Quisqueya la Bella

Dominican Republic in Historical and Cultural Perspective

Alan Cambeira

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317461470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

A history of the Dominican Republic from pre-Columbian times to the present. The book focuses on the merger of three cultures across time - the indiginous cultures of the Caribbean, the Iberians of southern Europe and the Africans.

1
Introducing Quisqueya

Beacon of the Caribbean, La República Dominicana should definitely not be confused with the much smaller, English-speaking island of Dominica, located among the farther eastern Caribbean Leeward group. The Dominican Republic, once called Quisqueya,¹ boasts sixty-seven types and three hundred species of orchids found on the island. The national tree is the caoba, or mahogany. The national bird is the cotica parrot, which is bright green and very talkative, and is a popular pet in many Dominican households. The national dish is sancocho; the national dance and music style is the merengue. The national sport is unquestionably béisbol. More than half of the more than three hundred professional Dominican ballplayers currently active with North American major and minor league ball clubs come from the town of San Pedro de Macorís. This island nation is one of the few countries (if not perhaps the only one) that honors a trio of Padres de la Patria (Fathers of the Nation): Juan Pablo Duarte, the writer; Matías Ramón Mella, the soldier; and Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, the lawyer. A high-ranking Catholic clergyman, Padre Fernando Arturo de Meriño, has served as president. Archbishop Adolfo Alejandro Nouel was a short-term interim president. The region’s history is reflected even today as witnessed in neighboring Haiti, where a radical, former Catholic priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has also served as president.

La República Dominicana is a country of dramatic contrasts and stark contradictions. At the same time seductive and captivating, it is a country that also can provoke utter frustration and absolute exasperation. It is a Caribbean country of puzzling idiosyncrasies and agonizing surprises. From almost any conceivable vantage point, the Dominican Republic can readily present a long list of contrasting features that, as evidenced throughout its lengthy and frequently turbulent historical and cultural evolution, have had wide-ranging effects to varying degrees upon the society as a whole. The land, the people, their history, and their identifying national traditions and customs, the social, political, and religious institutions all combine to offer the visitor an immediately friendly and gregarious community. It is a comunidad (community) that can be accurately described as possessing boundless energies and tremendous richness of spirit, along with genuine warmth unlike any other island society in the Caribbean. Unmistakable also is the ready, easy openness and unconditional hospitality of the remarkable Dominican people themselves. But still, the contrast and contradictions remain prominently evident. The paradox that is Quisqueya looms heavily over this beautiful tropical island.

Azúcar

One paradox worthy of special note is the question of azúcar (sugar), the cultivation of which was begun about 1506 on the island. By about the year 1520 sugarcane cultivation had become an industry. To say that sugar historically has been—and still is—extremely important to the Dominican economy is a gross understatement, even given the government’s efforts in recent years to encourage diversification in the agricultural sector. Despite the considerable wealth derived from sugar, which accounted for and sustained the principal cities, and the entire nation as well, the overwhelming majority of Dominicans throughout the country’s evolution have remained shamefully poor! This circumstance was a direct result of the fact that many of the lucrative profits and related benefits of the sugar-based economy made their way exclusively to the socioeconomic upper echelons of Dominican society and to foreign investors. Moreover, most of the nation’s untapped wealth remained noticeably undeveloped or underdeveloped.

On the subject of sugar quotas, there is another interesting note. Until 1984, the United States’ import quota system, of which La República Dominicana was the largest beneficiary, provided a preferential market for over half the country’s sugar exports, as well as a handy safety net to cushion against the slump in sugar prices on the global market. The inevitable switch in United States consumer tastes—going from traditional sugar to high-tech fructose corn syrup—signaled the move by the United States to reduce quotas to a truly devastating level. By 1988, the Dominican Republic’s quota had been cut to 25 percent of previous levels. The main economic thrust was now reshaped into three areas that the Dominican government hoped would replace sugar: tourism, agro-industry, and the expansion of foreign-owned manufacturing/assembling operations in what are called zonas francas (free-zone operations), strategically located around the country. It is said, however, that the actual selection site for any new zona franca is often determined more by political considerations than motivated by any particular economic factors. Of the three, tourism has shown the most spectacular growth. Today it is the largest foreign exchange earner—with nearly twice the combined income from sugar, coffee, and cocoa. Increasingly, La República Dominicana is becoming known internationally for its magnificent beaches. According to recent UNESCO reports, for instance, the Dominican Republic “has some of the best beaches in the world: white sand, coconut palms and many with a profusion of green vegetation. Current annual receipts from tourism are estimated at about U.S.$750 million.”²

The Dominican Reality

However, no introduction to Quisqueya would be faithful without a studied view of the Dominican reality today, a reality that remains quite grim. This reality is laden with potholes as potentially ruinous as those encountered on most streets of the nation’s capital city, Santo Domingo, as well as on the roads of small towns and hamlets throughout the Republic. Continued devaluation of the Dominican peso is steadily eroding purchasing power, and mind-boggling inflation is leaping out of control.³ The continuing impoverishment is reflected in an alarming exodus of “boat people” to the neighboring island of Puerto Rico. Often the journey is ill fated, as increasing numbers of the crudely built yolas⁴ (wooden rowboats) capsize, leaving the fate of the occupants to the shark-infested waters of the Mona Passage. The Dominican reality, with the dilemma of its U.S.$4 billion debt, is seen as a warning of the perils of entanglement of governmental policies with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Unpopularity of governmental policies (i.e., austerity measures) enacted to satisfy IMF demands is widespread. Still, the Dominican government continues negotiations for new agreements, as poorer dominicanos are becoming highly politicized and determined to resist the new pressures. The Dominican reality is a society without easy and quick solutions. No single political force in the country today seems to be offering the definitive alternative program. The three major parties are entering a period of special uncertainty after the tumultuous elections of May 1994. An in-depth analysis and commentary on the election results and consequences most assuredly will be a necessary update in a later edition of this present work. La República Dominicana, as well as all the other island societies in the Caribbean, have a common historical legacy: corsairs, buccaneers and pirates, a plantation society of slavery and indentured labor, exploitative monocultural economies (based primarily on sugarcane) producing what they did not consume and consuming what they did not produce, and perhaps the lengthiest period of external political–economic dependence and domination in any part of the developing world.

About the Land

The island is called Hispaniola, and it is the only Caribbean island shared by two distinct countries. There is one other island that does have an almost similar circumstance. Both France and the Netherlands share possession and governance of the same tiny island called both St. Martin/St. Maarten (French-speaking on one side, Dutch-speaking on the other). It is located in the eastern Caribbean between Anguilla and St. Barthelemy. On Hispaniola, two distinct cultures have developed. La República Dominicana, which is Spanish-speaking, occupies the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola. It has a total land area of 48,734 square kilometers (or 18,816 square miles). The country sharing the island on the western end is the Kryol- and French-speaking Haiti, with a land area covering about 27,750 square kilometers (or 10,714 square miles). The two countries share a common border of some 375 kilometers (232½ miles). This is a border left mostly without adequate or even constant vigilance by border patrols. It is a border where at certain points along its route a traveler can merely slip off his or her shoes, roll up the pant legs or skirt, and wade across a shallow stream of clear water. Hispaniola is the second largest of the Greater Antilles. The largest, Cuba, is separated from Hispaniola by the Windward Passage and lies about seventy-seven kilometers northwest. The island of Puerto Rico, across the Mona Passage, lies one hundred kilometers eastward.

Cordilleras

Mountains figure prominently in the geography of Hispaniola. Pico Duarte, at 3,175 meters or 10,417 feet, is the highest mountain on the island and in all the Caribbean. Although mountainous, La República Dominicana is actually less mountainous than its western neighbor, Haiti. The whole of Hispaniola, in fact, consists of an impressive series of three major, parallel, east-west mountain chains (cordilleras) with alternating, deep valleys. The breathtaking sweep of Dominican landscape is a contrasting mix of low-lying coastal plains, humid lowlands, arid desertlike zones, abundantly lush intramountainous valleys, and high peaks. This alluring and diverse topography accounts for the country’s distinct geographic regions, figuring as it has, very decidedly, in the pattern of divergent socioeconomic and political development. Because the Dominican Republic, like the other island nations in the family of the Greater Antilles group, is part of a submerged mountain chain, the country’s configuration rests largely upon the three powerful and majestic cordilleras: the Cordillera Central, the Cordillera Septentrional, and the Cordillera Oriental. Water draining from these mountain chains forms the principal rivers and waterways of Quisqueya.

Garden of the Antilles

Situated in the country’s wide middle zone, the Cordillera Central is the island’s massive backbone. It runs well into Haiti, where it becomes the Massif du Nord. It is composed mainly of a variety of volcanic, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. To the north of the Cordillera Central, and between this range and the Cordillera Septentrional, which fronts the Atlantic Ocean on the north coast, lies Hispaniola’s largest and most fertile valley: the legendary Cibao. This fiercely independent region has served as the dramatic backdrop for many significant episodes in the country’s history. Located here also is the Vega Real (Royal Plain), often called “The Garden of the Antilles.”

The Cibao-Vega Real is endowed with exceptionally rich alluvial soils, is watered by the many tributaries flowing from the two cordilleras, and is liberally supplied with rainfall. These favorable circumstances amply justify the region’s renown for the nation’s prime crop harvests. The western portion that penetrates Haitian territory becomes the Plaine du Nord for Haitians. Moving southward, the traveler soon comes upon a series of ridges and valleys flanking the Cordillera Central. These several parallel basins are the most important configurations of this southern region (known as the Massif de la Hotte and the Massif de la Seile in Haiti). These units include the very humid Azua lowlands, the smaller ranges of Sierra de Neiba and Sierra de Bahoruco, situated contrastingly in the arid southwest region, and the Enriquillo basin, where we find the largest lake in the entire Caribbean, Lago Enriquillo.

More Contrasting Topography

There is also the Cordillera Oriental, situated just below the Bay of Samaná. Again in terms of historical turmoil, this particular region, which features the much disputed Península de Samaná, provided an influential scenario for Quisqueya’s social evolution. Another diverse topographical configuration of maximum socioeconomic and historical importance is the southeastern coastal plain of Seibo, the product of emergence from the sea and alluvial deposits. It is here that the chief Dominican crop throughout the major part of the country’s history—sugarcane—developed its primary center of operation.

So it should not be at all surprising that a region possessing such sharp contrasts and paradoxes of relief within a relatively small area should experience a great diversity of soils, climates, and vegetation cover. Even though La República Dominicana is normally spared the extreme climate conditions usually associated with most tropical sites, the country unfortunately still lies directly in the path of violent, often devastating seasonal hurricanes. Not only are temperatures affected by elevation and shelter from maritime influences, but there are also acute differences in rainfall amounts between exposed coastal regions and deep, cavernous valleys resting leeward of the island’s transverse cordilleras. Upon this markedly varied physical background, two very contrasting countries and cultures evolved, often with violently conflicting ideologies, national interests, and agendas.

But also there has been an intimate symbiosis that continues even today—often against the ready acknowledgment on both sides of the fragile border. It is absolutely essential that the reader understand the pivotal role that the land executed on the stage of cultural evolution in La República Dominicana. When we inspect at close range the formation of Dominican culture, we quickly see the interconnectedness between the specific contributing human element and physical geography. From the era of the first prehistoric migrations across the Antilles from the South American mainland to Hispaniola in at least 3000 B.C., giving rise to the early Taíno culture, to the unanticipated and purely accidental arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the late fifteenth century, together with the forced introduction of African captives, the land mass in all its magnificent diversity, all its splendor and provocation, has exerted a wide-ranging, long-lasting impact upon Dominican culture. Today the land features about 13 percent forest and woodland, 31 percent arable land, and 43 percent pasture. Agri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Map
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Introducing Quisqueya
• 2. The People of the Dominican Republic
• 3. The Indigenous Heritage
• 4. The Spanish Heritage
• 5. Voices of Opposition
• 6. The Renegades: Marginal People
• 7. Los Cimarrones: Another Transfrontier Culture
• 8. The Africans: An Early Presence
• 9. Azúcar: The Advent and Decline of Sugar
• 10. Hispaniola’s Slave-Labor Plantation Economy
• 11. Hispaniola’s Century of Misery
• 12. Hispaniola’s Demographic Expansion: Interior Colonization
• 13. The Neighbor to the West: Saint-Somingue
• 14. The Haitian Revolution and the Neighbor to the East
• 15. The After-Shock: Consequences of the Haitian Revolution
• 16. French, then Haitian, Domination of Santo Domingo
• 17. A Haitian President in Santo Domingo
• 18. After Independence, More War
• 19. After Restoration, More Chaos
• 20. Invasion from the Northern Colossus
• 21. The Era of Trujillo: 1930–1961
• 22. Living in the Shadow of Trujillo
• 23. Conclusions: Dreaming Jointly in Defining Dominican Culture
• Appendix A: What Makes the Language of Quisqueya Different?
• Appendix B: National Treasures
• Appendix C: The Dominican Flag
• Bibliography
• Index