Masculinity after Trujillo by Horn Maja;

Author:Horn, Maja;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 2016-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

4

Still Loving Papi

Globalized Dominican Subjectivities in the Novels of Rita Indiana Hernández

In 1996 a new president took office in the Dominican Republic and seemed to promise a significant break with the previous government (1986–1996) of the now very old, feeble, and almost blind Balaguer. In contrast, Leonel Fernández was relatively young, educated, New York–raised, and thus also part of the Dominican diaspora. Fernández’s political discourse avidly reinforced this sense of a new beginning in Dominican politics; he stylized himself emphatically as a “modern” president and vociferously embraced neoliberal economic policies and modern technology as ways to fast-track the country’s progreso, all encapsulated in his government’s ubiquitous forward-looking slogan “E’ pa’lante que vamos”—“We Are Moving Forward.”

Past political patterns, however, asserted themselves quickly under the “modern” Fernández presidency. This continuity became evident early on when the new president decided not to investigate the blatant corruption cases from the Balaguer years, and when his government got caught up in the same clientelist and corrupt patterns that had long predominated in Dominican politics. As Michiel Baud asserts, the government remained “anchored in a political culture in which clientelism and authoritarianism played an important role. Fernández could not break with these cultural ties.”1 The important role of such “cultural ties” indicates how paying attention to formal political processes alone misses how cultural forces contribute to shaping the political landscape in the Dominican Republic (as they do elsewhere).

Specifically, what is overlooked thereby is how understandings and expectations that have become “common sense” among Dominicans continuously reinforce prevailing relations between the populace and the political realm. These relations, I argue, help contribute to reproduce the practices of clientelism and corruption that are generally considered responsible for the country’s often perplexing political stagnancy vis-à-vis its dramatic economic, social, and cultural transformations over the past decades.2 Scholars frequently remark upon this apparent paradox: while developments closely associated with rapid modernization and globalization—including urbanization, migration, tourism, and free trade zones—are seen to have led to a profound transformation of the country’s society, culture, and economy, the political sphere has remained notably stagnant.

This chapter considers this paradox of persisting political patterns, reinforced by certain “common sense” conceptions, existing alongside processes of rapid modernization and globalization through the lens of the literary work of Rita Indiana Hernández, a key figure of the generation of writers that emerged at the turn of the century in the Dominican Republic.

Gender in the Global Age

Among one of the most notable Dominican cultural transformations is the “great explosion of media and consumer culture” during the twentieth century.3 As Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof describes, in A Tale of Two Cities: Santo Domingo and New York after 1950 (2008), “after midcentury, Dominican middle and lower classes learned of the practical allure of automobiles, household products, electronics, and leisure goods. They grew attentive to the symbolic value of brand names, hairstyles, clothing, and commercial media. What Dominicans, even those of modest means, owned, wore, watched, or heard became progressively more important in defining their everyday lives.”4 This eruption of consumer culture reshaped Dominican society in ways that would have important political implications as well.

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