Intersectionality of Racism and Sexism in the Dominican Republic

Phoebe Do 17 Gettysburg College

Citation style: APA

French travel writers of the 19th century, when visiting Saint Domingue, noted that people who

seemed obviously of mixed African and Spanish descent consider themselves los blancos de la tierra,

literally the whites of the land, to distance themselves from black identity which was often associated

with slaves identities (Candelario, 2000). This anecdote demonstrates that whiteness, in the context of

the Dominican Republic identity, clearly connotes achievement of social, political, and economic

privileges. The application of such a paradoxical racial notion in the context of gender inequality in the

Dominican Republic is an interesting conceptualization. By discussing the institutionalization of both

racism and sexism in the Dominican Republic, this paper argues that the structural interaction of the two

results in a unique form of oppression on Dominican women of color. The paper thereby concludes that

it is important for modern feminist movements to consider the structural oppression to address the

struggles of women of color in the Dominican Republic.

Racism has been historically institutionalized in the Dominican Republic by three forces:

colonialism, Dominican struggle to distance from Haitian influence, and Trujillos construction of

Dominican identity.

Racial tensions have been central to the history and identity establishment of the Dominican

Republic since Columbuss arrival in 1492. During the years of slavery under Spanish colonists, earliest

form of racism developed from slaves inclination to liberate themselves through concubinage with their

white slave masters. The offspring of these unions became free people who could acquire full citizenship

rights under Article 59 of the Black Code dictated in 1685 (Moya Pons 1998). In addition, mulatto sons

also acquired the rights of succession to inherrit properties from their father, and thus at times, even
became members of the colonys elite class (Moya Pons, 1998). The development of the colonial society

penetrated the internalized racism, which encouraged people to distance themselves from black identity

and to embrace Spanish heritage. For example, this mentality was apparent in the mulattos attitude when

the anti-slavery, anti-colonial Haitian Revolution gained imminent success under leader Touissaint

LOuverture. As free men and land owners, the mulattos did not accept being governed by a former slave

so in Februrary 1799, elite mulattos fought against Touissaint until their defeat in August 1800.

Through various later affairs with Haiti, racism was intensified in the form of anti-Haitian

sentiment through a positive feedback loop. During the Haiti-DR unification period (1822-1844), overall

poverty and mishandle of integration of land rights lead to resentment from both the West and the East

of Hispaniola (Moya Pons 1998). By the fourth decade of the 19th century, it was evident that two different

nations coexisted, one beside the other, with their differences based not only on dissimilar economic

systems but also on racial, cultural, and legal dissimilarities. The overthrow of the Haitian government in

1844 and separation of the Dominican Republic from Haiti were essentially the assertion of Dominican

Republic national identity against that of Haiti in racial, cultural, and legal terms. After the Haiti invasion

of 1845, the Dominican conservative leaders were determined to seek out protection from a Western

power to prevent any future invasion. In May 1846, the Dominican government sent diplomatic missions

to Spain, France, and England to negotiate the recognition of the Dominican Republic as an independent

country but mostly to place the country under protection with the most to offer. The negotiations then

produced limited results but later in 1959, the Dominican Republic government again reached out to Spain

to negotiate a political and military protectorate over Santo Domingo as a means of preserving

Dominican independence against Haitians (Moya Pons 1998). Such efforts resulted in the annexation to

Spain from 1959 to 1965. The two dominant themes of the first half of 19th century in the Dominican

Republic were struggle against Haiti and negotiation with Western power to recolonize the island. Those

political discourses evidently demonstrated the internalized racism which prompted the Dominican
Republic to assert themselves against Haitian identity (essentially blackness) at any cost and to even

submit to European neo-colonial powers.

The inclination towards Spanish identity and desire to distinguish themselves from Haitians, who

embraced their African heritage, was further institutionalized during Trujillos dictatorship. Dominican

Hispanidad was a nationalist discourse espoused by Trujillo, especially in the wake of Haitian Massacre in

1937 (Moya, 1998). Trujillo defended the killings of 12,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent

living in the DR as the only remedy to establish the disputed border between DR and Haiti since the

colonial period. Hispanidad exploited historical tensions against Haiti, links territorial security with

whitening, and reinforced Trujillo as the true savior of the countrys Hispanic and Catholic tradition (Horn,

2014). In Hispanic nationalist terms, Dominicans, unlike Haitians, were racially pure-blood Spaniards

(Meyes 2008) so the Trujillos dictatorship intentionally eliminated terms that were reminiscent of black

heritage such as negro, mulatto to describe Dominican identity, in favor of language that limit their racial

ancestry to Europeans and Taino "Indians" such as indio, indio oscuro, indio daroy trigueno, moreno/a

(Candelario, 2000). Until today, by intention of the state, Indio continued to be the category that is most

frequently assigned on the cdula (the national identification card) (Candelario, 2000). In 2013, the

highest court of the country stripped up to 200,000 Haitian immigrants and their descendants of their

Dominican citizenship on the ground that they entered the DR illegally and could not provide customs

clearance or birth registry (Alarcon 2016).

Parallel to the history of institutionalized racism, institutionalized sexism on women of color in

the Dominican Republic also has its own tale. To demonstrate that Dominican womanhood only favors

elite light-skinned women in its definition, this paper analyses the three predominant philosophical

milestones of the development of femininity and feminism between 1880s and 1940s: Hostosianismo,

Latinidad and Trujillista feminism (Mayes, 2008).

 Emerged in the 1880s in Latin America (Moya, 1998), Hostosianismo, which refered to the political

philosophy of Eugenio Maria de Hostos, a Puerto Rican dissident and pan-Caribbean activist, charged

dominant elites with protecting social order and pursuing modern economic reform. Hostos blamed

Spanish colonialism and religious tyranny as the causes of Latin Americans backwardness. It gave

educated elite women in the DR a new identity as moral vanguard of reform. However, such project is

double-edged because it equated reformist modernity with bourgeois values and rendered poor people

of color objects of reform (Mayes, 2008). Hostosianismo relied on elite womens symbolic and physical

distance from working women of color to police the boundaries of honorable womanhood. As a result,

Hostosianismo neither addressed the black poor womens specific experiences of gender oppression nor

inclined to question its repressive methods that protect the privileges of their social station and color

(Mayes, 2008).

The Hostosian pedagogy and moral vanguardism were influential until the US occupation of 1916

to 1824. Dominican intellectuals responded to Yankee imperialism by advocating a reactionary Latinidad

nationalism, which later became Dominican Hispanidad. Latinidad nationalists rejected Americanization

and Hostosianismo as threats to Dominican national identiy, insisting that Domicans resist US imperialism

by defending Catholic religiosity and Latin values. Elite and aspiring women responded to this nationalist

discourse with Latin feminism, which is a way to align with the nationalist movement and to include

women in the public sphere. Latin feminists attempted to keep educated women politically relevant while

affirming their loyalty to Latin cultual norms, such as strong commitment to families, traditional gender

roles, and ant-imperialism. Aspired women established the Accion Feminista Dominicana in 1930, an

organization that brought together women of various ideological commitments, including Hostosianismo,

Latinidad nationalism and Latin feminism. Dominican feminism then remained firmly in the hands of

affluent educated women, the majority of whom were light-skinned and white (Mayes, 2008). Latinidad

nationalism and Latin feminism were especially detrimental for women of color because it policed
scandalous women usually poor women of color labored as market women, midwives and prostitutes.

It excluded women of color from the Dominican Republic feminist discourse (Mayes, 2008). Until Trujillos

dictatorship, Hostosianismo and Latinidad coexisted in the discourse, despite their differences, because

they agreed on the fundamentals that elite educated light-skinned women reform and define Dominican

womanhood (Mayes, 2008). Both, thus, excluded the discussion of structural subordination of women of

color.

The Trujillo dictatorship institutionalized sexism not only by his construction of Dominican identity

as masculine (Horn, 2014) but also by appropriating feminist language to advance his ideologies (Mayes,

2008). Trujillo endorsed the supposedly masculine values of US military trainings and called on national

violent virility to counter historical foreign domination (Horn, 2014). It was also during this period that

Hostos was gradually erased from feminist ideas not only because Hostos, as opposed to Trujillos

Hispanidad, disapproved of Spanish colonialism, but also because its most vocal female proponents, such

as Dr. Evangelina Rodriguez (arguably the most prominent Black feminist of the time), or Ercilia Pepin,

were persecuted by Trujillato (Mayes 2008). He promoted a feminist discourse dominated by Latinidad

feminists, whose ideologies of Latin cultural and religious traditions aligned with his construction of the

Dominican identity as racially pure-blood Spaniards and Catholic. Latin feminists were convinced of a

logical marriage between Trujillos Latinidad nationalism and their elite ideas of feminism. As Trujillo

secured his power in 1930s and 1940s, the AFD helped disseminate his nationalist discourse, Dominican

Hispanidad. By 1942, official feminism became a state project that promoted white supremacist and

modernising vision and elevated the class and colour interests of elite light-skinned women (Mayes, 2008).

This allows Trujillo to further appropriate liberal feminist language to veil his oppressive regime as

democratic and simultaneously promote negrophobic and misogynist nationalism (Horn, 2014). In

conclusion, Black feminists and narratives on women of color barely exist in Dominican feminist memory

of 1880s to 1940s.
 The above analysis of Dominican history demonstrates the institutionalization and internalization

of both racism and sexism in the Dominican identity. To understand the interaction of racism and sexism,

it is important to realize their interrelation with classicism. For example, as described above, both

Hostosian moral vanguardism and Latin feminism policed scandalous women, who were those working in

market, labor occupations and prostitution and, significantly, those tend to be black women

disadvantaged systematically by their gender and color (Horn, 2014). Clearly, historical racism

disproportionately disadvantaged blacks socially and economically, which in turn, further silenced and

oppressed them under classicism. Eurocentricity was associated with capital access and social privilege

while Blackness came hand in hand with poverty and disgrace. Sexism entered the equation by

disadvantaging women further in terms of employment, education, and activism opportunities. The

consequence was a sort of detrimental multi-layered oppression for women of color. Race, class, gender

created a matrix of domination that women of color experience on three levels: the personal level, the

social level of cultural context and the systemic level of government institutions.

Therefore, consequences for women of color assume unique forms. Among the most detrimental

of structural intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) is the normalization of domestic and sexual violence.

Gender-based violence is the fourth leading cause of death among women in the Dominican Republic

(Lugo, 2012). For many victims of such issues who are women of color, alternatives to abusive

relationships are simply not available due to the multilayered forms of domination such as racially

discriminatory employment, access to education, and social prejudice. In the case of sexual violence, for

example, counselors who provide rape crisis services report that a significant proportion of the resources

allocated to rape cases of women of color must often be spent handling problems rather than the rape

itself (Crenshaw, 1991). Structural intersectionality poses major challenges to efforts of eliminating

physical and social violence against women of color in the Dominican Republic.
 Another example of consequences of the structural intersectionality between racism and

misogyny is pressure on women and girls to pursue European beauty standards. The Dominican beauty

practices place central importance on hair because it is a defining race marker but, after all, is an alterable

sign. A central aspect of Dominican hair culture has been the notions of pelo malo (bad hair) and pelo

bueno (good hair) (Robles, 2007). The former is tightly curled, coarse, and kinky hair while the latter is soft

and silky, straight, wavy, or loosely curled hair (Candelario, 2000). There are clearly racial connotations

between African-origin and European or indigenous-origin hair textures. Nearly all Dominican women

straighten their hair because insults are directed at women with natural curls (Robles, 2007). Hair is thus

an emblem of daily engagement of blanqueamiento, or whitening. In general, features associated with

blackness described by DR women (such as rough, ordinary, black muzzle, big mouth, fat nose)

are generally equated with ugliness and suffering (Candelario, 2000). Racism and sexism confine the

beauty culture of Dominican women into an guildbox of European standards that renders black facial and

body features as sorrow and genetic misfortune.

Based on the argument that oppression on women of color is the matrix of racism, sexism, and

classicism, I argue that feminist movements in the Dominican Republic must, first, recognize the

underrepresentation of women of color in feminist narratives and, second, detangle gendered racism

from the acknowledgement of structural intersectionality. Examples of movements that take such

objectives into account are analyzed below.

During the height of Hostosianismo, Latinidad and Trujillista feminism (1880s-1940s), Dr.

Evagelina Rodriguez is one of the very few that draw attention to structural oppression of women of color.

Her radical insight is to understand the unequal distribution of healthcare as evidence that female

subordination is a structural problem rooted in poverty, racism and political disenfranchisement. It is

important to be cautious that Rodriguezs education is based in Hostos ideology so in her written work

Granos, the nature of Hostoss moral vanguardism (such as adherence to patriarchal norms, evolutionist
ideology with concern about race) is still pervasive (Mayes, 2008). However, her activism directs attention

to a larger system of inequality that oppresses poor women of color on the basis of class, color and gender.

She even includes fallen women into her vision of public health when she dispenses free contraceptives

to prostitutes and treats their venereal diseases (Quinn, 2015). Her ideology is probably rooted in her own

struggle as a black woman. Despite her brilliance as a doctor and a social activist, contemporary locals

ridicule her as a black, ugly lesbian because she is single and prefers braiding her hair (Mayes, 2008).

Rodriguezs activism, African heritage and singleness position her, much like the black women she appeals

to, beyond the boundaries of acceptable Dominican womanhood.

Aiming at informing Dominican women about their history, ancestry, and identity as Afro-

Dominicans, in 1989, Identidad or Casa por la Identidad de las Mujeres Afro was formed in the form of

intellectual work, outreach, and activism (Simmons, 2012). It begins by explaining the structural

intersectionality to the public through three modules published in 1999. The first focuses on ethnic and

gender identity, the second focuses on racism, and the third focuses on patriarchy, women, and power.

All three have activities to apply such ideas to the womens lives and circumstances. By first articulating

the problem, Identidad counter the misogynistic and white-supremacist education of the state. The

movement has promoted the network of Afro-Latin and Afro-Caribbean women on Black feminist

thought. The legacies also include evidence of a shift in racial thinking among young generation, such as

popular emergence of merengue hiphop, changing hairstyles (braids, curly hairstyles, and fade haircuts).

Another example is the activism of Afro-Dominican singer-songwriter Xiomara Fortuna, and her

generation of youth who lives the new feminist discourse of the late 1970s and 1980s (Quinn, 2015). Many

feminists of her generation find connections to Afro heritage through recovering gatherings of non-

Christian Dominican religious manifestations that have been outlawed in the Dominican Republic in the

early twentieth century. Some of them are the cult of San Juan de Bautista or the cult of the Congos of

Villa Mella, or the fiestas de palos (drumming ceremonies) for misterios (spirit entities of Vodou).
Xiomaras activism is largely involved with encompassing in her composition a music fusion of reggae, jazz,

and religious Afro-Dominican rhythms such as sounds of the congos, palos, salve, sarandunga, guloya,

and gaga. By singing and celebrating Afro-Dominican roots domestically and internationally, she

challenges the state intentions for a White Dominican identity. Fortuna and her peers also plan various

arts events, literary readings, and gathering to produce albums, musical technology that celebrate

feminism and black art culture. Afro-Dominican feminist activists also mobilize successful protests against

the female criminalization of all forms of abortion, which is central in the fight against oppression on

women of color.

The topic of gendered racism is not new in feminist literature. Since the 1880s, feminist scholars

have increasingly acknowledged that gender is part of a larger pattern of unequal social relations. In other

words, how gender is experienced depends on how it intersects with other inequalities. This paper

contributes to the literature of feminist scholarship by explaining such intersectionality of racism and

sexism in the case of the Dominican Republic. Because of the uniquely institutionalized construction of

the national womanhood, especially during Trujillo dictatorship, as both Spanish-descent and Latin-

traditional, women of color have been systematically left out of the discourse. Modern feminist struggle

against their oppression can begin only with the acknowledgement and understanding of the

institutionalized, internalized, and multi-layered structural force upon them.

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