Ayiti, as the Taíno called the Caribbean island Hispaniola, remains a transcendental realm holding the key to new imaginaries. And still, as an island devastated and severed by colonialism and slavery, it grapples with a legacy of racial and cultural struggle. The Dominican Republic and Haiti have yet to find stability in identity as bitter chronic disputes have continued on the island in the quest for progress and relevance on the international stage.
The urgency for a national identity can be attributed to the state’s instability and multiple iterations: cacicazgos, colonialist Spanish (re)conquistas, Haitian abolitionist integration, US imperialist invasion, the Trujillo dictatorship, and an anti-pluralist government. It was the land that once proclaimed “Dios en cielo, Trujillo en tierra” as it clutched to its European elitist heritage to redeem itself from its self perceived savagery and tainted black bodies. All the while, it is a nation where the majority self-identify as indio:1 an ethnic category for racially mixed persons that is disassociated from native indigenous peoples. The term, propagated by the Trujillo regime, simultaneously negates Dominican blackness and erases indigenous bodies to produce a homogeneous populace.
An exploitative economy and the shadow of Trujillo’s politics of exclusion persist today. It manifests itself as institutionalized anti-Haitianism evidenced by the policies and architectures in place in the 21st century. Among these policies are migration laws, a new constitution, and court judgements that have methodically eroded the rights of Dominicans and Haitians alike.2 However, the persecution of Haitians, racialized and demonized, have managed to marginalize and oppress all nonconforming bodies. This has been the case for Dominicans of Haitian descent, some of whom, were it not for the darkness of their skin, would never have their Dominicanidad questioned.
Fig. 1 (left) Fig. 2 (right)
To be Dominican, therefore, is to be Hispanic: catholic, heterosexual, cis, fair-skinned, and criollo.3 Those that counter the hegemony exist in a constant limbo state — only occupying physical and social interstices. In the past decade, over 70,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent have been robbed of their citizenship and exiled into statelessness along the Dominican-Haitian border.4 The 20th century saw Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent corralled into bateyes, company owned enclaves, and perpetually indentured to the sugarcane plantations. Those Dominicans of Haitian descent that were denied access to identity documents are excluded from receiving benefits and utilizing resources and services available to citizens such as primary and secondary education. LGBTQIA+ individuals have historically been policed by the state and barred from occupying positions of power such as serving as part of the police force.5
How, then, does a nation begin to transcend the current political and cultural hegemony rooted in the Francoist myth of Hispanidad?6 Could we begin to consider black queer imaginaries that carve out new and alternative spaces in the calficied built environment? And will doing so, conceive identity, beyond geopolitics, in the form of a spatial ontology? Those marginalized show us that identity must not be delineated in colonial ontology but in the practice of spatial contestation. It does not matter if Dominican society wishes to make nonconforming bodies invisible because progress, wealth, and most importantly, the land, bears the mark of those that brought it to fruition.
Fig. 3 (left) Fig. 4 (right)
Haiti, once the primary source of global sugar, saw international economic isolation upon independence and the abolition of slavery. The Dominican Republic filled it’s shoes and looked to the ostracized nation for labor. The modern sugar industry was fed state-sponsored Haitian labor yearly by the tens of thousands during Haiti’s Duvalier and the Dominican Republic’s Trujillo dictatorships. However, Trujillo was deliberate on what spaces Haitians were allowed to occupy within his borders. “El Corte” of 1937 saw the massacre of more than 12,000 Haitians across the Dominico-Haitian border, deliberately sparring those residing in bateyes.
Fig. 5 (left) Fig. 6 (right)
The 20th century saw bateyes emerge and grow to today’s staggering estimate of 435 settlements embedded into the rural landscape. These dilapidated camps were deliberately abandoned by the sugarcane companies and government, some without access to sanitation services or electricity. Workers and their families were forced to live in barracónes, long rectangular wooden or concrete barracks, often windowless and without latrines.7 The fall of the sugarcane industry at the end of the century further robbed these communities of maintenance and investment in infrastructure and education.
Fig. 7 (left) Fig. 8 (right)
Yet the rural landscape assembled for the exploitation of lands and bodies are being reclaimed; disenfranchised enclaves owned by private entities for profit gains are functionally transformed into the collective property of its inhabitants. This can be seen in the establishment across bateyes of colmados solidarios, mutual aid grocers that run on a social economy to ensure food security. Colmado profits go back to the community in the form of services, initiatives, and investment for colmados in other bateyes with the help and guidance of NGOs. The selection of administrators and the location are chosen democratically.8 These mediations reimagine plantations and colmados beyond the capitalist enterprise into strictly community spaces serving the population.
Fig. 9: (left) Fig. 10 (right)
As industry changes on the island in the 21st century, Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent find themselves occupying urban space as labor transitions from the rural agricultural fields to the ever-developing city capital and tourist destinations. However, it is not an overwhelming acceptance these individuals experience but a perverted reinterpretation of their peripheral condition in the new millennium. In the construction industry alone, over 70 percent of jobs fall under the category of informal labor, performed by a workforce composed of companies with 10 or less workers.9
Fig. 11 (left) Fig. 12 (right)
Without government oversight, the batey tale of limited worker rights and insufficient collective bargaining due to fear of termination or deportation repeats itself in the city. Urbanity and its development, built by and offensive to these individuals, reinforce the political hegemony. Nevertheless, like in the rural, marginalized people interrogate Dominicanidad via strategies of ownership and reprogramming of space through occupation and other architectural devices. “That’s why they call it la Feria. A Fair is where everything moves; turkeys, goats, dogs, everybody” reveals a gentleman in the film Una Mirada, Dos Realidades.10 “Everyone has to come here to hustle!”
Fig. 13 (left) Fig. 14 (right)
La Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre was an international exhibition that took place in 1955 in celebration of a quarter century of hispanic triumph under the Trujillo regime.11 La Feria, inspired by the despot's state visit to Francoist Spain the year before,12 was a hastened attempt to appease international criticisms of Trujillo’s atrocities against human rights and attract investments in the hopes to revitalize the country’s declining economy in a post-WWII reality.13
Fig. 15
The monumental complex, Trujillo’s populist hispanic agenda made manifest, now lives an alternative queer existence. During the day, government business is conducted indoors and informal commerce carries on outside. By night, its structures are home to the marginalized and outside sex workers partake in the cladestine.14 The film depicts another scenario in the complex: a youth declares “Aqui estamos,” laying claim to the place, a self-acknowledgement that rings victorious against the backdrop of the El teatro Agua y Luz Angelita Trujillo. On a daily basis, these unmaintained structures are occupied and constantly prescribed new programs thereby imbuing them with value and new meaning.
Fig. 16 (left) Fig. 17 (right)
Extraordinarily, identity began to transmogrify via the revolutionary practice of spatial negotiation and alterations enacted by all inhabitants. In rural areas, collective space in private sugar cane plantations was introduced as a way to ensure the wellbeing of batey residents, and to secure land in defiance of the institutions that denied it. In the city, places of inclusion hitherto inexistent were carved out by means of temporary interventions of informal commerce and the domestication of the abandoned fair structures.
Fig. 18 (left) Fig. 19 (right)
These alternative spaces of the black queer imaginary forge citizenship, demand attention, and defy Dominican hegemony. Not only does it firmly cement the Dominican Republic as patrimony of the populace, but it sets the infrastructure that supports an equitable, just, and pluralist society — no longer defined by the social constructs of failed political ideologies. Through a collective participation in spatial dialogue Dominican society will transcend binaries and come closer to a more faithful iteration of Dominicanidad.
Fig. 20
Bibliography
1. David Howard, Coloring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic (Oxford: Signal Books, 2001), 41.
2.
Charlotte Wiener, “Migración forzada: Deportaciones por vía terrestre de la República Dominicana hacia la República de Haití” (Dominican Republic: OBMICA, 2019).
3.
Alejandro Raya, The Idea of Hispanidad in the Relationship of Francisco Franco and Rafael L. Trujillo (Massachusetts, 2004), 367.
4. Jonathan M Katz, “In Exile.” The New York Times, January 13, 2016
5.
“LGBT Issues in the Dominican Republic” (New York: Human Rights First)
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/HRFReportLGBTinDR.pdf
6.
Raya, The Idea of Hispanidad, 315.
7. Patrick Gavigan, Beyond the Bateyes (New York: National Coalition of Haitian Rights, 1995), 34-36.
8.
ASCALA, “Colmados Solidarios: Seguridad Alimentaria, Empoderamiento y Desarrollo” (Dominican Republic: ASCALA, 2016).
9.
Analytica, Economía Dominicana y Sector Construcción (Santo Domingo: ACOPROVI, September 2019), 36-37.
10.
Corinne van der Borch, Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014) https://vimeo.com/128309869.
11.
Album de Oro de La Feria de La Paz y Confraternidad Del Mundo Libre, Vol. 1 (Santo Domingo: El Mirador, 1956).
12.
Raya, The Idea of Hispanidad, 351.
13. Robert Crassweller, Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 293-299.
14.
Ruddy German Perez, Teatro de Agua y Luz, nido de prostitutas y delincuentes (Dominican Republic: El Nacional, 2015).
Image Credit
Fig. 1. Corinne van der Borch, [Family squatting at El teatro Agua y Luz Angelita Trujillo,] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 2. Fefe Jean and his family, Parc Cadeau 1, in “Where are we going to live?” Migration and Statelessness in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Amnesty International, April 1, 2016.
Fig. 3. A worker passes a rail car filled with cane stalk, in “Blood, Sweat and Sugar: Trade Deal Fails Haitian Workers on DR Plantations.” Aljazeera America, July 16, 2015.
Fig. 4. A worker cuts sugar cane at Batey Las Papita, in “Blood, Sweat and Sugar: Trade Deal Fails Haitian Workers on DR Plantations.” Aljazeera America, July 16, 2015.
Fig. 5. Batey Las Papita, in “Blood, Sweat and Sugar: Trade Deal Fails Haitian Workers on DR Plantations.” Aljazeera America, July 16, 2015.
Fig. 7. Francesco Spotorno, [Batey Lecheria flooded due to clogged sewage system] in “Bateyes del Gran Santo Domingo: La metamorfosis 4/4.” Diario Libre, August 7, 2019.
Fig. 8. Francesco Spotorno, [Woman washes clothes] in “Bateyes del Gran Santo Domingo: La metamorfosis 4/4.” Diario Libre, August 7, 2019.
Fig. 9. [Stocked shelves at the colmado solidario] “Colmados Solidarios: Seguridad Alimentaria, Empoderamiento y Desarrollo.” ASCALA (blog), January 23, 2016.
Fig. 10. [The front of the colmado solidario intervention] in “Seguridad alimentaria a través de la implantación de colmados solidarios en los bateyes de San Pedro de Macorís.” Justalegría.
Fig. 11. Lindsay Erin Lough, Laborers work on constructing a new apartment complex in downtown Santo Domingo, in “Illegal Haitian Workers in Demand.” Cronkite Borderlands Initiative.
Fig. 12. Francesco Spotorno, Vista actual del batey Estrella y su cercanía a la ciudad, in “Bateyes del Gran Santo Domingo: La metamorfosis 3/4.” Diario Libre, August 5, 2019.
Fig. 13. [Street vendors selling fruit from a temporary stall at the Fair complex] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 14. [The facade of a fair structure, now the Consejo Estatal Del Azúcar] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 15. [La Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre complex with La Bolita to the left and El teatro Agua y Luz to the right] Album de Oro de La Feria de La Paz y Confraternidad Del Mundo Libre (1956-1957 : Santo Domingo. Vol. no. 1 and no. 2,) Available from: Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 16. [The fair’s opening ceremony at La Bolita] Album de Oro de La Feria de La Paz y Confraternidad Del Mundo Libre (1956-1957 : Santo Domingo. Vol. no. 1 and no. 2,) Available from: Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 17. Corinne van der Borch, [Sex workers stand adjacent to La Bolita] in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 18. [Fair opening ceremony at El teatro Agua y Luz Angelita Trujillo] Album de Oro de La Feria de La Paz y Confraternidad Del Mundo Libre (1956-1957 : Santo Domingo. Vol. no. 1 and no. 2,) Available from: Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 19. Corinne van der Borch, [Children and teens swim and hang out at El teatro Agua y Luz Angelita Trujillo] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig 20. Corinne van der Borch, [Stills of activity at La Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre.] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Bibliography
1. David Howard, Coloring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic (Oxford: Signal Books, 2001), 41.
2.
Charlotte Wiener, “Migración forzada: Deportaciones por vía terrestre de la República Dominicana hacia la República de Haití” (Dominican Republic: OBMICA, 2019).
3.
Alejandro Raya, The Idea of Hispanidad in the Relationship of Francisco Franco and Rafael L. Trujillo (Massachusetts, 2004), 367.
4. Jonathan M Katz, “In Exile.” The New York Times, January 13, 2016
5.
“LGBT Issues in the Dominican Republic” (New York: Human Rights First)
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/HRFReportLGBTinDR.pdf
6.
Raya, The Idea of Hispanidad, 315.
7. Patrick Gavigan, Beyond the Bateyes (New York: National Coalition of Haitian Rights, 1995), 34-36.
8.
ASCALA, “Colmados Solidarios: Seguridad Alimentaria, Empoderamiento y Desarrollo” (Dominican Republic: ASCALA, 2016).
9.
Analytica, Economía Dominicana y Sector Construcción (Santo Domingo: ACOPROVI, September 2019), 36-37.
10.
Corinne van der Borch, Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014) https://vimeo.com/128309869.
11.
Album de Oro de La Feria de La Paz y Confraternidad Del Mundo Libre, Vol. 1 (Santo Domingo: El Mirador, 1956).
12.
Raya, The Idea of Hispanidad, 351.
13. Robert Crassweller, Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 293-299.
14.
Ruddy German Perez, Teatro de Agua y Luz, nido de prostitutas y delincuentes (Dominican Republic: El Nacional, 2015).
Image Credit
Fig. 1. Corinne van der Borch, [Family squatting at El teatro Agua y Luz Angelita Trujillo,] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 2. Fefe Jean and his family, Parc Cadeau 1, in “Where are we going to live?” Migration and Statelessness in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Amnesty International, April 1, 2016.
Fig. 3. A worker passes a rail car filled with cane stalk, in “Blood, Sweat and Sugar: Trade Deal Fails Haitian Workers on DR Plantations.” Aljazeera America, July 16, 2015.
Fig. 4. A worker cuts sugar cane at Batey Las Papita, in “Blood, Sweat and Sugar: Trade Deal Fails Haitian Workers on DR Plantations.” Aljazeera America, July 16, 2015.
Fig. 5. Batey Las Papita, in “Blood, Sweat and Sugar: Trade Deal Fails Haitian Workers on DR Plantations.” Aljazeera America, July 16, 2015.
Fig. 7. Francesco Spotorno, [Batey Lecheria flooded due to clogged sewage system] in “Bateyes del Gran Santo Domingo: La metamorfosis 4/4.” Diario Libre, August 7, 2019.
Fig. 8. Francesco Spotorno, [Woman washes clothes] in “Bateyes del Gran Santo Domingo: La metamorfosis 4/4.” Diario Libre, August 7, 2019.
Fig. 9. [Stocked shelves at the colmado solidario] “Colmados Solidarios: Seguridad Alimentaria, Empoderamiento y Desarrollo.” ASCALA (blog), January 23, 2016.
Fig. 10. [The front of the colmado solidario intervention] in “Seguridad alimentaria a través de la implantación de colmados solidarios en los bateyes de San Pedro de Macorís.” Justalegría.
Fig. 11. Lindsay Erin Lough, Laborers work on constructing a new apartment complex in downtown Santo Domingo, in “Illegal Haitian Workers in Demand.” Cronkite Borderlands Initiative.
Fig. 12. Francesco Spotorno, Vista actual del batey Estrella y su cercanía a la ciudad, in “Bateyes del Gran Santo Domingo: La metamorfosis 3/4.” Diario Libre, August 5, 2019.
Fig. 13. [Street vendors selling fruit from a temporary stall at the Fair complex] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 14. [The facade of a fair structure, now the Consejo Estatal Del Azúcar] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 15. [La Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre complex with La Bolita to the left and El teatro Agua y Luz to the right] Album de Oro de La Feria de La Paz y Confraternidad Del Mundo Libre (1956-1957 : Santo Domingo. Vol. no. 1 and no. 2,) Available from: Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 16. [The fair’s opening ceremony at La Bolita] Album de Oro de La Feria de La Paz y Confraternidad Del Mundo Libre (1956-1957 : Santo Domingo. Vol. no. 1 and no. 2,) Available from: Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 17. Corinne van der Borch, [Sex workers stand adjacent to La Bolita] in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 18. [Fair opening ceremony at El teatro Agua y Luz Angelita Trujillo] Album de Oro de La Feria de La Paz y Confraternidad Del Mundo Libre (1956-1957 : Santo Domingo. Vol. no. 1 and no. 2,) Available from: Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig. 19. Corinne van der Borch, [Children and teens swim and hang out at El teatro Agua y Luz Angelita Trujillo] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
Fig 20. Corinne van der Borch, [Stills of activity at La Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre.] 2014, in Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (One Gaze, Two Realities) (The Venice Architecture Biennale, 2014).
