The Fascinating Origin of the Dominican Republic by Esteve Redolad

Author:Esteve Redolad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Latin America / Central America
Publisher: Outskirts Press, Inc.
Published: 2022-02-22T04:00:00+00:00

10.

Slavery and Blackness in Santo Domingo

As all these events unfolded, Santo Domingo was caught in contradictory views. While many hoped for the liberation from French occupation, they still preferred to be under France rather than to become part of Haiti’s new Republic. To understand this, we must consider Santo Domingo’s social and racial self-perception. They would not consider themselves as blacks like those in Haiti, but neither as whites as the French.

The social and racial make-up in Santo Domingo was mostly people of color: free mulattoes who would consider themselves primarily Spaniards, before French or Haitians, together with poor whites. Through generations, poverty made the different groups socially equal to the point that, over the years, the racial problem in Santo Domingo ceased to be relevant.

In the old Saint Domingue, the black slave population had grown dramatically and differentiated from the white settlers. In Santo Domingo the situation was different: Spanish authorities, pressured by the circumstances, had put aside the legal scruples created by the colonial legislation regarding people of color and accommodated immigrants from the western part, as long as their miscegenation could be properly explained.402

In Santo Domingo, an impoverished and confounded society, the critical issue regarding race was not to be totally black or too black to acquire a social category close to white people. To be sure, that was not a racial statement but a socio-economic goal. The term used was “white of the land” which meant Dominican or Creole Spanish from Santo Domingo as a way to differentiate themselves from the slaves, the “real black.” The point was not to be recognized as black but as “white of the land.”403 So, even as mulatto, they did not want even remotely to be considered black. This disdain of the mulatto for the Negro was as universal as slavery itself. The mulatto wished to be white, or at least to be considered as such.404 That was, of course, a social aspiration. The reality that was conveniently ignored was that any mulatto had slave ancestry.

To attain social recognition for the mulattoes was not a whim or a historical claim. There was a genuine concern and fear of being considered slaves. Still, there were about seven thousand unemancipated people at that time, according to a contemporary census.405

One of the few means of social recognition that slaves had was Catholic brotherhoods. These brotherhoods had members of various social statuses and conditions and offered them social, material, and spiritual support. Some slaves found in these groups a certain degree of autonomy. In 1806, sixty-one blacks belonging to the rural properties were members of these brotherhoods in Santiago. The authorities were not very satisfied with these groups: “these blacks have always lived in a state of independence…which has never permitted officials to collect any goods from them” they complained.406

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