The racist ghost that, together with the ancient spirits of xenophobia, chauvinism, patriarchal machismo, homophobia and all kinds of discriminations co-opted by big capital and the worst of the current world dominators, to feed the fashionable neo-fascism… They travel the planet to the rhythm of the decline of bourgeois civilization and Western imperialism.
In Europe, racist neo-fascism has won resounding victories.
During his journey through various regions of Our America, this unpresentable ghost has made important achievements in countries susceptible to being influenced by a renewed white supremacist colonialism.
In recent days, while the continuist-re-electoral deployment of the formula preferred in the Dominican Republic by the deep government of the United States has been consummated, this ghost stopped in Santo Domingo to greet the ultra-conservative crusade sponsored by President Luis Abinader and to engage alongside Zelensky and with NATO, in the mammoth of Lucerne.
This crusade has taken a harmful step forward with the ingenious promotion of a television spot that presents to the country and the world a “pure-strain” national identity, thus attempting to conceal the historical reality and hide the truth about the formation of the Dominican identity, hiding its Afro-descendant roots.
Their main motto is: Dominicans of pure blood!… so they know it!
Native extermination and intertwining of strains
The aboriginal population was exterminated by successive Spanish genocides due to cruel slavery and various diseases imported from Europe. Exterminated until not a single one of the original inhabitants of this island remained, as happened throughout the island Caribbean!
Since then, a set of strains, mixed or crossed, began to prevail: the Spanish with the aborigines, the blacks with the Spanish and the aborigines, the pure whites, the pure blacks and the mestizos or “mulattoes”.
Later, Arabs, Italians, Chinese Germans, Jews, Japanese, Puerto Ricans, French, Black West Indians, Russians arrived and they also mixed.
The indigenous strains, which were numerous, recorded their DNA only at a low percentage.
In short, many strains and many intertwinings. Nothing of a single strain characterized by its purity. Rather a beautiful rainbow of human beings.
A combination of different phenotypes supported by a colonialist culture that imposed racist white supremacy, denying black stock and any African cultural influence,
We are of African origin and racist culture insists on denying it.
The whitening and artificial-imaginary self-whitening of blacks and mulattoes is deployed above all against the black republic of Haiti; its rebellious people were cruelly punished by the European and North American empires. They do not forgive its anti-slavery revolution and its independence in 1804!*
The illusionistic mental whitening, instilled in a part of the people composed of different human types mixed and combined, implies the alienation of believing oneself to be white without being so… because in the racist culture, white is superior to black, to the natives and to all the rest…
It is the product of Spanish racism reinforced by American racism as one of the ideologies of discrimination.
From there comes the abundant and expensive official promotion, sealed and financed by the presidency of the republic, with that of the “pure-blood Dominicans”; captured in the aforementioned cinematographic spot, technically very well designed and artistically prepared, which presents us as a pure strain of national identity, which really has nothing to do with being Dominican.
This spot denies what we are, hides the black component of our identity, has a racist background and is deployed in the face of the Dominican-Haitian conflict; manufactured from anti-Haitian racism, with the help of pseudo-nationalisms on both sides.
In this document, the national symbols, flag, shield, heroes and heroines, are manipulated in the logic of this false Dominican identity of “pure strain”; that is to say, of a strain devoid of darkness, which is an inseparable part of who we are and the source of a beautiful cultural syncretism.
This spot draws on the same ideas as all folkloric expressions of black African culture; many of them are white in mind and heart, and black and brown in skin.
The President of the Republic has lent himself to this cultural crime, as part of his stubborn ultra-conservative competition with the so-called opposition, in which everyone wants to appear as the champion of hatred against Haiti, as a black republic, a kind of piece of Africa in Our America. A hatred, in short, pro-colonialist and profoundly racist.
This racist promotion is a component of a cultural crime of high cost and great perversity, intensely assumed by the dominant Dominican ruling class.
It must be said that it does indeed exist in the Latin-Caribbean subcontinent. A society that has a majority population of various black strains, apparently one, culturally very African, with its own language, is Haitian; although partially and limitedly mixed. Even in this case, it is not valid to speak of purity.
In other countries of the continent, there are societies in which whites predominate and are not exactly of pure stock, and there are those with an indigenous majority, who are not of diverse stock.
Being black, or any other color, does not cancel the only “tension” that unifies us in the world: we are all humanity and as Martí said: the homeland is humanity!
They want to ignore all this from the ignorance and superfluous clumsiness generated by a supremely white racism, injected into the Dominican ruling class by the neocolonial culture of the white imperialist powers, which do not cease to despise the populations of their neocolonial dependencies with populations of different colors and other cultures.**
It is a pity for our country that the organizations that make up the partisan system of the electoral regime (with the exception of small progressive or leftist organizations) and many other entities, passionately adhere to the anti-Haitian racist ideology and permeate the political competition with these harmful ideas and a false ultranationalism soaked in xenophobia; without considering its disastrous consequences for the preservation of our identity as a people and the vital reestablishment of sovereignty as a nation against the imperialist powers.
It is worth saying it forcefully: we are Dominicans of diverse origins and it is appropriate to defend all of them in their just values, so that they know it.
Racist-criminal role of the Trujillo tyranny and its heirs
The ghost of the tyrant Trujillo has not left the Government Palace of the Dominican Republic, except when he was briefly expelled at the initiative of Juan Bosch (1963) and by the Democratic and Popular Revolution of 1965.***
Trujillo was a **** “mulatto” like his brothers Negro Trujillo, Petán Trujillo, Pipí Trujillo… His mother, Julia Molina Chevalier, was of Haitian origin, through the Knights.
But Trujillo, “The Boss,” the “Generalissimo,” whitened his face with pearl cream and reddened his cheeks, no one knows with what.
He dresses elegantly, in open competition with the white and wealthy people of the capital.
The so-called leader believed himself to be of “purebred” stock, without being one. Of course, just so you know, he believed himself to be of white stock.
As a racist Hispanophile, he denied his origin and prided himself on being a “first class” white man, being a “vain and “comparative” mulatto of various strains, despised by the “haughty aristocratic class.”
Selected by the gringos (intervention 1916-24) as military leader, he turned out to be a very cruel tyrant, with a conservative-colonialist mentality***.
Clinging to white supremacy, he hated black people, especially Haitians or people of Haitian descent. Let us remember the massacre of 1937 and this imperative place to identify and kill them: “say parsley”!, a phrase that Haitians pronounce badly.
One of his efforts was to erase the black phenotype from the identity card, to reinforce the idea of a Dominican identity foreign to our precious Afro ancestry.
Then the tyrant ordered or dictated to include in the data of the identity card the possibility of declaring oneself “Indian” **, “light Indian” and “dark Indian”, to gradually oust the blacks or “mulattoes” from the official document”; incidentally, he asked officials to persuade dark-skinned people to adopt one of the three variants of “Indian”.
Unlike the racist leaders of countries with aboriginal populations, Trujillo did not hesitate to attribute to the Dominicans “of color” the condition of “Indians”, since all the aborigines had paid with death their guilt of being “Indians”, without having “light” or “dark” surnames.
Let us also remember that the conquerors and colonizers tried to reach the East Indies and encountered what they later called America and, before that, the “Antilles”; being content to exterminate all the Caribbean peoples and kill 70 million “Indians” of South and Central America, prevented from exterminating them completely by the heroism and resistance of the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, Mapuches, Quechuas, Aymaras, Chapini, Miskito, Cuna and catrachos…
Trujillo killed 20,000 Haitians, a by-product of the influence of Nazi fascism and especially of European imperial racism, which, since the beginning of colonization, enslaved hundreds of thousands of blacks brought from Africa and killed them in heaps, without power to exterminate them; and not by the Grace of the God of the Vatican, but by the heroic resistance of Haitian and Latino-Caribbean blackness.
Trujillo was also a sexual predator with an aberrant machismo.
In our country, the colonialist intention of prolonging white supremacy and its persistent display of racism are still alive, committing new violations, in the name of defending a false neo-annexationist Dominicanism, very similar to that of Pedro Santana and Buenaventura Báez.
At the same time, religious fundamentalism and the ruling class are appropriating with new vigor the sexist patriarchal ideology that has had a strong influence throughout our history.
The racist ideology was promoted by Trujillo and his heir Balaguer*****; while in this critical present for US imperialist domination, its replacements in the party system (PRM, PLD, PRSC, PRD, FP, FNP, PQD, BIS…), and throughout the corrupt political orbit, embrace Haitian anti-racism with renewed passion: counting on the precious support of the Creole and foreign economic elites, and on its enormous p media power.
Abinader leads this crusade from the Dominican State, and among his malicious and sophisticated contributions to the vast seed of a false Dominican identity, there is this advertising resource of high professional quality and too hidden perversity: the spot ” Dominicans of pure strain », so they know!
Previously, in the last century and until now, it was led by Presidents Trujillo, Balaguer, Leonel Fernández and Danilo Medina.
A humanity of many colors and combinations of shades and cultures.
So that you know it clearly, I tell you now: neither the aborigines, nor the black slaves, nor the white conquistadors, nor the blond gringos are of “pure stock.”
This “pure strain”… is a perfidious and dangerous “vagabond” invention of talented publicists and merchants sympathetic to the anti-Haitian, or simply offering their commercialized creative production to interlocutors engaged in the current crusade against Haiti, all of various orders; strains and of the same neo-Nazi inspiration.
Yes, we know: the aborigines of the Caribbean and those of this island were of various strains: Siboneyes, Igneries, Taínos and Caribs. Of several similar strains and phenotypes, very far from the European whites.
All – I repeat – exterminated by the Spanish, English and French conquerors and colonizers; all white Europeans, but of different origins and the same cruelty.
The Portuguese colonialists joined in the aboriginal holocaust of the rest of Our America, with a death toll of 70 million.
Europeans and Americans have done – and are doing – something similar in Africa and the United States. Bloody conquests and colonizations. All this to guarantee white supremacy in many aspects and a criminal appropriation of enormous wealth.
The blacks hunted in Africa, brought in chains to the three Americas and to the Caribbean islands, reduced to slavery and overexploited in these “Antilles”, were not of pure stock either. They came from several stocks, rooted in many African tribes, with similar, but not identical, phenotypes. All treated with the same cruelty by the different white empires.
Two black holocausts on two continents, both perpetrated by white people of different origins.
The same thing happened in Asia, Australia and Oceania, which gave birth to a planet populated by countless strains; fruit of these realities and of multiple and constant migrations.
There is therefore a global population resulting from numerous “racial” mixtures and numerous crosses between whites, blacks, various aborigines, East Indians, Asians (Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Thais, Cambodians, Tibetans, etc.), Mongols, Eskimos and Australian aborigines.
But it turns out that the whites who “discovered” us when we already existed, because they had more destructive power, better weapons and more capacity to exploit and hoard wealth, considered themselves a “superior race” to all other human beings; and they believed themselves to be of “pure stock”; considering blacks, “Indians”, yellows and mulattoes as inferior; fit – according to their colonizing criteria – to be dominated, oppressed and mistreated.
This is how humanity has been shaped over the centuries.
A humanity without pure stock and without nations or nationalities or identities with unique stocks.
A humanity with a rainbow of “inter-military” strains, prey to capitalist voracity.
Quisqueya******* is a reliable example of this global diversity, very intense in what is called the third world.
Quisqueya is a specific example of this global diversity. But then there were those who, under the presidential protective mantle, fed by a lot of anti-Haitianism and abundant money, decided to invent a “pure-strain” Dominicanity and use it as a high-caliber advertisement, with abundant and subliminal racist diffusion, against Haiti and its stigmatized blackness.
Some conclusions:
The reconfiguration of fascism in the 21st century is advancing dangerously, supported fundamentally by racist ideologies, by the sexist patriarchal ideology with all its derivatives, by the intensification of xenophobia and hatred against the avalanches of migrants caused by imperialist pillaging, ultranationalism and all kinds of conservatism.
The processes of impoverishment of the peoples of the central countries, including their white workforce and other sectors won over to ultra-conservative ideas, the growing gangsterization of the party cracies and capitalist elites within the framework of a neoliberalism of varying intensities in the center and the periphery, facilitate in both scenarios the rise of an ultranationalism with a strong populist component.
At the same time, the multi-crisis of decadence of the capitalist-imperialist system, increasingly acute in the American superpower and in the Western powers, has launched into wars of conquest and reconquest, into ecocidal wars and practices, and into the use of military force in vain attempts to recover weakened hegemonies, has bogged down their situation and aggravated their decline and their systemic crisis.
This strategy of survival and perpetuation, led by the PENTAGON, NATO and Israel… has deepened its discredit to unprecedented levels and strengthened its counterparts in gestation (emerging powers confronting the United States and subordinate forces, States and peoples struggling for their autonomy) determination and peace, social and political-social movements fighting against neoliberalism, growing rebellions of mistreated migrations and peoples attacked by white supremacy, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist organizations.
This indicates that this destructive aggression is more a result of his weakness than his diminished strength.
In any case, a whole series of diverse struggles are underway against a system that is sick and aggressive in the extreme, but endowed with powerful energies of resistance, reinforced in the midst of its violent death rattles and its intense fears charged with cruelty because of its fear of being permanently displaced.
This is promising and favorable to continue growing in quality and quantity.
A global torrent difficult to unite, but with strong deficits to exercise internationalism with the different levels of unity necessary to defeat the culture of death; and even more, to achieve a kind of global insurrection that achieves this great objective. In addition, with serious weaknesses in the construction of its essential components that are called to reach the levels of consciousness and anti-systemic organization that make possible new democracies and new socialisms.
These are the great challenges of this convulsed world, of a block of imperialist capitalism which resorts without the slightest shame to neo-fascism, to chaos under its control and to the extermination of peoples and nations.
Notes:
* Our America’s first independence and the only triumphant black anti-slavery revolution.
** Dominican racism is Hispanophile, with a monarchic-colonialist matrix.
***Mulatto” is a derogatory term of a racist nature, inspired by the product of the union of a mare and a donkey, which is why I put it in quotation marks.
**** The “Indians” are actually the natives of India, something different from the indigenous peoples of America. Everything else is a product of the loss of Columbus and the conquistadors.
***** People of color, gringos call blacks and mixed-race people.
****** If race, Columbus Day, are inventions aimed at segregation, the “superior race” is used to justify sinister oppressions.
******* Quisqueya is a nickname, it is said, inspired by the Taíno language, given to the Dominican Republic to exalt the values of this island: “a fascinating land…” the best in the world.
Aporrea 20 Juin 2024
