As usual it is more brainstorm/brainfart than statement.
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OK here are my suggestions that I promised to put up in interest of fairness. I want to say I believe no man can fully escape the material conditions he was raised in, the culture and education he came out of, etc ... so in short I own up that my views are shaped by the biases of growing in the diaspora, to poor parents, and rarely exposed to any 'upper crust' Dominicans. That said there is a conviction that drives my sentiments that may make me a snobbish, aloof city-dweller. I'm not afraid to put it out there for cristiscism and thoughts though, and the conviction is nested in this question:
How many people in DR are functionally illiterate peasantry & urban proles, or at best one generation removed from that condition?
This material condition to me is something that cannot be overlooked in deciding how you craft a message and framework for progress. When expressed openly the human rights values underlying Baldo's proposals often have difficulty finding an audience even in thoroughly middle-class & literate republics like the US and EU nations! How much more alien, impractical and in some ways even undesirable must these principles sound to the Dominican mass barely a generation away from illiteracy, raised in families barely 2 or 3 generations away from a free, sparsely populated, over-fertile countryside? Or conversely when they find an audience among urbanized Dominicans does that mean the values receive honest participative application by this segment, or that the values just get more lip service from the educated, pilfering intelligentsia?
TO ME here is a framework that would buy the consent of these groups, be specific enough that the participative aspects are clear to all, have demonstrable outcomes that don't require high literacy to believe in, and still serve the underpinning human rights values we share:
1- modernization of electric grids and domestic transportation, perhaps with a focus on enabling agricultural entrepreneurialism … this does not require foreign engineering firms or even as much capital as we might imagine. Policies could include drafting manpower to build infrastructure, & applying the bulk of government resources and brains to resolving the electricity issue.
2- rationalization and professionalization of bureaucracies … less political appointments and more qualified career technocrats. If you were the right man to run the communications ministry yesterday, a new president today should not have the power to replace you under any circumstances. PUNTO.
3- preservation/development of a unique Dominican culture to combat materialism … because Dominicans need to focus on getting in place the basics, on not being fatalist pessimists, and also not have false illusions that the island will ever look like Smalltown, USA. I think there is no shortage of pride amongst Dominicans in their island, and their UNIQUE hybrid Hispanic & African culture…this needs to continue to be promoted but the overwhelming pessimism must go, and ditto the gold chains, Escalades and Land Rovers.
4- restrictive control of immigration …sorry this I've come to realize is a necessary focus to ensure consensus and unity in any policy package or platform for progress. For there to be a Dominican project it must be clear to all the potential citizen stakeholders that they will be the sole beneficiaries. Concerns for our neighbors in the West are worthy and necessary, but also necessarily dead last in terms of priority. Juan Campesino and Jose del Barrio must believe, despite even the most limited grasp of politics, that the leaders of his government and culture have him as their main concern. If progressive cultural & political forces don't choose to own this issue by manipulating a sort of anti-Haitianism-lite then their opposition will use this as leverage, and they will aim to apply a much scarier trujillista anti-Haitianism.
Well that's my piece hope you find it worthwhile and I look forward to your thoughts.
I'll make a daring statement that DR is the one true mulatto nation. Our cousins in Cuba & PR are allegedly >75% European descended, so along with much of Latin-America they are creole republics. Many of our other neighbors in this sea are self professed Black republics. Latin-America has considerable populations of people with African heritage, but as we know it isn't as evident in their rostros and so it isn't as central to their societies. In DR absent the worst excesses of the plantation & slavery, absent the racializing influence of a strong imperial presence, witnesses to the outcome of cruel oppression next door, amidst plentiful sun and land, and under constant assault by outsiders the European & African came together in a unique way....the Dominican.
Whether because of ODR in the case of North-America, or because of a stronger connection to indigenous heritage in South America, nowhere else is there this comfort to the same degree. Their different history almost blinds them to the outcome they would see before their eyes if they bothered to learn our history. PERO as members here have put out there on other threads here on DT.com, we of course aren't some harmonious racial utopia completely innocent of the sins of discrimination. No nation is. However for Dominicans being something original and tough to decipher all we get from fleeting observers is superficial scrutiny and baseless condemnation.
Soon when we are a bit mightier and more developed, when Haiti is not the humanitarian cause of the minute, when our diaspora's voice abroad gains volume, and when Cuba's own issues are no longer hidden from view ... maybe then the stage will be set and they will see. The Americas...
'...should begin to think seriously about the destiny reserved by Providence for the Negroes and mulattoes of America. From now on, this destiny is manifest, given the present number of this [mulatto] race; and I believe the island of Santo Domingo is called to be the nucleus, the model of its glorification and individuality in this hemisphere.'-"from an homage to Gregorio Luperon, 1888".
Quote cited in Undoing Empire by Prof. Buscaglia-Salgado.
