The Dominican Republic Reader: History, Culture and Politics ed. by Eric Paul Roorda, Lauren Derby, and Raymudo Gonzáles (review)

This volume is the most recent edition to “The Latin America Readers” series that is edited by Duke University Press Series Editors Robin Kirk and Orin Starn. Readers will recognize such Latin American profiles to date as Brazil (1999), Argentina (2002), Mexico (2002), Cuba (2003), Costa Rica (2004), Peru (2005), Ecuador (2009), Guatemala (2011), Paraguay (2012), and Chile (2013). Drawing on extant publications from archival, historical, peer-reviewed, poetic, and popular sources, these template-prescribed volumes provide the closest things to the genre of ‘area studies’ publications with the important distinction that there are multiple authors and the editors introduce sections and selections to situate each work presented. Herein lies both the strength and weaknesses of the reader series, which has now moved beyond Latin America to include Indonesia, Alaska Native, and other works in the newer “The World Readers” pipeline at the press.

Eleven major sections outline major historical periods that start from “European Encounters” to the “Dominican Diaspora). These sections frame 118 contributions that range from entries about Columbus’ voyages, to Facebook postings about “You know you’re Dominican when…”, the latter, of course, has diffused globally for nearly every country. The sections are European Encounters; Pirates, Governors and Slaves; Revolutions; Caudillos and Empires; The Idea of the Nation: Order and Progress; Dollars, Gunboats and Bullets; The Era of Trujillo; The Long Transition to Democracy; Religious Practices; Popular Culture; and the Dominican Diaspora. Latinamericanists, particularly Caribbeanists and Centralamericanists, will recognize the logic of this order. Yet if one of the goals of the book tries to dispel some popular misconceptions of the Dominican Republic, I would have allocated more space to the latter two sections as opposed to the first two. On the one hand, globalization and low-cost jet travel have transformed the lives and landscapes of the Punta Cana-Bávaro area of the eastern shores, where the likes of developers Frank Rainieri and Ted Kheel, celebrities Oscar de la Renta and Julio Iglesias, as well as the ambitious investments of Donald Trump and the Cap Cana resort, are –rightly or wrongly-- reshaping the country’s history, culture and politics in the new millennium. Accordingly, something on this topic merits at least one entry. On the other hand, what José Martí, Barack Obama, Fidel Castro, Christopher Columbus and others have to say about all things dominicano makes for captivating reading.

Although The Dominican Republic Reader attempts to transcend the popular perception that the nation produces only baseball players, tobacco, and is a tourist destination for North Atlantic snowbirds, there are topical oversights. One would be an essay concerning the role that tourism or export-processing zones have played in the past fifty years, though this is superficially hinted at through the lyrics of songwriter and performer Juan Luís Guerra. Another is some semblance of an environmental history driven by forest clearings for sugar, the search for firewood in the highlands, or little-known gems such as whale watching and breeding in Samaná Bay on the north shore. The palpable anti-Haitian sentiment receives some attention, but surely deserves more ink. Nor is there a single essay devoted to the all-important border setting the Dominica Republic apart from Haiti. While aerial images show the striking contrast in land cover between denuded Haiti and a greener neighbor to the east, the formal border also underscores a huge underground market for islanders on both sides of the border, whose economic impact and transculturation affects the livelihoods of tens of thousands of households.

Presidents Trujillo, Balaguer, and Bosch receive ample coverage, as one would expect given the book’s sub-title. There are also textual jewels concerning religious practices, cock fighting, the social meaning of one’s hair, merengue, [End...