of crosses, or calvarios, symboliz-

ing the crosses at Calvary marked the entrances to houses along the road, some

of them still adorned with crepe paper from recent rituals.

Finally I turned off the paved road onto a roadbed of red soil. I was only

able to drive another three miles; then I had to park my car and walk. I followed

the directions of three local children who, pointing with their fingers, told me

to continue up the mountain. “Is it far?” I asked. “No, it is right there,” they

answered. After the children promised to watch my car, I walked uphill for more

than an hour until I reached a tall fence with a gate opened for me by a woman.

Inside, opposite a concrete wall painted green, was located a calvario. The

woman who had opened the door for me requested that I light a candle at the

calvario, then directed me to follow her. I did as she requested, and we then

walked in a semicircle, stopping three times to light more candles at the crosses

that led to the stone- enclosed rectangular well, or aguita. After moistening my

hands in the aguita, I was taken inside a small cave. In the middle of this cave

was a huge enramada, or sanctuary, and altar. On the altar I could see images of

Saint Michael, Santa Barbara, Saint James, the angel Gabriel, San Expedito, Santa

Marta, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, as well as candles, crosses, and

the remains of offerings from worshipers. The Aguita de Oliborio is the destina-

tion point for pilgrims, who travel there every December 28 to commemorate

the anniversary of Oliborio Mateo’s birth in 1876.

A Visitor to the Cosmic Universe of Vodou

It was the year 1908. Nature rebelled, sending a furious hurricane that destroyed

ranchos and crops and killed many. At that time, in those circumstances,

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 9 7

Oliborio disappeared. His relatives assumed he was dead, but as they were cel-

ebrating the ninth day of his funeral, he suddenly reappeared. There are various

other accounts of his return. Some state, bizarrely, that he descended from the

sky, with an accordion on his head. Others affirm that four hundred men were

dispatched to search for him in the mountains; eventually, after several days

they found Oliborio, who was sitting on a chair and who then called out to the

men to join him in holding a festive party.

The story that he reappeared at his funeral is told by Alejandro Popa. Ale-

jandro was the son of Genaro Popa, who is the brother of José Popa, Oliborio’s

disciple and, after his death, his successor. This narrative, almost whimsical

in its retelling, relates that when Oliborio appeared at his own funeral, he

seemed disoriented and dazed. Oliborio then told the audience that he had

been snatched up by San Antonio Esclarecido, also known as San Antonio Ilu-

minado, who then placed Oliborio behind him astride the back of his silver

horse. This saint flew around the world, over mountains and valleys, with Oli-

borio, and when Oliborio became afraid, he was told by San Antonio not to

fear. They finally arrived before God, who gave Oliborio a thick book. Oliborio

did not accept it, saying he was illiterate. Presenting him the book again, God

told Oliborio, “You can read,” with the implication that God was empower-

ing Oliborio to preach His Word, as well as to heal, and to build a world of

peace and love. After the retelling of his encounter with God at his funeral, the

immediate response of Oliborio’s relatives and friends was to laugh, assuming

him now to be crazy.

Reading the accounts of Oliborio’s disappearance and spiritual journey, it

is possible to infer that he had traveled to the cosmic universe of Vodou. First,

Saint Anthony, the Christian name for Vodou lua Papá Legba, is the gatekeeper

to this spiritual domain, and thus it was Papá Legba who snatched him away.

It is also significant that Saint Anthony carried Oliborio on horseback over

mountains and valleys. In his discussion of Haitian Vodou, Leslie G. Desmangles

places the location of the Vodou cosmos in the imaginary Ville- aux- Champs,

with Legba the “Hermes of the Vodou Olympus.” Ville- aux- Champs exists within

the trees, rock formations, mountain footpaths, fountains, and rivers of the four

cardinal points of the universe.86

Oliborio’s visit to the Vodou spiritual realm confirms the important linkage

between Dominican and Haitian Vodou. Both were influenced by enslaved Afri-

cans who originated in the region of Dahomey and who, on the Dominican side

of the island, blended their beliefs and rituals with those of later enslaved Afri-

can arrivals from the Congo area. This story of Oliborio’s death and return sheds

light on the contemporary supernatural world of Dominican Vodou, where ele-

ments of Christianity, indigenous Taino belief, and diverse African deities con-

stitute a cosmology and practice that are deeply imbedded among the peasantry

and made manifest in Oliborio’s movement and message.

9 8 c H a P T e R 4

The Vodou Prophet

The story is told that before Oliborio’s cosmic journey he used to disappear for

days, traveling into the wilderness and remaining there.87 Such behavior is not

uncommon on the island. One Dominican woman I interviewed told me that

she wandered in the wilderness when Petro luas/mysteries called her to their

domain located among the trees. There, among things that were revealed to

her, she was told about the many beneficial properties of plants. It was these

revelations of hers that made people in her community take her to be crazy,

like Oliborio.

Stories about Oliborio relate that from childhood he knew the healing pow-

ers of plants, and that he had perfected his abilities to heal during his relation-

ship with Juan Samuel, probably a cocolo man from the Lesser Antilles, who

sold Bibles to make a living. Returning to life after his visit to the Vodou cos-

mos, Oliborio impressed his followers in San Juan de la Maguana by restoring

to life a well- known woman who had died in this community. This caused a stir

throughout the entire San Juan region. Oliborio went on to heal the sick and

disabled, resurrect others who died, and cure the mentally ill. He became the

most acclamed healer in his region and beyond it.

Oliborio in the Eyes of Social Scientists

Our understanding of the legacy of Oliborio is trapped in conceptual and ideo-

logical frameworks. A variety of interpretations, which reveal the varied points

of view of Dominican intellectuals, have been offered to explain the emergence

of Oliborio and the Liborismo movement. Some have tried to precisely define

or classify the movement, while others have attempted to explain in gener-

alized terms its enormous appeal and its continuing persistence until today.

Most approaches reflect or incorporate the historical prejudices of the “official”

Dominican imaginary.

One group of authors advances economic determinism.88 For these schol-

ars, Liborismo was a movement resisting the harsh impacts of modernity: the

disappearance of communal property, land appropriation by powerful interests,

the imposition of agrarian legislation, repression and excessive abuses, and the

policies following US occupation. According to these interpretations, Liborismo

was a cultural expression of rural unrest caused by radical economic change

and makes an appealing argument to envision a rural community resisting the

intrusion of modernity.

In the view of Dominican sociologist Roberto Cassá, however, the region of

the Maguana Valley and the Cordillera Central was remote from the imposed

“benefits” of modernity. According to Cassá, the southwest was the most

backward region of the country, with an agrarian sector still conditioned by

traces of colonial relations. Peasants were anchored in subsistence production

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 9 9

on conucos, with the country’s lowest level of connection to the market. The

only profitable local economic activity was selling cattle to Haitians, and cattle

raising in this region involved extensive grazing patterns unchanged since the

sixteenth century; indeed, the local economy of the southwest had not incor-

porated technological changes introduced since 1880 in other regions of the

Dominican Republic. The communal property shared by numerous peasants

was an indication of low land values as much as economic primitivism; cattle

raising was small scale and long established; and rustic livestock producers had

no interest in appropriating marginal lands occupied by peasants. This regime

was accompanied by low levels of urbanization in contrast with other regions.

San Juan de la Maguana, the regional urban center, for example, had no estab-

lished urban working- class political base, and the surrounding peasants repro-

duced their living conditions with little state or market interference.89

Another group of authors contend that Liborio transcended his death in

the eyes of his followers because of the circumstances preceding his assassina-

tion. They portray Oliborio as a guerrilla fighter and anti- imperialist leader. Leo-

poldo Figuereo, a lawyer from San Juan de la Maguana, for instance, asserts that

Oliborio was a guerrilla defending the interests of the poor and oppressed.90

According to Figuereo, Oliborio protested the Dominican- American Conven-

tion of 1907, and he also affirms that Oliborio was a member of the liberal Par-

tido Azul, or Blue Party, of Gregorio Luperón. After the US invasion, Oliborio

became a Gavillero, a member of a group of guerrillas who fought against the

Americans. This characterization of Oliborio as anti- imperialist guerrilla is not

supported by any evidence such as in newspapers or documents, nor do Olibo-

rio’s speeches, as known through oral narratives, give any indications of such

political activism.

According to Puerto Rican historian Pedro L. San Miguel, Oliborio was a

menace to both the state and the local caudillos because he represented an

alternative social order.91 When the United States invaded in 1916, it had the

intention of reorganizing the country to put into effect the Dominican- American

Convention, giving the United States control over Dominican customs, in order

to create a modern state apparatus and to annihilate the regional caudillos who

benefited from fragmented power throughout the country and destabilized the

political center. According to the US understanding of caudillismo, Oliborio was

a threat: he had an army, controlled a considerable portion of the Maguana val-

ley and Cordillera Central range, and was a respected leader. Oliborio became a

target of US troops rather than the opposite claim— that Oliborio had initiated a

military confrontation with the invading forces.

And from the moment that the campaign against Oliborio was launched,

he indeed did become an armed adversary. Yet what transformation did Oli-

borio undergo during the years he resisted US troops? Did he develop an anti-

American ideology; did his exhortations and speeches reflect anti- American

1 0 0 c H a P T e R 4

sentiment; were Gavilleros in Oliborio’s army; was he in contact with the Hai-

tian cacos fighting the concurrent US occupation of Haiti? It is certainly believ-

able that the answer to these questions was yes, but there is little evidence to

support it.

Dominican writer Andrés L. Mateo argues that Oliborio became famous

because, by being assassinated by the invading forces, he was made a nation-

alistic and subversive symbol and that popular “magico- religious” belief arose

in response to the menace of a technologically superior culture. To explain his

point, Mateo follows the French anthropologist Claude Lévi- Strauss in claiming

that believers holding messianic perceptions of Oliborio were resisting moder-

nity by imbuing him with a magico- religious identity amplified by the circum-

stances of his death.92

Mateo’s approach explains Liborismo from abstract stipulates, but I am

uneasy with this approach. External theories, including Marxism and Lévi-

Strauss’s structuralism, enunciate totalistic explanations of historical, cultural,

economic, and political ideologies and social relations based on generalized

conceptual frameworks. One static theory thus explains all cases, homogenizing

culture and ignoring the particularity of diverse social universes. To Domini-

cans, these explanations fail to examine the particularity of Liborismo and its

immediate context. They read as impositions of a general postulate that situate

our experiences within an external theoretical framework.

Similarly, Lusitania Martínez, a pioneer in the study of Oliborio in the

Dominican Republic, defines Liborismo as a messianic and millennial move-

ment. This implies a worldview predicating the imminent arrival of a divine

savior to direct people to radical change, a perspective entailing the return of

Christ to Earth in the near future to establish a thousand- year reign ending

in the final judgment as foreseen in Revelations, chapter 20, in the New Tes-

tament. Martínez acknowledges that Liborismo was grounded in the exploita-

tion of the peasantry as encoded in the new, imposed land registration policy

that threatened communal usage and by the commercialization of agricultural

production, which cheated peasants and resulted in discontent over capitalist

penetration and modernization. In this context, Oliborio became a leader of

disaffected peasants marching toward an egalitarian society and a divine world

on earth.93

Martínez, like many other social scientists, labels such social movements

that target tradition versus modernity as messianic and millenarian. In this

regard, Walter Benjamin observes: “The danger threatens both the content of

the tradition and those who inherit it. For both, it is one and the same thing:

the danger of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. Every age must strive anew

to wrest tradition away from the conformism that is working to overpower

it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer; it comes as the victor over

the antichrist.”94 There are many scholars, like Martinez, who explain radical

C I m a R R O N e s : T H e S e e D S o f S u B v e R S I o N 1 0 1

social movements in terms compatible with Benjamin’s phrasing of the struggle

between messiah and antichrist as a metaphor for the struggle between tradi-

tion and modernization. From this perspective, movements arise in situations

of extreme stress where dominated social groups experience deprivation.95 In

the depths of such stresses, a redeemer with supernatural powers appears to

lead people toward salvation, promising an imminent terrestrial haven of col-

lective redemption.

Other Latin American radical social movements are also labeled mille-

narian. Desmangles, for example, states that revolts against slavery forced the

enslaved to emphasize ancestral traditions and heightened the vividness of

millennial promise in their minds.96 Macandal, as portrayed by novelist Alejo

Carpentier, in these terms became the first messiah of the Haitian Revolu-

tion. The Brazilian Belo Monte, Canudos, Juazeiro, and Contestado movements

also have been examined using the millenarian optic, as has the Rastafarian

movement.97

In the case of Oliborio Mateo, however, I want to think outside of theories

that assign all similar radical social movements a single, totalizing explanation.

Rather, I wish to engage in an ethnographic journey into a terrain still fallow

in Dominican studies. Oliborismo is the opacity at the bottom of the mirror ( . . . )

unexplored ( . . . ) denied ( . . . ) insulted.98 In employing Glissant’s opacity notion,

I maintain that to encapsulate Oliborio in millenarian explanations beclouds

even more the opacity of Dominican subversive imaginary. Oliborismo was not

simply an isolated movement in the history of the island. It is the alluvium

deposited by the movements of people, and it needs transparency. To explore,

to accept, to celebrate the continuation of the maroonage beginning in the six-

teenth century, is to offer a transparent mirror in which Dominicans see their

own true reflection.

Cultural Criollismo

During the past millennium, Africans, Tainos, and Spaniards walked/journeyed

into a process of genetic and cultural fusion within the swirling cauldron of

colonial and postcolonial domination and resistance. The painfully delivered child

became an adult of a distinctive skin color in alternative communities where

they produced a new social space. In this social space, people gave political, eco-

nomic, social, and cultural meanings to the mountains and later to the entire

nation. This cultural criollismo is embedded in syncretic cultural dynamics and

meanings unique to the Dominican Republic.

Food preparation techniques and recipes generated in maroon communi-

ties are part of the Dominican diet, particularly in the Dominican south. Cook-

ing with coconut oil or coconut milk, for example, is unknown in many places

in the Cibao Valley, an area in the center of the island where cimarronaje did

1 0 2 c H a P T e R 4

not exist. Similarly, chencen and chacá are dishes known only in the south.

Music accompanied by palos or atabales, Africa- derived drums, and the sing-

ing of call- and- response salves are common in the south of the island. The

Domincan Vodou religion, with its worship of luas, and its Horas Santas ritu-

als incorporating elements of the Roman Catholic Mass, are widespread in

the south as well. In more recent times, the distinct musical style associated

with Oliborio, called la comarca de Oliborio, fuses the Spanish accordion with

the Taino güiro, a gourd or metal scraper, and drums of African origin. Social

forms such as the family- held conuco and the convite, in which community

members are invited to a house- building or land- cultivation work party, are

still important institutions in the south of the Dominican Republic. The roots

of these cultural behaviors are concealed by the “official” national imaginary.

Yet they are a ubiquitous present- day reality— not a matter of the past, but an

integral part of Dominican society.

1 0 3

5

Criollismo Religioso

The expansive green lawn, crowded with people, faced a large roof- covered, open- walled sanctuary, or enramada, at its far end. At its near end was a calvario,

the trio of short, standing crosses. Next to the crosses a group of three men

sat astride log drums, the palos of Congo- Angolan derivation,1 hitting them fre-

netically in a syncopated rhythm. On the lawn, a woman writhed on the ground

like a snake while people watched ecstatically. A man dropped to the ground,

his belly extended, his eyes glazed over, foam coming out of his mouth. People

shouted, “San Elias, San Elias,” naming the lua of death who is the husband of

the snake lua Santa Marta. In the background, a woman was singing out stir-

ring phrases, to which people were responding, “Santa Marta la colorá,” or “Saint

Martha, ‘the red.’”

What I observed that day perplexed me, as had my many other encoun-

ters with Dominican Vodou in the southern region of the Dominican Republic.

Beyond amazement, my observations revealed cultural dynamics produced and

reproduced exclusively in this region of the country. I observed houses with

festoons of aloe hanging from the top of their front doors. I counted hundreds

of calvarios in the road. I learned of the sacred meaning of stones and wells. I

heard stories of mythical characters— bacás, galipotes, ciguapas— and of ensalmos,

prayers said over a person being massaged with herb and root remedies. I was

told of how the lunar calendar dictates when to sow or harvest.

When I first started to visit the rural community of Najayo in the province

of San Cristóbal in the late 1980s, I became curious about the meanings of altars,

folk medicine, palo drumming at funerals and festivities, and local folk tales.

My curiosity helped overcome a painful entry to fieldwork, as I had to recognize

my own prejudices and admit the distrust of me by people in the community.

For the longest time I was la señora blanca, the white woman, despite skin color

and hair that attest to African strains in my ancestry. I was perceived as white,

1 0 4 c H a P T e R 5

probably being associated with those rich mulattos who called themselves blan-

cos de la tierra (“whites of the land”) during colonial times.2 I was addressed as

“Doña,” meaning “Madam,” in a manner connoting respect but at the same time

saying, “You are not us.” When I asked a lua follower, a Vodou priest, to allow

me to take photographs of her altar, she told me that the luas did not want “the

white woman” to probe her activities. I had to cross the long bridge from my

own academic mindset and walk into a world of subversively derived religious

experience.

I witnessed many Vodou rituals. I heard more palo drumming and saw more

women mimic snakes. I participated in the novenas of the Virgin of Altagracia

and a cofradia, or religious brotherhood, celebration of the Holy Spirit. I visited

the place where people told me Saint John the Baptist had been delivered by

Earth. I ate chenchen. I danced pri pri, a secular music of the Dominican south,

including areas adjacent to Santo Domingo, which is a musical style played with

accordin, güiro, and balsié, a Dominican single- headed drum of central African

origin played horizontally, with the drummer sitting on top of it.3 I observed peo-

ple of many colors ranging from almost white to the darkest black, participating.

I was told about Oliborio Mateo, the religious leader killed by Dominicans

soldiers led by the US occupation army in 1922. I went to the island of Cabritos,

in the middle of Lake Enriquillo, where the Taino leader Enriquillo confronted

the Spanish in the sixteenth century. I saw from a distance the mountains of

Neiba, where the last maroon village was founded in the late eighteenth cen-

tury. And I stood in the location where hundreds of Vodou believers were killed

at rural Palma Sola, in the province of Las Matas de Farfán, in 1962.

Driving from San Juan de la Maguana to Las Matas de Farfán, my mind wan-

dered beyond the immense fields of the San Juan Valley plain. I imagined Sebas-

tian Lemba, the legendary maroon of the sixteenth century, commanding his

army of self- liberated slaves to burn Spanish properties and kill whites and then

return to the mountains. My attention abruptly shifted when I almost ran into

a procession of twenty or so people carrying flags of different colors and singing

salves calls and responses. One of the men carried a chicken, a young girl bore

a vévé, a lua portrait painted with corn flour and glued to a piece of cardboard,

and a boy, mounted on a horse, held a palo drum crossways in front of him over

the saddle.

The south of the Dominican Republic may be envisaged as a delimited

arena that, over time, has evolved through a process of adding and subtract-

ing beliefs, images, practices, memories, geographies, histories, and racial and

cultural encounters and identities. The Dominican south exhibits a dynamic

hybridity that encompasses musical instruments, songs, religious expression,

food, family ties, and community form. This includes the cofradias; the veladas,

or feasts for saints or the dead; the singing of salves and drumming of palos;

and regional music, such as the sarandunga of Baní or pri pri, which is found

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 0 5

throughout the south. These cultural forms and practices, emerging through

a process of ethnic, racial, and cultural blending, are unique to the island, and

beginning as they did in 1492, are temporally the most deeply rooted such cul-

tural patterns in the Americas.

Employing an ethnographic approach, this chapter examines the concrete

context of Dominican religious criollismo, a process beginning in the ferment of

insurrections and creation of maroon villages by enslaved Tainos and Africans

who, at the same time, were developing new cultural practices that have con-

tinued to evolve over the centuries into the present. The ethnography utilized

within this chapter was conducted in the province of San Cristóbal, located in

the center of the Dominican south. The chapter further argues that, historically,

criollismo transpired simultaneously on the plantations and cattle- grazing hatos

of the south as well as in the manieles of this region, the locus where most of

Hispaniola’s slave insurrections occurred and its maroon communities existed.

In both domains— the plantations and cattle farms and the maroon

villages— religion became an effective means to preserve the enslaved subjects’

cultural essence and to resist the impositions of the colonizer. Those enslaved

as well as self- liberated slaves created spaces of their own under the protection

of the images and personas of the saints or mysteries they worshiped across the

centuries. Marc Blanchard makes the same claim in discussing Cuba’s orishas,

or saints: “Cuban Orishas maintain a deep connection to the political resistance

fIguRe 5.1. Vodou procession. Photograph by Milagros Ricourt (2010).

1 0 6 c H a P T e R 5

of societies in which secrecy and community are primordial. Afro- Cuban saints

have first and foremost resisted projects of imperial dominance and internal

repression. The figure central to this mystique of resistance has been the cimar-

rón or fugitive slave.”4

Like Cuban orishas, the mysteries of Dominican Vodou emerged in the

midst of resistance. Centuries before the Boca de Nigua insurrection in the

south, thousands of enslaved workers fled the mines, work camps, and planta-

tions of the early Spanish colony, establishing their settlements in the moun-

tains of the island. The area called El Partido de los Ingenios de Nigua, which

became the province of San Cristóbal in 1821, had a concentration of planta-

tions, but it also contained small maroon communities, such as Santa María.

Sociocultural transformations in the San Cristóbal region provide a primary

focus for approaching the production of criollismo religioso in the Americas. In

the rural communities of San Cristóbal, a mystique of resistance was an intrinsic

component of people’s everyday practices, and secrecy veiled the essentials of

religious practice to outsiders.

The present chapter describes this exploration into the alternative knowl-

edge produced in these communities through their countercolonial cultural

histories and practices. In this pursuit, I subscribe to Michaeline Crichlow’s

dictum that “ordinary people straddle many locations with their movements,

practically subverting neat political topographies of ‘imagined communities’

and forcing a reimagination of the national.”5 For these ancestral communities,

which created and continuously re- created Vodou, we will ask in this chapter

how these practices reimagined the nation and subverted the official religion.

Are the Seeds of Vodou in the Spanish Colony?

Although the early Spanish colony had Vodou practices and adherents, our

knowledge of Vodou comes basically from writings about Haiti. Only a few

anthropologists and other social scientists have researched and published

about Dominican Vodou. In contrast, a vast number of international academics

and writers, as well as many Haitian scholars and public intellectuals, have stud-

ied and written about Haitian Vodou. These studies, however, do not consider

the Dominican Republic as a site of any importance in the historical develop-

ment and practice of Vodou.

When defining Vodou, many religious figures and mass media admit that it

is not a “normalizing” doctrine, fitting the Western conception of religion, but

rather, as Talal Asad would put it, that it is a collective expression of the human

search for meaning in life.6 For Asad, “religion” is an expansive concept that

goes beyond Western conceptions of doctrine, structure, and organization. Fol-

lowing this more inclusive perspective on religion, Leslie G. Desmangles writes

that Haitian Vodou

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 0 7

is a complex system of myths and rituals [that] relate the life of a devo-

tee to the deities who govern that life. Like many religions of the world,

Vodou is a system of beliefs and practices that gives meaning to life:

it uplifts the spirits of the downtrodden who experience life’s misfor-

tunes, instills in its devotees a need for solace and self- determination,

and relates the profane world of humans to that of incommensurable

mythological divine entities, called lwas, who govern the cosmos. It also

provides an explanation for death, which is treated as a spiritual trans-

formation, a portal to the sacred world, where productive and morally

upright individuals, perceived by devotees to be powerful ancestral fig-

ures, can exercise significant influence on their progeny.7

Desmangles’s definition applies as well to Dominican Vodou. But is Dominican

Vodou a refraction of Haitian Vodou? Is Dominican Vodou, as many Dominicans

deem it, merely a diluted version of Haitian Vodou?8 Here I argue that the seeds

of Vodou in the western, later Haitian, side of the island were planted during

the two centuries preceding the creation of the French colony in 1697 and were

planted by the maroons who inhabited the Bahoruco and Cordillera Central

ranges, which run from central Hispaniola, now the Dominican Republic, to

the island’s western edge. Enslaved Africans subsequently landed by the French,

bringing their cosmologies and deities, shared the same or compatible back-

grounds with maroons already living on the island. This blending of peoples

and beliefs evolved in the west into what today we know as Haitian Vodou. Sev-

eral Dominican anthropologists, however, maintain that religious practices in

both the Spanish and French domains share an earlier common origin, and that

diverging sociohistorical developments over time account for the differences

between Haitian and Dominican Vodou.9

Taking this longer view, I will stress that in the process of the creation of

Vodou on Hispaniola many different ethnic and racial cultural elements became

integrated. While the indigenous Tainos and earliest Africans were being

coerced into Christianity, they were also responding with and reproducing their

own spiritual beliefs and ways of dealing with their own deities. If the imposi-

tion of foreign religious values was inevitable, the unequal encounter with Euro-

peans forced Africans to negotiate their own religious pathways into and within

Christianity. In this process, African religions appropriated Christian icons, dei-

ties, and prayers. The luas/mysteries or spirits of the Africans were assigned the

names of Catholic saints, their rituals and prayers were incorporated into Chris-

tian ritual forms, and the cross of Jesus’s crucifixion was reimagined.

Still, these religious traditions had basic differences. Christians, both Cath-

olic and Protestant, believed in a Trinity composed of God the Father, Jesus the

Son, and the Holy Spirit, with Jesus the principal intermediary between God and

humans but the Virgin Mary and saints considered also as spiritual personages.

1 0 8 c H a P T e R 5

Protestants were more radical than Catholics, believing that the only interme-

diary is Jesus Christ, and to enlist any other intermediary, such as a saint, is

idolatry, a sin. In Vodou the pantheon has one supreme God above the many

luas, who are intermediaries between God, humans, and nature. It is in this

intermediary arena, central to Vodou, in which luas became associated with the

names of Christian saints.

This hybrid religion had many complexities beyond the appropriation of

Christian elements. The few Tainos who survived diseases, abusive working

conditions, and genocidal attacks interacted intimately with Africans and their

spiritual conceptions of the divine, the earth, and nature. This melding of Afri-

can and Taino religions has survived in Vodou until today, affecting its adher-

ents’ valuations of such natural phenomenon as the sun and moon, plants,

animals, bodies of water, lighting, rain, and hurricanes. This naturalistic view is

sometimes associated with a cultural antithesis to “civilization”: as Claude Lévi-

Strauss suggests, such a “naturalistic view offered a touchstone which allowed

the savage, within culture itself, to be isolated from civilized man.”10 In other

words, “worshiping” nature is a sign of primitivism. When nature, however,

becomes separated from culture, the two domains become opposed structur-

ally; nature is of interest in relation to civilization only as an object, a means of

human thought processes used for technical and social transformation.11 The

respect for, even worship of, nature among the indigenous people of Hispaniola,

and other of the world’s indigenous peoples, is intrinsically related to their soci-

etal organization, means of production, customs, and beliefs. Nature in these

schema is not a commodity to be exploited. As such, it exists as an essential

component of Vodou cosmology: nature is God’s gift that must be respected and

used according to God’s and luas’ purposes.

Religious hybridity also involved the blending of African religions from

many different regions of that continent’s western shores. In the production of

Hispaniola’s unique religion, each of these groups intertwined their particular

beliefs with those of Christian and indigenous origin. Some enslaved Africans,

as “Ladinos” already acculturated within Spain before transshipment to the

New World, also added to the island’s mix. These Ladinos, the first Africans to

arrive, worked in gold mines and on the construction of cathedrals, churches,

and colonial mansions. In 1503 Ladinos and indigenous Tainos rebelled and fled

to the Bahoruco and Cordillera Central mountains, which extended into the

western territory that later became the French colony of Saint Domingue and

eventually the Republic of Haiti. Other enslaved Ladinos remained in the vicin-

ity of Santo Domingo.

The Ladinos were the essential group in the introduction of Roman Catho-

lic elements into the new emerging religion. They were familiar with Catholic

saints and rituals and with the importance of the Christian cross, which spread

into the maroon communities from the vicinity of Santo Domingo. Many among

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 0 9

both the Ladinos and members of the Church’s missionary orders in the New

World, such as the Franciscans, Jesuits, and Hieronymites, were from or passed

through Murcia, in Spain, before sailing to the New World. There in the town

of Caravaca, the distinctive Cross of Caravaca, with its double cross- pieces, was

believed to have strong healing and protective powers. Both Ladinos and mis-

sionaries extended the popularity of this cross in the Americas, particularly

in Hispaniola. Doubtless it was those Ladinos who became the island’s first

“bush priests,” the prêt- savannes identified by Maya Deren in modern Haiti, who

already knew well the Catholic liturgy.12

Ladinos were also instrumental in the creation of cofradias within this

new spiritual milieu, a reinterpretation of European religious brotherhoods.

Religious brotherhoods of free blacks and mulattos, or pardos, were found in

southern Spanish cities. The names of such brotherhoods, founded as early as

1393, were Negros de la Virgen de los Angeles, Negros de la Virgen del Rosario

de Triana, and Mulatos de la Virgen de la Representación.13 As early as 1502,

Ladinos formed their own cofradias in the Spanish colony as organizations of

mutual aid to help bury the dead within their marginalized social sector and to

worship their patron saint, or misterio. Traces of these cofradias are also found

in Cuba and Brazil; those in Cuba were called cabildos, meaning ayuntamientos or

self- governments, but in Brazil they were also known as cofradias. One cofradia

surviving until the present day in the Dominican Republic is the Cofradia of

the Congos of Villa Mella, which has been proclaimed an Intangible Cultural

Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.14 Other cofradias are found in San Juan de la

Maguana, San Cristóbal, and Baní.

The early sixteenth- century cofradias had Saint John the Baptist as their

patron saint; today the patron saint of Dominican Vodou worshipers is the Holy

Spirit, or Calunga, and Saint John the Baptist appears on their altars as a doll or

bulto (bundle). Martha Ellen Davis contends that early slaves venerated Saint

John the Baptist, who represented Chango, a Yoruba deity. Later, when slaves

came from the Congo- Angola area, the same deity shifted to Calunga or the Holy

Spirit. I found that both the Holy Spirit represented by a dove and Saint John the

Baptist represented by a bundle or the image of Saint John the Baptist were pres-

ent everywhere.15 It is important, however, to note that in Baní Saint John the

Baptist is still the patron saint of its cofradia. Perhaps Baní’s location was more

isolated from changes elsewhere in the colony that were introduced by later

cohorts of enslaved Africans, or Baní may contain a maroon community that

survived until becoming incorporated into the town in the nineteenth century.

The voice of the patron saint of Vodou is the ensemble of palo drums, also

known as congos or atabales, which accompany the singing of salves. Constructed

of a hollowed- out log with a single cowhide drumhead played with the hands,

palos are found in ensembles of three— the palo mayor or head palo, and two

smaller alcahuetes. They are accompanied by a güiro, maracas, or hand- held,

1 1 0 c H a P T e R 5

seed- filled gourd rattles, or a pander, which is a tambourine. The musical genre

salves originated in the Spanish colony but derives from the centuries- old Cath-

olic Church prayer “Salve Regina.” Sung in antiphonal call- and- response man-

ner, it is performed during celebrations, burial rites, and other rituals for the

dead. It is sometimes sung a cappella, and other times it is accompanied by palo

drumming.16

Catholicism and indigenous religious elements intersected with the social

structures, mythologies, and symbolisms of enslaved Africans from different

regions along the continent’s western coast. The first Africans brought directly

from the continent to Hispaniola were from the region of Guinea, correspond-

ing to the modern states of Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. From this region,

the Arara and Yoruba cultures provided the essential structure and organiza-

tion of Vodou— one God, with a pantheon of mysteries mediating between God

and humans. (This is also the organization of Cuba’s Santeria and Brazil’s can-

domblé.) This region would contribute the Rada (a derivation of Arara) family

of luas, with its Legba and Ogun divisions, and the cult of the snake spirit, to

the structure of Dominican Vodou. New elements were added later, following

arrivals of enslaved Africans from the Congo/Angola region during the eigh-

teenth century. (These Bantu- speaking peoples influenced Cuban and Brazilian

African- derived religions as well.) The Bantu groups added the Guede family of

mysteries to the cosmological structure of Vodou.17

Vodou in Hispaniola is the hybrid and syncretic religion of the “painfully

delivered child of the Caribbean”: the creolized blending of transplanted Afri-

can religions, localized Taino practices, acquired Christian symbols and icons,

and later connections between Haitian and Dominican Vodou variants. When

Roger Bastide calls the similar religion of Brazil a morphological syncretism,

or juxtaposition and coexistence of African spirituality and Catholic religion,

and an institutional syncretism, or reconciliation of African and Catholic litur-

gies,18 this also applies to Dominican Vodou. The succeeding cultural interac-

tion between Spanish and French enslaved and free blacks, and then between

Haitians and Dominicans, furthered the cycle of cultural exchange in a process

that I call “revolving syncretism,” defined as a complex web of back- and- forth

cultural exchange.

The religion never stopped refreshing itself as revolving syncretism con-

tinued to accommodate new social and political developments. During the sev-

enteenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and in spite of Spanish and

French colonial surveillance, enslaved manumitted and self- liberated persons

continued to interact, crossing and recrossing borders, and the religion kept

refashioning and reincorporating. Maroons encountered escapees from the

French slave colony, which added new elements to the Vodou pantheon and

nomenclature. As these self- liberated slaves escaped to the Spanish side, many

joined maroon villages in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Later the

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 1 1

Spanish colony’s enslaved workers fled to Haiti after the success of the Haitian

Revolution and the abolition of slavery. Then, during the years between 1822 and

1844, the island was unified. In the twentieth century, despite anti- Haitianism,

acts of violence, and state surveillance, Dominican and Haitian people encoun-

tered each other again on the modern sugar plantations.

The revolving syncretism between Haitians and Dominicans— exchanging

luas and religious practices— brought new elements to the maroon heritage. For

example, the Haitian Rara is a festival that started during the colonial period

when Africans, and also troupes of maroons, paraded with drums and musical

instruments on Easter Sunday, and it has continued to the present time. One of

Rara’s main characteristics is performance of political commentary expressed

with vulgar words and gestures. Rara is tied to Vodou through worship of deities

of the Guede nation; includes performers masked as kings and queens (with

men impersonating women) in Congo style; and uses musical instruments,

like maracas, of Taino origin. When Haitians began to work in the Dominican

sugar industry, they brought along their religion, dances, and festivals, includ-

ing Rara, and through the years Rara begat Dominican Gaga. This refashioned

festival added the Spanish language to Kreyòl in an amalgamation of the two;

used Dominican- style bamboo trumpets called fututos; and was embraced by

Dominicans with no Haitian ancestry.19 Rara, historically, was first performed

among mountain maroons in the early sixteenth century, before the creation of

the French colony. Elizabeth McAlister affirms that Rara celebrates a fusion of

spirits resulting from early intermingling of Tainos and Maroons.20 The oldest

versions of Gaga, in fact, contained a ritual call condemning the extermination

of the indigenous population.

Why is Vodou today more visible in Haiti than in the Dominican Repub-

lic? The answer lies in the two countries’ dissimilar historical developments.

The weakened position of the Catholic Church after Haitian independence, in

particular, contributed to the strength, visibility, and popularity of Vodou on

the western side of the island. For decades Haiti experienced ostracism by the

Catholic Church, as the Vatican refused to recognize Haitian independence and

withdrew Catholic priests from the new nation. During the presidencies of Alex-

andre Pétion (1807 to 1818) and Jean- Pierre Boyer (1818 to 1843), Catholicism did

remain the state religion, but the few priests who had stayed after the revolu-

tion were dying, and no new priests were sent to the republic.21 Moreover, as

Michel- Rolph Trouillot explains, the United States, Europe, and the newly cre-

ated Latin America republics imposed a diplomatic blockade on Haiti. Trouillot

further argues that the contempt of the Vatican helped “cripple the Haitian

chances of building a solid wide- ranging system of formal education and the

spread and consolidation of the church.”22

In this context of international isolation, Haitians continued to adhere to

Vodou, and the “long separation with Rome had permitted Vodou to disseminate

1 1 2 c H a P T e R 5

and to anchor itself solidly within the framework of Haitian society.”23 Accord-

ing to Desmangles, the practice of Vodou revived and expanded during the

twelve- year tenure of Haitian president Faustin Soulouque beginning in 1847.

When his successor, President Fabré Nicolas Geffrard, took power, he initiated

negotiations with Rome, and a Concordat to rebuild the relationship between

Haiti and the Catholic Church was signed in 1860. The opportunity to reestab-

lish Haiti as a Catholic nation, however, “came too late. . . . Haitian culture was

imbued with Vodou practices.”24

During the early twentieth century, including under the US occupation of

Haiti, Vodou was repressed, but in the 1920s the negritude movement exalted

Vodou as a symbol of Haitian attachment to Africa. This favorable atmosphere

allowed Haitians to practice Vodou as well as to extend its artistic and creative

orbit. With a population that was 90 percent of African descent, and with most

Haitians adhering to Vodou, the opportunity was present to celebrate its Africa-

derived mythology, which explains the origin and attributes of each of the lwas

(luas) comprising the pantheon. Moreover, Maya Deren argues that Haitians

had preserved the heritage of Vodou through oral transmission, in which “the

speech of an elder in the twilight of his life is not his history but his legacy;

he speaks not to describe matter but to demonstrate meaning. He talks of his

past for purposes of his future.”25 It is significant as well that Haitian national

history is intrinsically linked with Vodou and that Haitian intellectuals have

been instrumental in researching and writing about Vodou. Haiti, its history,

and its Vodou deities are thus united in a single process of social and cultural

dynamics.26

Although Vodou was long suppressed under the French colonial Code Noir

of 1685, and after the Haitian revolution it met the disdain of Haiti’s mulatto

presidents, it has enjoyed a freedom in that nation completely absent in the

Dominican Republic. On the Spanish side of Hispaniola, Vodou has been demon-

ized for centuries— through legal prohibitions, acts of violence, and a negativity

induced by education, mass media, and the Catholic Church— all in the attempt

to erase it from Dominican life. Legislation enacted after the creation of the

Dominican Republic prohibited and penalized the practice of Vodou. As Emilio

Rodríguez Demorizi details, in 1862 Vodou was deemed illegal in public and in

Catholic churches; in 1874 and 1881 all drumming or bailes de cuero (drumming

rituals) were prohibited in the rural areas of Santiago; and in 1943 the Penal

Code stipulated jail time and fines for those apprehended practicing Vodou.27

Violence was also used to stop it. During the twentieth century, the country wit-

nessed the persecution of religious leader Oliborio Mateo and his followers, as

well as his assassination in 1922; the massacre of thousands of Haitians in 1935;

and the slaughter of hundreds of Oliborio followers in 1962.

Dominican intellectuals have been critical in disseminating dislike

for Vodou; they considered it a barbaric practice transmitted from Haiti.

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 1 3

Nineteenth- century Dominican literature is replete with this disdain, treating

Vodou and its rituals as uncivilized customs alien to Dominican culture. During

the early twentieth century, Pedro Henríquez Ureña deplored Vodou’s African

musical expressions and influences, cataloging them as vulgar and reiterating

the dismissive pronouncement of Nicolás Penson that palos were primitive

instruments. Later in the twentieth century, the work of Joaquín Balaguer and

Arturo Peña Batlle constructed a dominicanidad exalting the Hispanic and Catho-

lic essence of the Dominican Republic and abhorring Haitian barbarism. The

imagery of this dominicanidad embedded in textbooks, media, and Catholic ser-

mons taught generations of Dominicans to envision themselves removed from

Haitians. Yet in spite of this official antagonism, Vodou is intrinsically linked to

Dominican life, especially in rural areas. The historic illegality of Vodou, and its

recurrent repression, explains the absence of a rich oral history, which today

hinders us from learning more about the origins and content of this religion.

Dominican Vodou

Vodou remains far from being seen as a religion by numbers of Dominican

anthropologists and social scientists. Many of them consider Dominican Vodou

a “magico- religious” manifestation, not a religion.28 When social scientists do

recognize Dominican Vodou as a religion, they label it “popular religion,” mean-

ing disorganized and lacking structure.29 I adhere to Robert A. Orsi’s critique

of popular religion and to its concept of lived religious as way people practice

religion and how religious meaning direct their daily lives. Orsi’s conception of

religion, well as my own ethnographic research, establish that Dominicans in

the southern region of the country practice a religion very much like the Vodou

of Haiti as envisioned earlier in this chapter by Desmangles.

Dominican Vodou is also known as Los Misterios, Maní, and the La Viente-

Una División (Twenty- One Divisions). Its core consists of the knowledge and

practice of communication with God’s intermediaries, the luas or mysteries.

God in the Dominican Republic is also known as La Misericordia (The Merciful);

in Haiti, God is Bondyé. The term “lua” (or “lwa” or “loa”) to designate a spiritual

intermediary is from the Fon language spoken in the West African kingdom of

Dahomey, today part of the country Benin. The Haitian form is “lwa,” with the

same meaning. Luas in the Dominican Republic are also called misterios, sanes,

or by the names of the individual Christian saints who became attached to these

spiritual intermediaries during the Spanish colonial period.

Vodou is a religion with its own philosophy of the universe, including its

own vision of the spiritual, natural, and human worlds characterized by the

struggle between love and envy. The broader view of the forces and opera-

tions of these worlds, and the place of mysteries within them, is depicted in

figure 5.2.30 Communication with the mysteries of Dominican Vodou occurs via

1 1 4 c H a P T e R 5

human servidores (male) and servidoras (female), or servers— also called curio-

sos or curanderos— who have received an encargo (mission) to be possessed by

a particular mystery. The servers are also known as a mystery’s caballo (horse,

or as brujo/bruja male or female witch). The term “brujo/bruja” is exogenous to

the New World but endogenous to Europe. The time of the “discovery” was also

the time of witch persecution in Europe, and Spain was one of the centers of

the Inquisition. People performing the roles of sorcerers were witches, and the

term became popular in Hispaniola basically on the western side and not in the

French colony or Haiti.

These concepts of servidor, caballo, and brujo are the equivalents of the

uogan or mambo priests in Haitian Vodou. The servers receive revelations from

their mysteries when they enter a state of possession. Through the servers, the

mysteries transmit messages about cures for illnesses or the solution of per-

sonal problems, and they inform people about what they desire as gifts or offer-

ings. The servers’ mission also includes guiding and healing human beings with

the resources of the natural world and providing devotion and care to the mys-

teries by offerings of their favorite foods, flowers, drinks, and perfumes. Servers

also post cloth flags in the color of their particular mystery outside their homes.

The mysteries inhabit a cosmological space below God and above humans.

The physical location of this world of the mysteries in Haitian Vodou, according

to Desmangles, is in trees, rocky peaks, mountainsides, rivers, the courtyards

of Vodou temples, and in the four cardinal points of the universe.31 Dayan, also

referring to Haitian Vodou, relates that these spirits live en bas de l’eau (under

the waters) in an unlocatable place called Guinée.32 According to my Dominican

Spiritual World God is Creator and Ruler,

Mysteries are Intermediaries between nature and humans

Natural World Perfect Harmony,

Naturalism and Animism toward manifestation of spiritual forces, where humans are receptors,

Mysteries are intermediaries

Human World Conflictive and divided between

love and envy, Invocation of divine forces of protection

fIguRe 5.2. Spiritual, natural, and human worlds of Vodou. Chart by Milagros Ricourt.

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 1 5

respondents in the community of Najayo, the mysteries reside in both the for-

est among trees and around wells and rivers. In my conversations with servers

in the region of San Juan, however, the mysteries were believed to reside in the

four cardinal points and rocky peaks. It is common to observe a server initiate a

Vodou ceremony with an acknowledgment to the four cardinal points. (Enrique

Patin Veloz argues that Dominican mysteries reside in air, water, fire, and soil:

the four elements of nature.)33

Within their cosmological abodes, the mysteries interact with each other,

marry, have children, and exhibit emotions such as passion, love, or hate. They

have the same range of sexual preferences and desires as do human beings.

Mysteries have their own characteristic personalities and their own individual

tastes in food, drink, and perfumes. Each mystery or saint in the Vodou pan-

theon has their own favored color: those of the Legba family, brown; Ogun/Saint

James, dark blue; Belié Belcán/Saint Michael, green and red; Anaisa/Santa Clara,

yellow; Santa Marta, the snake, green; Guede/Saint Elias, black; and so on.

Mysteries are organized into four families or nations— Rada, Guede, Indian,

Petro— each symbolizing a strand of the ethnic origins of the enslaved African

and indigenous inhabitants of Hispaniola. This mode of organization accords

with the Dahomean tradition of organizing loas within nations.34 In Haiti there

are two nations, Rada and Petro, with Indian mysteries included within Rada

and Guede mysteries within Petro. The Rada and Guede nations originated in

Africa, in the regions of Dahomey and Congo/Angola respectively; the Indian

and Petro nations originated on Hispaniola.

The Indian nation of mysteries derives from the indigenous Taino popula-

tion extinguished in the sixteenth century, while the Petro nation emerged on

the Spanish side of the island during the eighteenth century. The chronicler

Moreau de Saint- Méry observed that a slave named Pedro from the eastern area

was the leader of a cult of Congo origin that people began to label “Petro,” prob-

ably reflecting Kreyòl pronunciation. Petro eventually extended throughout the

island.35 The Petro nation became a spiritual force and spread during a period

when new cohorts of enslaved Africans were in revolt against slavery, and their

mysteries reflected their anger and rebelliousness. The Petro mysteries are rep-

resented either by strong black male and female warriors or by an ox.

The four nations include female mysteries known as metresas, a term

derived from the Haitian Kreyòl word met and meaning mother. These metresas

include Santa Ana/Anaisa, Our Lady of Mercy/Ofelia Balenyo, Virgin of Altagra-

cia/Alaila, Our Lady of Sorrows/Metresilí, and Virgin of Mount Carmel/La Bar-

onesa. Each metresa is married to a male mystery. Interestingly, when a metresa

chooses a man to be a server, he becomes a woman when possessed. A segment

of such servers are male homosexuals, but neither spiritual gender nor human

sexual preference presents any limitation on becoming a server of a particular

Vodou mystery.

1 1 6 c H a P T e R 5

The combined mysteries of all four nations are spoken of as “La Viente- Una

División,” conceptually the united force of all Vodou mysteries and the mobi-

lization of all four nations’ power. During my fieldwork, I asked innumerable

times what is meant by “the Twenty- One Divisions,” and the responses were

consistent: that it designates the power represented in the different ethnic

backgrounds of all the enslaved Africans brought to Hispaniola. Some Domini-

can writers, however, assert that the Vodou pantheon is comprised of twenty-

one ranked divisions or categories of deities, in hierarchical order. Patin, for

example, provides a ranked list of twenty- one entities that include such eth-

nic groups as Congos and Nagos; the Rada, Guede, Petro, and Indian Vodou

nations; and individual mysteries, such as Legba, Ogun, and Marassa, resulting

in a single, and incongruous, list.36 Someone else mentioned the significance of

January 21, the anniversary of Virgin of Altagracia, the Dominican patroness and

one of the most venerated luas in Vodou. I suspect, however, that the origin of

the notion of the Twenty- One Divisions is lost in history, and that it was never

thoroughly researched in the field. However, I want to stress that the notion

of the Twenty- One Divisions is Dominican, not Haitian; and I will repeat what

people told me during my fieldwork: the Twenty- One Divisions, mobilizing all

four nations, is the united force of all Vodou mysteries.

The organization of these families, or nations, varies according to the appre-

ciation of anthropologists. For example, Carlos Andujar states that the Dominican

Vodou has hierarchies and divisions and that they are divided into three groups:

the Water Division, with Caonabo as the division chief; the Fire Division, with

Ogun Balenyo or Saint James as the division chief; and the Land Division, which

is subdivided into two: the Guedes, with the Baron del Cementerio or Saint Elias

as the division chief, and the Legbas, with Papá Legba or Saint Anthony as the

division chief. Andujar also adds other subdivisions. One is the Radas, with Belie

Belcan or Saint Michael as the Division chief; the Petros, with Criminel as the

division chief; and the metresas, with Anaisa Pie or Saint Anna as the division

chief. Leo Ripley organizes the families into four forces: Rada, Guede, Petro, and

Indigenous. Martha Ellen Davis offers a similar division of four families.37

Table 5.1 provides African, Roman Catholic, translated Spanish, and Taino

names in use among my respondents for the key mysteries in what I organized

as the four families. In many instances, the mysteries were not identified to me

primarily by family or nation but rather by their attributes, such as sweet, black,

or Indian, or death related.

These mysteries manifest themselves through the possession of human

beings, and each nation has its own style of possession behavior. For example,

the Rada and Indian mysteries behave in a soft and gentle manner; the Guede

appear with a sudden fall of the server to the floor, or with snakelike move-

ments; Petro mysteries are loud and aggressive, and sometimes their servers

eat fire or stab themselves with knives or machetes. Certain of the mysteries

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 1 7

TaBLe 5.1

Family/Nation in Dominican Vodou

Rada or misterios dulces/Sweet Mysteries

Papá Legba/Saint Anthony Abad (presiding mystery of all 21 divisions/ nations)

Legba Carfo/Saint Anthony of Padua

Belie Belcan/Saint Michael (Rada Force)

Ogun Balenyo/San Santiago (Warrior of the 21 Divisions)

Metre Sili/Our Lady of Sorrows or Saint Rosa of Lima

Atacua Balenyo/San Florian

Ofelia Balenyo/Our Lady of Mercy

Candelo/Ogun Fegay/Ogun Fegallo/Great White Cock/San Carlos Borromeo

Guede or misterios de la muerte o misterios negros/Death Mysteries/Black Mysteries

Baron of the Cemetery /San Elias (Rada Force)

Baron La Cua/San Elias the Sad or Saint Alitroste

Baron Samedi/Saint Deshacedor/Saint Gerardo

Baroness/Virgen del Carmen (Wife of the Baron)

Guede Limbo/San Expedito (Cemetery Secretary)

Guede Lia Lagcua/Santa Marta La Dominadora (also known as Aida Wedo and Wife of the Baron)

Saint Guiñe/San Cipriano (Son of the Baron)

Guedecito/San Juan de la Conquista

Gunguna Guiyone/Santa Elena

Petro or misterios agrios/Bitter Mysteries

Centinela Sabalo/King of the Forest/ Sacred Heart of Jesus/San Sebastian (Rada Force)

Atbanpuey/San Sebastian

Lenglesu Taguedo/Sagrado Corazón de Jesus

Yan Fego Gonaive/San Marcos de Leon

Toronisa Caifu/Female Ox

Negro Felipe

Maria Lionsa

Negra Francisca

Criminel

(continued)

1 1 8 c H a P T e R 5

can manifest themselves at what are called puntos, or points. Points are like

the characteristics of each mystery, and crossing from one point to another

means taking the characteristics of another mystery. For example, San Miguel

or Saint Michael is a sweet mystery but he can adapt the characteristic of a

Petro aggressive behavior, and Santa Marta of the Guede can appear in a Petro

punto. These puntos of each nation also cross the Haitian/Dominican border.

Dominican mysteries that appear in Haiti speak Spanish with a Kreyòl accent;

and when appearing in the Dominican Republic, those from Haiti speak Kreyòl

with a Spanish accent.

When and where do the mysteries manifest themselves? Tuesdays and Fri-

days are the regular days when servers are mounted by their mysteries, and

advice is provided by them to people seeking a consultation. Each server is

TaBLe 5.1

Family/Nation in Dominican Vodou (continued)

Indian or misterios de agua/Water Mysteries

Gran Soleil/ Indio Bravo, Gamao/San Nicolas de Bari (Rada Force)

Aguila Blanca

Atit

Guaipuro

Guacaganarix

Caonabo

Anacaona

Las Metresas/Female Mysteries

Anaisa Pye (Saint Anne)

Metré Silí/Our Lady of Sorrows or Saint Rosa of Lima

Ofelia Balenyo/Our Lady of Mercy

Baroness/Virgen del Carmen (Wife of the Baron)

Gunguna Guiyone/Santa Elena

Ezili Alaila (Virgin of Altagracia)

Filomena Lubana (Santa Marta)

Candelina Sedife (Virgen de la Candelaria)

Ezili Danto (Santa Barbara Africana)

Source: Information collected during author’s fieldwork.

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 1 9

possessed at a location, or altar, where people come to obtain advice from a par-

ticular mystery. These sites have a calvario of three crosses in front; an enramada

(see fig. 5.3), under which people wait for their consultation; and an enclosed

room where the altar is located and the server sits while the consultation with

the mystery takes place. The enramada also is where the altar is moved, and palo

drummers perform during such festivities as the annual día del santo (saint’s day)

celebration for each mystery, or at a fiesta de palos, a thanksgiving party.

The repozwa (sacred places) in Dominican Vodou do not have the elabora-

tion and sophistication of their counterparts in Haiti. There are similarities,

however, between the Dominican enramada and the Haitian peristil, the site

of dancing or social gatherings. The Haitian potomitan, from where the lwas

descend, corresponds to the hole in the ground from which the mysteries of

Dominican Vodou ascend. But while the altars are similar in both countries,

Dominican Republic altars vary more in their contents: while some servers

organize their altars to represent one nation, or mystery or metresa, most altars

I observed contain symbolic elements from all nations. Such items as Rada mys-

teries of Saint Anthony/Papá Legba, a chromolithograph of the Sacred Heart of

Jesus, and sometimes the Virgin of Altagracia may be featured, with a second

tier containing such images as Saint Michael/Belie Belcan, Saint James/Ogun

Balenyo, or others, but there will also be representations of Guede and Petro

mysteries on the floor. Less elaborate altars are common in people’s homes.

fIguRe 5.3. La Enramada. Photograph by Milagros Ricourt (2012).

fIguRe 5.4. An altar. Photograph by Milagros Ricourt (2012).

fIguRe 5.5. Palo drumming. Photograph by Milagros Ricourt (2012).

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 2 1

During festivities, the altar is carried to the enramada, and the server begins

the particular ritual by invoking the mysteries, which he or she does by throwing

rum in the four cardinal directions or into a hole in the ground. Then, after the

audience shouts “Gracia a la Misericordia” and “Gracia a la Veinte- Una División,”

palo drumming (see fig. 5.5) summons the mysteries to possess the server.

The Server

I started out my research on Vodou servers, healers, bush priests, and adher-

ents by seeking out Papo, one of the most important servers in the area of San

Cristóbal. I arrived at Papo’s home after walking for nearly an hour from the

main road to his place of consultation, or paraje. Normally cars could reach here

directly, but the road had been damaged by a recent rainstorm. I enjoyed the

uphill walk and the view of the ocean in the distance; the vegetation exhibited

varying shades of green, and the wooden houses I passed had beautiful flowers

in front of them, surrounding their calvarios. The entrance to Papo’s property

was fronted by a thick hedge of coralillos, or jungle flame (Ixora coccinea), that

was neatly trimmed, with an archway at the center. As I walked toward Papo’s

house, to the left was an immense pile of burned wood and ashes in a pit in

the ground, the remains of a fire that, like a shrine, is kept burning around the

clock. To the right was a small garden, and then the house Papo shares with his

wife. His children are now grown and married.

On the other side of the house was a large enramada and then a small

wooden house with a huge altar inside, which contained a statue of Belie Bel-

can, photographs of images of saints, hand- drawn pictures of several mysteries,

dozens of lighted candles, and bottles of rum, soda, and wine. Between the two

structures was a line of flat wooden benches (bancos), surrounded by huge nin

trees providing a cooling shade and protection from the sun. To the left of the

enramada was a large herb garden. While I waited for Papo, I saw him leave the

altar building, enter the garden to collect leaves, which he placed in a basket,

and return to his altar, where he was conducting a consultation with a client.

Then, at last, I finally met Papo. I introduced myself as a researcher and

expressed my desire to talk to him about his work and the daily practices of his

religion. He told me he first had to consult the mysteries and asked me to come

back the following week.

When I returned a week later, he said, “Yes, now is the time to talk to you,”

and we began to discuss many topics, beginning with how he first became

a server.

Papo told me that he was about eight or nine years old when he started

to have hallucinations. In his dreams he saw angels flying above his head and

calling his name. His grandmother told him he was being called by the myster-

ies, reminding him also that he was born with an extra finger growing from his

1 2 2 c H a P T e R 5

pinky. This made him laugh, but the next morning he awoke with a fever that

made him shake with convulsions. He was given infusions and, among other

treatments, was bathed in his own urine to reduce the fever. After three days,

his mother wanted to take him to the hospital, but he refused. He knew he

would recover soon and that he would accept the mysteries’ call to become a

server, a course he started along at the age of ten.

Today Papo is widely known as a servidor of Belie Belcan, both within the

region of San Cristóbal and in the Dominican diaspora in Europe and the United

States. He told me that he is also possessed by Ogun Balenyó, Legba Carfó, and,

sometimes, Guedé Liá. People come to him with tumors, infections, aches, and

other quebrantos (illnesses) that doctors cannot cure but that, through vision

given to him by the mysteries, he can diagnose and heal. He has the power, for

example, to see the quebranto by examining a person’s urine. After his diag-

noses, he prepares botellas (potions) and teses or tisanas (herbal infusions), still

under the direction of the mysteries. He also anoints the sick and prays over the

problematic areas of their bodies. In addition, he performs “works,” or traba-

jos, enlisting the mysteries to protect people from things like the envy of their

enemies, or to help make decisions, attain success in business, and overcome

problems in their love lives.

The Healer

I had many hours of conversation with Mamita, a healer. She told me she

dreamed about Indians, Tainos, seminude and playing in a well of clear water.

She also showed me the Taino figures made out of clay that she kept under her

bed, clay figures that are important because they are a reminder of the influence

of the Indian family/nation in present- day Dominican Vodou. Also important is

the historical link between the alliances of Africans and Taino and today. It was

the Indian mysteries and Saint Anthony of Padua, she said, that had made her

a healer.

Mamita said she knew all the mysteries intimately, their strengths and their

weaknesses. She told me she could order any of them to leave a person they were

possessing. According to Mamita, during a celebration honoring the mystery

Anaisa, a woman had been suddenly possessed by an unfriendly mystery, and

when she approached the altar, which was laden with bottles of rum and wine,

the bottles exploded, confirming that the mystery possessing her was not wel-

come. At that moment, Mamita stood up and asked the spirit to leave, and the

woman immediately recovered.

Mamita was a short, slim, black woman with white hair dyed black, ten-

der eyes, and a constant smile. She had given birth to ten children. Four died

as babies from colerín (gastroenteritis), and another died of tetanus. The sixth

died, she told me, after a witch sucked his blood: “I saw the witch flying away

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 2 3

from my house and I knew my son was dead.” Four children survived, three

males and a female, all now in their fifties. Her ten grandchildren have all mar-

ried and have children, many of whom are already adolescents. Her husband

had died after “David,” she said, referring to the hurricane that devastated the

Dominican Republic in 1979.

Mamita cultivated her small piece of land, loved corn and peanuts, and

knew the herbs, roots, and fruits to cure countless diseases, to cleanse the body

and uterus, to enhance one’s energy, and to abort unwanted pregnancies. The

local Catholic priest, who traveled to her village every Saturday afternoon for

mass and communion, had told Mamita she was not welcome in his church. He

said she was dangerous, and unless she renounced her satanic practices, she

was not allowed in the church. She has never gone back and will finish out her

days still healing community members.

Mamita used to visit the rocky side of the beach to collect bulgao, a conch-

like mollusk, to boil and enjoy for dinner. Today, she complained, bulgaos are

gone. People indiscriminately collected the mollusk without respecting its cycle

of reproduction and growth, and the daily routine of saluting the sea and col-

lecting what nature provides was interrupted. But beyond the beach, the forest

and rivers offered her everything needed for nourishment and healing, both

physical and spiritual. In the wilderness Mamita collected herbs, leaves, and

roots, the spirits whispering the properties of each in her ears. Mamita’s words

reminded me of Macandal, as portrayed in Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of

This World, who had discovered the “secret life of strange species” and whose

hand “gathered anonymous seeds, sulfuric capers, and diminutive hot peppers.”

Eventually, according to the book, the moment arrived when “the Mandingue

crumbled the flesh of a fungus between his fingers, and his nose caught the

whiff of poison.” With that, he returned to poison his planter master, beginning

the Haitian Revolution.38

Mamita cultivated yucca, plantains, sweet potatoes, okra, and eggplants

and raised chickens and other animals. The only foodstuffs she purchased were

rice, beans, pasta, and cooking oil, now that modernity has displaced the avail-

ability of coconut oil. Her old conuco plot was lost to Hurricane David, after

which she and her husband moved near the road, built a cement house, and

reluctantly sold their old land to a group of Canadians who construct vacation

houses. As more new houses are built, the wilderness shrinks.

I met a friend of Mamita’s, Mary, who is a “horse” of Santa Marta. When she

is possessed by this spirit of the snake, she says she runs into the wilderness,

where she wanders for hours, even days. “The forest is where the spirits reside,”

she told me, “and there one must go to listen to their desires.” Like Mamita,

Mary laments that the forest is receding with the construction of more houses.

The spirits told her to build a new shrine— on a hill located far from her house

and her old shrine— in a place where nature was still intact and the spirits were

1 2 4 c H a P T e R 5

free and content. According to Mamita and Mary, the wilderness is the source

point of healing as well as the cosmological abode of the mysteries.

Now in her later years, Mamita has to wander far from home to obtain the

herbs and roots she needs for her healing practice. When I journeyed into the

wilderness with her, she showed me more than a hundred herbs, roots, bushes,

and trees growing near brooks that she uses to abort unwanted pregnancies,

kill parasites, heal scars, reduce blood sugar levels, soothe anxieties, and pre-

vent or cure fever, infections, sexually transmitted diseases, uterine tract prob-

lems, complications of menopause, and liver, heart, lung, stomach, and skin

ailments. Mamita laughed when I mentioned that noni was being used in the

United States to strengthen the immunological system. “We have been using

noni and other plants for generations,” she said. When I returned to Najayo in

2012, people were again laughing at the “discovery” of moringa, or libertad, as it

is known in the community, another plant used for generations by community

members and now considered a miraculous cure for all kinds of illnesses.

el Rezador (the Bush Priest)

The house of Elpidio, a bush priest I visited, can be spotted from the Crossroads

of the Changos, where the road to Najayo and Palenque merges with the road

to Nigua.39 His wooden house, built at the far end of a broad, flat open space,

was painted green. A large framed image of Saint Anthony hung on the left side

of the front porch, and three crosses made from the wood of the Guaramo tree,

as Elpidio later explained, stood in front of the house. The middle cross had

two parallel cross- pieces, like the Spanish Cross of Caravaca. Elpidio, however,

later told me that he dreamed of this doubled cross, as he calls it, himself and

decided to put one in front of his house. He does not identify it as the Caravaca

cross. The trio of crosses were covered in purple and white crepe paper to cel-

ebrate the day of the Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) in May and were firmly grounded

in the earth, surrounded by stones and aloe plants.

Inside Elpidio’s house, bachata music blasted from a radio located in one

corner of the small living room. To the right was a small bedroom, and from an

elaborate altar in another room in the back the aroma of perfume and agua de

florida (scented water) inundated the entire house. Elpidio showed me the large

statue of Saint Michael on the altar, along with the green and red stole that Elpi-

dio wears for this saint’s celebration. In the kitchen outside the house, Elpidio

brewed coffee on a small stove to share with me. In back were the enramada, a

small bathroom, and a large backyard. I saw two more calvarios in the rear of the

backyard, set among more stones and aloe plants.

As I sat waiting for Elpidio to finish the coffee, a man drove into the yard

on a motorcycle; he had asked permission to collect ajanjai branches from the

trees in the backyard. Since I knew these branches are used to make brooms,

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 2 5

I asked him if he made them. He said, “No. I use the branches for good luck,

placing them in water at the entrance to my house, but when you use them as a

broom,” he added, “it brings good luck throughout the entire house.” He cut a

little branch and handed it to me so I could smell the agreeable aroma.

After the man left and Elpidio arrived with the coffee, Elpidio told me that

he had been sick as a newborn, and that in exchange for his health his mother

had promised to place a little head made of silver in the Saint Anthony shrine

at Caña Andrés as an offering. To fulfill her promise to the saint, she had also

dressed Elpidio in brown, Saint Anthony’s color, for his first six years, and even

today he still wears brown clothes in honor of the saint. It was in Caña Andrés,

a rural community in the Nigua municipality of San Cristóbal Province, where

Elpidio grew up in the local Roman Catholic Church and was taught how to

conduct a Hora Santa, a ceremony that resembles a Catholic Mass, as well as the

mysteries of the tercio (rosary) and how to sing salves to the Virgin. I observed

several Hora Santas conducted by Elpidio, including one in which I was allowed

to photograph the altar and Elpidio praying with his rosary. I have also observed

him leading prayers at a funeral and burial, at a velación (ninth day after a

burial), and at other rituals.

The altar prepared for the Hora Santa was centered on a large chromolitho-

graph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and flanked on each side by images of Saint

Anthony and Saint Michael. On the altar table there was bread and wine to be

distributed during the service, as well as a cake and candies to be enjoyed after

the ceremony. There were also flowers, a bell, and bottles of wine, rum, and

whisky as offerings to the mysteries. In the kitchen, women were making rice

pudding and fruit punch, to be served after the ritual as well.

The Hora Santa started with a ringing of the bell and prayers to the Holy

Father. Then Elpidio began the rosary ritual, which was divided into five myster-

ies or stations, as in the Roman Catholic Stations of the Cross, and it included

Catholic vocal responses. After the ritual was over, Elpidio read prayers— prayers,

incidentally, that are not part of the Catholic liturgy today— to Saint Michael,

Saint Anthony, and the Virgin of Altagracia from a religious text printed in 1800

(see fig. 5.6). The Hora Santa ended with Elpidio’s blessing of the bread and

wine, which was similar to the way it is performed by a Catholic priest, after

which the bread was distributed by the sponsor of the Hora Santa. Children were

served first, followed by adults. After this, cake, candies, rice pudding, and fruit

punch were served to all.

Following this food, the first salve began, dedicated to Papá Legba. A man

sang the first verse a capella, and the crowd responded in antiphonal fashion.

Immediately after this, an ensemble of three palos drummers and a güirero

started drumming and people started dancing. As I watched, I was told that

one of the dancers, a woman, was being possessed by the mystery Anaisa. While

this was going on, bottles of rum were opened for the drummers, which they

1 2 6 c H a P T e R 5

consumed freely, and I saw that the congregation also drank rum and beer. To

me as an outsider the ceremony appeared chaotic, but to the participants it was

the way, since ancestral times, that thanks was given to God and the mysteries.

Another ritual I witnessed Elpidio lead was the funeral of a man who had

died of heart failure at the age of thirty- seven. It was after three o’clock in the

afternoon when I arrived. From outside the thatched- roof house where the

fIguRe 5.6. Prayer book cover. Photograph by Milagros Ricourt (2012).

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 2 7

funeral was being held, I heard, even though all the doors and windows were

shut, what I believed was Latin being spoken. I could see that behind the house

women and men were cooking pork, plantains, and yucca in large pots set on

four stones over a log fire. Inside, the house was divided by curtains into two

sections. On one side were the mourners, close relatives. On the other, a coffin

faced an altar made of a table covered with a white tablecloth. On the altar were

a chromolithograph of Our Lady of Sorrows, a lighted candle, a glass of water

containing a sprig of basil, and a cross painted black. Elpidio sat with another

man in front of the coffin while a small group sat around them. The two men led

a prayer, with the others responding in unison. I could not follow all the words,

but I heard the leaders say, “Requien eterno adonaidom,” and the others respond-

ing, “Ellus perfecto luciaden.”

I soon realized they were reproducing— imperfectly, through longtime oral

transmission— the Introit of the old Roman Catholic liturgy of the Mass of the

Dead. This begins with the priest singing, “Requiem aeternam dona eis, domine,”

meaning “Grant them eternal rest,” and the congregants responding, “Et lux per-

petua luceat eis,” meaning “And let perpetual light shine upon them.” During the

funeral these quasi- Latin prayers were repeated several times as the opening

for prayers in Spanish, such as a salve to the Virgin, which is another old Catho-

lic prayer that is ordinarily sung but here was chanted. After an hour more of

prayers, palo drumming began, accompanying a slow, sad salve during which

everyone, the relatives in the adjacent room and those in the section with the

altar, cried fervently.

After the drumming, prayers resumed until, already dark, it was time to

walk to the cemetery. The palo drummers led, followed by the coffin borne by

four men and the group of mourners. The slow, mournful drumming provoked

renewed crying. After walking for an hour, the procession arrived at the cem-

etery and stopped at the location where the burial was completed amid more

drumming, final prayers, and still more crying. After burial, people returned

to the house to console the dead man’s relatives, and the food that had been

cooked earlier was served.

For the next nine days the family members remained inside the house,

where prayers were recited each afternoon. The entire ninth day was devoted

to tercios, which besides being the word for “rosaries,” also refers to prayers

accompanied by palo drumming. After the final tercio, the relatives left the

house crying and were joined by other mourners. The dead man’s widow fainted

when people started to dismantle the altar and open the windows and door.

The drummers, now outside, kept drumming until all the curtains, flowers, and

contents of the altar were removed from the house.

This extended nine- day funeral, as well as the Cabo de Año commemoration

one year after a death, and the Banko after four years, are occasions to express

the belief that life continues beyond death and are ceremonies necessary in

1 2 8 c H a P T e R 5

Dominican Vodou to prepare the dead to transcend worldly existence and reside

with the ancestors in a place that God (Bondye or Calunga) has prepared and

where their spirits can become mysteries.

A Tuesday in Najayo

The events that follow occurred in the vicinity of the village of Najayo, which

is located between Nigua and Palanque in the province of San Cristóbal, south

of the capital city Santo Domingo. The rural areas surrounding the city of San

Cristóbal— including Nigua, Najayo, Doña Ana, Santa Maria, Bobó, Sainagua, La

Cruz, Yaguate, and Samangola— were prime locations of sugar cane production in

the past, as well as home to maroon communities. The population today descends

in significant part from enslaved Africans who arrived during colonial times. The

history of Najayo, a small community in the municipality of Nigua, is linked to

the advent of sugar plantations and maroonage in the sixteenth century, and the

cultural practices of its residents reveal the richness of ethnic and racial blend-

ing in which the African component is particularly strong. My descriptions of the

Najayo area will portray the daily practice of Dominican Vodou.

Caña Andrés was a sugar plantation that survived until the nineteenth

century when slavery was abolished upon Haitian president Jean- Pierre Boy-

er’s unification of the island. After abolition it was abandoned by its owner,

and peasants appropriated the land to cultivate small holdings, or conucos.

Today, the physical layout still resembles the original plantation, with an ermita

(church), a cemetery, and the remains of the sugar mill. The plantation became

a site of Vodou, containing a calvario honoring Guede mysteries, the ermita

dedicated to Saint Anthony, and an enramada, or gathering place. Every Tues-

day, people travel here from many locations to worship Saint Anthony.

On a Tuesday in 2010 I journeyed through the village’s vicinity, starting

with Mira Cielo, one of the highest peaks surrounding the San Cristóbal valley. I

descended by foot to Caña Andrés in a gap between the hills and continued on

motorcycle along an unpaved road for about three miles, passing the Quintina

crossroads and Los Botaos, which means “the expelled,” The story goes that the

beauty of Najayo had captivated the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo so much

that he expropriated peasant land to build a large house on a hill above the

beach, relocating the inhabitants to another hill facing the beach— resulting in

the name for the new settlement.

At last I reached Najayo, a small community of fishermen facing the Carib-

bean Sea. Tuesday, a busy mystical day in Dominican Vodou,40 starts early in

the morning, when people from many different places arrive in Caña Andrés to

worship the Christian and Vodou deity Saint Anthony/Papá Legba. Later, after

two o’clock, people had the opportunity to visit a server of mysteries for consul-

tation about health problems or love issues, or to seek spiritual solace.

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 2 9

Throughout the south of the country, Tuesday is also the day people give

candies, bread and hot chocolate, or rice pudding to children as homage to

Saint Anthony, who is said to love children. On my journey I observed a truck

distributing candies to children walking to school and, later, a woman who gave

bread and hot chocolate to children returning home after school. It is believed

that the mystery Saint Anthony not only especially likes children but favors

adults who treat them well.

Oral tradition relates that, in the late nineteenth century, a vision of a

printed paper image of Saint Anthony appeared to an old woman while she

was bathing in a nearby creek. Since that time, an actual printed image of this

saint has been preserved in a glass showcase inside the ermita. The original

ermita was built of wood, but in the mid- twentieth century the Catholic Church

rebuilt the ermita as it appears today. Roman Catholic priests visited it to con-

duct masses once a month, and they allowed the congregants to perform their

own festivities with palos, salves, dancing, and food, especially at thanksgiving

rituals and on the annual saint’s day of June 13. People in the community recall

the priests even participated in these celebrations.

After Vatican II and the advent of liberation theology in the 1960s, however,

the Church changed this policy. Both of these new Catholic movements were

intolerant in general of attention being paid to saints, and new priests arrived in

Caña Andres who disapproved of the local people’s practices and now requested

that people abandon the rituals and celebrations of saints. But these attempts

at change, including the introduction of the Catholic Charismatic Movement,

did not work. People continued to worship Saint Anthony according to their

accustomed ancestral ways, and the result was that the priests abandoned the

ermita and never returned. Although people still consider the ermita to be a

Catholic Church, the symbolism inside and outside speaks of Vodou. The three

crosses in front, the enramada next to it, and the altars inside are clear signs of

Vodou practice.

During thanksgiving celebrations and the annual Saint’s Day, people gather

inside the ermita. Before entering, however, they stop at the three- cross calvario

outside the church. Here they pray to Saint Anthony and make the sign of the

cross over their faces three times. Upon entering the ermita, they follow the tra-

ditional practice of going to the main altar, lighting a candle and ringing a bell

several times, placing the candle on the altar, and, finally, expressing gratitude

or making a request in front of the image of Saint Anthony. Following worship in

the ermita, the drumming of palos signals a procession to the enramada. Here

people sing salves to the saint, dance to the accompaniment of the palos, and

may become possessed by mysteries. These long Tuesdays of Vodou rituals begin

early in the morning and continue until dark.

A glass showcase on the main altar in the ermita in Caña Andrés contains

the printed image of Saint Anthony. In front of it stands a long table holding

1 3 0 c H a P T e R 5

candles, a bell, a glass of water, a bottle of perfume, and flowers. Over this, affixed

to the rafters, is a small figurine of Jesus on the cross, with a semicircle of flowers

over it. The image of Saint Anthony is adorned with hundreds of tiny gold and sil-

ver hearts, hands, feet, legs, and other body parts symbolizing the limb or organ

Saint Anthony was beseeched to heal. These tiny sculptures are placed there by

devotees of Saint Anthony who believe in his power to perform miracles. Other

offerings brought here include bread, red wine, hot chocolate, arepas, candies,

and coffee, which worshipers later share with others in the ermita.

Every Saturday the glass showcase bearing the saint is taken by a differ-

ent family to perform a ritual for Saint Anthony in their home. The image is

carried in a procession by a group of Vodou adherents who walk several miles,

with drumming and singing. They bear flags of different colors, especially brown

to honor Saint Anthony/Papá Legba. I have also observed people visiting the

ermita dressed in brown clothing.

There are two altars in the ermita that, with the main altar, represent the

three levels of Vodou cosmology. The left altar, of ritual items placed on the

floor, symbolizes the ground mysteries of the Guede division. The central table

altar honors Saint James/Ogun Balenyo and the Virgin of Our Sorrows/Metré Silí,

whose images are placed behind a Christian cross. On the wall above the table

is an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, also a mystery in the Vodou pantheon,

with another image of Saint Anthony beside it.

Leaving the ermita at Caña Andrés, I continued my Tuesday journey. Along

the road, I encountered several solid- colored flags on long poles at the entrance

of houses and at crossroads. I learned that the flags indicate that a server of

the saint corresponding to the flag’s color lived there. When I asked about one

green flag, I was told this house was a point of the mystery Santa Marta, which

is represented by the snake, the only animal in the Vodou pantheon. During the

day I also observed red, blue, and yellow flags.

Throughout the day, I saw trios of crosses in front of houses where servers

of mysteries conducted consultations, as well as at crossroads. When I asked

one man in Najayo what the three crosses meant, he told me they signify fe,

esperanza y caridad (faith, hope, and charity), which other people in the south-

west also affirmed. The Christian cross was one of the early symbols appropri-

ated by enslaved Africans in the religion they created in the New World. The set

of three crosses, symbolizing Jesus crucified between two thieves on Calvary,

was incorporated into Vodou, assigning it a new meaning. According to Des-

mangles, the symbol of the cross in Dahomean mythology was fused with the

Christian cross to represent the crossroads of human destiny presided over by

Legba, the opener of the cosmic gate.41 It became one of the most important

symbols in Vodou.

Before reaching Los Botaos, I encountered the Cross of Quintina. Quintina

was a powerful server of mysteries well known for her healing powers. Local

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 3 1

residents named their community after her and placed a trio of crosses at the

crossroads where the road to Los Botaos intersects with a road to a small village.

I also passed three crosses in front of an abandoned house where an elderly

woman had died. She was a devotee of Saint Anthony, as well as a healer who

knew the properties of plants, herbs, and roots and how to use them as rem-

edies to cure numerous illnesses. Although the house had been abandoned for

fIguRe 5.7. People celebrating in the ermita in front of the Saint Anthony altar. Photograph by Milagros Ricourt (2012).

1 3 2 c H a P T e R 5

months, the woman’s relatives did not dare to replace it out of respect for her

healing powers and strong presence in the community.

In one calvario I encountered, the middle cross was the double cross- pieced

Spanish Cross of Caravaca (see fig. 5.8), popular during colonial times in Seville,

in Spain, where ships departed to the Americas. I attribute the presence of the

Caravaca cross in rural Hispaniola to the influence of the Ladinos, the enslaved

Africans who had spent time in Spain and learned about Christianity there.

Another set of crosses along the road had three names written on them: San

Elias, El Gran Poder de Dios, Santa Marta (see fig. 5.9). This calvario was used

as an altar for the Guede mysteries of death— Saint Elias, the cemetery Baron; El

Gran Poder de Dios (The Great Power of God), one of the most powerful myster-

ies; and Santa Marta, the snake and wife of Saint Elias. These crosses, I was told,

also represent the crosses found in cemeteries.

When I arrived in Los Botaos, I visited the house of a server of Santa Marta.

Several people were waiting in her enramada for consultations, as is customary

on Tuesday afternoons. The server was inside the altar room, which contained

an elaborate altar with images of Rada mysteries on top, a middle level with

other mysteries, and a wooden snake on the floor. To one side of the altar was

a cement bath tub, dedicated to the Petro mysteries, where the server bathed

clients. The server sat in a large chair in front of the altar, and the client sat

opposite her. She received each client by first ringing a bell and then holding

fIguRe 5.8. Calvario with the Cross of Caravaca. Photograph by Milagros Ricourt.

C R I O L L I s m O R e L I g I O s O 1 3 3

the client’s hands and saluting him or her, and asking the client’s name. Next

she lit a candle purchased by the client and asked what had brought the client

to her. After the client responded, she dropped the candle into a large glass of

water and began the consultation with the mysteries.

The Present, Past, and Future of Dominican Vodou

For more than five hundred years, people like Papo, Mamita, Elpidio, and the

residents of Najayo have known how to approach and to celebrate God. Their

creativity refashioned Christianity, as they designed their own ways of relating

to the divine. As Guérin Montilus argues, “African slaves came into the ‘New

World’ naked, but their minds were clothed and wrapped up with myths, ritu-

als, customs, traditions, cultures, and civilizations— in essence a worldview.”42

This worldview appropriated other worldviews, that of the indigenous inhabit-

ants of the island and that of the colonizers, to create, in a syncretic manner, a

“coherent social group, masters of their destiny and their world, organizing and

ordering their cosmos.”43 Embodied in a black body, Mamita’s folktales, dreams

of Indians, remedies, saints, and healing practices inform us about how cultural

production in Hispaniola drew many parts into a new whole. She stands as the

painfully delivered child, now an adult, who in the mountains, forests, and riv-

ers of the island resisted domination and refashioned African myths, rituals,

fIguRe 5.9. Calvario of the Guede mysteries. Photograph by Milagros Ricourt (2012).

1 3 4 c H a P T e R 5

and customs, accommodating them to the indigenous cosmos, and blending

them with the imposed Catholic saints, icons, and rituals.

The cultural contemporaneity of Dominican Vodou presents a major dif-

ficulty to Dominican social scientists searching for explanation. For most of

them, the “magico- religious” practices of this “popular religion” are unortho-

dox, incoherent, incongruent, ambivalent, chaotic, disorganized, and variable,

lacking dogma or a formal liturgy. But it is in ambivalence, chaos, and diver-

sity where the fascination resides. The mixtures and confluences of religions

and ethnic groups in Hispaniola happened differently in each of the country’s

regions, making for a heterogeneous religion today that fluidly changes prac-

tices, iconography, and deities from south to north, from east to west.

Guede Santa Marta’s possession of her servers and her frightening eroti-

cism in the province of San Cristóbal, the drumming at a funeral in Baní, the

first Tuesday of the month celebrating Papá Legba, the distribution of bread and

chocolate to children, the luas uplifting and providing solace to followers— all

speak of cultural contemporaneity, renewing the past while creating the new. It

is in the healing powers given to Mamita, the problem- solving powers of Elpi-

dio, the sounds of drums, the singing of salves, the way the dead are celebrated,

that we Dominicans as a nation and as individuals recreate the self and create

subjectivities.

1 3 5

6

Race, culture, and National Identity

The stories in this book expose the roots and historical pathways of the “offi- cial” and the subversive Dominican imaginaries. In archives, chronicles and

travel accounts, landscapes, artifacts, and past and contemporary social and

cultural practices, we have discovered traces of the survivors of the Middle Pas-

sage and the horrors of the new land, of the painfully delivered Creole child, and

of a continuous process of movement and blending upon an island canvas of

economic and political change.

Excavating the sources of the Dominican present in its past, we encoun-

tered a rich and undeniable African presence. Demographically it contributed,

in large proportion, to the ancestry of the Dominican population. When turn-

ing to religion, the evidence bears witness to African continuities across more

than five centuries. As the result of Hispaniola’s tangled historical and cultural

trajectories, moreover, religion is one of the strongest, if underacknowledged,

links uniting the island’s Dominicans and Haitians.

When looking at racial identity as it has been understood and experienced

on the island, history attests to the hybridity of Dominican DNA. Mulataje, as

well as its denial, has been evident at all levels of Dominican society since colo-

nial times. Antonio Sánchez Valverde, a prominent clergyman and intellectual

of the eighteenth century, and a mulatto, was a loyal defender of the Spanish

crown, yet he confronted discrimination from the colonial Catholic Church

hierarchy. In contrast, Ramón Matías Mella, also mulatto, was a co- founder of

La Trinitaria, the movement formed with white Juan Pablo Duarte and black

Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, that advocated independence and created the

Dominican Republic in 1844. The inclusive, liberal view of Los Trinitarios was

extinguished by a group of “burlesque” mulattos who eventually ceded the new

republic to “motherland” Spain. However, other mulattos had fought for abo-

lition of slavery as well as independence, and today a significant number of

1 3 6 c H a P T e R 6

Dominicans of all colors and social strata fight against racial discrimination

aimed at Haitians and black countrymen.

The Dominican nation remains divided between burlesque mulatto con-

tinuity and the search, rooted in the island’s subversive imaginary, for a new

national self- identity. Behind this fractured awareness, culture confronts all

Dominicans as a reminder of their diverse roots and complicated history. This

chapter seeks to probe how race and culture inform identity in the present, and

how all three— race, culture, identity— infuse the political life of the nation.

This quest takes us to into several distinct yet interconnected spaces inhab-

ited by today’s descendants of the painfully delivered child. As we have seen,

a critical pathway to these contemporary spaces began in the marginal space

secured by maroons. In this sense, notions of race were created outside of the

plantation and the traditional view of slavery, yet were strongly influenced by

the struggles for freedom by slaves. The first slave insurrection was registered

as early as 1503, and they continued to escalate through the sixteenth century,

with reverberations for centuries. Although slave insurrections and cimar-

ronaje encountered violent opposition from Spanish masters, maroon settle-

ments survived across the Dominican landscape until present times, becoming

rural communities. In Hispaniola’s maroon societies, the embryo of Domini-

can cultural dynamics— represented in religion, music, food, and language— was

implanted, a melding of African, Taino, and Spanish influences. Rather than

economic forces alone determining culture, it was, and is, struggles for freedom

that ignite the production of this hybrid culture. And rather than Haiti as its

source, this cultural production developed in a historical space that emerged

long before the French colony of Saint- Domingue.

Freedom continued to shape and influence culture. The struggles for eman-

cipation on the western side of the island and the creation of the Republic of

Haiti were further factors in the blending of ideas and culture between both

sides of the island. Continuing interaction over the past two centuries, and the

massive migration of Haitians to labor in modern Dominican sugar plantations

during the twentieth century, have reinforced long- entrenched cultural flow.

Contemporary “I”s

Is this cultural and racial blend acknowledged by Dominicans of the rural areas?

How do people of various skin colors identify according to their own cultural

understanding of this island history?

The rural area of San Cristóbal, with a strong African historical component,

was one site for my conversations. Daily life there is marked by deep African

sociocultural influences, but self- identification is catalyzed as well by the “offi-

cial” discourse that has long permeated textbooks and mass media. On a hot

summer afternoon, I invited a group of rural women, ranging in age from nine

R a c e , c u L T u R e , a N D N a T I o N a L I D e N T I T y 1 3 7

to eighty- five, to participate in my inquiry. Seated under a mango tree, thirteen

women joined in a conversation about racial identification. “I am prieta [black],”

a thirty- five- year- old woman answered, adding that her ancestry was African.

Her ten- year- old daughter also said, “I am black.” A woman of eighty- five gave

the same response: “I am black.” Three of the women said they were a mix of

black and white— “Soy una mezcla [I am mixed],” they each responded. The rest

identified as white. At this, the thirty- five- year- old woman and her daughter

laughed, telling them, “Ustedes son prietas, no se han visto en un espejo? [You are

black, haven’t you seen yourselves in a mirror?]” “You are javás,” the two added,

meaning they had light skin color but the facial features and hair of a black per-

son. In the same community, I met many more people identifying themselves as

blacks. One man told me, “Estas es una comunidad de prietos [This is a community

of black people].”

Rural communities in the Dominican Republic remain spaces where traces

of the island’s past are manifest in everyday life practices. The cultural knowl-

edge reproduced in these communities is often opaque or concealed, continu-

ing the underground and guarded aspects of Hispaniola’s historic maroon

communities. For example, the presence of Dominican Vodou religious prac-

tices is so deeply embedded within or exists surrounding Catholicism that it

can be difficult to detect. Concealment long served to protect adherents against

violent opposition to their religious practices, deemed outside the norms of

Roman Catholic orthodoxy.

The following ethnographic notes from Santa María, a rural community

adjacent to the city of San Cristóbal, illustrate my point. Santa María was men-

tioned in the 1846– 48 travel diary of David Dixon Porter as the site where, after

Dominican independence in 1844, several men refused to join the new repub-

lic’s army to fight against Haiti, presumably a demonstration of their solidar-

ity with those who had liberated them from slavery. In my conversations with

people in Santa María, I discovered a similar subversive spirit.

I sat in a grocery store across from the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy

Spirit where, each year at Corpus Cristi, thousands of people gather to venerate

the Holy Spirit with Catholic Masses, as well as with a procession of the commu-

nity’s cofradia and with palo drumming. I introduced myself to a local woman,

and as we sat on wooden chairs and shared a beer, I began to ask my questions.

How do you identify yourself racially? Where do the cofradias come from? From

Africa? Are people mounted by lua/mysteries during the Pentecost celebration?

First the woman told me that she was black. Then, in referring to the cofradia

and worship of the Holy Spirit, she said that the Catholic priest was “in charge

of everything inside the church.” She went on to explain that the priest does not

allow drumming inside the church but that after the Pentecost mass there was

a procession, accompanied by palo drumming, to the calvario at the Mandinga

crossroads, adding that the crossroads was called Mandinga because people

1 3 8 c H a P T e R 6

in that area say they are Mandingos. I knew that the Mandingo, Mandinga, or

Mandinka is a West African ethnic group. A significant proportion of enslaved

Africans transported to Hispaniola during the sixteenth century came from

Mandinka territory along the Gambia River.

We then walked into the church, where I took photographs of the large

altar with its image of the Holy Spirit represented as a dove and a smaller image

of Saint John the Baptist. As we walked out, a man and woman listening to our

conversation joined us. I asked why the priest does not permit palos inside

the church. The man who had joined us responded, “The priest does not want

people being mounted [by luas], and besides, he does not believe in that.” “In

what does he not believe?” I asked. “In what we believe,” the man told me. He

explained that “the palos were given to us by our ancestors so we could listen

to the voice of the Holy Spirit.” I heard another man express with pride that

the church was constructed by Trujillo because he wanted to win the sympathy

of people from Santa María. After the church was built, he said, Trujillo came

riding his horse and tried to enter into the church, but his horse halted as an

unnatural force stopped him. The man then added, “This saint [referring to the

Holy Spirit] does not allow assholes inside. He is almighty.”

I visited another rural community in the municipality of Las Matas de

Farfán in San Juan de la Maguana Province, also in the south. I was told to speak

with Mercedes, the woman in charge of the veladas, or festivities, for the Virgin

of Altagracia (or Alaila, a Dominican Vodou mystery). After introducing myself

to Mercedes, I asked her to show me her personal altar. She told me I had come

to the wrong house: she was a devoted Catholic and did not have any altar. I

tried to explain my research, but she insisted she did not know anything about

veladas and that she did not have an altar in her home.

Later I returned with a man from the community who knew and vouched

for me, and she then opened up. She showed me the most intricate and elabo-

rate Vodou altar I had ever seen, combining Catholic symbols such as the cross

and saints with colorful flags, a water pitcher with ribbons of many different

colors tied to the handle, a bell, tobacco, and the scented Florida water typical

of Dominican Vodou. This woman’s reluctance to reveal her true religious alle-

giance reflected Las Matas de Farfán’s violent past, when, in 1962, followers of

Oliborio were slaughtered a few kilometers away. Salves in her community still

recount when the Dove, or Holy Spirit, announced to Los Mellizos that bombs

were about to strike them.

When I asked Mercedes about her racial self- identification, she said she

was black, married to a Turk, and had white children. Her four adult children

were of medium to light skin color, and one had green eyes. When I asked them

about their racial identities, three had self- perceptions different from the ones

their mother had told me. The green- eyed daughter looked at her skin and said,

“Soy café con leche [coffee with milk], with green eyes.” Everybody laughed. One

R a c e , c u L T u R e , a N D N a T I o N a L I D e N T I T y 1 3 9

son identified as white and the other two also as “café con leche.” My observa-

tions in Las Matas de Farfán included several people with very dark skin and

blue or green eyes, or what they called “cat eyes,” meaning eye color that shifted

from green to light brown. I also saw people of color who had blond hair. Dur-

ing colonial times, Las Matas de Farfán was a destination for arrivals from the

Canary Islands, and in the decades prior to as well as during Trujillo’s regime,

for Turks and other European immigrants.

Turning to the urban sector, where the Dominican Republic has experi-

enced rapid growth since the 1960s, I spoke with several economically marginal

urban dwellers— rural migrants who came to the city on their own, or to join

relatives, in search of a better life. Similar to the burlesque mulatto power struc-

ture, people of different colors, ranging from very light to dark skinned, living

in extreme poverty in urban shanty towns most often identify as “white” or

“Indian.”

“White?” I almost blurted to a man driving an old motorcycle, a light-

skinned mulatto, who had told me he was white. “Yes, white,” he replied in

an assertive manner. “Indian?” I repeated after one black woman’s reply to my

question. “Yes, I am Indian,” she replied. “Indians were also dark skinned, and

then with the sun, we became darker.” Others who responded they were white

also mentioned the sun’s responsibility in darkening their skins. Denial of an

African ancestral component was also evident among urban residents in choices

in makeup and hair style.1

When I shared these interview results in a conversation with Jorge Güigni,

organizer of the San Cristóbal Carnival and a prominent cultural activist, he

explained that “skin color is intrinsically related to social mobility. People

embrace whiteness as a safeguard to distinguish themselves from the rest of the

people around them, as the only tool to be above, on the social ladder, the rest

of their neighbors. Wealth is in the hands of ‘white’ people, and opportunities

are available to those of light skin color. Look at the people working in banks or

in fancy malls: they are all light skinned. Identifying as whites, they distinguish

themselves from being Haitian.”

This argument about aspiration for upward social mobility resonates

with historical claims by rich mulattos wielding political power. They masked

as “white” to demonstrate their assumed superiority. The “official” narrative

of a Hispanic and Roman Catholic Dominican peoplehood has permeated all

social classes in the Dominican Republic, a testament to thorough, top- down

socialization.

The psychological terrain of racial self- identification in the Dominican

Republic, however, does not exhibit, as many argue, a complete mass depersoni-

fication. Rather, many “I’s” have evolved.2 The very same Dominican community

that houses elite mulatto denial, and desperate confusion or evasion among seg-

ments of the urban poor, also contains the rural frankness and challenges we

1 4 0 c H a P T e R 6

have just seen, as well as other strands of racial identification entangled within

the contemporary public sphere of meanings. If ideological imposition of the

“official” discourse is still part of the mix, so is the acknowledged ethnic blending

of groups who migrated in the twentieth century: people from St. Kitts and Nevis

who came to work in the emerging sugar plantations; Turks, Lebanese, Syrians,

and Jews who settled during the Trujillo years; Chinese and Japanese; and Hai-

tians. And added to this, in complex interchange, is the emergent concept “I am

Dominican” as a space of negotiation between the binary of black/white.

I approached a young man in the research room of the Archivo General de

la Nación and asked him about his racial self- identification. “I am Dominican,”

he answered. “Dominican?” I responded. “Yes, Dominican— white, black, and

everything in the middle.” I later discovered that he was the person who had

stood up for a delivery man of Haitian ancestry thrown out of an exclusive resi-

dential building in the summer of 2011 and falsely accused of spreading cholera.

(This occurred after the disease had appeared in Haiti following the January

2010 earthquake.)

Several students at a private university also self- identified racially as

“Dominican.” When I asked one of them, “Isn’t Dominican too vague?” he

responded, “If I’m not white, I’m black; and if I’m not black, I’m in denial.” Most

of these youth energetically defended this “Dominican” identity, telling me they

were neither “black” nor “white,” but “Dominican.” Their responses helped me

grasp more firmly the different understandings of race between one geographi-

cal region and another. In the United States, for example, with its historic “one

drop rule,” one is either white, or, no matter one’s appearance, black. In the

Dominican Republic, as “Dominican” you can admit to being both.

Similarly, Dominican American novelist Junot Díaz wrote in his volume of

short stories, This Is How You Lose Her, about a woman who insulted one of his

characters by saying, “Go back to Africa,” to which the character replied, “Only

half of me would be dancing in Africa.”3 Both those Dominicans I encountered

self- identifying racially as “Dominican,” and also Diaz’s character, acknowledge

their nation’s hybrid racial composition, or what I called in chapter 3 the “cre-

olization of race.” This “I am Dominican” self- identification certainly represents

rejection of the “official” discourse, but more emphatically it signals the inven-

tion of an alternative identity that is not white or black and represents a now-

occupied liminal space between the predicaments of racial blending.

During my interviews I also found an emphatic “I” that identified racial

self- identity, and daily life practices, with blackness and Africa. I encountered

this essentialist “I” in many locations of the Dominican Republic, and especially

among middle- class students and political activists, both in rural and urban

locations. For example, while walking along Salomé Ureña Street in what is

known as the “colonial” section of the capital city Santo Domingo, I entered

a small Rastafarian restaurant. I met a young Dominican man there wearing

R a c e , c u L T u R e , a N D N a T I o N a L I D e N T I T y 1 4 1

dreadlocks; he told me he was black, identified publicly as black, and was proud

of his African roots. He spoke with pride of the early twentieth- century black

leader Marcus Garvey, born in Jamaica, and stated emphatically that he did not

identify with the “official” Dominican idea of whiteness. Across the street was

a bar whose owner, another young Dominican wearing dreadlocks, also vigor-

ously affirmed his African origins. Both men were light- skinned mulattos.

Another young Dominican to whom I asked, “How do you identify racially—

white, Indian, or black?” responded: “We have been wrongly taught to be white.

But look at us: we are all black, and everything we do comes from Africa— music,

food, even the way we walk.” Over the course of my research, I encountered still

other Dominicans, primarily in southern rural areas, who emphatically identi-

fied themselves as blacks.

Black essentialism is also evident in organizations. For example, in the

early 1990s the Movimiento de Mujeres Negras, the Movement of Black Women,

started a dialogue to create an agenda for the betterment of black women in

the country. The black movement extended to other groups, male and female,

urban and rural. In my observations of these groups, they tended to separate

themselves from Dominican society overall, resulting in an isolated constitu-

ency with little relationship to the rest of the national public.

In the Dominican diaspora, I encountered Dominicans comfortable with

their skin color and cultural background. Diaspora locations, however, are full

of complexity in terms of racial identification. Many have argued that Domini-

cans become aware of their negritude when they confront racism in the United

States. Yet it is not as though people thought they were white and then woke up

one morning feeling black.

There are significant numbers of diaspora Dominicans who never expe-

rience racism directly. Their jobs, daily life interaction, social activities, and

church affiliations are within a community of immigrants, with very little

contact with mainstream society. It is first- generation immigrants, however,

who become exposed to racialization of “Latinos” in U.S. mass media and to

TV shows, news, and soap operas on Spanish- language channels that portray a

white Latino/an ideal image. To this Arlene Davila argues that US mass media

create a homogenous idea of Latinos in the United States, eliminating the racial,

ethnic, and cultural diversity of the population.4 Other Dominicans, who enter

mainstream US society more directly, may encounter different experiences in

terms of racial identification. As Puerto Ricans did in the past, Dominicans may

anglicize their names to fit in; for example, I met a few people who changed

their names from Ramon to Raymond, or Andres to Andrew. At the same time I

also encountered young people in the second and third generation who identi-

fied as “Afro- Dominican.”

One young woman told me that she grew up believing black was ugly, to

the point that she and her mother went to the beauty parlor together to have

1 4 2 c H a P T e R 6

their hair straightened. When she went to college, she joined a black sorority

where she learned that “black is beautiful,” and from then on she began wearing

dreadlocks. Her identity became “Afro- Dominican”: “Because Dominicans are

constitutionally white, I added Africa,” she said. In contrast, most of my Domini-

can students at Lehman College in the City University of New York maintain that

they have not had any problem with regard to their identity because they never

thought of themselves as white. As novelist Junot Díaz explains, however, this

situation can be quite complicated.

Inside my family I did not have a very sophisticated lens with which to

view my racial identity. Some of my family members avoided discussions

of race altogether, others used Dominican racial terms which seemed

to me either confusing or flat- out useless, and still others acknowledge

that my family was of African descent but only in passing, never as a

sustained identification. Fortunately for me I grew up in one of the best

places in the world to learn about blackness— I grew up in the U.S. It’s

a great place to learn about being ethnic as well, to learn about white

supremacy, the dark energy against which all of our various identities

must contend. The U.S. not only let me see blackness which my D.R.

world never permitted, it also allowed me to see WHITENESS which was

even more invisible in the D.R. . . .

I grew up in N.J. (New Jersey) surrounded by many different racial

and ethnic groups. My best childhood friend was Egyptian. I grew up in

close contact with Chinese and Japanese and Korean Americans. I grew

up in intimate contact with the African American community and with

other Latino groups and these relationships and contacts gave me so

much. Together they allowed me to home in on what it meant to be me

and who I really was as a racialized immigrant subject. I was not like my

older sister who was phenotypically “black” nor was I like some of my

family members who could pass for white. I was a mulatto who didn’t

look mulatto, a member of the African diaspora with black blood on both

sides of my family who was often confused for every group but African.

Growing up in and around an African American community in N.J.

really helped me to understand my African- ness, but so did my experi-

ence with other Caribbean groups. My own understanding of why I was a

member of the African diaspora came from all these contacts. Dominican

ideas on blackness mixed with Cuban ideas on blackness which mixed

with Puerto Rican which mixed with African American which mixed with

Jamaican which mixed with Haitian which mixed with the kids in my

town who were biracial etc.5

The exploration of these dynamics on the island has opened dialogue

around cultural and identity struggles between the Dominican Republic and

R a c e , c u L T u R e , a N D N a T I o N a L I D e N T I T y 1 4 3

other Caribbean nations, including Haiti. Like people from Haiti, Martinique,

Trinidad, Jamaica, Cuba, and other Caribbean nations, Dominicans are engaged

with understanding the historical processes of contact and mixing between

Africans and Europeans that have shaped them. Their sociocultural dynamics

each have unique patterns of development, yet they are historically, culturally,

and socially related. They are all countries shaped by interaction between Africa

and Europe, with cultures developed through a blending of diverse origins and

submission to socioeconomic conditions generated by unequal local and global

power relations.

Politics, Academia, and Merengue

In the mid- 1960s the “official” Dominican narrative of Hispanidad began to be

openly contested. Within sectors of the left, academia, advocacy and cultural

organizations, and popular culture, an agenda of recovering and celebrating

the African component of Dominican national culture started to acquire pub-

lic prominence. The preamble to this public affirmation of blackness was the

emergence of new political leadership during the period of protracted civil con-

flict following Trujillo’s assassination in 1961 and the US invasion in 1965. The

two key leaders of this popular movement were Maximiliano Gómez, known as

“El Moreno,” the young, dark- skinned president of the leftist Movimiento Popu-

lar Dominicano (Dominican Popular Movement/MPD); and José Francisco Peña

Gómez, a Dominican of Haitian ancestry, the leader of the center- left Partido

Revolucionario Dominicano (Dominican Revolutionary Party/PRD). Both politi-

cal parties were created in exile during the Trujillo era. The PRD was created on

January 21, 1939, in Havana, Cuba. The MPD was also created in Havana, in 1956.

In 1970 these two political parties had the alliance of most working- class street

vendors (chiriperos), the drivers of motoconchos (the motorcycle taxis), unem-

ployed women, and men in the urban centers, and their constituency was the

masses of poor, black, and mulatto women and men in the urban and rural

areas of the Dominican Republic.

El Moreno’s ideas were important to a new definition of the nation because

he identified the Dominican Republic as part of the Caribbean rather than of

Spanish- speaking Latin America. “The Caribbean” embodied blackness, while

“Latin America,” as used by the elite, oriented the country away from Jamaica,

or Barbados, or Haiti, or any other nation where the majority of the population

is black. Moreover, El Moreno advocated reliance on the Dominican Republic’s

own resources to construct a better society, thus distancing himself from the

elite who sought to rely primarily on aid and assistance from western nations.

El Moreno also boldly unmasked the hypocritical stance of the Dominican left

that, in terms of the “official” national imaginary, often shared the views of the

Dominican oligarchy.

1 4 4 c H a P T e R 6

El Moreno joined the MPD in 1963; he immediately became a leader, and

later president, strongly opposing Joaquín Balaguer and US intervention. He was

apparently assassinated by the CIA while in exile in 1971, at the age of twenty-

eight. He can be considered the first anticolonial and postcolonial thinker of the

post- Trujillo period, proposing to liberate the country from US dependency. His

viewpoint included not only resistance to the economic, political, and cultural

imperialism of the United States, as well as overcoming the history and residue

of Spanish domination, but opposition to foreign impositions from communist

Russia or China. He proposed a Caribbeanization of Marxism that recognized

the cultural, political, and economic specificities of the region, and particularly

of the Dominican Republic.

El Moreno invited fellow Dominicans on the left and the right, including

from the armed forces, to create a Creole paradigm for fighting both US imperi-

alism and their own oligarchy, represented by Joaquín Balaguer. This paradigm

would result from investigating the realities of the Dominican Republic in the

context of the Caribbean and not rigid application of the teachings of interna-

tional figures such as Mao or Lenin. In a short essay, “El colonialismo ideológico

y sus consecuencias prácticas y organizativas [Ideological Colonialism and Its

Practical and Organizational Consequences],” he criticized failures of the Trini-

tarios in 1844, the Restauradores in 1865, and Juan Bosch in 1963 and argued

that Dominican liberals had failed to consolidate power because they relied on

foreign doctrines from the classical democracies. This essay was published as a

pamphlet in the late 1960s. (I have a copy in my files that I acquired when I was

a student at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo in the 1980s.)

In a context of political confusion during the later 1960s and early 1970s

following the US invasion and continuing political repression under Balaguer, El

Moreno’s position was too advanced for his time; his ideas were never expanded,

and to some degree were discredited, by the Dominican left.6

Dominican academia also joined the quest for cultural and historical iden-

tity. In 1969 Franklin Franco Pichardo’s Los negros, los mulatos y la nación domini-

cana effectively destroyed the myth of an essentially white Dominican populace

and nation, as Juan Jimenez Grullón points out in his preface to the ninth edi-

tion.7 In 1973 a Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo colloquium was the

first Dominican academic gathering devoted to “the African presence” in the

Caribbean and Dominican Republic. This colloquium was followed by a further

stream of academic production elucidating the African roots of Dominican soci-

ety and lifeways.

In 1974 Hugo Tolentino Dipp’s Raza e historia en Santo Domingo: Los orígenes

del prejuicio racial en América analyzed the origins of racial prejudice in the Amer-

icas and, in particular, the Dominican Republic; signaling the new outlook from

Dominican academia, there was an acceptance of slavery, Spanish greed, and

racism.8 In 1976 Rubén Silié published Economía, esclavitud y población; in the

R a c e , c u L T u R e , a N D N a T I o N a L I D e N T I T y 1 4 5

introduction he explained that his motivation was to rewrite Dominican history

to bring to life the particularities of the slavery regime and to counter the obscu-

rantism of Trujillo’s legacy.9 The work of Fradique Lizardo in Cultura Africana en

Santo Domingo, published in 1979, for the first time named the African ethnic

groups present in the island’s Spanish colony and identified their impact on

Dominican culture. Other academics impugning “official” hispanophilia during

the 1980s included, among others, Pedro Mir and US scholar Martha Ellen Davis,

a pioneer in the study of African continuities in Dominican culture.10

Within this harvest of intellectual work, the figure of historian Carlos Este-

ban Deive stands out. As Deive put it, the 1974 UASD colloquium “spread like

wildfire, especially among most dyed- in- the- wood and orthodox Marxists.”11

Utilizing the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Deive told the story of the

black impact on Dominican culture in Vodú y magia en Santo Domingo (1975); of

slavery in the Spanish colony across the centuries in La esclavitud del negro en

Santo Domingo (1980); of the maroon village of Neiba in Los cimarrones del maniel

de Neiba (1985); and of maroons more broadly in Los guerrilleros negros (1989).

Although Deive’s work was groundbreaking in a country that had silenced dis-

cussion of Africa for more than a century since Independence in 1844, his work

is marred by prejudicial language— referring to enslaved persons as “lusty,” or

“denaturalized,” or labeling Dominican Vodou “a magical manifestation.” Deive

uses the same discriminatory language contained in the Spanish colonial letters

to the crown. For example, Deive calls Africans sinister, villains, perverts, blacks

of perverse feelings.12 However, his work remains of lasting importance for see-

ing Dominican society as truly hybrid rather than only distantly linked to Africa.

Challenge to the “official” imaginary also came from civil society. In the late

1970s, in his magazine Callejón con Salida, the journalist and university profes-

sor Narciso González advanced the goal of recovering and exploring Dominican

cultural heritage in order to withstand penetration by US cultural values. In

response to his advocacy, some Dominican social and sport clubs began to cel-

ebrate October 12 as Dominican Identity Day rather than the commemoration of

Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. In a further step he advocated, the month

of October became October Mulatto, or October Cimarrón.13

Social clubs began to sponsor popular carnivals and festivals, including the

San Cristóbal Carnival with characters portraying maroons; the Festival de Ata-

bales, featuring palo performances in Sainagua in San Cristóbal Province; and

the Festival Palo Sur in Barahona. As mentioned earlier, a coterie of feminists

formed the group Dominican Black Women. And NGOs such as the Movimiento

de Campesinos Independientes (Independent Peasant Movement), Confeder-

ación Naciónal de Mujeres Campesinas (Confederation of Peasant Women), and

the Centro de Estudios de la Educacion hosted exhibitions celebrating black-

ness, promoted publications by academics writing about black issues, and hired

staff members to learn more about local culture in rural areas of the country. In

1 4 6 c H a P T e R 6

1991 a photography exhibition calendar titled “The Face of Africa in the Domini-

can Carnival” circulated widely.

After the assassination of Trujillo in 1961, Dominican popular music not

only became characterized by brighter rhythms but also began to reflect the

island’s blackness. Merengue now expressed the sense of political release in the

air. It moved out of the ballrooms of the elite to be appropriated by the masses,

and “merengue texts were emancipated sexually as well as politically; the sug-

gestive double meanings traditional in merengue cibaeno resurfaced.” A new

sound evolved, what Paul Austerlitz in Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican

Identity identifies as “happier merengue.”14 It eliminated the paseo, increased

the importance of the jaleo, and greatly increased tempos.

Merengue singers and groups began to allude directly to black themes

and the island’s black population. The musician Cuco Valoy in “No me empuje

[Don’t Push Me]” (1975) sang about an African American visiting the Dominican

Republic who is mistaken for a black Dominican and then brutalized by police

because his color and appearance signify suspicious behavior to them. The

Johnny Ventura y su Combo Show, and Felix del Rosario y los Magos del Ritmo,

exponents of “happier merengue,” incorporated US influences in their stage

costumes and choreography. Although Austerlitz argues that Johnny Ventura’s

persona recalled Elvis Presley,15 I disagree. As a young fan at the time, to me and

my peers this merenguero’s outfits resembled the costumes of black American

Motown groups who dressed in jumpsuits and tight pants with bell bottoms. To

us, the choreography of merengue groups also imitated the movements of Afri-

can American performers such as James Brown. The Afro hair styles exhibited by

several merengue singers and musicians were a revealing badge of black pride,

as many Dominican men ordinarily wore their hair closely cropped, concealing

tightly curled “bad” hair.16

The cover from one of Johnny Ventura’s albums depicts him as a strong black

man rooted in the Dominican soil. The lyrics of some of his songs also reflected

political and cultural themes and movements. For example, one song honored

those massacred at Palma Sola in 1962. The lyric stated: “El pueblo de Palma Sola

no estaba solo na, encontraron 10 mil hombres pa Liborio nada má [The people

of Palma Sola were not alone; they found ten thousand (who were) completely

for Oliborio].” He also composed a song after the death of Florinda Soriano, or

Mamá Tingó, the black leader assassinated by Balaguer’s forces in order to seize

her land in 1974. The lyric says: “Han matado a Mamá Tingó defendiendo su

propiedad [They have killed Mamá Tingó defending her own property].”

José Francisco Peña Gómez: The Modern Disrupter of Hispanidad

A mass of thousands of people chants “Peña Gómez Presidente,” descending

from Duarte Avenue in the capital city. People pushing carts, carts pushed

R a c e , c u L T u R e , a N D N a T I o N a L I D e N T I T y 1 4 7

by mules, dark- skinned women dressed poorly, dark- skinned men with shirts

stained by plantain spittle, young men riding old bicycles, a car without doors,

and at the front of the throng is Peña Gómez, leading a massive rally during the

presidential campaign of 1994.

The presidential candidacy of José Francisco Peña Gómez in 1990 con-

fronted a racialized atmosphere by no means of its own choosing. There were

three major candidates: Peña Gómez for the PRD (Partido Revolucionario

Dominicano); Juan Bosch for the PLD (Partido de la Liberación Dominicana);

and Joaquín Balaguer for the PRCS (Partido Reformista Social Cristiano). Peña

Gómez was everything the elite Dominican intelligentsia abhorred. Born in

1937, he was the son of Haitian parents living in the border zone near Dajabón

in Valderde Province. Trujillo’s order that year to massacre Haitians on the bor-

der amounted to a death sentence, and in fear of the horror they faced, Peña

Gómez’s parents fled to Haiti, leaving him to be adopted by a Dominican fam-

ily. From these lowly, marginal roots, the young man managed to complete his

education, attend law school, attain a postgraduate degree at the Sorbonne in

Paris, and forge a political career as radio broadcaster, supporter of Juan Bosch,

president of the Socialist International and, from the 1960s onward, principal

leader of the PRD opposition to Trujillo’s successor Balaguer.

A black Dominican of Haitian origin from the center left was not widely

expected to be a candidate for the presidency of the country. In 1990, however,

this pillar of the PRD was, for the first time, slated for the presidential post. Since

1973, when Bosch left the PRD to create the PLD, the PRD had been fragmented;

so now, in the pursuit of unity, the one leader to whom all factions would listen—

Peña Gómez— became the party’s presidential candidate. Still weak, the PRD took

third place behind the winner Balaguer (then eighty- four years old) and runner-

up Bosch (eighty- one) in an election almost universally judged fraudulent.

The 1994 election was another story. Once more the PRD presidential

candidate was the dark- skinned Peña Gómez, now with a stronger and uni-

fied party. And again he ran against Balaguer and Bosch, both light- skinned,

in what became a vicious and racist campaign. Balaguer’s electoral parades

were led by a man in a gorilla suit with a “Peña Gómez” name tag and people

chanting, “Ese negro no es de aqui que se lo lleven a Haiti [This negro isn’t from

here, so take him to Haiti],” or “En el bembe de Peña Gómez aterrizan los avio-

nes [Airplanes can land on Peña Gómez’s broad lips].” Vinicio Vincho Castillo,

an ultraconservative and fierce enemy of the PRD, and a Peña Gómez hater,

produced a televised video of a supposed Peña Gómez practicing Vodou, an

effort to discredit and portray him as Haitian. Balaguer financed publication

of “The Revenge of Dessalines,” a tract depicting the candidacy of Peña Gómez

as a Haitian plot to reconquer the Dominican side of the island. The New York

Times reported that “Balaguer (is) playing on national fears of being cultur-

ally submerged by Haitian immigrants while urging his mostly brown- skinned

1 4 8 c H a P T e R 6

compatriots to identify with their Spanish rather than African heritage.”17 On

Election Day a rumor circulated that Roman Catholic Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús

López Rodríguez was haranguing military commands throughout the country

to prevent the election of Peña Gómez.

In spite of such tactics, Peña Gómez may actually have won the election.

More than 40 percent of Dominicans most probably voted for him, and the

official Junta Central Electoral vote count, giving the win to Balaguer, was not

accepted as legitimate by international observers, who noted irregularities in

voter rolls. These “official” results showed Balaguer with 1,275,460 votes (43.3

percent); Peña Gómez with 1,253,179 votes (41.1 percent); and Bosch with 395,653

(13.3 percent).

Thirty- two thousand votes marked the difference between Balaguer and

Peña Gómez. The PRD immediately charged the Junta Central Electoral and

Balaguer’s party with electoral fraud, but a verification committee did not

accept the PRD charges. The country was now on the verge of civic confronta-

tion, and US president Bill Clinton, worried that a Dominican electoral crisis

could compound Haitian political problems following the 1991 military coup

there, sent State Department emissaries to negotiate a compromise between

the Dominican government and the opposition.18

The United States did not support Peña Gómez: for decades he had been

considered unfriendly to the United States and vice versa. On April 24, 1965,

his voice had sounded on the radio, urging the masses to oppose the de facto

government installed after the 1963 coup and to return Juan Bosch to power.

With the United States again taking sides against the PRD, and with Peña

Gómez’s pacific attitude opposed to violent confrontation, negotiations began.

The PRD and the PRSC agreed to a solution to the crisis, the so- called Pacto por

la Democracia, the Pact for Democracy. The pact ratified Balaguer as winner but

with the provision that he would govern for only two years, with another general

election to be held in 1996. The pact also prohibited his reelection, called for a

new election law and revision of the constitution, and approved a two- round

election if needed, with a “50 percent plus one” absolute majority required. Polit-

ical observers opined that the two- round system and absolute majority vote were

elements of a strategy on the part of Balaguer. He understood that the PRD had a

fixed vote floor of 40 percent but that even if more people voted in their favor, the

PRD was unlikely to obtain an absolute majority vote on its own. Balaguer would

support the PLD’s Leonel Fernández, believing that this younger and mulatto can-

didate would have the best chance to defeat black/Haitian Peña Gómez.

Three major political parties competed in 1996: the PRD with Peña Gómez,

the PLD with Fernández, and the PRSC with Alvarez Bogart. Balaguer did not

support his own party’s candidate and called upon the PRSC membership to

vote for Fernández. The first election round put Peña Gómez in first place with

R a c e , c u L T u R e , a N D N a T I o N a L I D e N T I T y 1 4 9

41.1 percent, Fernández at 38.9 percent, and Bogart at 15.0 percent. Since no one

obtained an absolute majority, a second election round followed.

The second, runoff round was even more fierce and vicious, and once again

party politics accentuated by racism shadowed the campaign. Cartoons mock-

ing Peña Gómez’s blackness appeared, and both the gorilla and the racist chant-

ing returned, even in New York City during a PLD parade. Balaguer once more

asked his party membership to vote for Leonel Fernández— implicitly, to choose

the mulatto/Dominican over the black/Haitian. With his light skin color and

facial features and hair attesting African ancestry, Fernández became the bridge

to save the nation from the black menace.

Leonel Fernández prevailed, becoming president with 51.2 percent of the vote.

Marked by race, the 1996 election divided the country, yet some 48.8 percent of

Dominicans of voting age in 1996 did not care if the candidate they had voted for,

Peña Gómez, was black or of Haitian ancestry. Peña- Gómez was to die of pancre-

atic cancer two years later, before the parliamentary election of 1998, but in that

election 51.4 percent of Dominicans voted for the now- deceased Peña Gómez’s

PRD party, which won 81 of 149 seats in the House and 24 of 30 seats in the Senate.

Today, as one young Dominican told me in Santo Domingo in 2011, José Francisco

Peña Gómez remains a symbol of hope for building a better country.

Challenging Anti- Haitianism

Despite shifting concepts of identity on the island and in the diaspora, and

despite work by Dominican intellectuals to construct a national paradigm

including Africa, the political impacts of El Moreno and Peña Gómez, and devel-

opments in civil society and popular culture, the “official” imaginary of a white,

Catholic nation persists, and with it continuing anti- Haitianism. To ponder this

contradiction, I assign my students at Lehman College to read Silvio Torres-

Saillant’s essay “The Tribulations of Blackness: Stages in Dominican Racial Iden-

tity,”19 which encapsulates the counterview, and write their reactions. Most are

second- generation Dominicans born in New York. Here are some excerpts from

their responses.

“I had a misconception of Haiti, but I also had one about myself and the

history of the island.”

“Instead of enlightening Dominicans with truth they were fed lies about

their ethnicity.”

“I realize how Dominicans deny their African roots.”

“It would be better to see more unity between the two nations because

they share so much in common in regards to their African roots.”

1 5 0 c H a P T e R 6

“Dominicans are in the dark.”

“They should take pride in saying that they are mixed various races

including Africa.”

“I also find interesting how badly Haitians are viewed in the Dominican

Republic when they are so similar.”

“It will be good to find out exactly what sets them apart.”

These opinions contrast sharply with anti- Haitian posts on Dominican

Internet blogs and websites. For example, in response to a paid advertisement

in Dominican newspapers and magazines (also posted on Facebook) that advo-

cated constructing a wall along the Dominican/Haitian border, one Domini-

can wrote: “El pueblo debe construirla. Olvidemos a los corruptos del gobierno, esto es

cuestión de honor, de dignidad y de patriotismo. Viva la patria de Duarte! [We should

build the wall. Forget about government corruption, this is a matter of honor,

dignity, and patriotism. Long live the fatherland of Duarte!]” And in response

to a website post asserting that the president of Haiti favored unification of the

island’s two countries, another Dominican wrote, “Hace falta alguien que tenga los

timbales de Trujillo para acabar con este relajo de los haitianos [We need somebody

with the balls of Trujillo to end this Haitian joke].”

A post on the website Acento.com.do in 2013, “Otra vez Haiti nos Humilla

[Once Again Haiti Humiliates Us],” reported that Haitian officials refused to

purchase chickens and eggs from the Dominican Republic after the H1a virus

was detected there. Here are two Dominican posts responding to the story:

La isla tiene dos Naciones totalmente diferente una de la otra en su len-

gua, en su cultura, en sus costumbres y rasgos étnicos, somos mayor-

mente mestizos en los que predomina la cultura hispánica, no somos

racistas ni pretendemos creer en la supremacía de lo africano sobre lo

español como pregona la intelectualidad haitiana, por suerte para nues-

tra nación hay muchos dominicanos que estamos defendiendo nuestra

nacionalidad y no permitiremos bajo ninguna circunstancia que nadie

nos imponga una fusión que es imposible e inaceptable para nosotros

los dominicanos.

[This island has two nations totally different in terms of language, cul-

ture, manners, and ethnic profile. We are mostly mestizos, in which the

Hispanic culture predominates. We are not racists, and neither do we

pretend to believe in the superiority of what is African over what is Span-

ish, as Haitian intellectuals do. Luckily for our country there are many

Dominicans defending our national culture. Under no circumstances will

we allow anybody to impose reunification, something that is impossible

and unacceptable to us as Dominicans.]

R a c e , c u L T u R e , a N D N a T I o N a L I D e N T I T y 1 5 1

No nos compran los pollos, pero nosotros estamos importando: miseria,

enfermedad, asesinos, ladrones, analfabetismo, mas deficiencias geneti-

cas: . . . Los genes de los haitianos no conocen la civilización.

[They don’t buy our chickens, but we import misery, illnesses, assassins,

thieves, illiterates, and genetic deficiencies: . . . Haitian are uncivilized

because of their genes].

These anti- Haitian comments recall pronouncements that culminated in the

slaughter and mass displacements of 1937: Haiti poses a national security prob-

lem; Haitians must be prevented from infiltrating Dominican territory; Haiti

wants to unify the island; only someone like Trujillo has “the balls” to deal with

Haitians. The voices of Trujillo’s ideologues Arturo Peña Batlle and Joaquín

Balaguer still resound in the new millennium, that unification of the island is

unacceptable because the two peoples are very different: Dominicans are His-

panic, Catholic, civilized; Haitians are biologically inferior.

On September 23, 2013, the Dominican Republic’s highest tribunal, the

Constitutional Court, issued a decision that stripped 200,000 Dominicans of

Haitian descent of their Dominican citizenship. The court ruled that under the

2010 constitution the Dominican- born children of persons in the country ille-

gally were not citizens by birth; this “illegal” designation applied primarily to

the thousands of Haitian migrant workers over the past eight decades whom the

tribunal determined had been “in transit” and therefore not legal residents. The

Dominican birth certificates of their children, and their children’s descendants,

born since 1929 were annulled by the decision.

The tribunal ruling ignited a firestorm throughout the country and inter-

nationally. On one hand, the patriotas consumed with anti- Haitian xenopho-

bia saluted it. Organizations supporting it emerged, displaying the Dominican

flag and singing the national anthem. Public speakers warned against Haitian

invaders. The archbishop of Santo Domingo denounced critics of the tribunal

as inauthentic Dominicans. In public forums people opposed to the ruling were

accused of treason, and within a month of the decision a group named Red

Naciónal por la Defensa de la Soberania (National Network for the Defense of

Sovereignty) issued a death sentence on traitors who opposed the court’s pro-

nouncement. Some supporters even lamented that Trujillo was not still alive to

kill all Haitians.

Similar anti- Haitian feelings emerged in the diaspora. Individuals carry-

ing huge Dominican flags, and screaming about Haiti’s intent to invade the

Dominican Republic, tried to disrupt several events in New York City protest-

ing the tribunal decision. Assertions were made that Dominicans who did not

defend their nation from the imminent Haitian menace were seditious and har-

bored anti- Dominican values. Such “anti- Dominican Republic” traitors, it was

claimed, were paid off by international institutions to discredit the country.

1 5 2 c H a P T e R 6

On the other hand, the tribunal triggered an epiphany among many Domini-

cans of all social backgrounds about the Haitian issue and the “official” Domini-

can imaginary. Many Dominican lawyers, economists, historians, politicians,

writers, artists, organizations, and members of the general public opposed the

ruling as xenophobic, even “civil genocide.” Opinion articles in newspapers and

on websites branded the ruling cruel, racist, and in violation of human rights. Dis-

sent was expressed in appeals to international organizations, the Dominican gov-

ernment, and protests at Dominican consulates in New York, Madrid, and Paris.

More than two dozen nongovernmental organizations in the Domini-

can Republic spoke out publically in opposition to the tribunal ruling. They

included Afro Alianza Dominicana, Arbol Maravilloso, Articulación Campesina,

Asociación Afrodominicana, Centro Bonó, Centro Cultural Dominico Haitiano,

Centro de Formación y Acción Social y Agraria, Colectivo de Mujeres y Salud,

Comisión Naciónal de Derechos Humanos, Confederación Naciónal de Mujeres

Campesinas, Consejo Nacional de Unidad, Diversidad Dominicana, Dominica-

nos por Derecho, Foro Feminista y Núcleo de Apoyo a la Mujer, Grupo Saragua,

Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico- Haitiana, Movimiento Socio Cultural para

los Trabajadores Haitianos, Observatorio Migrantes del Caribe, Participación

Ciudadana, Reconocido, Red Afro, Sindical, Solidaridad Fronteriza, Solidaridad

por la Nacionalidad, and Soy Dominicano Como Tú.

Even the Catholic Church encountered dissidents within. For many years

the Jesuit order had defended the human rights of Haitians in the Dominican

Republic through their organization, Centro Bonó, which now was at the fore-

front of protests to overturn the tribunal ruling. Dominican Cardinal Nicolás de

Jesús López Rodriguez publically attacked Jesuit priest Mario Serrano, president

of Centro Bonó, for his outspokenness against the decision.

María Isabel Soldevila, editor- in- chief of Listín Diario, the Dominican

Republic’s leading newspaper, and a critic of the tribunal ruling, wrote about

the dangers that extreme patriotism posed to democracy.20 The Dominican

American novelists Julia Alvarez and Junot Díaz, joined by Haitian American

novelist Edwidge Denticat, wrote in the New York Times that “the highest court

in the country has taken a huge step backward. . . . Such appalling racism is a

continuation of a history of constant abuse, including the infamous Dominican

massacre, under the dictator Rafael Trujillo, of an estimated 20,000 Haitians in

five days in October 1937. . . . What will happen now to these 200,000 people—

stateless with no other country to go to? It is an instantly created underclass.”21

The prominent Dominican journalist Juan Bolívar Díaz posted an anti-

tribunal piece titled “Se impone la solidaridad (Solidarity Is Imposed)” on

Acento.com.do. In the discussion blog following it, one reader commented,

“Esto es un plan xenofobico de la oligarquia [This is a xenophobic plan of the oli-

garchy]”; others wrote, “Pobre patria. Podemos amar a la patria sin ser inicuos [Poor

country. We can love the country without endorsing this wickedness],” and,

R a c e , c u L T u R e , a N D N a T I o N a L I D e N T I T y 1 5 3

“Esta ley esta destinada a ser revertida tan pronto la conozca la Corte Interamericana

de Derechos Humanos [This law is destined to be reversed as soon as the Inter-

American Court on Human Rights reviews it].”

The Constitutional Tribunal ruling revealed long- contained racial tensions,

exposed a fraying “official” imaginary, and opened a conversation to rethink the

nation. The ruling spotlighted latent and long- silenced national differences in

how race is perceived and experienced. In spite of “official” masking, violence,

and propaganda emanating since 1844 from the Dominican oligarchy and the

Catholic Church, the essentialist white and Hispanic national identity had failed

to displace alternative subversive understandings. Blackness as a factor in the

definition of the Dominican nation was reinvigorated by the tribunal’s attempt

to strip Dominicans of Haitian ancestry of their citizenship.

Rethinking Dominicaness

Masses of blacks and mulattos chanting and claiming black Peña Gómez to be

their president; El Moreno’s idea of caribbeanizing Marxism; intellectual chal-

lenges to the discourse of African denial; cult of the snake and the sound of

drumming; youngsters with dreadlocks citing Marcus Garvey; the singing

of salves in a funeral extending the racial debate in the Dominican Republic

beyond the confines of the racial myth of the ruling class. The experience of

these populations are not anymore denied or insulted; the descendants of the

painfully delivered child are insistently present turning their opacity into light.

Young Dominicans are re- researching their country’s history, learning

about slavery in the Spanish colony, and discovering the links between racial

and cultural hybridity, between Africans, Tainos, and Spaniards. National pub-

lic events exhume and excoriate racism.22 Popular discussion and newspaper

articles attest to, and accept, the fact that Dominicans have long been mixing

with Haitians, even pointing to the many Dominican family surnames of Hai-

tian origin.23

Now more than ever the existence of contrasting and entangled national

imaginaries is open for all to ponder. An important social and political seg-

ment of the Dominican populace has turned away from the corrosive concept

of national Hispanidad. Under the slogan “We are all Dominicans,” racial inclu-

sivity is at the vanguard in claiming a different and racially hybrid nation. The

voices of the Dominican people demand respect for human rights, envisioning a

nation free of hate and with a genuine desire of embracing Haitians and Domin-

icans as sharing one island, as two countries in sisterhood walking beyond the

divide of extreme patriotism.

Dominican culture, however, has still to reconcile its historically disparate

sources and trajectories. Balancing the viewpoints of Dominican Vodou adher-

ents with the orthodoxy of Roman Catholic clergy or the worldviews of urban

1 5 4 c H a P T e R 6

intellectuals is no easier than respecting both the knowledge embedded in the

minds of Hispaniola’s people over centuries and the talents and insights of a

new generation. Cultural difference is always present, still playing its role of

imagining the nation in contradictory ways.

Women dance possessed by snakes in a rural community in San Cristóbal

Province. People conceal Vodou altars in San Juan de la Maguana. Dominicans

in the south celebrate the Holy Spirit with the singing of salves and the drum-

ming of palos; they mourn their dead with rituals evolved from African practices

and Latin prayers; they heal the afflicted using plants revealed to them by mys-

teries whispering in the ears of their human mounts. They are fearless in their

faith, despite scorn from the Catholic Church.

Papo, Mamita, Elpidio, worshipers at Caña Andrés, my grandmother, and

countless Dominicans remain at the margins of the nation, in ongoing cultural

resistance to the “official” establishment and narrative. Cimarronaje remains

concealed, yet at the same time it is revealed across the island every day. It con-

tinues to be central to the creation of difference, still moving the nation.

N o T e S

1. INTRoDucTIoN

1. Examinations of Dominican identity as backward and racist, and of the otherization of Haitians by Dominicans, are provided by scholars such as David Howard, Coloring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic (Oxford: Lynne Rienner, 2001); Benjamin H. Bailey, Language, Race, Negotiation of Identity: A Study of Dominican Ameri- cans (New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2002); Michelle Wucker, Why the Cock Fights: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999); Alan Cambeira, Quisqueya la Bella: The Dominican Republic in Historical and Cultural Perspective (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997); Eugenio Matibag, Haitian- Dominican Coun- terpoint: Nation, Race, and State in Hispaniola (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Dawn F. Stinchcomb, The Development of Literary Blackness in the Dominican Republic (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004); and Ernesto Sagás, Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000). Silvio Torres Saillant, “Blackness and Meaning in Studying Hispaniola: Review Essay,” Small Axe 10, no. 1 (February 2006): 180– 188, energetically criticizes these authors.

2. Silvio Torres- Saillant, “The Tribulations of Blackness: Stages in Dominican Racial Iden- tity,” Latin American Perspectives 25, no. 3 (1998): 135.

3. Enrique Patin Veloz, “El Vodú y sus misterios,” Revista Folklore 2 (1975): 141– 161. 4. Martha Ellen Davis, “A Survey of Afro Dominican Palos Sacred Drum Music,” Actes

du Séminaire d’ethnomusicologie caribéenne, Sainte- Anne, Guadalupe (7– 11 July, 2003), http://svr1.cg971.fr/lameca/dossiers/ethnomusicologie/pages/davis2_eng_2003.htm. See also Morton Marks and Isidro Bobadilla, “Descriptive Notes,” Afro- Dominican Music from San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic (Folkways Records FE 4285, 1983).

5. Martha Ellen Davis, Voces del purgatorio, Estudio de la salve daminicana (Santo Domingo: Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 1981).

6. My book in collaboration with Ruby Danta, Hispanas de Queens: Latino Panethnicity in a New York City Neighborhood (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003); and Milagros Ricourt, Dominicans in New York City: Power from the Margins (New York: Routledge, 2002).

7. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections in the Origins and Spread of Nation- alism (New York: Verso, 1991); Edward Said, Beginnings, Intent, Methods (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 467; and Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vin- tage Books, 1979), 348.

8. Joaquín Balaguer, in La Isla al revés, 11th ed. (Santa Domingo: Editora Corripio, 2002), 63. 9. Ramón Marrero Aristy, La República Dominicana: Orígenes y destino del pueblo cris-

tiano más antiguo de América (Santo Domingo: Editora Caribe, 1958).

1 5 5

1 5 6 N o T e S T o P a g e S 6 – 1 2

10. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 5.

11. Roger Sanjek, “The Enduring Inequalities of Race,” in Race, ed. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 1– 17.

12. Carlos Andújar Persinal, La presencia negra en Santo Domingo: Un enfoque etnohistorico (Santo Domingo: Impresora/Editora Búho, 1997); trans. Rosa María Andújar as The African Presence in Santo Domingo (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012); Celsa Albert Batista, Mujer y esclavitud en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Ediciones INDAASEL, 2003); Franklin J. Franco Pichardo, Los negros, los mulattos y la nación domini- cana; Blas Jiménez, Caribbean Americans Upon Awakening, trans. Antonio D. Tillis (Lon- don: Mango 2010); Fradique Lizardo, Cultura africana en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Sociedad Industrial Dominicana, 1979); Dagoberto Tejeda Ortiz, San Juan Bautista y la Sarandunga de Baní (Santo Domingo: Ediciones Indefolk, 2010); Hugo Tolentino Dipp, Raza e historia: Los orígenes del prejuicio racial en América (Santo Domingo: Fundación Cul- tural Dominicana, 1992); Rubén Silié, Economía, esclavitud y población (Santo Domingo: Editora de la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, 2009).

13. Ginetta Candelario, Black behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Torres- Saillant, “Tribulation of Blackness.”

14. I collected discussions posted in several online Dominican newspapers. People’s reac- tions to articles posted in these newspapers are a rich source for sensing sentiments both anti- Haitian and non- anti- Haitian.

15. Pedro L. San Miguel, The Imagined Island: History, Identity, and Utopia in Hispaniola, trans. Jane Ramirez (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 9– 10.

16. Charles C. Tansill, The United States and Santo Domingo, 1798– 1873: A Chapter in Carib- bean Diplomacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938); Candelario, Black behind the Ears, 36– 82; Torres- Saillant, “Tribulation of Blackness”; and Silvio Torres- Saillant, Introduction to Dominican Blackness (New York: Dominican Studies Institute, City University of New York, 2010).

17. Doris Sommer’s “Un circulo de deseo: Los romances nacionales en América Latina,” Araucaria 8, no. 16 (December 2006): 3– 22.

18. See also Candelario, Black behind the Ears, 58– 60, 80– 81. 19. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press,

1967), 17– 18. 20. See Federico García Godoy, El derrumbe (Santo Domingo: Editora Búho, 2000); José

Ramón López, “La alimentación y las razas,” in Escritos dispersos, ed. Andrés Blanco (Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación, 2005); Francisco Eugenio Moscoso Puello, Cartas a Evelina (1941; repr., Santo Domingo: Editora Cosmos, 1974).

21. Roberto Cassá, “El racismo en la ideología de la clase dominante dominicana,” Revista Ciencia 3, no. 1 (1976): 76.

22. Américo Lugo, Edad media de la Isla Española: Historia de Santo Domingo depués de 1556 hasta 1608 (Santo Domingo: Librería Dominicana, 1952), 165– 169.

23. See Marvin Harris’s discussion of race relations in Brazil and “the myth of the friendly master” in Patterns of Race in the Americas (New York: Norton, 1964).

24. Francine Winddance Twine, Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997)

25. Silié, Economía, Esclavitud y Población, 107– 108. 26. Médéric Louis Elie Moreau de Saint- Méry, A Topographical and Political Description of

the Spanish Part of Saint- Domingue, trans. William Cobbet (Philadelphia: Printed and sold by author, 1798).

N o T e S T o P a g e S 1 3 – 1 9 1 5 7

27. See Candelario, Black behind the Ears, 19; Torres- Saillant, “Tribulations of Blackness,” 139; Torres- Saillant, Introduction to Dominican Blackness, 45.

28. Arturo Peña Batlle, Origenes del estado haitiano (1954; repr., Santo Domingo: Ediciones Librería La Trinitaria, 2004), 68.

29. Bernardo Vega, Trujillo y Haiti, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1995).

30. Antonio S. Pedreira, Insularismo: Ensayos de interpretación puertorriqueña (San Juan, PR: Plaza Mayor, 2002).

31. See Juan Pablo Duarte, Ideario de Duarte, compiled by Vertilio Alfau Durán (Santo Domingo: Editora Búho, 2013).

32. The work of Pedro Francisco Bonó is collected in Papeles de Pedro Francisco Bonó para la historia de las ideas políticas de Santo Domingo, ed. Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi (Santo Domingo: Academia Dominicana de la Historia, Editora Caribe, 1964).

33. Howard, Coloring the Nation, 1. 34. Wucker, Why the Cocks Fight, 16. 35. Torres- Saillant, “Blackness and Meaning,” 181. 36. Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York Pen-

guin, 1986); Herbert S. Klein and Ben Vinson III, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Laird W. Bergad, The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 2007); and Rebecca Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860– 1899 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). To view a different approach, see Stephan Palmié and Francisco A. Scarano, eds., The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

37. Michaeline Crichlow and Patricia Northover, Globalization and the Post- Creole Imagina- tion: Notes on Fleeing the Plantation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).

38. Edouard Glissant’s “The Open Boat” is one of the chapters of his book Poetics of Rela- tion, trans. Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).

39. Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 111. 40. Antonio Benítez- Rojo, The Repeating Island (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992),

5. 41. Edouard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays, trans. J. Michael Dash (Charlot-

tesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989), 20. 42. Michel- Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston:

Beacon Press, 1995), 2. 43. Michel- Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: State against Nation: The Origins and Legacies of Duvalier-

ism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 26. 44. There are many instances where diplomats and envoys from the United States, France,

and Britain provided vivid descriptions of Haitians versus Dominicans. For examples, see Britain’s 1826– 1827 consul Charles Mackenzie’s Notes on Haiti (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830; reproduced by Google Books, 2013); and US Navy Commander David Dixon Porter’s comments to President James K. Polk in his Hand- written Diary, 1846, Duke University, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

45. James Ferguson, Dominican Republic: Beyond the Lighthouse (London: Latin American Bureau, 1992), 90.

46. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972); Said, Orien- talism, 21– 24.

47. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Lon- don: Zed Books, 1999), 2.

1 5 8 N o T e S T o P a g e S 2 0 – 2 8

48. Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (New York: McPherson, 1953), 54. 49. Michael Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study of Terror and Healing

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 5. 50. Martha Ellen Davis, La otra ciencia: El vodú dominicano como religión y medicina popular

(Santo Domingo: Editora Universitaria, Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo- UASD, 1987) is a pioneer in the anthropological study of Dominican Vodou practices and music. Although other authors attempt to explain these phenomena, they fail to utilize a nuanced approach to “other” religions— e.g., Carlos Esteban Deive, Vodú y magia en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 1975); Abe- lardo Jiménez Lambertus, “Aspectos históricos y psicológicos del culto de los luases en República Dominicana,” Boletin del Museo del Hombre Dominicano 15 (1980): 171– 182; Manuel Mariano Miniño, “¿Es el Vodú una religión?” ser. of 8 articles, Listín Diario (1983); Patín Veloz, “El Vodú y sus misterios.”

2. BoRDeR aT THe cRoSSRoaDS

1. Matibag, Haitian- Dominican Counterpoint; Steven Gregory, The Devil Behind the Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Eduard Paulino, Dividing Hispaniola: The Dominican Republic’s Border Cam- paign Against Haiti, 1930– 1961. Pitt Latin American Series (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016).

2. Manuel Arturo Peña Batlle, La Isla Tortuga, Plaza de armas, refugio y seminario de los enemigos de España en las Indias, 3rd ed. (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 1988), 22.

3. Richard Hartshorne, “Geographic and Political Boundaries in Upper Silesia,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 23 (1933): 195– 228.

4. See Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy (New York: HarperCollins, 1990).

5. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 25.

6. David Newman, “Borders and Bordering: Toward an Interdisciplinary Dialogue,” Euro- pean Journal of Social Theory 9, no. 2 (2006): 171– 186.

7. See Milagros Ricourt, “Price- Mars et Son Antithèse Dominicaine,” Ainsi parla l’Oncle: Suivi de revisiter l’Oncle and Collection Essai, Jean Price- Mars (Montréal: Mémoire d’encrier, coll. Essai Français, 2009), 357– 360.

8. David Chidester argues this in Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 20.

9. Joaquín Pacecho, Francisco de Cárdenas, and Luis Torres de Mendoza, eds., Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las anti-

guas posesiones españolas de América y Oceanía, vol. 1(Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel B. Quirós, 1864); Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdes, Historia general y natural de las Indias, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1959), 1:98– 100; Cipri- ano de Utrera, Polémica de Enriquillo (Santo Domingo: Academia Dominicana de la Historia, 1973) 197; “Ordenanzas contra esclavos cimarrones de 5 de enero de 1522,” Patronato 295, no. 104, and Patronatos 172 and 174, Archivo General de Indias (here- after AGI).

10. General François M. Kerversau’s contemporary account, “Rapport sur la partie espag- nole de Saint- Domingue depuis de la cession á la Republique Française par le Traité de Bale, jusqu’a son invasion par Toussaint Louverture, Presenté au le Ministre de la Marine,” Boletin General del Archivo de la Nación 2– 6 (1939): 210– 214.

N o T e S T o P a g e S 2 8 – 3 5 1 5 9

11. Emilio Cordero Michel, “¿En que fecha se abolió por primera vez la esclavitud en Santo Domingo?” in La Ruta del Esclavo, comp. Comisión Nacional de la Ruta del Esclavo (Santo Domingo: Editora Búho, 2006), 111– 120.

12. L. Ferrand, commander in chief of Santo Domingo, Decree of January 6, 1805; Franco Pichardo, Historia del pueblo dominicano, 156– 158.

13. Mackenzie, Notes on Haiti, 213. 14. Jean Price- Mars, La República de Haiti y la República Dominicana: Diversos aspectos de

un problema histórico, geográfico y etnologico (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 2000), 1:113– 136.

15. Frank Moya Pons, The Dominican Republic: A National History (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1998), 123.

16. Frank Moya Pons, La Dominación Haitiana 1822– 1844. 2nd ed. (Santiago: Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, 1972), 34.

17. The letters sent to Bolívar and other officials of la Gran Colombia are collected in Emilio Rodríquez Demorizi, Santo Domingo y La Gran Colombia: Bolivar y Nuñez de Cáce- res (Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1971).

18. José Gabriel García, Compendio de la historia de Santo Domingo, 5th ed. (1893; Santo Domingo: Editora de Santo Domingo, 1979), 2:28– 30; Moya Pons, La Dominación Haitiana; Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, Invasiones Haitianas de 1801, 1805, y 1822 (Santo Domingo: Editora Caribe, 1955). The Demorizi collection is an archival testament to the elite mentality concerning the brutality of Haitians against Dominicans, yet at the same time it is an invaluable compendium of original documentation.

19. See Price- Mars, La República de Haiti y La República Dominicana, 2:750. 20. Ibid., 2:771. 21. Franklin J. Franco Pichardo, Historia del pueblo dominicano (Santo Domingo: Sociedad

Editorial Dominicana, 1993), 522– 523. 22. Vega, Trujillo y Haiti; and José Israel Cuello H., Documentos del conflicto dominico- haitiano

de 1937 (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 1985); Ernesto Sagás, “A Case of Mistaken Iden- tity: Antihaitianismo in Dominican Culture,” Latinoamericanist 29 (1993): 1– 5; Rich- ard L. Turits, Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); and Wucker, Why the Cocks Fight; Matibag, Haitian- Dominican Counterpoint, 143.

23. See Wucker, Why the Cocks Fight; Alan Cambeira, Quisqueya La Bella: The Dominican Republic in Historical and Cultural Perspective (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997); David Howard, Coloring the Nation.

24. Richard L. Turits, “A World Destroyed, a Nation Imposed: The 1937 Haitian Massa- cre in the Dominican Republic,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 3 (2002): 589– 635.

25. Ibid., 596. 26. See Vega, Trujillo y Haiti, 1:173. 27. Ibid., 1:241. 28. Balaguer, La Isla al revés, 77– 78. 29. See Turits, Foundations of Despotism, 151. 30. Allan Wells, Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa (Durham, NC: Duke

University Press, 2009), and Marion A. Kaplan, Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosúa (New York: Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2008).

31. Balaguer, La Isla al revés, 91. 32. Vega, Trujillo y Haiti, 318– 320, documents the alliances between Trujillo, the Spanish

Falange, and German fascism.

1 6 0 N o T e S T o P a g e S 3 6 – 4 7

33. Turits, “A World Destroyed, A Nation Imposed,”: 596. 34. Vega, Trujillo y Haiti, 1:323. 35. Ibid., 1:339– 340. 36. Freddy Prestol Castillo, El Masacre se pasa a pie (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 2002);

Jacques Stephen Alexis, General Son, My Brother (1955; repr., Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999); Edwige Danticat, The Farming of Bones (New York: SoHo Press, 1998).

37. Eric Paul Roorda, “Genocide Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy, the Trujillo Regime, and the Haitian Massacre of 1937,” Diplomatic History 2, no. 3 (1996): 301– 319; Torres- Saillant, Introduction to Dominican Blackness, 29.

38. Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 196– 217.

39. Torres- Saillant, “Tribulations of Blackness,” 139. 40. United Nations, “UN Experts on Racism and Minority Issues Call for Steps to Combat

Reality of Racial Discrimination in the Dominican Republic” (Geneva: United Nations Office, 2007).

41. Ginger Thompson, “Immigrant Laborers from Haiti Are Paid with Abuses in the Dominican Republic,” New York Times, November 20, 2005; Edwige Danticat and Junot Díaz, “The Dominican Republic’s War on Haitian Workers,” New York Times, November 20, 1999.

42. Inter- American Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS), April 15, 2013. hrbrief.org/2013/04/inter- american court determines- that- dominican- republic- use- excessive- force- against- haitian- migrants. Accessed April 17, 2014.

43. Greg Constantine, “Stateless: A Human Rights Crisis,” March 23, 2013, Pulitzer Center. pulitzercenter.org/reporting/dominican- republic- haitians- stateless- legal- documents - citizenship- human- rights- crisis. Accessed April 17, 2014.

44. Jose Israel Cuello, Documentos del conflicto dominico- haitiano. 45. Silvio Torres- Saillant, Caribbean Poetics: Towards an Aesthetic of West Indian Literature.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Torres- Saillant, “Tribulations of Black- ness”; Torres- Saillant, Introduction to Dominican Blackness.

46. Rosaldo, Culture and Truth, 198.

3. THe cReoLIzaTIoN of Race

1. Andújar, African Presence in Santo Domingo. 2. Candelario, Black behind the Ears, 85. 3. In George Robert Coulthard, Race and Colour in Caribbean Literature (London: Oxford

University Press, 1962), 38. 4. Deive, Vodú y magia en Santo Domingo; Carlos Esteban Deive, Los cimarrones del Maniel

de Neiba: Historia y etnografia (Santo Domingo: Banco Central de la República Domini- cana, 1985); Carlos Esteban Deive, Los guerrilleros negros: Esclavos fugitivos y cimarrones en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1989).

5. Moreau de Saint- Méry, A Topographical and Political Description. 6. Lugo, Edad media de la Isla Española, 256. 7. Juan Bosch, Composición social dominicana (Santo Domingo: Publicaciones Ahora,

1970), 95. 8. Walter Benjamin, cited by Rolph Tiedmann, “Dialectics at a Standstill,” in Walter Ben-

jamin, The Arcade Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 929.

N o T e S T o P a g e S 4 8 – 5 2 1 6 1

9. Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” Neplanta 1, no. 3 (2000): 533– 580.

10. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 10. 11. The story of this unnamed African woman was told by Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi,

Relaciones históricas de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Editora Montalvo, 1942), 227; see also Cipriano de Utrera, Dilucidaciones históricas (Santo Domingo: Editorial Dios y Patria, 1929), 1:233.

12. Jane G. Landers, “Introduction,” Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives in Colonial Latin Amer- ica, ed. Jane G. Landers and Barry M. Robinson (Albuquerque: University of New Mex- ico Press, 2006), 1– 4. Also see Alfonso Franco Silva, Sevilla y su tierra a fines de la edad media (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 1979), 132– 146.

13. Roberto Cassá, Los Tainos de la Española, 3rd ed. (Santo Domingo: Editora Búho, 1990); Samuel M. Wilson, Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990).

14. The letter is included in Pacheco et al., Colección de documentos, 1:43; Rolando Mellafe, La esclavitud hispanomericana (Argentina: Editorial Endeba, 1964), 18. Also see Lynne Guiltar, “Boiling It Down: Slavery in the First Commercial Sugarcane Ingenios in the Americas (Hispaniola, 1530– 45),” in Landers and Robinson, Slaves, Subjects and Subver- sives, 39– 82.

15. Frank Moya Pons, Historia colonial de Santo Domingo (Santiago: Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, 1977), 68, maintains there were 600,000 Tainos at the arrival of Columbus; Franco Pichardo, Historia del pueblo dominicano, 80. Also see Reinaldo Funes Monzote, From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), and Sven Lovén and Anto- nio Curet, Origins of the Tainan Culture, West Indies (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010).

16. See Pacheco et al., Colección de documentos, vol. 1. 17. Letter from the Spanish crown to Governor Nicolás de Ovando, September 16, 1501, in

ibid., 1:23. 18. This collection of six volumes contains José Antonio Saco, Historia de la esclavitud de la

raza africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en especial en los paises Américo- Hispanos (1838; repr., New York: General Books, 2013).

19. Letter from the Spanish crown to Governor Nicolás de Ovando, September 16, 1501, in Pacheco et al., Colección de documentos, vol. 1.

20. See Bergad, Comparative Histories of Slavery, 2. 21. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas,

1959), 1:174. 22. Bartolomé de Las Casas, History of the Indies (London: Harper and Row, 1971), 18. 23. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 1:230. 24. Ibid., 1:231. 25. In Pacheco et al., Colección de documentos inéditos, Cédula Real, August 18, 1518, 1:49. 26. De Las Casas, History of the Indies, 129; Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural,

4:chap. 8. 27. Pacheco et al., Colección de documentos inéditos, vol. 1, Letter to the King, November 5,

1515; and Silié, Economia, esclavitud y población, 28. 28. Cipriano de Utrera, “Un memorial a Antonio Sánchez Valverde,” in Antonio Sánchez

Valverde, Idea del valor de la isla Española (Santo Domingo: Editora Montalvo, 1947), 57, referring to Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 1050, AGI. See also Silié, Economia, esclavitud y población, 30.

1 6 2 N o T e S T o P a g e S 5 2 – 5 8

29. Silié, Economia, esclavitud y población, 32–33. 30. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 2:122; Joaquín Marino Incháustegui

Cabral, Reales cédulas y correspondencia de gobernadores de Santo Domingo: De la regencia del Cardenal Cisneros en adelante (Madrid: Colección histórico- documental Trujillana, 1958), 1:212, Informe al Consejo de Indias de Alonso de Castro, March 24, 1542. Castro reported that there were 1,200 “vecinos,” or Spanish colonists, who utilized the labor of 20,000 to 30,000 slaves.

31. Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor, 172. 32. Inchaustegui, Reales cédulas, 2:358, Grajeda to the king, Santo Domingo, May 27, 1548,

AGI; Fernández Cuenca to the king, April 15, 1578, AGI; Audiencia al Rey, May 12, 1578; Audiencia de Santo Domingo, 51, AGI.

33. Moya Pons, Historia colonial; Andújar Persinal, La presencia negra en Santo Domingo; de Las Casas, History of the Indies, 129; and Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 4:8; Saco, Historia de la esclavidad, 2:50.

34. Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor. 35. Demorizi, Relaciones históricas, 161– 184. Manuel Arturo Peña Batlle, La Isla de la Tortuga,

Plaza de armas, refugio y seminario de los enemigos de España en las Indias, 3rd ed. (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 1988).

36. According to Moya Pons, Dominican Republic, 45– 46: “Contraband began to be viewed as more than just a violation of Spanish trade. It meant the penetration of religious ideas and political loyalties alien to the Spanish crown and people, especially those of Protestant England and Holland.”

37. Inchaustegui, Cédulas reales, 2:353. 38. Ibid., 1:67– 68; Letter from Alonso de Suazo to the king, Santo Domingo, January 27,

1518, AGI; Ordinances against maroon slaves, January 6, 1522, Patronato 295, no. 104, AGI.

39. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 1:132– 137. 40. Cipriano de Utrera, Historia militar, 1:223– 224. 41. Letter from López de Cerrato to the king, September 12, 1544, Audiencia de Santo

Domingo, 868, 1844, AGI. 42. Census of Governor Antonio de Osorio of October 1606, in Américo Lugo Edad media

de la isla Española: Historia de Santo Domingo después de 1556 hasta 1608 (Santo Domingo: Librería Dominicana, 1952), 145– 148.

43. Rebecca Scott, “Explaining Abolition: Contradiction, Adaptation, and Challenge in Cuban Slavery Society, 1860– 1886,” in Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish- Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Frank Moya Pons, and Stanley L. Engerman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 25.

44. Cipriano de Utrera, “Antonio Sánchez Valverde,” 27. 45. Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor, 136. 46. Antonio Garcia- Baquero González, Cádiz y el Atlántico 1717– 1778 (Seville: Consejo Supe-

rior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1976), 1:351– 352; Amadeo Julián, “Negros de mala entrada: El contrabando de esclavos en la Colonia Española de Santo Domingo en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII,” La Ruta del Esclavo, 25.

47. The South Sea Company was granted a monopoly to supply slaves to Spain’s American colonies as a part of a treaty during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701– 1714).

48. Letter from the Governor of Hispaniola to the king, September 1, 1741, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, 1009, 1741, AGI.

49. Report of the Spanish Colony Comptroller from 1754 to 1760, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 1069- A, ramo 1, files 5r– 5v, 1760, AGI.

N o T e S T o P a g e S 5 8 – 6 5 1 6 3

50. Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor, 141. 51. Letter from the president of Audiencia de Santo Domingo to the king, October 25,

1745, 265, 1745, AGI; Report about the capture of a ship with 136 blacks conducted by corsair Francisco Cierto and patented by the governor of Santo Domingo, February 29, 1764, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, 1071, 1764, AGI; Report of the comptroller, May 20, 1765, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, 1071, AGI.

52. Report of the comptroller from 1754 to 1760, 1069- A, ramo 2, files 316v, 1069- A, ramo 3, file 481v, 1069- A, ramo 4, files 653r– 653v, 1760, AGI; Report of the comptroller from 1754 to 1777, 1069- A y B, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, 1047, 1048, 1049, 1050, and 1051, AGI.

53. Cipriano de Utrera, Noticias históricas de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 1978), 5:235; Letter from Governor José Solano y Bote to Julián de Arriaga, February 24, 1773, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 983, AGI; Report of the colony comptroller, December 9, 1773, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 983, AGI.

54. “Libro de indulto de negros de mala entrada del 16 de diciembre de 1776,” Ultramar, libro 764, fols. 3r– 3v, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid.

55. “Libro de registro de poseedores de negros de mala entrada de la banda norte,” Ultra- mar, libro 683, fol. 1r, 1776, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid.

56. On the provenance of Africans transported to Hispaniola, see Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Paul E. Lovejoy, “Identifying Enslaved Africans in the African Diaspora,” in Identity in the Shadow of Slavery, 2nd ed., ed. Paul E. Lovejoy (London: Continuum, 2009), 1– 29, and Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 3rd ed. (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400– 1680, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

57. Regions in the north and northwest, such as Santiago, Puerto Plata, Montecristi, and Dajabón, were also important centers of production.

58. Felix Reyes, Descripción histórica de las antiguas haciendas, estancias y hatos que durante la era colonial Española, existieron en el Partido de los Ingenios de Nigua, hoy San Cristóbal (Santo Domingo: Editora Montalvo, 1951).

59. Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, Cesión de Santo Domingo a Francia: Correspondencia de Godoy, Garcia, Roume, Hedouville, Lovertoure, Rigaud, and otros, 1795– 1802 (Santo Domingo: Impresora Dominicana, 1958), 138.

60. Franklin J. Franco Pichardo, La población dominicana: Razas, clases, mestizaje y migracio- nes (Santo Domingo: Editora Universitaria, 2012), 192.

61. Reyes, Descripción histórica, 115. 62. David Dixon Porter, “Diary Manuscript Santo Domingo, 1846– 1848,” (Durham, NC:

Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, n.d.), 54– 55. 63. Manuel Otilio Pérez Pérez, La impronta indeleble de Tomás Bobadilla uno de los fundadores

de la patria (Santo Domingo: Editorial Santuario, 2011), 131– 134. 64. According to the Osorio Census in Lugo, Edad Media, 145– 148. 65. Archivo Real de Higüey, Archivo Real de El Seibo, and Archivo Real de Bayaguana in

Santo Domingo, Archivo General de la Nación. 66. Inchaustegui, Reales cédulas, Cedula Real of April 29, 1:1549. 67. Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor, 412. 68. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 4:50. 69. Franco Pichardo, La población dominicana, 69. 70. Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1992).

1 6 4 N o T e S T o P a g e S 6 7 – 7 8

71. Cipriano de Utrera, “Antonio Sánchez Valverde,” 8– 39; Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, “Un memorial a Sánchez Valverde,” Revista Clio organo de la Academia Dominicana de la Historia 25, no. 109 (January– March 1957): 118– 130.

72. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto (Madison, WI: Cricket House Books, 2003), 5.

73. Tansill, United States and Santo Domingo, 1798– 1873, contains information of all diplo- matic reports during the end of the eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

74. Porter, “Diary Manuscript.” 75. Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cam-

bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004; Frank Moya Pons, Manual de historia dominicana (Santiago: Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, 1992), 161.

76. Trouillot, Haiti, State against Nation, 38. 77. Torres- Saillant, Introduction to Dominican Blackness (2010), 54.

4. CImaRRONes: THe SeeDS of SuBveRSIoN

1. Deive, Los guerrilleros negros; Manuel A. Garcia Arévalo, “El maniel de Leta,” in Cimar- rón, ed. Manuel A. García Arévalo (Santo Domingo: Fundación Garcia Arévalo, 1986), 31– 85; Carlos Larrazabal Blanco, Los negros y la esclavitud en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Librería La Trinitaria, 1998); Patin Veloz, “El Vodú y sus misterios.”

2. Richard Price, “Introduction,” in Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, 3rd ed., ed. Richard Price (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996), 1– 30.

3. Ibid. On more recent scholarship, see Jane Landers, “Cimarrón Ethnicity and Cultural Adaptation in the Spanish Domains of the Circum- Caribbean, 1503– 1763,” in Identity in the Shadow of Slavery, ed. Paul E. Lovejoy (London: Continuum, 2000), 30– 54.

4. William Walton, Present State of the Spanish Colonies including a Particular Report of His- paniola (London: Longman, Hurst, Reis, Orme, and Brown, 1810); Manuel Alexis Ortiz Read’s Cimarrón, maniel y Ocoa (Santo Domingo: Loteria Nacional, 1986).

5. Albert Batista, Mujer y esclavitud en Santo Domingo. 6. Price, “Introduction,” 4. 7. Cherríe L. Moraga, A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000– 2010 (Dur-

ham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 70. 8. Torres- Saillant, “Tribulations of Blackness,” 126– 146. 9. See Price, “Introduction,” 2. 10. See Candelario, Black behind the Ears, 281n15; Christopher Columbus, Chronicles of

Christopher Columbus in Ten Cantos, ed. and trans. Margaret Dixon (Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2010); Ramón Pané, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, ed. José Juan Arrom, trans. Susan Griswold (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

11. Yi- Fu Tuan and Hoelschen Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minne- apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977).

12. Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 91– 110.

13. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). 14. I am using this long citation because it is ignored by most Dominicans. It also dis-

articulates the official discourse that assigns Dominicans an Indo- Hispanic race. 15. Bartolomé de Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account (Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1992), 32– 34.

N o T e S T o P a g e S 7 9 – 8 3 1 6 5

16. Girolamo Benzoni, History of the New World: Shewing His Travels in America, from AD1541 to 1556: With Some Particulars of the Island of Canary, ed. and trans. W. H. Smyth (Lon- don: Hakluyt Society, 1857), 4.

17. Ibid., 12. 18. Letter from the mayor’s office to the king, December 1, 1531, Audiencia de Santo

Domingo, legajo 73, AGI; Joaquín Marino Inchaustegui Cabral, Reales cédulas y cor- respondencias de gobernadores de Santo Domingo: De la Regencia del Cardenal Cisneros en

adelante. (Madrid: Colección histórico- documental Trujillana,1958), 2:353. 19. Pacheco et al., Colección de documentos, 5:43– 45. 20. Roberto Marte, Santo Domingo en los manuscritos de Juan Bautista Muñoz (Santo

Domingo: Fundación García Arévalo, 1981), 52. 21. Price, “Introduction,” 7. 22. Pacheco et al., Colección de documentos inéditos, 5:43– 45. 23. Ibid., 1:332– 347. 24. Inchaustegui, Reales cédulas, 1:47. 25. Audiencia de Santo Domingo, 1524, legajo 51, AGI; de Utrera, Polémica de Enriquillo;

Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 3:488. 26. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 3:488. 27. Ibid., 3:488. 28. Audiencia Santo Domingo, 1533, legajo 49, AGI. 29. The letters sent to the king by the island governor López de Cerrato contained in Audi-

encia de Santo Domingo, legajo 49, AGI, describe the situation with the maroons. 30. Audiencia de Santo Domingo, 1532, legajo 49, AGI. 31. Ibid.; and in Inchaustegui, Reales cédulas, 2:348. 32. Inchaustegui, Reales cédulas, 2:358. 33. Letter from Fernández Cuenca to the king, April 15, 1578, Audiencia de Santo Domingo,

legajo 51, AGI. 34. Letters from Riberos to the king, December 29, 1580, February 29, 1581, May 19, 1581,

Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 70, ramo 1, AGI. 35. Letter from Ovalle to the king, February 23, 1586. Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo

51, AGI. 36. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 3:488. 37. See de Utrera, Polémica de Enriquillo, 197. 38. Letter from Ramírez de Fuenleal to the king, July 31, 1529, Audiencia de Santo Domingo,

Patronato 174, AGI. 39. De Utrera, Polémica de Enriquillo, 197. 40. Letter from Enriquillo to the king, June 6, 1534, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo

77, AGI. 41. Letter from Francisco Barrionuevo to the king, August 26, 1533, Audiencia de Santo

Domingo, legajo 77, AGI. 42. On the 1521 slave insurrection, see Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural,

1:98– 100. 43. José Antonio Saco, Historia de la esclavitud de la raza Africana (Medellín, Colombia: Edi-

ciones Jucar; digitized by Google Books 2013), 144. 44. Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural, 1:202. 45. Letter from Miguel de Pasamonte to the king, 1525, Audiencia of Santo Domingo, AGI. 46. Letter from López Cerrato to the king, February 2, 1546, Audiencia de Santo Domingo,

legajo 49, ramo 3, AGI. 47. Letter from Grajeda to the king, May 27, 1548, in Inchaustegui, Reales cédulas, 2:358.

1 6 6 N o T e S T o P a g e S 8 4 – 9 1

48. Letter from López de Cerrato to the king, October 15, 1547, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 49, ramo 3, AGI.

49. Letter from Aliaga to the king, May 12, 1578, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 51, ramo 1, AGI.

50. Letters from López de Cerrato to the king (1544, 1545, 1546, 1547), Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajos 49 and 74. AGI.

51. Juan de Castellanos, Elegias de varones ilustres de indias (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1857). (Original in Oxford University; digitized by Google Books in 2007.) This ballad is cited in Larrazabal Blanco, Los negros y la esclavitud, 143.

52. De Utrera, “La condición del negro.” 53. Letter from Cuevas Maldonado to the king, Santo Domingo, September 15, 1662, Audi-

encia de Santo Domingo, legajo 93, AGI. 54. See De Utrera, Noticias históricas de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller,

1978); Inchaustegui, Reales cédulas, vol. 3; Rodríguez Demorizi, Relaciones históricas. 55. José Juan Arrom, Cimarrón: Apuntes sobre sus primeras documentaciones y su probable

origen (Santo Domingo: Fundación Garcia Arevalo, 1986). 56. Travel narratives begin with Moreau de Saint- Méry in the late 1700s, William Walton

in the early 1800s, and Charles Mackenzie in the mid- 1800s. 57. Deive, Los cimarrones del maniel de Neiba; Dieve, Los guerrilleros negros; Larrazabal

Blanco, Los negros y la esclavitud. 58. William Walton, Present State of the Spanish Colonies, 34. 59. Price, “Introduction,” 5. 60. Richard Price writes that maroons communities “used false trails replete with danger-

ous body traps” (“Introduction,” 6). 61. Information on the Maniel de Neiba is contained in Audiencia de Santo Domingo,

legajo 1102, AGI: maps of the maniel, relations of the maniel, letters, and negotiations between the Spanish and French authorities. Legajo 1102 has been analyzed by Deive (Los cimarrones del maniel de Neiba) and Silié (Economía, esclavitud y población).

62. Letter from Governor Azlor to the king, 1766, Audiencia Santo Domingo, legajo 1101, AGI.

63. Documentation in the AGI— legajo 1102— refers to negotiations with the Spanish, and the narrative of Moreau de Saint- Méry relates to negotiations with the French.

64. Letter from Governor Peralta to Joseph de Galvez, July 24, 1783, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 1102, AGI.

65. Letter from Governor Peralta to Frómeta, May 28, 1783, Audiencia Santo Domingo, legajo 1102, AGI.

66. Letter from Chávez to Peralta, April 1785, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 1102, AGI.

67. Letter from Bellecombe to Desmaratte, May 5, 1785, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 1102, AGI.

68. Letter from Bobadilla to Archibishop Isidro Rodriguez, May 20, 1785, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 1102, AGI.

69. Walton, Present State of the Spanish Colonies, 34. 70. Ibid., 31. 71. Letters of Gómez de Sandoval to the king, December 20, 1609, and January 12, 1611,

Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajos 53 and 54, AGI. 72. Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 56, July 31, 1644, AGI. 73. AGI’s legajo 1102 has been studied by several Dominican sociologists and historians,

e.g. Rúben Silié and Carlos Esteban Deive.

N o T e S T o P a g e S 9 1 – 1 0 1 1 6 7

74. Letter from Cuevas Maldonado to the king, September 15, 1662, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, legajo 93, AGI.

75. Walton, Present State of the Spanish Colonies. 76. Ibid., 36. 77. Deive, Los guerrilleros negros, 221. 78. Inchaustegui, Reales cédulas, 1:332– 333. 79. Ibid., 1:334– 335. Also in Franco Pichardo, Historia del pueblo dominicano, 142. 80. Franco Pichardo, Historia del pueblo dominicano, 166. 81. David Dixon Porter, “Diary Manuscript,” 72. 82. Frank Moya Pons, Dominican Republic, 206– 297; Franco Pichado, Historia del pueblo

dominicano, 268. 83. Franco Pichado, Historia del pueblo dominicano, 268, citing José de la Gándara, Anexión

y Guerra en Santo Domingo (Madrid: Imprenta de el correo militar, 1884; digitized by Google Books 2016), 237– 238.

84. Moya Pons, Dominican Republic, 308. 85. As related in Alejo Carpentier’s novel, The Kingdom of this World (New York: Farrar,

Straus and Giroux, 2007), 13– 43. 86. Leslie G. Desmangles, “African Interpretations of the Christian Cross in Vodou,” in

Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers, ed. Claudine Michel and Patrick Bellegarde- Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 43.

87. I draw on the stories in Emigdio O. Garrido Puello, Olivorio, ensayo histórico (Santo Domingo: Published by author, 1963), the only biography of Oliborio. Garrido was the editor of the San Juan de la Maguana newspaper El Cable during the 1920s at the time of the critical events. Although Garrido’s biography is prejudiced against Oliborio, it contains important information about his life and movement.

88. Lusitania Martínez, Palma Sola: Su geograf ía mítica y social (Santo Domingo: Academia de Ciencias de la República Dominicana, 2003), 12, 13; Mats Lundahl and Jan Lundius, “El éxito y el fracaso del movimiento olivorista: los factores económicos fundamen- tales,” in La ruta hacia Liborio: Mesianismo en el sur profundo dominicano, ed. Martha Ellen Davis (Santo Domingo: Editora Manati, 2004), 57– 82.

89. Roberto Cassá, “Problemas del culto olivorista,” in Davis, La ruta hacia Liborio, 3– 44. 90. Leopoldo Figuereo, “El Santo Vivo de Maguana,” in Davis, La ruta hacia Liborio, 174. 91. Pedro L. San Miguel, La guerra silenciosa: Las luchas sociales en la ruralía dominicana

(Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación, 2011), 61. 92. Andrés L. Mateo, “El Liborismo y dominicanidad,” in Davis, La ruta hacia Liborio,

315– 319. 93. Lusitania Martínez, “Definición de mesianismo,” in Davis, La ruta hacia Liborio,

125– 126. 94. Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 4: 1938– 1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael

W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 389– 400. 95. Leslie G. Desmangles, The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti (Cha-

pel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 13, citing Anthony Wallace, “Revi- talization Movements,” in Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, 4th ed., ed. William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 422.

96. Desmangles, Faces of the Gods, 14. 97. Todd Diacon, Millenarian Vision, Capitalist Reality: Brazil’s Contestado Rebellion, 1912–

1916 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991); Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, O messianism no Brazil e no mundo (São Paulo: Omega, 1976); Patricia Pessar, From Fanatics to Folks: Brazilian Messianism and Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,

1 6 8 N o T e S T o P a g e S 1 0 1 – 1 1 3

2004). Barry Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univer- sity Press, 1994).

98. Glissant, Poetics of Relation.

5. CRIOLLIsmO ReLIgIOsO

1. Marks and Bobadilla, “Descriptive Notes,” 1. 2. Torres Saillant, “Tribulations of Blackness,” 126– 146. 3. Marks and Bobadilla, “Descriptive Notes,” 3. 4. Marc Blanchard, “From Cuba with Saints,” in Faith without Borders: The Curious Category

of the Saints, ed. François Meltzer and Jaś Elsner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 1– 35.

5. Michaeline Crichlow and Patricia Northover, Globalization and the Post- Creole Imagina- tion: Notes on Fleeing the Plantation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 4.

6. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reason of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993), 1.

7. Desmangles, Faces of the Gods, 2– 3. 8. Davis, Voces del purgatorio; Deive, Vodú y magia en Santo Domingo. 9. Davis, La otra ciencia; Jiménez Lambertus, “Aspectos históricos y psicológicos”; Mari-

ano Miniño, “¿Es el Vodú una religión?”; and Patín Veloz, “El Vodú y sus misterios.” 10. Claude Lévi- Strauss, Totemism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 2. 11. Ibid., 100. 12. Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (New York: McPherson, 1983), 54. 13. See Landers, “Introduction,” 3– 4. See also Isidoro Moreno, La antigua hermandad de los

negros de Sevilla (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 1997). 14. UNESCO opened the Slave Route Program in Benin in 1994 with the objective of dis-

seminating the legacy of Africa to the world, and the Dominican Republic joined the program in 2004. Many sites in the Dominican Republic have been proclaimed Intan- gible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

15. Davis, La otra ciencia, 135. 16. See Davis, Voces del purgatorio. 17. Alfred Metraux, Voodoo in Haiti (1959; repr., New York: Pantheon, 1989), 95. 18. Roger Bastide, African Civilizations in the New World (New York: Harper and Row, 1971),

154– 156. 19. See Maurea E. Landis, “The Band Carries Medicine: Music, Healing, and Community in

Haitian/Dominican Rara/Gaga” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2009). 20. Elizabeth McAlister, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora (Berke-

ley: University of California Press, 2002), 5. 21. Desmangles, Faces of the Gods, 43. 22. Trouillot, Haiti: State against Nation, 51. 23. Desmangles, Faces of the Gods, 43. 24. Ibid., 47. 25. Deren, Divine Horsemen, 21. 26. Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 27. Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, Música y baile en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Librería

Hispaniola, 1971), 85– 95. 28. Andújar Persinal, La presencia negra en Santo Domingo; Patín Veloz, “El Vodú y sus

misterios.” 29. Martha Ellen Davis calls Dominican Vodou small and Haitian Vodou larger.

N o T e S T o P a g e S 1 1 3 – 1 4 5 1 6 9

30. Davis, La otra ciencia, 86. 31. Desmangles, Faces of the Gods, 43. 32. Joan Dayan, “Vodoun, or the Voices of the Gods,” in Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Sante-

ria, Obeah, and the Caribbean, ed. Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini- Gebert (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 13– 36.

33. Patín Veloz, “El Vodú y sus misterios,” 142. 34. Desmangles, Faces of the Gods, 42. 35. Médéric Louis Elie Moreau de Saint- Méry, Description topographique, physique, civile,

politique et historique de la parte Française de l’isle Saint- Domingue (Philadelphia, 1797– 1798). For additional discussion of Petro origins, see Luc de Heusch, “Kongo in Haiti: A New Approach to Religious Syncretism,” in Slavery and Beyond: The African Impact in Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Darien J. Davis (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994), 103– 121; and Metraux, Voodoo in Haiti.

36. Patín Veloz, “El Vudú y sus misterios,” 144. 37. Davis, La Otra Ciencia, 134; Geo Ripley, Imagenes de Posesión Vudú dominicano (Santo

Domingo: Cocolo Editorial, 2002), 24. 38. Carpentier, Kingdom of This World, 17– 18. 39. The matriarch of a local family, a woman in her late nineties, told me that because the

people living in this area were descendants of an African group named “Chango,” this crossroads had been named after them.

40. Davis, La otra ciencia, 97, states that in the Dominican Vodou weekly cycles the spiri- tual days are Tuesdays and Fridays, in accord with European mysticism.

41. Desmangles, “African Interpretation of the Christian Cross.” 42. Guérin C. Montilus, “Vodun and Social Transformation in the African Diasporic Expe-

rience: The Concept of Personhood in Haitian Vodun Religion,” in Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, and Reality, ed. Patrick Bellegarde- Smith and Claudine Michel (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 1.

43. Ibid., 3.

6. Race, cuLTuRe, aND NaTIoNaL IDeNTITy

1. Candelario, Black behind the Ears, offers a detailed discussion of how Dominicans con- ceal their African ancestry with hairstyles and makeup.

2. Bhabha’s ideas of the evocation of the I are found in Location of Culture. 3. Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013). 4. Arlene Davila, Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 2001). 5. Junot Díaz to Milagros Ricourt, e- mail, December 27, 2010. 6. In 1970 a group of MPD members kidnapped a US military officer and offered to free

him in exchange for El Moreno and other MPD members then in jail. An agreement was reached, and El Moreno and the others were freed and traveled with the hostage, US Lt. Colonel Donald Crowley, and a moderator of the Catholic Church to Mexico, where Crowley was released. El Moreno moved to Belgium ,where he died under dis- puted circumstances. The MPD leaders involved in the kidnapping were killed in the Dominican Republic in 1971.

7. During the 1980s and 1990s, Franco continued to research the African roots of the Dominican people, publishing several books, including Historia del pueblo dominicano.

8. Tolentino Dipp, Raza e historia en Santo Domingo. 9. Silié, Economía, esclavitud y población.

1 7 0 N o T e S T o P a g e S 1 4 5 – 1 5 3

10. Pedro Mir, Tres leyendas de colores: Ensayo de interpretación de las tres primeras revolucio- nes del Nuevo Mundo (Santo Domingo: Editora Nacional, 1969). Davis, Voces del purga- torio; Davis, La otra ciencia: El vodú dominicano como religión y medicina popular (Santo Domingo: Editora Universitaria, 1987).

11. Carlos Esteban Deive, “The African Inheritance in Dominican Culture,” in Dominican Cultures: The Making of a Caribbean Society, ed. Bernardo Vega (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2007), 88.

12. Deive, Los guerrilleros negros, 19 and 43. 13. “Narcizaso,” as he was called, also was a leftwing opinion writer in Dominican news-

papers. He “disappeared” on May 26, 1994, after he accused Balaguer, the National Police, and the army of electoral fraud, during a UASD faculty assembly.

14. Paul Austerlitz, Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity (Philadelphia: Tem- ple University Press, 1996), 85 and 87.

15. Ibid., 87. 16. See Candelario, Black behind the Ears, 215. 17. Howard W. French, “Santo Domingo Journal: A Dominican’s 2 Burdens: Haiti and

Balaguer,” New York Times, April 14, 1994. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/14/world /santo- domingo- journal- a- dominican- s- 2- burdens- haiti- and- balaguer.html?page wanted=print. Accessed June 9, 2014.

18. Roberto Cassá, “Negotiated Elections: The Old Boss Steps to the Side” NACLA Report on the Americas 30, no. 5 (March- April 1997): 20– 26.

19. Torres- Saillant, “Tribulations of Blackness,” 126– 146. 20. Maria Isabel Soldevila, “Peligro para la Democracia,” Listin Diario, November 17, 2013. 21. Aníbal De Castro, Mark Kurlansky, Junot Díaz, Edwidge Danticat, and Julia Alva-

rez, “Two Versions of a Dominican Tale.” New York Times, October 31, 2013. http:// www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/opinion/two- versions- of- a- dominican- tale.html?_r=0. Accessed June 9, 2014.

22. Dominican historian Quisqueya Lora stated in her lecture at the Archivo General de la Nación on December 13, 2013, titled “Desmontando mitos: Invasión y dominación en Haiti y República Dominicana,” that the court decision promoted racism, xenopho- bia, hate, and racial exclusion.

23. “Encuentre el haitiano detras de su apellido ‘dominicano,’” 7 dias.com.do, September 28, 2013; “Origen franco- haitano de apelidos dominicanos,” Hoy digital, October 29, 2013. http://www.7dias.com.do/portada/2013/09/28/i148827_encuentre- haitiano- detras - apellido- dominicano- consultando- esta- lista.html#.Vxa1y3rkp1E.

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Note: Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations.

abolition, 24, 27, 29–30, 47, 48, 67, 68, 89, 92–94, 111, 135. See also Haitian Revolution; slave insurrections

Aguita de Oliborio, 95–96 Albert Batista, Celsa, 8, 72 Alexis, Jacques-Stephen, 36 Alvarez, Julia, 152 Alvarez Barba, Antonio, 60 Anacaona, 78, 79, 81, 95, 96, 118 Ana María, 93. See also Nigua Anderson, Benedict, 5 Andújar Persinal, Carlos, 8, 45 Antillanité. See Glissant, Edouard Anzaldúa, Gloria, 19, 25, 44; Borderlands, 26;

Intimacy, 8, 36, 40, 44 Archivo General de la Nación, 5, 20, 61, 64, 140

Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 38 Asad, Talal, 106 Austerlitz, Paul, 146 Azua, 28, 51, 55, 60, 75, 82, 83, 89, 90

Báez, Buenaventura, 68, 69 Baharona, 39, 41, 75, 145 Bahoruco, 54 Bahoruco Mountains, 2, 11, 81, 82, 84, 107, 108 Bahoruco Viejo, 88. See also maroon villages Balaguer, Joaquín, 4, 13–15, 19, 34, 37, 38, 69, 113, 144, 146, 147–149, 151

Baní, 41, 59, 60, 83, 86, 90, 104, 109, 134 Bánica, 31, 143 Barahona Road, 39 Barbados, 58, 143 Barrionuevo, Francisco, 82 Basora, Juan, 94 Bastide, Roger, 110 Batista, Fulgencio, 35, 74 Bayaja, 27 Bellacombe, M., 89 Belo Monte movement, 101 Benítez Rojas, Antonio, 18 Benzoni, Girolamo, 79 Betancourt, Juan René, 14 Billini, Hipolito, 34 Black Code, Caroline, 13 Blanchard, Marc, 105

Bobadilla, Juan, 87, 88, 89, 92 Bobadilla, Tomás, 94 Bogart, Alvarez, 148, 149 Bohechio, 79 Bolívar, Simón, 28, 29, 93, 152 Bonao, 51, 75 Bonó, Pedro Francisco, 14 border towns, 5, 13, 34, 35; Anse-à-Pitres, 89;

Juan Mendez/Ounaminthe, 43 Borno, Louis, 31 Bosch, Juan, 38, 47, 74, 144, 147, 148 Boyer, Jean-Pierre, 10, 23, 29, 49, 60, 68, 69, 93, 111, 128

Brown, James, 146

Cabo San Nicolás, 86 Cabo Tiburón, 86 Cabritos, 104 Caimito Yaguimo, 86 Calixte, Demostenes, 32 Caña Andrés, 125, 128–130, 154 Candelario, Ginetta, 8, 45 Canudos movement, 101 Caonabo, 71, 77, 78, 81, 96, 116, 118 Cap-à-Foux, 75. See also Haitian Vodou Capotillo, 34 Caravaca, 109, 124, 132 Carpentier, Alejo, 101, 123 Carrero de Higüero, 86 Carretero, 73, 92, 93. See also Nigua Casa de Contratacíon de Sevilla, 53, 56 Cassá, Roberto, 11, 98 Castillo, Vinicio, 147 cattle ranching, 51, 56, 65, 68 Cayos Siete Hermanos, 86 Cedras, Raoul, 38 Central Range Mountains, 20, 54, 86, 108 Centro Bonó, 43, 152 Centro de Estudios de la Educación (CEDEE), 145

Centro Investigación para la Acción Femenina (CIPAF), 43

Cesteros, Mariano, 34 Chamuscadillas, 92 Charles I (king of Spain), 81 Charles III (king of Spain), 56

1 8 4 I N D e x

Charles V (king of Spain), 51 Chidester, David, 25 Christophe, Henri, 25, 28. See also Haitian

Revolution Cibao Valley, 75, 101 Cimarrones. See maroon villages Cocolo, 46, 98 Code Noir, 112 cofradías, 104, 109; Congos of Villa Mella, 109; Holy Spirit Santa Maria, 137; Saint John the Baptist, 109

Colectivo Mujer y Salud y Acción Femenina, 43

Contestado movement, 101 Cordero Michel, Emilio, 28 Cordillera Central, 54, 75, 84, 86, 95, 96, 98, 99, 107, 108

Cordillera Oriental, 75 Cordillera Septentrional, 75 Cotubanamá, 79, 81 Cotuí, 28, 55, 81 countercolonial, 106 counteridentity, 77 Creole, 7, 9, 10, 17, 18, 28–30, 48, 57, 61, 67, 69, 81, 93, 135, 144

creolization. See Glissant, Edouard Crichlow, Michaeline, 10, 16, 106 Criollo, 5, 9, 91 Crossroads of the Changos, 124; Cruz de, 109, 124, 132

Cuello, Maria, 67 cultural production, 4, 8, 16–17, 25–26, 61, 71, 100, 133, 136

Dajabón, 2, 43, 147 Danticat, Edwige, 36, 43 Davila, Arlene, 141 de Castro, Melchor, 82. See also slave

insurrections De Certeau, Michel, 76 de Chavez, Luis, 89 de Figueroa, Rodrigo, 51 de Guzmán, Diego, 54, 81, 84. See also slave

insurrections Deive, Carlos Esteban, 46, 86, 145 de la Cueva Maldonado, Francisco, 87 de Las Casas, Bartolomé, 35, 45, 50, 64, 77, 81

del Rosario, Félix, 146 del Rosario Sánchez, Francisco, 59, 93, 95, 135

de Ocampo, Diego, 54–55, 81, 84. See also slave insurrections

de Osorio, Antonio, 54–56 de Ovando, Nicolás, 48–50, 79–80 Deren, Maya, 20, 109, 112 de Seda, Pedro, 93 Desmangles, Leslie G., 97, 101, 106–107, 112–114, 130

Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 10, 28 de Utrera, Cipriano, 67, 81 Díaz, Juan Bolívar, 152 Diaz, Junot, ix, 43, 140, 142, 152 Dominican Constitutional Tribunal, 38, 151

Dominican-Haitian border, 18, 40, 41, 42, 13, 18; cultural, 37, 43, 44, 39; dominicaniza- tion of, 32–35; final resolution of, 30, 31, 32, 33; genocide in, 32, 36, 37; geographi- cal, 22, 23; history of, 27, 28, 29

Dominican Republic: annexation to Spain, 94–95; Constitution, 94; criollismo in, 101; Dominican South, 90, 92, 95, 99–100, 102–104; and Haiti, 113, 118, 119, 123, 150– 152; identity, 137, 139, 140; independence, 93, 135; merengue in, 146 (see also Valoy, Cuco; Ventura, Johnny); racial debate in, 153; religion in, 106–107, 109, 111, 112. See also Hispaniola

Dominican Vodou, 95, 97, 103, 106–107, 109–110, 113, 116, 117–118, 119, 122, 128, 134, 137, 138, 145, 153

Doña Ana, 3, 128 Drake, Sir Francis, 53 Duarte, Juan Pablo, 14, 69, 93, 135 Duvalier, François, 38 Duvalier, Jean-Claude, 38

El Central Barahona, 41 Elías Piña, 5, 40–43, 75 elite, 44, 46, 48, 65, 68, 69, 139, 143, 146, 147 El Partido de los Ingenios de Nigua:

maroons, 106; owners, 60; plantations, 60. See also Nigua

El Seibo, 61, 62 Enriquillo, 45, 75; in fiction, 11; insurrection

of, 54–55, 71, 80–82, 86, 88. See also slave insurrections

Enriquillo Basin, 75 Enriquillo Lake, 82, 86 Estado Libre del Haití del Este, 93 Ezili (Ezili Dantó, Ezili Freda, Ezili-je-wouj,

Ezili Marine), 41, 118. See also Haitian Vodou

Fanon, Frantz, 11, 37 Fequiere, Magaly, 14 Fernández, Leonel, 15, 38, 43, 148, 149 Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo, 52, 60, 63, 81 Fort of San Gil (Fort Ozama), 84 Fowler, Victor, 14 Franco Pichardo, Franklin, 8, 31, 49, 94, 144 Frias, Francisca, 67 Frometa, Felipe, 88

Gabriel García, José, 10 Galván, Manuel de Jesús, 11, 45 Gamba Abajo, 60, 61, 93. See also slave

insurrections Gamba Arriba, 60. See also slave

insurrections García Godoy, Federico, 11 Garvey, Marcus, 141, 153 Gates, Henry Louis Jr., 15 Geffrard, Fabré Nicolas, 94, 112 genocide, 19, 23, 32, 34, 36, 39, 42, 152 Glissant, Edouard, 18, 38, 101 Godreau, Isar, 14 Gómez, Juan Gualberto, 14

I N D e x 1 8 5

Gómez, Maximiliano, 8, 21, 143 Gonzalez, José Luis, 14 Guigni, Jorge, 139 Guillen, Nicolás, 14

Haina, 51, 72, 73 Haitian Revolution, 69; abolition and, 10;

Dominican Republic and, 27, 53; French Revolution and, 27; religion and, 101, 112, 123; Spanish colony and, 9, 16, 28–29, 47, 56, 58, 60, 73, 85, 111

Haitian Vodou, 97, 106–107, 114 Hartshorne, Richard, 24 Henríquez Ureña, Pedro, 113 Hernandillo el Tuerto, 81, 82. See also slave

insurrections Heureaux, Ulises, 70 Higüey, 51, 55, 61, 62, 79, 85 Hincha, 57, 92 Hispanidad, 20, 32, 143, 146 Hispaniola, 2, 4, 9, 10, 16, 18, 23, 26–28, 29, 48–50, 66, 67, 72, 76, 85–87, 93, 107, 109; Ayti, 74; holocaust in, 19, 24, 36 (see also Dominican-Haitian border: genocide in); island of, 3, 9, 23, 25; Quisqueya, 74; reli- gion and, 105, 110, 112, 114, 115–116, 132–137, 154; slavery and, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 58, 59, 71, 79, 80, 82, 83, 90, 138; Spanish and, 7, 8, 56, 12, 16, 17, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 61, 63, 64, 65, 77, 84; Tainos and, 11, 20, 49, 50, 74, 78, 81, 108

Howard, David, 15

Immigration Law of 1932, 35 Inter-American Court, 38, 42, 153 Inter-Colonial Protocol of 1731, 27 Intergroup, 23 Intersocietal, 23 Isabela River, 83 Islet Beata, 86. See also maroon villages

Jamaica, 72, 141, 143 Jimaní, 5, 40 Jimenez, Blass, 8 Jose Leta. See maroon villages Juana Mendez. See border towns Juan Criollo, 54, 81, 84, 85. See also slave

insurrections Juazeiro movement, 101

Kaplan, Marion, 34 Kreyól, 22, 24, 40, 41, 111, 115, 118

Ladinos, 49, 92, 108–109, 132 Lake Azuey, 40 Lake Comendador (Enriquillo Lake), 75, 104, 86, 82

La Miel, 31, 33. See also Dominican-Haitian border

Lares de Guava, 86 Larrazabal Blanco, Carlos, 86 Las Matas de Farfán, 20, 95, 104, 138, 139 La Vega, 28, 50, 51, 55, 75, 78, 82, 84 League of Augsburg, 27

Lemba, Sebastian, 45, 47–49, 54, 55, 71, 73, 81, 84, 96, 104. See also slave insurrections

Leocadio, José, 71, 93 Lescot, Elie, 32, 33 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 100, 108 Listín Diario, 152 Lizardo, Fradique, 8, 145 López Rodríguez, Nicolás de Jesús, 148, 152 Los Naranjos. See maroon villages Louverture, Toussaint, 10, 27, 49, 60, 92 Lucaya Islands (Bahamas), 49 Lugo, Américo, 12, 13, 47, 55, 56 Luperón, Gregorio, 14, 95, 99

Mackenzie, Charles, 28, 65 Maguana Valley, 20, 98, 99 manieles, 72, 81, 88–89, 105; economy of, 90;

family structure of, 91; palenques, 72, 86; political organization of, 92; population of, 86, 88; pueblos cimarrones, 50 (see also maroon villages); quilombos, 72, 86

maroon villages: Bahoruco, 2, 11, 54, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86–88, 107; Los Naranjos, 86; Neiba, 86, 145. See also manieles

Martínez, Lusitania, 100 Martínez de Rivera, Maria, 67 Mas Gros-Mare, 31. See also Dominican-

Haitian border Massacre River (Rio Masacre), 36, 93 Massif de la Selle, 2, 75, 85 Mateo, Andrés L., 100 Mateo, Oliborio, 20, 71, 73, 75, 95–102, 104, 112, 138, 146

Matías Mella, Ramón, 69, 93, 135 McAlister, Elizabeth, 111 Medina, Danilo, 15 Meillassoux, Claude, 65 Mellafe, Rolando, 49 Metresas, 115, 118, 119 Mintz, Sidney, 16 Mir, Pedro, 145 Mira Cielo, 128 Moca, 28 Mojarra, 93 Molina Chevalier, Julia, 69 Montecristi, 27, 36, 86 Monte Grande, 94 Monte Plata, 28, 55 Montilus, Guérin, 133 Moreau de Saint-Mery, Mederic-Louis-Elie, 64, 67, 89, 112, 115

Morejón, Nancy, 14 Mota, Fabio A., 35 Movimiento de Campesinos Independientes, 145

Movimiento de Mujeres Negras, 141 Movimiento Popular Dominicano, 143–144 Moya Pons, Frank, 49 Museo de las Casas Reales, 35

Najayo, 20, 21, 103, 115, 124, 128, 130, 133 nation-state, 24, 25, 32, 36, 38. See also

Dominican Republic Neiba, 2, 27, 54, 75, 86, 88, 91, 92, 104, 145

1 8 6 I N D e x

New Immigrants and Old Americans Project, x

New York Times, ix, 147, 152 Nigua, 51, 60, 71, 83, 84, 124, 125, 128; Boca de

Nigua, 60, 61, 73, 92, 93, 106; Insurrection Boca de Nigua, 60, 61, 73, 92–93, 106. See also Ana Maria; Carretero

Nigua River, 51, 76 Nizao, 51, 83 Nizao River, 83 Northern Range Mountains, 72 Núñez de Cáceres, José, 29, 93

Ocaña, Clara, 67 Orsi, Robert A., 113

Palé Matos, Luis, 14 Palenque, 124 Palma Sola, 73, 95, 104, 146 Panzo, 89. See also maroon villages Partido Azul, 99 Partido de la Liberación Dominicana, 147

Partido Reformista Social Cristiano, 147 Partido Revolucionario Dominicano, 143, 147

Pedernales, 5, 22, 27, 34, 39, 75, 86 Pedernales River, 27, 31, 87, 89 Pedreira, Antonio, 14 Peña Batlle, Manuel Arturo, 13, 14, 23, 37, 53, 113, 151

Peña Gómez, José Francisco, 8, 21, 143, 146, 147, 148, 149, 153

Penn, William, 53, 85 Pensón, Nicolás, 113 Petion, Alexandre, 28, 111 Pico Duarte, 75 Pierre, Sonia, 42 Popa, Alejandro, 97 Popa, Genaro, 97 Popa, José, 97 Porter, David Dixon, 94, 137 Price-Mars, Jean, 29 Puello, Moscoso, 11, 37 Puerto Plata, 51, 86, 90 Puerto Real, 86

race, 94, 135–137, 140–142, 149–150, 153 racial democracy, 12, 47, 61 racial discourse, 7, 11, 16 racial identification, 19, 137, 140–141 racial labels, 63, 65 racial denial, 19, 70; Africa denial, 3, 5, 6, 14, 15, 16, 46, 47, 135, 139, 153

racism, iv, ix, x, 8, 11, 15, 35, 37, 141, 144, 149, 152, 153

Rastafarian movement, 101, 140 Red Nacional por la Defensa de la Soberanía, 151

religion. See under Dominican Republic Restauración, 31, 34 Reyes, Félix, 61 Rio Masacre, 27

Rio Pedernales, 87 Robert, Emile, 42 Rodríguez Demorizi, Emilio, 30, 112 Roman Catholic Church, 125, 137

Sabana de la Mar, 86 Saco, José Antonio, 14 Said, Edward, 5, 19, 121 Sainaguá, 128, 145 Saint Eustatius, 58 Saint Vincent, 58 Salomé Ureña Street, 140 Salva Tierra de la Sabana, 86, 90 Samaná, 86, 92 Samangola, 4, 128 Sánchez, Luis Rafael, 14 Sánchez, Pedro, 67 Sánchez Valverde, Antonio, 9–11, 13, 53, 58–60, 62, 67, 135

San Cristóbal, 128, 134, 136, 137, 139, 145, 154 San Cristóbal Province, 4, 20, 59, 60, 61, 72, 73, 83, 88, 89, 94, 103, 105, 109, 121, 122, 125

San Ignacio Loyola, 34 Sanjek, Roger, 7 San Juan de la Maguana, 4, 27, 41, 60, 84, 96, 95, 96, 98, 99, 104, 109, 138, 154

San Juan Valley, 75, 96, 104 San Nicolás Hospital, 48, 86, 118 Santa Mar, 96, 103, 115, 117, 118, 123, 130, 132, 134

Santa María, 61, 94, 106, 128, 137, 138. See also cofradias

Santa María de la Verapaz, 86 Santana, Pedro, 30, 68–69, 94 Santiago, 28, 55, 75, 82, 83, 89, 112 Santo Domingo, 4, 5, 20, 22, 27, 28, 29, 32, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 48, 49, 50–59, 61, 67, 72, 75–76, 81, 83, 86, 93,104, 108, 128, 140, 144–145, 149, 151

São Tomé, 50 Serra, Rafael, 14 Serrano, Mario, 152 Serrano, Pedro, 60 Sierra de Bahoruco, 75 Sierra de Nieba, 75 Sierra de Samaná, 75 Sierra de Yamasá, 75 Sierra Maestra, 74 Sierra Martín García, 75 Silié, Rubén, 8, 12, 52, 144 slave insurrections, 6, 16, 52, 54–55, 60, 66, 75, 80, 81, 83, 92, 105, 136; Africans and Tainos in, 71, 82, 95, 25, 50, 62; Boca de Nigua (see Nigua); Enriquillo (see Enriquillo); Plantation Diego Columbus, 82, 83

Slave Route, 8 Soldevilla, Maria Isabela, 70, 52 Sommers, Doris, 11 Soriano, Florinda, aka Mamá Tingó, 4, 146

Soulouque, Faustin, 112

I N D e x 1 8 7

Tamayo, 81, 82. See also slave insurrections Tavares Justo, Manuel (Manolo), 74 Tejada, Dagoberto, 8 Tolentino Dipp, Hugo, 8, 144 Tomás Congo, 93. See also Nigua Torres-Saillant, Silvio, 8, 15, 43, 70, 73, 149 Tortuga Island, 23, 26, 27 Treaty of Aranjuez, 27, 60 Treaty of Basel, 27, 60 Treaty of Ryswick, 27 Trinitaria, 34, 135 Trinitarios, 30, 94, 135, 144 Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 69, 111 Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas, 13, 15, 31–33, 46, 48, 69, 73, 128. See also genocide

Tuan, Hoelschen, 76 Tuan, Yi-Fu, 76 Tuhiwai Smith, Linda, 19 Turits, Richard, 32 Twine, France Windance, 121

UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scien- tific and Cultural Organization), 8

United Nations, 37

Valoy, Cuco, 146 Vaquero, Juan, 54, 71, 81, 84, 85, 96. See also

slave insurrections Vasquez, Horacio, 34 Venables, Robert, 53, 85 Ventura, Johnny, 146 Villadeca, Emeterio, 60 Villalobos, Mejia, 87 Vincent, Stenio, 31, 32 Vodou mysteries/luas, 20, 98, 105–106, 107, 110, 113–119, 121–122, 124–126, 128–130, 132–133, 137, 154

Vodou Nations: Guede, 21, 110, 11, 115, 116, 117, 118–119, 122, 128, 130, 132, 133, 134; India, 115, 116, 118; Petro, 21, 98, 115–117, 118–119, 132; Rada, 21, 110, 115–119, 132

Walton, William, 13, 64, 92 Wells, Allan, 34 Wucker, Michelle, 15

Xaragua Massacre, 79, 81

Zenon, Isabelo, 15

a B o u T T H e a u T H o R

Milagros ricourt is a professor in the Latin American and Puerto Rican

studies department at Lehman College, The City University of New York. She

is the coauthor of Hispanas de Queens: Latino Panethnicity in a New York City

Neighborhood and the author of Power from the Margins: Dominicans in New York

City and Women in Latin America. Her research is centered on the Dominican

Republic and the Dominican diaspora, including race/ethic relations between

Haitians and Dominicans, the historical roots of Dominican racism, migration,

Dominican peasantry, and immigrant women and the building of community.