by Oliver Hill
Narration
Sugar has formed the basis of the Dominican economy for the past 400 years.
On a recent friday night Sita Fernandez, a first generation Dominican artist performed a dance at City College called "Bittersweet." Fernandez wanted to highlight the economic foundation of anti-Haitian prejudice so she chose sugar as the theme.
NatSound - Sita - Azucar Azucar Azucar….bring under…
Fernandez:
I was curious as to how the production of sugar has also produced notions of identity and that there's links between the history of sugar and the history of how we view ourselves as Dominicans racially.
Post SOT - Rant
Narration:
The dance is divided into three parts. In the first part Fernandez is dressed like the notorious Dominican Dictator Trujillo who exemplified racial oppression with his massacre of Haitians and diehard allegiance to the Spanish motherland.
Post SOT Dictator Rant
One of the things that I'm looking at is the struggle of the Haitian migrant workers in present day DR but also historically what that experience has been and how Dominican identity has been pitted against what is Haitian and it's often defined as whatever is not Haitian is what we are.
Fade Music of First section / Bring up poem
Narration:
In the second part of her performance, Fernandez changes tone, dancing gracefully to a recording of her poem coming through the sound system. The poem is an emotional outpouring of the historical elements that shaped her own identity.
Post Poem
Fernandez:
I'm Dominican and white and I think part my whole research into Dominican culture was to try to understand who I am in the context of history.
Narration:
It's not just through dance and poetry that Fernandez is challenging prejudice and exploring her heritage. She has founded a New York based Dominican cultural group called Areytos.
Fernandez:
We really wanted to start by throwing events in the Dominican community that highlight the African and indigenous heritages of Dominican culture, there's never been a negritude movement in Dominican History on a large scale.
X-Fade Poem - Post Gaga SOT
Narration:
The performance culminates with a dance called Gaga that bridges Haitian and Dominican cultures.
Fernandez:
The third section is about Gaga which is a religious sect that came up on the sugarcane plantations which is both Dom and Haitian and the music and dance of that section is gaga.
Post End of Gaga Song in Dance - Fade Applause under Narration
Bring up Ceremony Maracas
Narration:
Gaga is one of many rhythms performed by the New York based musical ensemble Palo Monte. The group's leader Osvaldo Sanchez was born in the Dominican Republic to a Haitian father and says it was hard growing up Haitian and black in a society with deep racial prejudice.
Sanchez:
If you are black, you are nothing, and that's why black people from Dominican they don't even know that they are African, you know, just like Haiti, they are brothers.
Bring Up Drumming - Fade under Figueroa
Narration:
The group specializes in Palo, a musical genre with African origins from the Dominican Republic. Percussionist Jose Figueroa sings with the group as he plays large cylindrical colorfully painted wooden drums.
Figueroa:
These Drums over here are actually of Haitian Decent - African Decent but of the African decent in Haiti.
Bring up
Figueroa:
We also have other genres that are Dominican there's the popular music that we were playing first with the tall drums that and that's played with the Dominican form of Voodoo which is practiced all over the island, but it's real origins, the fundamental part of its origin comes from Haiti.
Narration:
All the rhythms played by Palo Monte come from the Voodoo tradition, some are particular to the Dominican Republic, others are found in Haiti as well. Voodoo originated when African slaves were forbidden from practicing their native religion and forced into Catholicism. The slaves responded by adopting the Catholic saints as synonyms for their own saints. While Voodoo is practiced openly in Haiti, it is shunned in the Dominican Republic. Figueroa says there's an inherent contradiction in denying the African and Haitian influences in Dominican society because Voodoo is so pervasive.
Jose Figueroa
like a good 80 percent practices it... they might not be open, but secretive, this is something that because of colonization and the U.S. domination of culture people are kinda really ashamed of it so they keep it behind doors.
X-Fade - Post LI ceremony SOT
At a Voodoo ceremony on Long Island, 25-year-old Jose Alequin says the musical and religious tradition he brought with him from the Dominican Republic is reinforced by his membership with Palo Monte.
Julio Alequin
(A traves de ella identifico por ejemplo que vengo de una raza negra, africana y la religion forma parte de eso de la raza no importa de donde sea, te hace sentir que es una misma familia a traves de ella tu la puedes osea conocer las cosas que hay oculta, que hay todavia a conocer)
V.O. Alequin
Through it i Identify that I come from a black African race and my religion is part of that, part of my race, no matter where it comes from, it makes me feel that I am part of a family and through it can begin to know the secrets of my history.
Fade out music Up bar
Narration:
Palo Monte gives workshops in schools and performs in venues around the city. Carlitos Bar in Spanish Harlem was packed for a performance on a recent saturday night.
Open for Drumming
Narration:
Group leader Sanchez says the goal of his group is to educate people in Dominican Culture and correct misconceptions about Voodoo.
Sanchez:
(Cuando una gente te dicen aqui en esta ciudad, fuera de alla de Republica Dominicana te dicen wow, yo no sabia que esta tradicion era mia ni que existia, me da mucho a mi, me paga todo el precio del trabajo porque yo se que estoy identificando otra gente quien es y de donde vienen y se que estoy haciendo una comunidad mas fuerte.)
V.O. Sanchez:
When people come and tell me in this city: "I'm dominican and I didn't even know this musical traditional was mine, or that it even existed," that gives me a lot, it pays the price of my work because I know that I'm giving people an identity and creating a stronger community.
Narration:
A senior member of the group, Silvestre Wallace says that through Voodoo music he hopes to promote awareness of cultural heritage in all people.
Wallace:
This is a project that attempts to set history strait and it also allows us to reach back to those elements or aspects of our own culture of our own tradition which serve to strengthen us going into the 21st century.
Narration:
Wallace spoke between songs about the importance of gaining a true understanding of self.
SOT Wallace talking to crowd at performance
If you walking around trying to be someone else cause we don't believe in ourselves then we cannot appreciate the diversity we cannot respect and we cannot be respected.
Bring under narration - fade out before Hernandez
Narration:
Efforts to overcome the historical antagonism between Dominicans and Haitians are not limited to New York. Angela Hernandez is a Dominican writer who lives in Santo Domingo. She says the melting pot of Latin-Americans in New York provides a unique opportunity.
Hernandez:
(da otra perspectiva sobre la identidad una perspectiva un poco distinta que tiene una persona que ha vivido toda su vida en Rep Dom o en Haiti o en cualquier otro pais, y tambien una necesidad mas fuerte de tener un certeza sobre su identidad y yo pienso que eso que estan haciendo es parte de esa devenir de su identidad.)
V.O. Hernandez
It gives people another perspective on identity, a different perspective from someone who has grown up their whole life in the Dominican Republic, in Haiti, or in any other country. It also demands certainty and I think people are doing all these things to establish strength and confidence in their identity.
Narration:
Hernandez is making her own inroads on the Island of Hispanola by collaborating with a Haitian author to compile an unprecedented Anthology of Folk Stories which will be translated for both Dominican and Haitian readers.
Hernandez: V.O.
(Creo que nosotros el pueblo Haitiano, el pueblo Dominicano tenemos que aprender a vivir bien como buenos vecinos porque tenemos atras una estela de prejuicios de malquerencias y de sucesos negativos)
I think that we in the Dominican Republic and Haiti have to learn to live as good neighbors because we have a history of pervasive prejudice, hate and negativity.
Narration:
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere suggesting its people will continue to cross the border into the Dominican Republic in search of work. By celebrating a shared cultural heritage with their Haitian neighbors, these Dominican artists hope to unite a divided island in solidarity instead of maintaining the frigid coexistence that has its roots in a colonial past. Oliver Hill, Columbia Radio News.