Pedro L. San Miguel, The Imagined Island: History, Identity and Utopia in Hispaniola, translated by Jane Ramirez. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005, x + 194 pp."You should never judge a book by its cover." So runs an established cliche. In the case of The Imagined Island, the advice implicit here is unnecessary. Nevertheless, for starters, the cover photograph of Samana, the Dominican Republic, is an arresting one, an aerial view of an empty, golden sand beach fringed on either side by extensive coconut tree plantings and the white foam of waves emerging out of the multihued blue Caribbean. It is a skilfully presented Utopian projection of a fabled island that focuses our imagination on the purity of nature, untainted by man and his works. Yet, as we will learn, this picture postcard perfection conceals an aggressive confrontation. The title of the book is equally arresting.The contents of this enticing packaging do not disappoint. San Miguel has provided the reader with a rigorous critique of, and commentary on, the principal historiographers of the Dominican Republic, contrasted with the work of Jean Price-Mars, the sole Haitian intellectual presented. More than anything else, this critical selection of the works of Dominican historians such as Sanchez-Valverde, Bono, Garcia, PenaBattle, Balaguer and Bosch, that San Miguel weaves so skilfully into his commentary, helps to shed light on issues seemingly specific to the two political units, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which occupy the island of Hispaniola, but which are central to any interrogation of Caribbean reality.Interspersed with a few tantalizing references to geography and environmental issues, the text focuses on race and ethnicity as the principal constructs of identity in the Dominican Republic. Couched in the language and theory of the postmodernists, especially Hayden White and Edward Said, San Miguel demonstrates how over time Dominican writers have depicted Haiti as the "other", the enemy, which was largely responsible for Santo Domingo's retardation.The conversion of the western side of Hispaniola in the eighteenth century to the economically successful French colony of St Domingue held out great promise to some Dominican intellectuals, especially Sanchez-Valverde, who suggested that the French example should be followed, including initiating the massive importation of West Africans as forced labourers for the plantation economy which he suggested should be established in Santo Domingo. The Haitian Revolution put paid to these dreams of rapid economic growth and instead initiated fear and other negative reactions to the possible "Haitianization" of the eastern side of the island. Jean-Pierre Boyer's occupation of that part of the island in 1822 became a benchmark for many White Dominicanos of a terrifying possibility and represented a potential fate that was to be avoided. This is the leit motif that runs throughout the historiography of the Dominican Republic and, to a lesser extent, that of Haiti.Divisions relating to a sometimes tragic and rabid xenophobia are explored in this small volume. Perhaps they have been taken to an extreme in Hispaniola, as evidenced by the massacres of Haitians during the Trujillo period, but they are also present in many Caribbean territories up to the present day. Entrenched divisions were implanted by the colonization process that pitted various European powers against each other. The variety of European languages spoken in the islands plus their related Creoles, tended to foster a "we" versus "they" mentality. This was exacerbated by the geographic reality of discrete islands with sharply nuanced differences within the common parameters of a pan-Caribbean culture.In the final analysis, race became the ultimate divider and catalyst for periodic bouts of violence. Dominican historians persistently located their analyses in the dialectics of race. Black Haiti, depicted as African, backward and mired in superstition and poverty, was contrasted with White Santo Domingo, which was viewed as European, forward thinking and potentially progressive, if only it could overcome its economic lapses or "arrhythmias", as Juan Bosch suggested. …

The Imagined Island: History, Identity and Utopia in Hispaniola

The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity

Maja Horn, Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014. 202 pp.Maja Horn's Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature is well researched, cogent and timely. Through incisive readings of a corpus of Dominican literary texts produced after the Trujillo dictatorship (1930-1961), Horn mounts a highly persuasive challenge to established critical currents concerning the major tenets of masculinity under the dictatorship, the terms in which it might be understood, the complexity of the semiotic practices which sustained it, and the intricate rhetorical legacies which it has spawned.Prevailing scholarly approaches to gender in Dominican studies, and Latin American and Latino studies more generally, tend to locate practices of masculinist hegemony and the concomitant attitudes of misogyny and homophobia within Iberian traditions of machismo. Invariably, the Anglo-American contexts from which most of this scholarship is sponsored and generated emerge as the developed gender democracies whose modern (Western) practices differ radically from those of the traditional (Latin) underdeveloped economies. The study of race relations in the Dominican Republic tends to be treated in much the same way. Horn's study distances itself definitively from this pattern of thinking by showing convincingly that Dominican gender norms have been shaped not in isolation from, but through constant interaction with, external powers of modernity. Gender formations in the Dominican Republic therefore respond to local criteria but also reflect the impact of global forces in multiple ways. Specifically, the book highlights the ineluctable effect of US imperialism on all aspects of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Dominican society including its conception and articulation of masculinity.By underscoring the "insistent meddling" (23) of the US in the affairs of the Dominican Republic from the mid-nineteenth century onwards and featuring its enduring consequences, Horns book complicates the historiography of the nation for the periods before Trujillo's rise to power as well as during and after the Trujillato. The indispensable role that the US occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916-1924) played in moulding the character and political career of the dictator Rafael Trujillo is well known, if not widely acknowledged. Masculinity after Trujillo widens and deepens our understanding of the extent of the influence of this period of military intervention on the gender ideology of the society as a whole. Therefore, unlike the preponderant critical stance which focuses on the idiosyncratic nature of the dictator, Horn centres her attention on the way US imperialist policies such as the infamous 'dollar diplomacy', accompanied as it was with ideologies on race, manhood, progress and 'civilisation', shaped the attimde of Dominican men in general. Thus, aggressive masculinity in the Dominican Republic is to be explained, at least in part, she argues, as an attempt to reassert virility in response to the emasculatory effects of US occupation.This book provides important background information about the Trujillato and subsequent political regimes which will be very useful for readers who are not familiar with the political history of the Dominican Republic. More importantly, it will be extremely valuable for scholars in the field of Dominican studies because of the dexterity with which it distils salient themes in both political and literary discourse in the country. It also breaks new ground through the revelation of the multiple forms of brokerage involved between the two. Horn provides strong evidence of the way hegemonic Dominican masculinity is reconfigured under Trujillo, discusses the characteristics of the new forms of masculinity that emerge in the regime, and details the political machinations that give rise to these new masculine subjects. …

Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature

Franklin Gutiérrez: "Antología histórica de la poesía dominicana del siglo XX (1912-1995)"

The Imagined Island: History, Identity, and Utopia in Hispaniola

The Dominican literary journal Brigadas Dominicanas published ten issues between December 1961 and March 1963. Its director, the Dominican poet and intellectual, Aida Cartagena Portalatin, affirmed her journal as a space open to compatriots committed to artistic and political freedom following the May 1961 assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo. Although its pages serve as an important repository for testimonial literature about the Trujillato, it is more than a simple anthology. While historians maintain that literary discourse played a negligible role during the postdictatorship moment, Brigadas reveals an intense social and political engagement by artists and intellectuals in the political and social life of the nation. Thus, rather than a time bereft of literary activity, Brigadas shows 1961–1965 as a period during which Dominican artists and intellectuals began what would be a long and continuing struggle to define the role of art and literature in a free society.

Elizabeth Christine Russ

Papers

Between the Unthinkable and the Unsayable: The Legacy of Brigadas Dominicanas (December 1961–March 1963)