but above all with performance, video-art and installation. The critical distance Almonte has to his circumstances, especially with respect to local politics and the shared histories of colonialism and dictatorships of the Dual Wound is emblematic of Puerto Plata, arguably the most cosmopolitan city of the island. Since its origins, this Atlantic enclave thanks to its commercial networks, has enjoyed a unique openness to the English-speaking Caribbean, especially to the Turks & Caycos Islands. Adding to that, the 22 years of Haitian government (Jean-Pierre Boyer,1822-1844) with French as an official language, have contributed to Puerto Plata’s multilingual character. With the opening in August 1900 of the first cinema in the country,31 using one of the first Lumiére Cinématographes, and with its pioneering development of photography, Puerto Plata`s iconic role in the visual imaginary of the Dominican Republic is indeed apodictic. This ability to flow in between mental and emotional landscapes, subjects and media, this capacity for observing Saint Domingue from a dual diasporic and transnational perspective, materializes lavishly in Almonte’s provocative Atlantic stamina as shall be discussed further on. In 2005, David Pérez Karmadavis asked a Haitian vendor to write in a piece of paper his diagnosis on the traumatic, to call it lightly, relationship between both nations and then had this message tattooed on his arm in public during the first Festival de Arte Corporal, in Caracas. As it is the case with a vast majority of Dominicans, although the artist has dedicated many of his performance pieces to explore the relation between both populations, until now he has never himself visited Haiti. And note that here I am saying populations instead of nations. Since he does not speak Haitian Creole, Karmadavis had no idea of what the piece of paper said. He only found out later on when Haitians would talk to him in the street asking him why he had that sentence tattooed on his arm. This is in the most strict sense a conversational piece and as durational as it gets for that matter. The text says that all the problems between the two nations have been created by their respective economic and political elites: “Biznis gouvenman benefis gouvenman.” The 1937 massacre of Haitian workers ordered by Trujillo has been until the Constitutional Rule 168/1332 the most 31 http://cinedominicano.com/index.php/noticiascine/noticiaslocales/50-historia-del-cine-dominicano 32 There are several articles on my position on this matter published in Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince as wells as a video interview by
300
prominent subject of conversation on Haitian territory with regards to its neighbours. And notice here that I use conversation instead of dialogue. In my experience spending long periods of time living in Haiti since 1994, this is a fact about our shared history that every single Haitian knows about. In contrast, the period of the 22 years of Jean-Pierre Boyer’s ruling of the entire island is only referred to in school books with 12 lines and correspondingly, the same happens with the absence of Dominican characters in Haitian literature as exposed by Hoffmann (2008).33 Eliú Almonte, as well as some intellectuals like Freddy Prestol Castillo, who in his novel El massacre se pasa a pie recreates his own account on what Dominicans call “El Corte,” have dealt with this moment in history in a rigorous manner. In 2000, Almonte presented an installation at X-Teresa Arte Actual in Mexico City as part of a group show dedicated entirely to Dominican artists on the island and the Diaspora.34 Two plexiglass maps of the island were mirroring each other, one on the floor, the other hanging from the ceiling. On the floor, the different racializing categories used in Dominican territory to “classify” people across class divides were printed in red, covered with bare bones sprinkled with sea salt. On top, the second map was completely covered with dozens of parsley bunches. The challenging self-explanatory allegory to the 1937 Massacre represented by this herb, suspended from above, suggested a permanent state of alertness with regards to this indeed inescapable issue in a shared history. The inclusion of Almonte`s provocative and redemptory piece in this exhibition responds to my insistence in including AlterPresse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9IFadFX5oY&list= PLOjfHlmSEP6bbaHZNtfwM9JKlL6SnTRyv&index=6 33 “Up to the American occupation, and despite the turbulent history and frequent contacts between the two countries, the Dominican Republic and its citizens are virtually absent in Haitian literature. There is, in my knowledge, no historical novel about the invasion of Dessalines, the occupation under Boyer, the invasions of Soulouque. Nor a novel or a story that is set in the Dominican Republic, or a protagonist is a Dominican or is about a Haitian-Dominican community. It is as if the writers had decided to treat their neighbors with contempt and silence.” Léon-François Hoffmann: “La République Dominicaine et les Dominicains dans la fiction haïtienne,” en The Caribbean Writer as Warrior of the Imaginary - L’Ecrivain caribéen, guerrier de l’imaginaire. Kathleen Gyssels and Bénédicte Ledent, Eds., Amsterdam/New York, Rodopi, 2008. p. 349. Hoffmann continues analyzing the specific role that Dominican identity plays in the Haitian literary imagination which until today is strictly circumscribed to representing Dominican women as seductresses and prostitutes. Male characters are symptomatically absent. 34 http://alannalockward.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/3-y-2-tres-idos/
Haiti in what is considered to be a “Dominican” exhibition or historical issue. This emphasis has also been extensive to the regional conundrum on the Spanish colonized Caribbean, which until very recently has systematically excluded the irrefutable relevance of Haiti, especially of the Haitian Revolution. I have done this consistently since my physical and mental decolonization processes started (in 1988, after my participation as a dancer in the Afro-Dominican choreography Vidas y Muerte de una Isla, by Marilí Gallardo, dedicated to Saint Domingue, and in 1994, after my first visit to Port-au-Prince) in my curatorial and theoretical work as well as a writer and journalist. Furthermore, after the Constitutional Ruling 168/13, I have defined myself as an epistemic Haitian and a Dominican in transit. Raúl Recio in the 1980s also thematized this celebration. After joining fellow artist Pedro Terreiro in Gagá rituals, he created one of his most prolific series, Gagá Party Tonight, also the title of his exhibition at Centro de Arte Nouveau (1988). A year later, this show was presented in Guadalajara, Mexico, at the Carlos Ashida Gallery. The altars of “popular religion” have also been approximated in the work of Jorge Severino, Jochi Asiático, Geo Ripley and Noris Binet, among others. The discontinuities of these manifestations suggests, however, a vacuum within the local canon, in which Western hegemonic traditions have had pre-eminence over African legacies. As Fernando Valerio Holguín35 35 “After the death of Pedro Henríquez Ureña, in 1946, the trujillistas, neotrujillistas and right-wing conservatives have made of the writer a postmodern cultural icon. This icon, which possesses a type of sacredness, functions as a depositary of a certain truth and its relationship to the reference is based on similarity. (Macey 2000: 198). As an icon, Pedro Henríquez Ureña represents for the Dominican intellectual elite, the dominant cultural ideology: that of an imagined Spanish culture, therefore universal, in that the [B]lack is substituted by the Haitian. Furthermore, as an icon Pedro Henríquez Ureña has also become a fetish of dominant culture, and as such he seems to possess the qualities and power of a god. Everyone that mentions quote or praises him is automatically touched by his power.” Valerio Holguin 2011: 97. “Pedro Henrìquez Ureña was educated in a liberal and nationalist family that knew very well the Spanish literature and aspired to that European ideal represented by Spain. As “high yellow mulatto,” he was not considered “[B]lack” in the Dominican Republic, so his cultural imaginary resulted in a racial imagery. Already in countries such as the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Spain, he would be exposed to racism, although he never had a clear conscience - at least in his writings- of his status as a mulatto intellectual. In an interview with Osvaldo Ferrari (2005), Jorge Luis Borges conjectures the following: ‘In Spain, of course, they regarded him as, say, a mere colonized; a Central American migrant.. And here in Buenos Aires, I think that we never forgave him for being Dominican, being, perhaps mestizo; being certainly Jewish... people never behaved well with him; the Republic of
insists, the hispanophile legacy of Pedro Henríquez Ureña is mirrored in all spheres of Dominican intellectual, artistic, social and political life. As it is the case in the rest of the globe, the vast majority of Dominican artists are still invested in the mirages of modernity’s art plantations. Traditionally, where the cultural recovery of Gagá is expressed with greater discursive coherence is in music, from the investigations and recording works of Luis Días, José Duluc, Irka Mateo and Roldán Mármol, among others. In the mid 1990s, the Cultural Foundation Bayahonda organized the series of concerts known as “Artists for Gagá.” Since very recently, I would dare to name Haiti’s January 12, 2010, devastating earthquake as the main reason for this, Dominican artists have consistently and progressively addressed Saint Domingue related topics in their work. Evidence of this was the 26 Bienal Nacional de Artes Visuales (2011). As an award jury, it was fascinating to notice the significant amount of works that dealt with the Dual Wound. One of the most memorable ones was the awarded Mi = muro, by Pancho Rodríguez. The anthems of Haiti and the Dominican Republic were played juxtaposed to each other in this deceivingly simple video installation. An unassuming wall built with blocks and cement divided the space. On one side of the wall, a projection showed the back of a Haitian man working on a construction site. The other side, shows him frontally. The artist`s interest in portraying the presence of Haitian workers in the Dominican construction industry is poetically embedded to his own experience with this matter, since his own house was built by Haitians that he never personally met. Time and space are challenged simultaneously in this insightful piece. Where does the habitat of one dweller ends? Where does the presence of the permanent inhabitant starts? The spirit of the Other is forever present in this space, in spite of any nationalistic propaganda.36 Argentina did not behave well with him... Spain either, he lived in exile, nobody recognized him at all.” Ibid, p. 200. “In Argentina, his final resting place, our Pedro Henríquez Ureña was discriminated and marginalized, both because of the color of his skin as his condition of foreigner, however his thinking was very influential in his high school students as well as in the work of great writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Ernesto Sábato.” Cosette Bonnelly. El Nuevo Diario, 01-07-2014. http://www.elnuevodiario.com.do/app/article.aspx?id=381136 (downloaded 08.07.2014). All translations in this quote by the author. 36 The Haitian worker received from the artist the usual amount he is paid for this craft: US$1 dollar an hour.
301