Racism Within a Biblical/Theological Framework: Dominican-Americans

               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

Racism within a Biblical/Theological Framework: Cuban Americans

In dealing with the Cuban-American community as part of the larger Hispanic-American community in the U.S,A., we find a very interesting situation.  While the vast majority of Latinos/as that came to the U.S.A. from different Caribbean, Central and South American countries for economic reasons, the presence of Cuban immigrants in the U.S.A. is for the most part, for a different reason.  The vast wave of Cubans who came to the U.S,A. after 1959, came to flee from what they considered to be a ¨dictatorship¨ imposed by Fidel Castro, who subsequently, after overthrowing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, declared himself a ¨Communist.¨ And because there was acrimony and hostility between the Cuban and American governments at the time, the U.S.A. welcomed Cuban refugees who, some of whom later on would be involved in an American plot to overthrow the Castro regime.

When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959, his revolutionary regime welcomed middle-of-the road politicians and citizens, a large number of whom viewed him as a democratic reformer with an honest, clear-cut agenda to rein in the widespread corruption and mis-management in Cuba´s government, and get on with the island´s constitutional democracy.  In a matter of time, however, Castro began implementing socialist reforms, which included the confiscation of privately-owned land and industries.  As early as 1961, he publicly declared , ¨I have been a Marxist-Leninist all along, and will remain one until I die.¨ Castro proceeded to align himself with the then Soviet Union, both economically and politically, in effect, from some standpoints, handling the island over to Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev (Himilce Novas:  Everything You Need to Know about Latino History, p. 187).

Whether Castro, had indeed, been a Marxist-Leninist ¨all along¨ as he stated is a matter of debate.  And whether he aligned himself with the Soviet Union after being rejected by the U.S.A. for financial help, is also debatable. Some would argue that the refusal of the U.S.A. (Batista´s benefactor) pushed him into the embrace of the Soviet Union, not so much out of conviction, but rather from economic and political expediency.  That perspective is one among several others.

By 1960, a large wave of Cuban immigration to the U.S.A. had been unleashed. Most of those who came were white middle class Cubans, who fled the island, especially for the U.S.A, especially Miami, where the U.S. government welcomed them as refugees (Novas, p. 187).

Another wave of Cuban immigration to the U.S.A was unleashed in 1980, when Castro lifted his seven-year ban on emigration and declared that every Cuban wishing to leave the island, should report to the port of Mariel, where Cuban-American families could pick them up by boat.  At least 11,000 Cubans showed up and got this second wave moving.  Castro then flung open the doors of his prisons, and between April 21 and September 26, 1980, allowed Cuban-Americans from Miami to load nearly 125,000 Cubans, approximately 1.3 percent of the Cuban population at that time, onto shrimp boats and over vessels, dubbed the Freedom Flotilla. The Cuban refugees, known as ¨Marielitos¨ because they departed from the port of Mariel, were boatlifted to Key West.  On May 11, 1980, alone, 4,588 Cuban refugees sailed to the U.S.A, breaking the the record for the most arrivals in a single day.  A good number of these refugees were convicted criminals, and people with mental health issues.  Unlike the refugees of 1960, the vast majority of these refugees were poor and black.

The way the U.S. government dealt with the first group of refugees and with the second group, raises questions of racial preference.  Why is it, for example, that the first wave was accepted with open arms, and treated with more dignity than was the second wave?   Why is it that white Cubans do not consider themselves to be treated as ¨second-class citizens¨ in America, while black Cubans identify with their black sisters and brothers in the African-American community and with blacks from other countries?

Once again, the issue or racism and racial preference within the framework of the community of faith comes into play.  How would you as a member of the Church or other community of faith respond to the rampant racism in our society, especially as to how it affects the Hispanic community?  Your input is much appreciated.

In the Name of the Creator, Liberator, and Sustainer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona

Small-talk Dialogue: Racism in a Biblical/Theological Framework: Fuerza...

Small-talk Dialogue: Racism in a Biblical/Theological Framework: Fuerza...: Before moving on to the next essay which will focus on the Cuban-American community, I would like to briefly address a movement that has ...

Racism in a Biblical/Theological Framework: Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (Armed Forces of National Liberation)

Before moving on to the next essay which will focus on the Cuban-American community, I would like to briefly address a movement that has had an impact on the Puerto Rican-American community.  I am referring to the group known as FALN which stands for Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (Armed Forces of National Liberation).  This was a paramilitary group whose focus was taking direct action to achieve the independence of Puerto Rico. I will not go into much detail on this essay concerning this group because my focus is on the issue of how we evaluate the issue of ethnic and racial discrimination within the framework of Scripture and theology. The reader is encouraged to do her/his own research on this group and draw her/his own conclusions.  I would also encourage the reader to read my previous essay on Puerto Ricans in the diaspora in the U.S.A. and determine for herself/himself if the role played by FALN is a legitimate one by biblical/theological standards.

As mentioned before, FALN was a paramilitary organization that focused specifically on the independence of Puerto Rico, and to a lesser extent, on the democratic rights of Puerto Ricans living in the U.S.A. It is said that they were guided by a Marxist ideology, and they did believe in resorting to armed struggle as part of the mission to achieve the goal of political indepence.  They claimed responsibility for many acts of ¨terror¨ in both the U.S.A.  and in Puerto Rico.  I personally witnessed one of these ¨terrorist¨ acts when I was working as a teletype operator for Thompson-Mckinnon, a brokerage house in lower Manhattan.  The year was 1975.  While I was I was typing, I heard an explosion which came from across the street.  Suddenly, I saw people running in different directions and within minutes of the explosion, many police cars and firetrucks arrived on the scene.  The building in which the Fraunces Tavern was located had been bombed and several people had died as a result of the bombing. FALN claimed responsibility for this ¨terrorist¨ act.

The reader may want to know why I place the word ¨terrorist¨ within quotes.  The reason for this is because the terms ¨terrorists¨ and ¨freedom fighters¨ are relative depending on whose perspective is the dominant one.  The American revolutionaries fighting against England for national independence were considered ¨freedom fighers,¨ and Palestinians and other Arabs who have fought against Zionist Israel and their lackeys are designated as ¨terrorists.¨"  The issue is not so much whether armed struggle should or should not be used, but rather whether the cause for which armed struggle is used is a justified one.

My issue is a different one.  Is armed struggle, which usually resorts in bloodshed, a valid way of achieving justice according to the Christian tradition?  The answer to this question will depend on who one asks.  Christians on both sides of the issue will give different answers according to not only their personal conviction, but also according to which interests they are trying to promote and reserve. Many American Christians will vehemently defend the method of armed struggle used by the American revolutionaries who fought against England, but then turn around and condemn those who use similar methods to defend what they consider their legitimate rights.

My question would be, whose particular biblical hermeneutic (interpretation) is the correct one in terms of addressing the issues of war and peace?  Is the correct hermeneutic determined by those in power or should it be determined by those who believe and consider themselves to be oppressed?

I invite you, the reader to join this dialogue by sharing your perspectives and views.  No answer is ¨right¨ or ¨wrong¨ in and of itself.  Your participation is most welcome and appreciated.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona

Racism in A Biblical/Theological Perspective: Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora

                                                             Puerto Ricans in the Diaspora

This essay will focus on the presence of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora, i.e. the presence of Puerto Ricans in mainland U.S.A.  We ask why are so many Puerto Ricans in the U.S.A?  Any honest and serious student of history will know that the major factor in the presence of Puerto Ricans in the U.S.A. is due primarily to the colonization of our island by the U.S.A. after the Spanish-American War in 1898, and subsequently the economic chaos on the island generated by the colonization. It is precisely because of the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the U.S.A. that we make, for the purposes of this dialogue, a distinction between Puerto Ricans in the U.S.A., on the one hand, and on the other hand, Hispanics (Latinos) who come here from other countries.

Himilce Novas raises the questions as to why isn´t Puerto Rican migration considered immigration and how did it get started?  She informs us that since all Puerto Ricans are citizens-no matter if they dwell in San Juan or in San Francisco-and not foreigners, they can travel freely back and forth between the island and mainland U.S.A.  without passports or visas.  In other words, their movement constitutes the internal migration of Americans, not immigration.  Confusion abounds in mainstream society about Puerto Rican citizenship status.
Most mainland Puerto Rican mainlanders have a story or two to tell about the time they were asked about their green card or Puerto Rican currency, or Puerto Rico´s president, and more than one media pundit has pontificated on national television about the issue of ¨illegal Puerto Rican immigrants¨ in America (Himilce Novas, Everything You Need to Know About Latino History, p.154).

Puerto Ricans first came to the U.S.A. in the 1860´s.  After Puerto Rico was ceded to the U.S.A at the end of the Spanish-American War, more Puerto Ricans making their way to the U.S.A., and after 1917, when they were given U.S.A. citizenship, they began to settle or sojourn, an experience fraught with risks, uncertainty, and obstacles, including a language barrier, poverty, social isolation, and overt discrimination. In the early days, the majority went to Florida and New York to labor in cigar-making shops. Forty percent of those who arrived between 1890 and 1910 eventually returned to Puerto Rico (Novas, p. 155).

The first great wave of migration from Puerto Rico to mainland U.S.A took place only in the aftermath of World War II, and lasted until 1967.  The reasons were many, but they essentially boiled down to one issue: economics.  During World War II, about one hundred thousand Puerto Ricans had served in the U.S. military.  Military life exposed these islanders to the ¨superior" quality of life on the mainland, fueling their desire to move north.  In addition, Puerto Rico´s population doubled in size to two million during the first quarter of the twentieth century, and continued to grow at a rapid rate due to improvement in medical services.  With so many more people on the island, the standard of living did not rise substantially, and the unemployment rate soared.  By contrast, jobs on the mainland were plentiful.  New York City was a destination for Puerto Rican workers , who found low-paying labor intensive jobs in the manufacturing sector-which eagerly hired unskilled and semi-skilled workers-making apparel, shoes, toys, novelties, and electrical good, and assembling furniture and mattresses.  They also went to work in the food and hotel industries, the meatpacking, and baking industries, distribution, laundry service, and domestic service.  About half of all these workers were women (Novas, p. 155).

Since 1967, Puerto Rican islanders have settled on the mainland spurts, depending on the health of the U.S economy, and the mainland job market.  Those who went to New York City in the 1960´s generally wound up in manufacturing, even though this sector had already began a gradual decline as early as the 1950´s.   Then in the 1970´s,  New York City was gripped by a major financial crisis as businesses packed up and headed south and overseas in search of low-wage, non-union labor.  This shrinking of the manufacturing sector had a devastating effect on New York City´s Puerto Ricans , who generally did not have the formal education needed to fill in the white-collar jobs that were opening up in the city´s growing service sector (Novas, p. 156).

It should be added that for many decades, Puerto Rican migrant workers, about whom most Americans are not even aware, have worked on a season basis harvesting potatoes on Long Island, fruits and vegetables in New Jersey and New York tobacco in Connecticut, and sugar beets in Michigan (Novas, p. 156).

Puerto Ricans have historically been the most socially and economically disadvantaged of all Latinos.  In 1998, for instance, a full 30.9  percent of Puerto Ricans lived in poverty, and 43.5 percent of Puerto Rican children lived below the poverty level.  In 2000, approximately 40 of Puerto Ricans had slipped to or below the poverty line.  The depressed economic status of mainland Puerto Ricans has been attributed to a number of phenomena, such as the disproportionate number of Puerto Rican migrants settling stateside as compared to immigrant groups , owing to the fact that Puerto Rican´s U.S. citizenship removes all obstacles to entering the mainland.  Low levels of educational attainment, limited job skills, disease disparities (including a high incidence of diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression in the Puerto Rican community), and drug use have also been frequently cited as reasons for the economically underprivileged class of Puerto Ricans on the mainland.  Some social observers have suggested that the culprits underlying all these circumstances are rampant ethnic and racial discrimination; the language barrier, and the process of transculturation, of straddling the two cultures and two-languages, which is commonly accompanied by a disorienting sense of being ¨neither here nor there¨ (Novas, p. 157).

It is important to point out that the socio-economic status of mainland Puerto Ricans is advancing at a steady pace.  Large numbers of mainland Puerto Ricans hold professional, managerial, technical, and administrative support jobs, which are cornerstones of economic well-being.  Interestingly, Puerto Rican mainlanders who live outside of the Northeast have shown better economic outcomes than their counterparts in the Northeast, owing to their human capital and labor market characteristics (Novas, p. 158).

Two questions come into play here.  They are:

1.  How do we evaluate colonization from a biblical/theological perspective?

2.  How do we evaluate the status of second-class citizenship from a biblical/theological standpoint?

I have consistently maintained in these essays, that the grain of Scripture (especially the Gospel accounts) mitigates against both the illegal and immoral usurpation of land, on the one hand, and relegation of a group of people to second-class on the other.  I now invite you to share your perspective as to whether or not we can examine both colonialism and the lack of democratic rights in the context of the Christian tradition, and of theology as a whole.  Please feel free to share your views and how theology fits or does not fit into this discussion about colonization and discrimination.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Ayala-Carmona