Racism Within a Biblical/Theological Framework: Dominicans
People of Dominican background in the U.S.A. are here primarily for the same reason that other Latinos/as are, i.e. to escape the cycle of misery and poverty in their country, which was generated to a large extent, by its colonial history with Spain, and its neo-colonial history with the U.S.A. In this essay, I will deal with those who came here as a result of the neo-colonial history with the U.S.A. and its foreign economic and political policies, and how, in turn, those policies resulted in a mass migration to this country.
The Dominican Republic and Haiti share the island of Hispaniola, which is the second-largest island of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Jamaica). The eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola constitutes the Dominican Republic, and the western one third, Haiti. To the northwest of Hispaniola lies Cuba, and to the east is Puerto Rico (Himilce Novas: Everything You Need to Know About Latino History, p. 220).
Christopher Columbus made his first landfall on Hispaniola on December 5, 1492. There he established the very first Spanish colony in the New World, which he named ¨La Isla Espa~nola¨ for Spain itself. At some point, historians are uncertain exactly when the island earned a second name, Hispaniola. In Spanish, the
land is nowadays known as both La Isla Espa~nola and Hispaniola; however, internationally it is called only Hispaniola. Columbus was delighted when the Tainos, the natives of Hispaniola, who were a subgroup of the Amerindian group called the Arawak, welcomed him bearing masks and amulets made of gold, for he supposed that the island harbored great riches. In fact, Columbus was so taken with Hispaniola that he made it his main base for exploration of the region. Incidentally, Dominicans claim Columbus as a virtual native son and allege that he was buried in the oldest cathedral in the Americas, the Cathedral of Santa Maria La Menor, which was completed in 1520 in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. The Spanish refute this claim and maintain that the conquistador´s remains are in Seville, Spain (Novas, p.221).
Before 1960, few Dominicans made their way to the United States. The ironfisted regime of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo maintained strict control over visas and travel abroad. After Trujillo´s assassination in 1961, and fueled by the 1965 civil war, Dominican immigration rose to significant levels and then remained steady through the 1970´s. Then in the 1980´s, when economic depression plagued the Dominican Republic, immigration soared. In that decade alone, 250,000 Dominicans entered the United States legally, constituting the second-largest national group of immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, with Mexicans being the largest. The 1990´s and the early years of the new century also saw an unprecedented number of Dominicans immigrating to the United States, due to enduring social injustice and a continued lack of economic opportunity in the Dominican Republic (Novas, p. 232).
One may ask what is the relationship between the internal economic and political problems of the Dominican Republic and U.S. foreign policy? The reader is encouraged to research the history of how the U.S.A. has lent economic, military, and political support to the Dominican government in times of dictatorship, and how the U.S.A. intervened militarily and economically in the time when Dominican leaders who sought the well-being of the Dominican people were undermined and even removed with U.S.A. assistance.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center tabulations of the Census Bureau´s 2005 American Community Survey, there were 1, 135, 756 Dominican-Americans and Dominican nationals in the U.S.A in 2005, a significant rise from the 764, 945 tallied in Census 2000, and more than double the 520, 151 counted in 1990. Census 2000 figures reveal that the five states with the largest Dominican population were New York (455, 061), New Jersey ( 102, 630), Florida (70, 968), Massachusetts (49, 913), and Rhode Island (17, 894). In 2000, Dominicans were the largest foreign-born contingent in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, surpassing all other immigrant groups (Novas, p. 232).
Washington Heights, Hamilton Heights, and Inwood in Manhattan, as well as Corona in Queens, are the very heart of Dominican life in New York City. Washington Heights has the largest Dominican community in the nation; Dominican Americans refer to it as Quisqueya Heights, after the native name for Hispaniola (Novas, p. 232).
In addition to Dominicans who enter the country through ¨legal¨ channels and secure U.S. citizenship, there is also a sizable undocumented Dominican population in the U.S.A. No reliable data on this population´s size have been published, but many researchers assert that as many as three hundred thousand undocumented Dominicans have settled in the United States. One way that they enter the United States is by paying a small fortune, often an entire year´s wages, to smugglers to transport them across the shark-infested Mona Passage, the eighty-mile stretch of turbulent separating the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. This perilous journey, undertaken in small, rickety boats or on rafts, costs thousands their lives each year. If they make it across the Mona Passage and succeed at dodging the U.S. Border Patrol agents combing the western coastline of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory with commonwealth status, Dominicans customarily work until they have enough money to travel to the U.S. mainland. They either hop a plane from Luis Mu~noz Marin International Airport in San Juan to the mainland, usually to New York, with false documents, pretending to be Puerto Ricans, who are American citizen, and thus needing no visa or passport, or they board container ships sailing to mainland ports, sometimes paying crew members to look the other way. Naturally, it was much easier for Dominicans to travel ¨illegally¨ from Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland before September 11, 2001, and the establishment of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Novas, p. 233).
Although clearly defined Dominican communities first appeared over fifty years ago, Dominican Americans have always been the invisible Latinos/as, especially in comparison to Mexican American, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans. And since a large percentage of Dominicans are of mixed African, native, and Spanish descent, they have encountered the same prejudice and racial discrimination that African Americans have suffered in the U.S.A. Operating under the false belief that Dominican immigrants represent the poorest, most disenfranchised members of Dominican society, some Americans have argued that these immigrants burden the nation´s social service system. While Dominicans do dominate the ranks of the small percentage of Latinos/as receiving public assistance, the truth is that the vast majority of Dominican-Americans are extremely hardworking people who have never been on welfare, or received food stamps or worker´s compensation. What´s more, as a group, Dominicans who come to the United States are more highly educated than those on the island, and a good number among them are professional (Novas, p. 234).
This essay raises the same questions that have been raised by previous essays, i.e. what is a biblical/theological response to the racism and ethnic discrimination that our Dominican sisters and brothers encounter in the U.S.A.? In what ways do we in the community of faith evaluate the plight of Dominican-Americans. Do we dismiss their condition as the result of indolence and laziness? Is there a viable faith approach that we can take to address and remedy their situation? You, the reader, are invited to share with us what you think about this issue. Please feel free to share your perspective, opinion, and view.
In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.
Dr. Juan A. Carmona
No comments:
Post a Comment