El obelisco varón, a masculine symbol of national identity in Santo Domingo
Between 1930 and 1961, the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo took firm control of nation-building in the Dominican Republic. More than any political power before him, Trujillo forged a unified nation, but he did so via a politics of exclusion. Many scholars suggest that the state bears the burden of responsibility for the persistence of racism and denial of African roots[1]. It appears, then, that Trujillo’s politics of exclusion continues to define domincanidad (Dominicanness) today. Far from being generated spontaneously among the population, the political and intellectual elite entrenched their version of national culture via formal and informal social institutions.
However, two historians suggest that dominicanidad is determined more by grassroots practice than these appraisals suggest. Writing respectively about the periods before and after Trujillo’s rule, the historians Teresíta Martínez-Vergne[2] and Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof[3] argue that the poor majority in Santo Domingo have resisted attempts by the elite to shape them, forming their own, more inclusive brand of citizenship that the elite failed to overrule.
Martínez-Vergne describes how, in the period between 1880 and 1916, elite projects of nation building were resisted and co-opted by the clases populares (popular classes). By the time Trujillo came to power in 1930, dominicanidad bore the mark of popular culture as much as elite desires for a European cultural orientation. [click to continue…]
{ 0 comments }
Is poverty a state of mind?
by Erin B Taylor January 24, 2013What is the psychology of poverty? This question has been a contentious one in anthropology, particularly during the last half a century. In La Vida (1966), a study of poor Puerto Rican families, Oscar Lewis argued that poverty produces certain psychological traits and social behaviours that become enculturated. His ideas caused an uproar because they [...]