Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic (review)

Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic. By Ernesto Sagás, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. Illustrations. Maps. Table. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xii, 160 pp. Cloth, $49.95.

This book joins the growing literature on the mostly conflictive relationship between those closest of Caribbean neighbors, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The author joins the fray straight out of the gate. He is hardly dispassionate about the fundamental sources of, if not the origins at least the perpetuation of, that conflictive relationship. "Antihaitianismo ideology," he states, "combines a legacy of racist Spanish colonial mentality, nineteenth-century racial theories, and twentieth-century cultural neo-racism into a web of anti-Haitian attitudes, racial stereotypes, and historical distortions" (p. ix). This "hegemonic ideology" not only oppresses Haitians in the Dominican Republic, it has also traditionally been employed as an ideological weapon "to subdue the black and mulatto Dominican lower classes and maintain their political acquiescence" (p. ix).

It is the author's intention to examine and "demystify" this racist ideology, perpetuated by what he terms the "light-skinned elites." Very similar light-skinned elites, he asserts, also monopolize power and exercise hegemonic control over blacks and mulattoes in today's Cuba and Puerto Rico. As such, the approach of this book dovetails with the considerable literature in Haiti and the non-Hispanic Caribbean that invariably analyzes social stratification and power relations in terms of skin color. Call it the "pigmentocratic" approach.

How well does the author make his case? It is a mixed performance. He uses well the substantial secondary literature on the "Haitian" problem in the Dominican Republic and this diachronic analysis moves convincingly from the colonial era to the Trujillo period (1930-61). It is the latter that receives the bulk of the author's attention. Rightly so. Trujillo's "national project" had strong and persistent anti-Haitian overtones, an ideology that was continued after the tyrant's death by one of the architects of anti-Haitianismo, Joaquín Balaguer. The author quite correctly argues that even in the democratic period (post-1965) antihaitianismo exercised a form of political control. His analysis of the fate of José Francisco Peña Gómez, accused of being "un haitiano," is insightful and lends credence to his central thesis. Unfortunately, his good historical analysis is repeatedly undermined by some fuzzy sociology. I shall mention three examples that are conceptually related.

First, the author's insistence that the Dominicans fail to recognize "their true racial identity" (p. 125) by coming to terms with their African heritage. He sees it as a form of "false consciousness" (p. 76). This position can be faulted on two grounds. Historically, the Dominican Republic never had a plantation system developed enough to demand large African slavery. There is, consequently, a weak African presence. Practical and ethical issues also arise: Who, other than the people themselves, should decide what their "true" ethnic identity is?

The second error derives from the first: the notion that it is the light-skinned elite's "divide and conquer" strategy that keeps the Haitian and Dominican masses from forming "transnational alliances" (p. 125). The author has no time to seriously consider national identities since he considers nationalism "inevitably" racist. (p. 6). A grave mistake. Finally, the author brings his whole historical argument into doubt when he repeatedly argues that in the final analysis what exists is "symbolic racism": everyday realities do not correspond to racial and ethnic attitudes. Antihaitianismo, he says, "is more myth than reality, more talk than substance" (p. 128). Elsewhere he tells us that social relations are characterized by a "divergence between public concerns and everyday reality." (pp. 82-83). To those acquainted with "true" (viz. Jim Crow) racism, this sounds awfully confusing.

This interesting and readable book is testimony to the complexities of Dominican--and Caribbean--society where individuals, groups, indeed whole classes, move in and out of "identities" with ease. Who are we to say...