Negotiating the Divide:
Practices in Transnational
Dominican Performance
Volume 1 of 2
This has been submitted by James Douglas Hundley to the University of Exeter as a thesis for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Drama, April 2008.
This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that
no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement.
I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no
material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any
other University.
……………………………………. (signature)
James Douglas Hundley
PhD Candidate in Drama
University of Exeter
April 2008
11
Abstract
This thesis is an examination of contemporary Dominican theatre and performance
practices that have emerged as a result of the modern processes of globalization and
transnationalism. It proposes and supports the existence of a burgeoning transnational Dominican
performance paradigm in both New York City, home to the largest Dominican diaspora, and the
homeland of the Dominican Republic.
To do this effectively, the thesis has been divided into three parts, each containing three
chapters. Part 1 serves largely as a review of published literature in the fields of study relevant to
the topic. For example, Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the essential characteristics of the
processes of globalization and transnational migration and of the US Latino identity formations
that historically have developed as a result of these processes. Chapter 2 broadly examines the
varied practices that constitute the transnational performance genre while Chapter 3 specifically
defines the socio-economic experience of US Latinos and the early formulations of US Latino
transnational performance that developed as a result.
In Part 2, the concepts of globalization and transnationalism are placed into a purely
Dominican context. In Chapter 4 the socio-economic relationship between the United States and
the Dominican Republic is examined while Chapter 5 addesses the cultural and racial identity
issues Dominicans face in both the homeland and the New York diaspora as a result of the
complex interconnections between these two locations. Chapter 6 then offers a history of the
development of Dominican theatre in New York City while Chapter 7 provides an analysis of the
lives and work of three Dominican theatre and performance artists living in the New York
diaspora who are generating a transnational performance aesthetic as a result of negotiating the
12
socio-cultural and economic divide that separates their residence in New York from their
homeland, the Dominican Republic.
Part 3 emphasizes the reciprocity of transnational performance. For example, Chapter 8
provides the argument that historically throughout the twentieth-century, theatre practices
occurring in the Dominican Republic were consistently being influenced by North American
theatre traditions. Chapter 9 offers an examination of the work of three specific Dominican
theatre and performance artists who have been shaped by the process of “Americanization” and
who, in their own unique way, are currently responding to this process in their work, providing
credence to the theory that transational performance can be cultivated also in the homeland by
those who have never actually migrated. The conclusion to the thesis is a reflection on the
universalities of transnational Dominican performance so to use that which is taking place in
New York City and the Dominican Republic as a tool for comparison in the broader study of the
growing tradition of transnational performance.
13
Acknowledgements
Many individuals and institutions need to be recognized for the support and assistance
they offered throughout the process of developing this thesis. First and foremost I say thank you
to the theatre and performance artists that allowed me into their lives: Waddys Jáquez, Roy Arias,
Josefina Baez, Antonio Melenciano, Teatro Orgánico, especially Angél Haché and Roger
Wasserman and Daniel Henderson and Juan Felipe Simone of the La Guloya dance group.
Through their words and work each offered me valuable insight into the world of contemporary
Dominican performance. I also thank those that provided additional interviews and guidance
during the research process, such as Manuel Chapuseaux, Maria Castillo, Lillyanna Diaz and
Bienvenido Miranda in the Dominican Republic and Karina Rieke, Dr. Jorge Piña at Culturarte
and playwright Lenin Compres in New York. Moreover, I offer a special thanks to Sarah Aponte
at the Dominican Studies Institute of the City University of New York for helping me locate
even the most forgotten pieces of published material on all things Dominican.
There are also many people to recognize at the University of Exeter for their undying
academic guidance. I thank Prof. Phillip Zarrilli for his invaluable insights on conducting
ethnographic research and Dr. Jane Milling, and Prof. Christopher McCullough as well as those
fellow research students who all shared with me their own methods for approaching the writing
process. But above all else, I thank my advisor Prof. Graham Ley who for five years consistently
has worked with me in turning what was originally a rough, blurry notion of a topic into the
completed thesis it has become. His support of my work and belief in my abilities has been
unwavering and for this I am indebted. I also want to acknowledge with gratitude the following
university scholarships and grants: the University of Exeter Overseas Research Scholarship
(ORS) (2005-2007) and the University of Exeter, Department of Drama international student
14
bursury (2005-2007). Together they enabled me to pursue my research fulltime. Without them a
completed thesis at this point in time would not have been possible.
I also want to acknowledge the fact that from this body of research a published article and
a number of conference papers were produced. For example, parts of Chapters 4 and 9 were
originally published as “Travelling the Guagua Aérea: The transnational journeys of
Dominicanyork performance” in Performance Research 12.2 (102-113). Chapter 6 was delivered
as a conference paper entitled “Latino Performance in Migration” at the 15th World Congress of
International Federation of Theatre Research in Helsinki, Finland in August 2006. Parts of
Chapter 5, 7 and 9 were subsequently turned into a conference paper entitled “Los
Dominicanyorks: Negotiating the American border through performance” that was delivered at
the Southwest American Studies Forum at the School of Arts Languages and Literatures,
University of Exeter in May 2007.
Finally, I want to recognize those closest to me, my family. Thank you to my parents for
their instilling in me an intellectual curiousity and to my wife and partner Ruby for her
indefatigable support of it. Succumbing to the life of a doctoral student is never without
challenges and Ruby met each of them without hesitation and for this I dedicate this work to you.
15
Table of Contents
Abstract
2
Volume 1
Acknowledgements
4
Introduction: Negotiating the Divide:
Practices in Transnational Performance
12
Part 1: Historical References in the Field
28
Chapter 1
Globalization, Transnational Migration
and the Search for a Cultural Identity
29
Chapter 2
Mapping Transnational Performance
62
Chapter 3
The Evolution of the
US Latino Identity and Theatre
94
Part 2: Transnational Dominican Performance in New York
134
Chapter 4
The Dominican Republic:
Confronting Americanization
135
Chapter 5
158
Transnational Migration and the Creation of the Dominican Dual Identity
Chapter 6
The Development of Dominican Theatre
in New York
184
Notes: Volume 1
203
16
Volume 2
Chapter 7
Transnational Dominican Theatre Artists:
The Case Studies
216

Waddys Jáquez:
In Continuous Flight
218

Teatro Estudio Internacional:
A Dominican Professional Theatre
241

Josefina Baez:
La Dominicana de La Romana
265

The Future of Transnational Dominican Theatre
295
Part 3: The Impact of Transnational Performance in the Homeland
299
Chapter 8
Determining Dominican Theatre
302
Chapter 9
Performing a New Dominican Dramaturgy:
The Case Studies
326

Antonio Melenciano:
Building a Dominican-Based Solo Tradition
327

Teatro Orgánico:
Political Theatre for the Community
349

Teatro Danzante Guloya:
Importing Folklore
375
Conclusion: Identifying Dominican
Transnational Performance
410
Notes: Volume 2
430
Bibliography
432
17
List of Maps, Tables and Illustrations
0.1
A map of the Caribbean region, indicating the geographical distance
between the Dominican Republic and New York City.
4.1
“Out Yankee” – Through graffiti, a Dominican street gang continues to
spread Juan Bosch’s message today, Santo Domingo, 2006, photo by
Douglas Hundley.
5.1
A table showing the population of Dominican immigrants admitted to the
United States during the second half of the twentieth-century.
5.2
A table showing the percentage growth of the US Latino population
between 1990-2000.
5.3
A table showing the average yearly income per US Latino population
5.4
Images representing the two faces of the transnational Dominican
identity.
5.5
Images of Washington Heights, the above as it is today, the crossroads
of Dominican transnationalism, photo by Douglas Hundley. The photo
below is a postcard depicting it as it was in 1918, a one-time affluent
suburb.
7.1
Waddys Jáquez as Zaza, La reina del patronato (Queen of the Council) in
Pargo, Los Pecados Permitidos, 2001, photo by Fernando Calzada,
courtesy of Waddys Jáquez.
7.2
Waddys Jáquez as two characters from LETAL: Televisión en vivo:
talkshow host, Jonathon Betancourt and Martín Peréz Peña, “man of the
cistern,” photos by Marilana Arvelo and Armaury Sajour, 2004.
7.3
Teatro Estudio Internacional’s Ilka Tanya Payán Theatre in the Times
Square Arts Center, New York City, 2006, photos by Douglas
Hundley.
7.4
Teatro Estudio Internacional publicty photos: Señorita Julia (1998),
Extremos (2002), Roy Arias as Caramelo in Sex on the Beach (2006)
Frank Perozo and Roy Arias in Emigrantes (2003).
7.5
Josefina Baez performing an aparición in conjunction with her poem “No.
No me callo na’porque esta boca e’mía.”
18
7.6
Josefina Baez performing apariciónes from her Wandering Soul Series, La
Romana, Dominican Republic, 2005, photos by Dinorah Rodriguez and
Bianca Sanchez / Ay Ombe Theatre.
7.7
Josefina Baez publicity photo for Dominicanish, 2005, photo by Lu
Sanchez / Ay Ombe Theatre.
7.8
Josefina Baez performing Dominicanish, New York City, date
unknown, photo by José Ortiz / Ay Ombe Theatre.
8.1
Images of Lincoln Center, New York City and Teatro Nacional, Santo
Domingo.
9.1
Publicity photo for Yolanda La Golosa, Con la punta de Ñ rota, Santo
Domingo, 2005, photo courtesy Antonio Melenciano.
9.2
Images of Antonio Melenciano as Yolanda La Golosa. Casa de Teatro,
Santo Domingo, 2004, photos by Douglas Hundley.
9.3
God reprimanding the Serpent - Paradise publicity photo, Santo Domingo,
2005, photo by Angel Martínez.
9.4
Teatro Organico performing Paradise; (left) traveling to New York via la yola (the raft),
(right) facing Customs and Immigration upon arriving, Santo Domingo (2006), photos by
Douglas Hundley
9.5
Angel Haché backstage at Casa de Teatro, Santo Domingo, 14th of
January, 2005, photo by Douglas Hundley.
9.6
Young participants of the Alianza Dominicana celebration of La
Guloya dance tradition of San Pedro de Macorís in New York, 2005,
photo by Douglas Hundley.
9.7
Images of Daniel Henderson’s home and of pictures hanging on his living
room wall. San Pedro de Macorís, 2006, photos by Douglas Hundley.
9.8
Images of Guloya costume pieces stored at Henderson’s home including
battle hatchets, capes and head dresses, San Pedro de Macorís, 2006,
photos by Douglas Hundley.
9.8
Guloya dancers in performance, San Pedro de Macorís, 2006, photos by
Douglas Hundley.
9.10
Daniel Henderson in Guloya Costume immortalized on a billboard on
Highway 4, San Pedro de Macorís, 2006, photo by Douglas Hundley.
19
9.11
Images of Daniel Henderson and Juan Felipe Simone, leaders of la Guloya
Dance group, post-performance and of the new San Pedro de Macorís /
New York Social Club. San Pedro de Macorís, 2006, photos by Douglas
Hundley.
List of Accompanying Material

Included with the thesis is a compact disc (CD) that contains recorded video of selected
works from the presented case studies, examples of transnational Dominican performance.
All video was recorded by Douglas Hundley with the acception of the segment of
Dominicanish which was recorded by Giovanni Savino. The CD is best played on a
computer and not a DVD player.
20
Figure 0.1
A map of the Caribbean region, indicating the geographical distance
between the Dominican Republic and New York City.
21
Introduction:
Negotiating the Divide:
Practices in Transnational Dominican Performance
In August 1997 I accepted a teaching position at an international school in Lima, Peru.
International schools, American schools, and privately funded institutions that teach an
American curriculum in English are located in practically every capital and major city in every
country throughout the world. The students they serve are the children of foreign diplomats,
embassy employees, international businessmen and organizers of non-profit organizations.
Informally, these schools are often referred to as “expat bubbles,” a place where, no matter its
location in the world, English is the preferred language and Western culture pervades.
However, students who attend these schools are offered a unique educational experience.
They live and learn in a complex “third culture,” one where they often speak to their teachers in
one language, English, and to their friends in another. What is even more interesting is the everincreasing number of students who attend these schools from the host country in which they are
located. Students who have very little connection to the United States outside of their vacations
to Disney World or to the global cities of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York are entering into
these American schools in record numbers in order to receive an education that will enable them
to live and support themselves beyond the geographical borders of their homeland. This is
22
evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of graduates from American and international
schools enroll in American universities and build careers for themselves in the United States.
I preface this study by providing insight on the field of international education not only to
emphasize the pervasive nature of globalization but also to explain how I originally was
introduced to the fields of study at the center of this thesis: globalization, migration and
performance. When I began teaching theatre at the international school in Lima, Peru in the mid1990s I had not yet become familiar with the concept of transnationalism although I was
witnessing it in my students and myself regularly. However, my transnational experience was the
mirror opposite to that of my students. As a student in an American public high school, I had
studied Spanish but had little connection with any other country outside of the United States.
Then, when in my twenties and in search of diverse cultural experiences and economic
opportunities, I moved to Peru and worked and lived in Lima for five years, returning to the
United States roughly twice a year to maintain my connections with family and my homeland.
When doing so, I would see my students and fellow American “expat” teachers on the plane and
at the airport, all of us in transit, regularly crossing the geographical, economic and cultural
borders that divided the country we called home from the country in which we were currently
living.
It was not until I was a post-graduate student in Drama that I was able to make the
connections between my experience living in Peru and the intricacies of intercultural
performance. The varied theatre practices I had witnessed in Peru I later realized were a result of
what Patrice Pavis refers to as “dialectic of exchanges of civilities between cultures” (1991: 2).
To clarify, there was a significant dichotomy to Peruvian theatre. Much of it was aimed to
entertain by way of a plethora of slapstick comedies and Broadwayesque musicals that were
23
continuously being staged in the large theatres in the capital city of Lima. Their audiences were
comprised of the European and American influenced upper-middle classes of the city. However,
in the rural villages of the country popular theatre that intended to instruct and unify the local
community thrived. Often this form of theatre found being performed in the streets and plazas of
the small towns and barrios addressed the economic plight of Peru’s peasant class as a result of
certain government policies1 and the subtle encroachment of American values that were
challenging their traditional belief system. Teatro Yuyachkani, a group of artists made up of
diverse ethnicities including “white,” mestizo and the indigenous is a key example of a company
that has thrived since the early 1970s creating community theatre “in various modes of cultural
transmission in an ethnically mixed and complex country” (Taylor 2003: 191). Consequently,
this company is now synonymous with the social identity of the indigenous groups seemingly
discarded in the wake of recent economic and socio-cultural progress in Peru.
It was my post-graduate education that provided me the impetus to study intercultural
performance further, specifically the contemporary practices currently taking shape at the sociocultural crossroads that connect developed and developing nations. I started by becoming
familiar with the well-documented repercussions of “cultural borrowing,” the practice executed
by First World directors wanting to add something “new” and “worldly” to their productions
intended for Western audiences. It is a practice criticized by many scholars in the field who
accuse these directors of helping themselves “to the forms and images of others without taking
the full measure of the cultural fabric from which these are torn” (Chauduri 1991: 193).
As I became more familiar with the field of intercultural performance, however, I was
increasingly drawn to the work of artists creating hybrid performance as a result of their own
migration experiences. I found this practice engaging due to its organic, unpretentious and often
24
visceral qualities. It was performance at the grassroots level, what Jerzy Grotowski would
consider to be “poor theatre” or Eugenio Barba would call Third Theatre2. It is a burgeoning, “inbetween” theatre practice that fuses genres and cultures. While the discussion of Grotowski and
Barba’s theories takes up considerable space in the first section of this thesis, it is the scholarship
of Patrice Pavis that ultimately captured the essence of my thought process as I was developing
guiding questions to my research, specifically his theory of the intercultural hourglass.
The sand in the hourglass prevents us from believing naïvely in the melting pot, in the
crucible where cultures would be miraculously melted and reduced to a radically different
substance...There is no theatre in the crucible of humanity where all specificity melts into
a universal substance, or in the warm cavity of a familiarly cupped hand. It is at the
crossing of ways, of traditions, or artistic practices that we can hope to grasp the distinct
hybridization of cultures, and bring together the winding paths of anthropology,
sociology and artistic practices. (Pavis 1991: 6)
In order to effectively develop this thesis I realized I had to study first-hand the
individual grains of “sand” of which Pavis speaks. Consequently, upon finishing my Master’s
degree and in preparation for conducting research that would become the material for this thesis,
I accepted a teaching position in the Caribbean island country of the Dominican Republic.
Working in the country enabled me to live there uninterrupted for three years and subsequently
become immersed in the culture. I specifically pursued this locale because I considered it an
ideal case study in the fields of migration studies, cultural identity and intercultural performance.
The Dominican Republic is an independent, developing country which, due primarily to its
proximity, has continuously felt the socio-cultural, economic and political pull of the United
States. Consequently, it is a country suffering a cultural identity crisis exacerbated by the current
processes of globalization. I knew that only by living in the country fulltime would I effectively
be able to witness the socio-cultural, economic and political implications that come with
neighboring the United States and understand how these implications led to the production of
25
many “tiny atoms of meaning” of which Pavis speaks (1991: 6). Perhaps more importantly
though, as a theatre scholar, living in the Dominican Republic would help me understand how
these implications also have helped forge a burgeoning hybrid performance tradition in both the
Dominican Republic and the Dominican diasporic community in New York City. Hence, with
my family, I relocated to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in August 2003 and for three
years lived and worked there while traveling regularly to New York City. In this substantial
period of time I was able to meet many Dominican performance artists and theatre makers in
both locations and observe firsthand how the processes of globalization and transnationalism
impacted their work.
The Framework
Divided into three parts with each containing three chapters, this thesis is an examination
of the growing transnational performance tradition of Dominicans based both in the Dominican
Republic and their primary diasporic community in New York City. I have organized this study
so the first part serves as a literature review in order to provide meaningful historical context. For
example, Chapter 1 consists of an introduction to the processes of globalization and transnational
migration and the diverse Latino identity formations that historically have taken place in the
United States as a consequence of these processes. Chapter 2 then broadly examines the varied
practices that constitute the transnational performance genre while Chapter 3 sheds light on the
historical socio-economic experiences of American-based Latinos and their early formulations of
transnational performance. In having Part 1 consist of these specific chapters, it is my intention
to emphasize that while Anglo and Latin America were once considered “two multicultural and
multiracial spheres of diverse populations,” their “shared legacy of colonialism, racism,
26
displacement, and dispersion” (Acosta-Belén 1995:82) have consistently drawn them together to
create the platform in which a hybrid culture has formed on both sides of their shared border.
In Part 2, I put the concepts of globalization, transnationalism and interculturalism into a
purely Dominican context. For example, in Chapter 4 I explicate the intricate socio-economic
relationship between the United States and the Dominican Republic while in Chapter 5 I address
the cultural and racial identity issues Dominicans face in both the homeland and the New York
diaspora as a result of the complex interconnections between these two locations. Then in
Chapter 6 I offer a history of the development of Dominican theatre in New York City while in
Chapter 7 I analyze how three particular Dominican performance artists and theatre makers
living in the diaspora are generating a transnational performance aesthetic as a result of
negotiating the socio-cultural and economic divide that separates their residence in New York
from their homeland, the Dominican Republic.
In Part 3, I emphasize the reciprocity and bi-directionality of transnational performance.
To clarify, Chapter 8 provides evidence that throughout the twentieth century, while artists in the
Dominican Republic were attempting to establish their own theatre culture in the country, it was
consistently influenced by the performance practices taking place in the United States. Chapter 9
offers an examination of the work of three specific Dominican theatre artists who have been
shaped by the process of “Americanization” and who, in their own unique way, are responding to
this process in their work, providing credence to the theory that transnational performance also
can be cultivated in the homeland by those who had never actually migrated. The thesis
concludes with an attempt to identify defining characteristics of transnational Dominican
performance, in order to emphasize the notion that while migration patterns and socio-economic
conditions vary among Dominican artists, there are still certain commonalities within their work.
27
It also needs to be stated that to support the thesis I have included a movie on a CD of
recorded video from performances observed and interviews conducted during my fieldwork. I
selected particular scenes for the movie that I specifically discuss in the thesis and in many cases
are included to emphasize the points I make regarding transnational Dominican aesthetics.
Therefore, I have chosen to not include direct English-language translations in the movie for the
included Spanish-language performances. However, English-language titles are provided at the
beginning of each of the Spanish-language scenes in order to provide the non-Spanish speaker a
general understanding of the material being performed. The CD is best played on a computer, not
a DVD player.
The Aims and Objectives
Though I have a number of objectives with this research, my primary aim is to indicate
that contemporary performance taking place in both the Dominican Republic and its New York
diaspora is indicative of the growing trend of contemporary transnational theatre and
performance that is taking place in both the diasporic margins of mainstream America and Latin
American homelands. With the surge in the current US Latino population, the cultural
production that stems from it is now transcending conventional classification and encouraging a
redefining of the traditional boundaries that have constrained the study of what has been
considered simply “American,” “Latino” or “Caribbean” theatre.
This primary aim is met by also exploring several other related issues. For example, in
this study a subsequent objective is to identify how American borders have shifted, and how
increasingly transnational interconnections between specific Latin American and Caribbean
countries are bridging the distance between them and their respective US diasporas. On this
28
bridge collective forms of cultural affirmation, resistance, and hybridization are taking place
among Latino groups in US society and in their countries of origin by way of theatre and
performance. These performance practices are eclectic creations that address the overlapping
issues of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity and class that constitute the fractured identity of the
contemporary US Latino.
With my analysis I hope to encourage less monolithic and homogenizing
conceptualizations of US Latino cultural identity and performance. Such conceptualizations
frequently impair our understanding of the cultural interactions and bi-directional exchanges that
US Latino (im)migrants from diverse nationalities maintain with their respective countries of
origin, and which play a pivotal role in the molding of contemporary Latino identities and
performance practices.
Through this study it is also my intention to contribute to the broader discussion of the
general impact of major population shifts on local theatre and performance traditions. In the
search for greater socio-economic opportunities, people have always traversed the borders that
separate the Third and First World. However, the transnational Dominican phenomenon signifies
the current postmodern condition, with global migration patterns contributing to increased
cultural fragmentation and plurality by establishing innumerable intersections between the local,
national and transnational spheres. I want to highlight that because of these intersections, new
forms of interaction and hybridization are being produced that urge the reconfiguration of
cultural identities and increasingly hybrid populations are voicing these new identities through a
wide array of art, including theatre and performance.
Addressing Ethnographic Concerns
29
This body of research is more than simply an examination of a particular performance
practice. It is more aptly an ethnographic study in which I delve into the direct observation of a
culture and a people’s way of life as a whole in order to effectively understand the
interconnections of their history, identity and “daily experiences” with their “extra-daily”
practice of performance (Zarrilli 1998: 5). This was done by my establishing a two stage research
process, the first being my extensive gathering of research through field work when living in
Santo Domingo and visiting the Dominican diaspora of New York City, the second being the
formal shaping of my research into this thesis while subsequently based at the University of
Exeter.
It is important to mention the number of challenges one faces in conducting ethnographic
research. It is a methodology not without critics. Historically, it was argued that ethnography
supported a Darwinian hierarchical classification system in which - on a continuum - the
developed West was found at one end and the exotic, primitive other was found at the other.
More recent criticism is encapsulated succinctly by Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tifflin who explain
that ethnography and the activities that comprise it
- watching, listening, asking or collecting – is never simply a neutral, value free act, nor
does it exist beyond the assumptions and prescriptions of the discourse of the
participant’s own culture. Not even the concept of knowledge itself can be value free
because what is known depends upon how it is known, that is, cultural knowledge is
‘constructed’ rather than ‘discovered’ by ethnography. (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tifflin
2003: 85-86)
Moreover, Richard Fardon says that the umbrella field of research called Anthropology
necessarily reproduced versions of assumptions deeply embedded in a predatory
European culture…the inversion of a self-image was generalized to some fictive
collectivity based on geography, skin colour, tribe or whatever. To counter pose to an
30
enlightened Europe we produced an African heart of darkness; to our rational, controlled
west corresponded an irrational sensuous Orient; our progressive civilization differed
from the historical cul-de-sacs into which Oriental despots led their subjects; our maturity
might be contrasted with the childhood of a darker humanity, but our youth and vigour
distinguished us from the aged civilization of the east whose splendour was past…
Subtly, not so subtly, and downright crassly, we produced our exemplar others;
now, we pride ourselves that we see through the mirrors we set up, no longer dazzled by
the pleasing images of ourselves they reflected. The temporal transpositions have been
rendered transparent for what they were: artifices of imagination in the service of power.
(Fardon 1990: 6)
Recently, ethnographic methodologies have been the subject of vigorous debates,
specifically whether or not and to what extent the ethnographer is conscious of his or her own
subject position. The essential question being: should ethnographic research be more
phenomenological in approach?3 Since the advent of contemporary revelations, it seems that
“ethnography has had increasingly to address the issue of whether there is an underlying conflict
between the earlier claims about its ability to make objective representative statements about the
conditions of human life in the world” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tifflin 2003: 86).
The criticisms made of ethnographic research are legitimate; however, with the onset of
this current process of globalization that began in the 1980s, we face a world of increasing
interconnections, interdependence and integration among nations, regions and cultures.
Consequently, I am in support of the argument presented by James Clifford that ethnography
should be reconsidered as less a symbol of imperialism and more as a
decentered ethnographic practice, a form of ethnographic writing that takes into account
and overcomes, its colonial history and the difficulties concerning the subject position of
the ethnographer because it is more than ever crucial for different peoples to form
complex concrete images of one another, as well as the relationships of knowledge and
power that connect them. (Clifford 1988: 23)
31
In my ethnographic research I have attempted to produce useful, complex descriptions
that seek to take my position as the observer into account. In the process I am careful to take into
considerations the “differences” between cultures by engaging constructively with issues of
representation. This requires forming links with other disciplines such as sociology, economics,
psychology and linguistics, integrating the study of a population with the various fields that
create a culture and a society as a whole. Consequently, in order to provide the proper context, a
key part of this thesis is the explanation of Dominican history, society and identity, three
components that invariably have shaped the transnational Dominican community and the theatre
and performance practices found within it.
The Fieldwork
While there is essential archival research provided in Part 1 of this thesis regarding
relevant theories on globalization, migration and cross-cultural identity and performance, the
thesis hinges upon the information gathered through fieldwork conducted between 2003 and
2006. Mindful of my status as a Caucasian American in an Afro-Latino Caribbean nation, I
understood that relationships with my case studies would have to develop naturally and over time
in order for me to be accepted and welcomed into the tight-knit and guarded independent theatre
community of Santo Domingo. However, my knowledge of the Spanish language and Latin
culture as a result of my experience in Lima and my own background as a theatre maker proved
advantageous in developing authentic relationships with Dominican artists who, although
recognizing me as an outsider, were curious to understand the subject of my thesis and their part
in it. Generally, the people I met and interviewed were consistently open to discussing their work
and allowing me into their lives. I was often invited into their homes, and they into mine.
32
Although I had formal interviews with each of the artists that comprise my group of case studies,
more often than not, our time together was spent watching the performances of others, attending
graduation and wedding ceremonies of mutual friends and working together on local film
projects. As a result I not only was able to experience these individuals as theatre artists, but just
as significantly as human beings and every-day Dominicans. This invaluable experience enabled
me to put their theatre and performance practices into proper context and understand just how
much their work was an extension of their lives as Dominicans living in this unique time of
cultural flux. However, I must emphasize that the obtaining of research material through my case
studies did not happen in a condensed period of time. The following is a brief mapping and
timeline of my field work experience.
I arrived in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in August of 2003 in order to begin
work as a theatre teacher at one of the more prestigious English language schools. In terms of my
research, my arrival to the Dominican Republic could not have been timed better. In October of
2003, roughly a month after having arrived, I saw the start of the fourth Festival Internacional de
Teatro in Santo Domingo. Venues for the event were dotted throughout the city, and a variety of
theatre companies and individual artists, some quite well-known in the region, came from all
over the Caribbean, Latin America, the US and Europe to showcase their work. I immersed
myself in the festival, aiming to observe primarily the work of locally-based, independent theatre
artists and companies. This was an effective and serendipitous, not to mention convenient,
introduction to the various forms of contemporary theatre being generated in the country.
There were two experiences during the festival that later proved to have significant
bearing on my research. The first was my meeting Dominican theatre artist Manuel Chapuseaux,
a key figure in the theatre community in the country. He granted me my first formal interview
33
and in doing so, provided a proverbial road map for me to follow in carrying out my research by
offering a keen perspective on Dominican popular theatre. He also provided me names and
contacts of many of his past theatre students, people who have since gone on to establish
themselves as theatre makers in both New York and Santo Domingo. One such person is Waddys
Jáquez, an artist who serves as an invaluable case study in this thesis. The second experience
during the festival was my observing the production of Emigrantes (Emigrants), a version of
Slawomir Mrözek’s play Emigranci (1974) by Teatro Estudio Internacional, a theatre company
that also serves as a case study.
As avant garde theatre is only now beginning to take root in the Dominican Republic, it
was with patience that I navigated the theatre community in the country. For example, from the
time I first saw Teatro Estudio Internacional’s Emigrantes in the Dominican Republic to having
the opportunity to sit down and interview Roy Arias, the founder of the company, two years had
passed. Similarly, in regards to another company, Teatro Orgánico, which serves as a case study
in Part Three, I followed their work and conducted interviews with its members for a period of
time lasting more than a year and a half. This was a significant experience because in this
extended period of time, I was able to observe first-hand the many successes and challenges they
experienced as well as understand properly how contemporary theatre in the Dominican
Republic has recently developed.
Moreover, it was only after significant time spent in the Dominican Republic that I felt
prepared to explore the Dominican community in New York City. The contacts I had made in
Santo Domingo helped me profoundly in regards to who to meet and where to go for Dominican
theatre in the city. For example, a librarian at the Natural History Museum in Santo Domingo
made an appointment for me to see an associate of hers in New York, Sarah Aponte, an assistant
34
director at the Dominican Studies Institute at the City University of New York. It was she who
then introduced me to the performance artist Josefina Baez who subsequently invited me to an
event at Riverside Church, hosted by the organization Alianza Dominicana4, celebrating the
Cocolos community of San Pedro de Macorís and the La Guloya dance tradition. As a result of
this fortuitous chain of events, both Baez and the La Guloya dance tradition serve as case studies
in this thesis, each offering a very different perspective on transnational performance. I came
away from my research experiences in both Santo Domingo and New York realizing that the
Dominican theatre community, no matter whether the medium is performance art, traditional
theatre or folk performance, is a devoted, interconnected, single entity that while wanting to be
recognized for its acheivements, is still in a fragile stage of development as it confronts the
processes of transnationalism and globalization.
I selected particular artists as case studies specifically for the way they live and how they
come to create material and perform. While each is unique in their attitudes, objectives and
methods of practice, collectively they are cultivating a transnational performance tradition “that
fuses home and host traditions and trends to generate eclectic styles of hybrid performance”
(Hundley 2007: 102). In doing so, they are each creating a form of community theatre that
addresses issues relevant to Dominicans in the face of globalization. For example, “Angel Haché
ironically practices hybrid performance to emphasize the downsides of transnational migration,”
while the viability of the process is represented by the success of Waddy’s Jáquez, who has been
able to keep one foot in each location by creating work and characters that are “astute
articulations of the present-day Dominican experience…” (Hundley 2007: 102-103). Meanwhile
Roy Arias and Josefina Baez attempt to extend the terms of reference of the migrant Dominican
and Dominican-American experience, “the former by bringing Dominican stories to the
35
mainstream New York theatre audiences, the latter forging a unique intercultural practice in
order to convey her own personal journey of self-identity” (Hundley 2007: 103).
Terminology
Terminology in this research is a sensitive issue; almost every term it incorporates can be
problematic. Therefore, it is important to specify the meanings of significant terms as they are
used in this particular study. For example, I use the term Latin American to refer to individuals
who were born and reside in Latin American countries. However, it is important to realize that
people in Latin American countries do not generally view themselves as “Latin American,” but
rather as Colombians, Brazilians, Dominicans and so forth. Latino and Hispanic5 are the terms
most associated with persons of Latin American origins or ancestry residing in the United States.
Although the term Latino is not without problems (it has been used pejoratively in some places,
and specific designators such as Chicano, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban and so on are
often preferred), it seems to be currently favored over the term Hispanic by members of the
culture, in part because it reflects their Latin American origins. Many Latinos reject the term
Hispanic, seeing it as a designator imposed on them from the outside, one that incorrectly
denotes Spanish, rather than Latin American, origins. Given the greater acceptability of Latino,
this is the term I prefer to use in this study.
To identify citizens of the United States, I use the term Americans as this is the most
widely used term in the US. But in many cases throughout the study, I use it interchangeably
with “North Americans” as well as “Anglo Americans” when I want to specify the mainstream
population of the United States that is not Latino. The Dominican Republic is a country whose
primary influences stem from Latin America and Africa and, therefore, Dominicans consider
36
themselves Latinos, Afro-Latino and Latino Caribbean so I have incorporated all three terms into
my account.
37
Part 1:
Historical References in the Field
38
Chapter 1
Globalization, Transnational Migration
and the Search for a Cultural Identity
The ideal of a single civilization for everyone implicit in the cult of progress and technique
impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that
disappears, diminishes a possibility of life.
—Octavio Paz
I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the
culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off
my feet by any.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Globalization
Much has been made over the fact that Latinos have now surpassed African-Americans to
become the largest minority in the United States. Many politicians, sociologists and
anthropologists have combed the 2000 US census to fully understand how and why this
39
population growth among US Latinos has occurred. However, what they are finding is a complex
set of factors and conditions that symbolize the phenomenon of globalization. This modern
economic process has led to the blurring of national borders and enabled populations to migrate
and cultures to merge at unprecedented rates. It is a broad and nebulous concept and my
intention is not to analyze its many already well-documented economic and political facets; for
this I defer to the scholarship of Arjun Appadurai, Anthony King and Leslie Sklair6. However,
since globalization is the primary catalyst for new migration patterns and cultural identity
formations, a brief introduction to the process is relevant.
The term “globalization” entered our western vernacular in the 1980s in light of the many
significant global events occurring during this decade and the media that helped bring them
within reach. As a teenager during this decade I watched the Iran-Contra hearings, the fall of the
Berlin Wall, the Tiananmen Square Protests and the famine and AIDS epidemics in Africa all on
a new cable channel called CNN from the comfort of my middle-class home. I remember being
impressed with our gadget-obsessed neighbor who called us from his front yard with his new
mobile phone. Little did I know then that only a few years later I would conduct most of my
correspondence not by traditional letter writing but by email sent through something called the
“internet.” All these events and advances have led to a redefinition of the term “border.” With
individuals increasingly gaining access to “globally disseminated knowledge,” broadening their
cultural horizons, becoming in a sense “citizens of the world,” the term carries with it now
profound socio-cultural significance.
Today, twenty-five years later, globalization is a universal term used to represent the
perception of the world as an interconnected whole indelibly linked by
40
flexible and spatially extended forms of production, the rapid mobility of capital,
information and goods, the denationalizing of capital, the deterritorialization of culture,
the interpenetration of local communities by global media networks, and the dispersal
of socio-economic power beyond the Euro-American axis.
(Papastergiades 2000: 77)
However, it is a polarizing issue. Not everyone sees this “process of exchange and flow” as fair
and equal. Critics of globalization see the current discourse on “personal freedom” and “global
interconnection” that accompanies it as masking complex forms of identity and displacement,
especially in this post-9/11 era with countries repossessing and militarizing national and geopolitical borders.
Globalization is also considered by many to be an insidious threat, going undetected as it
affects our everyday lives. Whether it is the price of gas at the local station or the new WalMart
superstore opening in the neighborhood, these are occurrences dictated by globalization with
little consideration for local traditions, practices and interests. Before realizing, we have
contributed to an integrated economic system that does not spread evenly and in all directions
simultaneously, leading many communities and populations to feel marginalized and powerless.
They have no choice but to succumb to the dominant homogenous global culture originating in
and perpetuated by the centers of capitalist power. Global organizations such as the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as a host of transnational corporations are
overriding the autonomy of nation-states of the developing world, centralizing capital investment
practices and restructuring labor relations in the pursuit of cheaper wages, all with little regard
for local needs and rules. At the same time, while the transnational corporation becomes more
powerful, pursuing unfettered paths of economic activity unbounded by geo-political borders,
“growth in the Third World has ceased and many countries have plunged into massive debt”
(Papastergiades 2000: 81).
41
Proponents of Globalization
There are those, though, who embrace globalization enthusiastically, a group who
considers this process inevitable, a by-product of an ever-changing world which has brought
technology and information, services and markets to local communities that otherwise would
have gone without. They argue that the nation-state is much more resilient than people realize
and that these new global trends in trade mirror previous patterns that have been historically
conducted across national boundaries (Hirst and Thompson 1996: 227).
However, regardless of the position one takes on the issue, all would agree that the
process of globalization is becoming more complicated than simply creating either a borderless
global system or economically independent nations. It is involved in a complex trafficking of
populations back and forth across borders in a bi-directional migration process. Such national
practices as “insisting on exclusive citizenship, regulating border controls, demanding political
allegiance and standardizing linguistic practice” all in the name of creating “sentiments of
belonging,” have led to an increased identity crisis among migrants who perhaps are more loyal
to their own regional identity (Papastergiades 2000: 82). This has become the modern
predicament of culture.
Globalization: The impact on culture
The archaic nineteenth-century notion that nation-states comprise a single national
culture and identity has proven unrealistic today. This is due largely to the fact that nation-states
are products of invasions and settlements that have merged different ethnic groups with diverse
cultural practices and who often speak different languages. Consequently, as it is impossible to
42
embrace the many different cultural values equally, the goal of the nation-state has been to
articulate a new all-inclusive national culture that incorporates all the regional differences of its
citizens, what Stuart Hall refers to as the “narrative of nation” (Hall 1995: 184).
However, the contemporary process of globalization works against this narrative. Migrant
communities today have maintained “bi-local affiliations” pledging no “exclusive or singular
allegiance to a particular country” but rather have
…historical references and linguistic practices [that] have taken complex and diverse
forms (…) feeling they belong with groups whose religion, language or cultural practices
are no longer bound to a particular nation and which perhaps stretch across a number of
places. (Papastergiades 2000: 85)
Consequently, nation-states have been forced to face cultural pluralism within their borders and
have addressed the issue of the plurality of the “national culture” with governmental
implementations of multiculturalism, policies to address the social needs and legal rights of
minorities. However, such policies are often difficult to establish effectively because nationstates are reluctant to extend their institutional framework to fully include minorities. Also, these
policies are accused of being insensitive and insincere, perhaps even working secretively to the
advantage of transnational corporations. Furthermore, as nation-states instill these often
misguided policies of multiculturalism, minorities ironically are increasingly searching for their
own ethnic roots in order to dispel their feelings of alienation, by attempting to maintain
connections with a homeland and an identity (Zizek 1997). In this respect, globalization has not
heightened the sense of integration as proponents have argued, but actually increased a sense of
fragmentation. With the process of globalization a polar effect has occurred. Migrant
communities either willingly submit to full assimilation or remain fragmented, marginalized
groups. Diasporic communities, if wanting to assert their migrant identities, have to “invent new
43
forms of belonging that could mediate between the local and the global” (Papastergiades 2000:
85).
However, they are at an extreme disadvantage in this fight to be recognized. The
dominant culture has the power of the media on its side. It has the ability to define and promote
“common sense,” “official versions” and societal norms (Jordan and Weedon 1995: 9-13).
Whether it is the production of music, movies, fashion, newspapers and television programs, the
media has the ability to promote specific modes of thinking as well as create and reaffirm
national, sexual, racial, ethnic and gender identities.
Unfortunately, global media culture is not a completely benign force; in this dominant
capitalist market, its primary function is to make a great deal of profit (Burnett 1996) and it will
resort to a variety of measures to do so. For example, it is much cheaper for countries to purchase
US-produced media artifacts such as television programs than to create their own domestically.
This is the very reason why television shows like Baywatch have the world thinking that all
Americans are stereotypically beach-going, blond lifeguards when most of the country does not
have a coastline (Cashmore 1994: 195). But, while it portrays this popular image, the global
media culture is simultaneously cannibalizing, appropriating, commodifying and thus
disempowering native cultures. Consequently,
[t]hese people cannot choose what they want to be, what they have always been, because
the environment that sustained and nourished them, that allowed them to be what they
want to be, has been and is systematically being destroyed. They cannot live as they
choose to live, because the sciences, the technologies, the medical systems, the
architecture, the natural habitat that sustained their lifestyles have been suppressed and
destroyed. They cannot buy what they choose to buy, because their mode of production
has been replaced by imported Western consumer goods and services. They cannot even
choose not to be the victims of the dominant culture: their victimisation is embedded in
the global economic and political system. (Sardar 1998: 19-20)
44
However, it is not entirely true that smaller countries and cultures blindly adopt and
accept American (and European) generated cultural artifacts and identities. In most cases, these
“local” cultural consumers fuse their own identities with the “global” products to construct
“hybrid” forms of culture and identities. Nevertheless, the culture that is most prevalent and thus
the most powerful in terms of homogenizing world populations into a single global culture is that
which stems from the United States. Stuart Hall calls the process of globalization distinctly
“American (…) In cultural terms, this new kind of globalization has to do with a new form of
global mass culture” that does not attempt to produce mini versions of itself but operates through
other economic and political elites (Hall 1991: 27-28).
“Americanization”
As Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Starbucks and Microsoft continue to span the globe, there is
little to keep globalization from being recognized as “Americanization.” In many ways the terms
are interchangeable. For example, Hollywood films are distributed worldwide, presenting images
of American culture and standards on how to live and look, what cars to own and drive, and what
to think and believe. In essence, American culture has domesticated all heterogeneous cultures
in most parts of the world in order to create a dominant global culture.
Although America avoids perceiving itself as “imperial,” ever since the Second World
War it has implemented policies that indicate an intention of “political domination and economic
and cultural control associated with imperialism” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tifflin 2003: 113). The
end of the war signified a shift of the world hegemony from Britain to the United States “…with
nearly every other industrial nation reduced to rubble” (Miyoshi 1998: 251). However, with its
huge wartime industrial expansion, the United States was faced with a crisis of overproduction.
45
The result was economic stagnation in 1945 and reduction in 1946. In fear of another economic
depression, George Kennan, a Truman policy maker, argued in February 1948:
We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population
(…) in this situation we [must] devise a pattern of relationship which will permit us to
maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To
do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming (…) We should
cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the
living standard, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have
to deal in straight power concepts. (qtd. in Miyoshi 1998: 251)
Thus, the United States, during the better part of the twentieth century has propagated the
practices of mass production, mass communication and mass consumption and promoted an
American-style capitalism throughout the world.
What does the process of Americanization mean for the local communities in regions
across the world? They have had to develop “strategies of representation, organization and
social change through access to global systems” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tifflin 2003: 114).
Although it potentially serves as a process of empowerment for local communities, an
opportunity to experience global forms of culture and free themselves from the local forms of
dominance and oppression; it inevitably forces local communities to come to terms with the issue
of identity as it leads to new possibilities in identity formation.
However, Americanization tends to emphasize homogenizing identity formations.
Therefore, the most active area of debate in globalization studies appears to be the nature of the
process by which external and internal forces interact to produce, reproduce and disseminate a
dominant American “global” culture within local communities and the subsequent survival of
local cultures. The interpenetration of global and local cultural forces is present in all forms of
social life in the twentieth century. But the extent to which Americanization exhibits the effects
46
of cultural domination by the United States, and the extent to which it offers itself to
transformation by peripheral communities form the crux of this particular study in transnational
Dominican performance.
What is found is almost invariably a negotiating process of hybridity or ‘glocalization’7
rather than one of complete acceptance or resistance to the dominant American culture. To think
in such polarized terms distorts insight into the characteristics of the modern world-society:
many social scientists see the unique nature of globalization and to a lesser extent
Americanization as lying precisely in the fact that local cultures only emerge, or have their status
enhanced through comparison and confrontation with universally practiced behavior.
Ethnologists are familiar with this process in connection with the “invention” of ethnic groups
and traditions, “constructions created by foreign interlopers and often more reflective of ideology
than reality” (Tansey 1995: 6). Only a combination of the universal and the particular promises
to do justice to the laws that move modern world-society. Hence the “glocal” represents a
modern society or “world space.” In such a space, the apparent opposites of homogenization and
heterogenization are recognized as being “simultaneous processes” which are ultimately
complementary.
However, to make sure there are equal parts of the global and the local in a “modern
world society” is easier said than done. When the cultural currency is Hollywood and the “global
lingua franca” is English, subordinate local cultures are at an extreme disadvantage in making
sure they are properly represented (Gitlin 1998: 4). American culture is indeed far reaching and
as such has been blamed for displacing native cultures, leading the United States to be referred to
as the primary cultural imperialists of the late-twentieth century. Jeremy Tunstall explains:
47
[T]he cultural imperialism thesis claims that authentic, traditional and local culture in
many parts of the world is being battered out of existence by the indiscriminate dumping of
large quantities of slick commercial and media products, mainly from the United States. (1977:
57)
Roy Shuker goes one step further:
[C]ultural imperialism developed as a concept analogous to the historical, political and
economic subjugation of the Third World by the colonising powers in the nineteenth
century, with consequent deleterious effects for the societies of the colonised. This gave
rise to global relations of dominance, subordination and dependency between the
affluence and power of the advanced capitalist nations, most notably the United States
and Western Europe, and the relatively powerless underdeveloped countries. This
economic and political imperialism was seen to have a cultural aspect: namely the ways
in which the transmission of certain products, fashions and styles from the dominant
nations to the dependent markets leads to the creation of particular patterns of demand
and consumption which are underpinned by and endorse the cultural values, ideals and
practices of their dominant origin. In this manner the local cultures of the developing
nations become dominated and in varying degrees invaded, displaced and challenged by
foreign, often western cultures. (1994: 59-60)
Moreover, it would be entirely incorrect to suggest that “only” developing nations feel
threatened by American cultural imperialism. Roy Shuker notes that developed countries like
Canada and New Zealand respectively have either established quotas or discussed similar
ceilings for American music in order to promote and protect its own artists' works and their
countries' musical identities. In Britain, the musical groups such as The Clash wrote and
recorded music as a response to Americanization with their protest song ‘I'm so Bored With the
USA' that voices opposition to the amount of American-produced television broadcast in the UK
during the 1970s. In my personal assessment, the prime motivations behind bands like Oasis and
Blur who launched the Britpop movement in the early 1990s was to create some form of identity
to stand in opposition to the American-generated grunge music so popular at the time. With their
48
distinctly English dress and hairstyles they intentionally stood in direct opposition to the flannel
shirts, torn jean fashion of American bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I personally remember
Oasis being interviewed on MTV upon their arrival to the United States; the members of the
group were quickly deemed unintelligible by American commentators as a result of their thick
working-class Mancunian accents. Then a couple of years later when I heard a subsequent Oasis
interview in the UK, I noticed their accent was tempered and that they were rather articulate.
Despite the argument that perhaps success breeds refinement, I concluded that while in the US,
the members of the group embellished their accents in order to reinforce their English identity to
make themselves separate and distinct from the sea of American homogeneity.
However, there is an element of bi-directionality in terms of cultural exchange, especially
from First World to First World nations. While American Jazz and Blues as well as Elvis Presley
have had a substantial impact on British culture, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones have
undoubtedly shaped American culture and fashion. Perhaps it was the first British invasion of
the 1960s that enabled bands like Oasis to come to the United States to tour in the first place.
The irony of it all is the fact that although Oasis has consistently maintained a distinctly English
identity, professing their primary influence to be the Beatles, it was the Beatles who claimed
1950s American blues and rock n’ roll as the force behind their own music.
All this suggests that cultures are constantly interacting, making hybrid forms of culture.
David Rieff argues that “[i]n many instances, the financing for a Hollywood movie studio, will
come from overseas, and it is commonplace that the people producing this ‘American’ culture
were often imported…” (Rieff 1993/94: 76). Perhaps another way to look at it is that while the
49
world has become more Americanized, America has “become internationalized” (Peres and
Pollack 1998: 12). Nevertheless, we need to interrogate critically the term “Americanization.”
It was originally a label applied to the anticipated assimilation of immigrants and new
minorities or, more formally, to qualities demanded of territories seeking statehood. In each
context Americanization was defined broadly as “a process by which an alien acquires our
language, citizenship, customs and ideals” (Bell and Bell 1998: 1). Nations all over the world are
beginning to use the terms “Americanization” and “Americanized” pejoratively, to imply the
adoption of homogenized cultural values promoted by Hollywood, American corporations and
MTV and consequently devoid of imagination and integrity.
Although such use of the term could be construed as justified, it is important to keep in
mind that the United States is now a multicultural country. There is no unified American culture.
No single cultural artifact, industry or icon can, at any one time, carry or transmit the values of
the entire American nation-state. The white, suburban, middle-class, heterosexual Protestant
experience is no longer the dominant image in the United States. Today, to be “Americanized”
means also to be well-versed in the cultures of the African-American, indigenous, AsianAmerican and the US Latino. This is the process of globalization at work, spurred on by the
development of transnational migration. This new migratory pattern has allowed for populations
to traverse geographical borders throughout the world carrying with them a variety of cultural
histories that then run up against others to form hybrid identities, new forms of organization in
need of recognition.
Transnational Migration
50
Historically, globalization has always been indelibly linked to international migration
movements, but with the development of “New World” globalization, that which is based
primarily in the United States, migratory patterns have shifted considerably. To clarify, previous
periods indicated a “settler-sojourner model,” a single discrete event involving movement from
one geographically and socially bounded locality to another. However, contemporary migrations
have introduced the practice of transnationalism when diasporic communities exchange concerns,
relationships, resources and needs that are immersed in multiple settings. It is the process in
which individuals and/or families cross borders, leading to the emergence of significant
communities of migrants in the regions of origin and of destination that travel regularly back and
forth between the two. Thus, transnational migration is fundamentally transformative, affecting
the regions of origin and of destination as well as the migrants themselves. Transnational
migration is the most dynamic force shaping modern societies, establishing communities of
emigrants and immigrants whose numbers have reached a threshold level that has impacted
surrounding non-migrant communities, what Santiago-Rivera and Santiago call “moving beyond
the enclave” (1999: 229). As these communities are continually fed by new participants in this
process of mobility; transnational migrants create a back and forth of transmission, of syncretic
ideas, attitudes and cultural behaviors.
In this form, migrants take actions and make decisions and establish identities embedded
in networks of relationships that connect them to home and host country. Transnationalism
empowers migrants to avoid assimilation into the host culture and allows for the maintaining of
separate and distinct agendas, goals, outlooks and communities. Transnational migrants may
consider their existence in the diaspora as temporary; their intention is to return home or perhaps
51
migrate elsewhere. With the convenience of modern travel being what it is, such prospects are
feasible.
Consequently, transnationalism requires a redefining of the concept of citizenship, a
study of ways through which people maintain links in multiple settings. Peggy Levitt in her
studies on the subject offers the idea of a post-national membership, a form of “participation and
representation emerging that [does] not require citizenship” and that “guarantee[s] a set of basic
rights” and that supersedes the nation-state (2001: 5). In conjunction with this premise, Charles
Tilly offers the metaphor of a honeysuckle vine whose “networks [have] moved, changed shaped
and sent down new roots without entirely severing the old cones” (Tilly 1990: 85). Moreover,
although the examples of home countries being influenced by overseas citizens are numerous,
transnational migration, a process often supported by the home government with the
implementation of official and sanctioned legal exchanges, has enabled a steady and continuous
influence from its diaspora communities on the culture and daily life of the home country as well
(Glick-Schiller, Basch and Blanc-Szanton 1995: 4). Transnationalism emphasizes the fact that
people in migration will
…remain intensely involved in their community of origin, be it a nation-state or a
deterritorialized collective regardless of their actual domicile. Whether transnationals go
overseas to glean resources for benefit of a hometown, region or state or to search out a
territory that offers greater geographical footing, it is evident that the transnational
migrant resides in more than one nation-state. (Gold 2000: 74)
However, there are critics of the post-nationalist perspective who consider its premise too
generalist. Patricia Pessar for example, contends that although “migrants’ social and economic
lives are not bounded by national borders” (qtd. in Levitt 2001: 5), the nation-states that receive
them are not superfluous. Host countries play a significant part in creating lasting transnational
52
involvements, as do civic, religious and political institutions. Recent studies have indicated that
second and third generation transnationals who consider themselves legitimate members of host
societies “continue to be active in their countries of origin from their base in the US” (Levitt
2001: 5).
Those in support of transnational migration argue optimistically that although there is
significant possibility for cultural collision, it opens new possibilities of interconnection and
exchange and that diasporic communities formed as a result of it are becoming “a prominent
feature of the global society” (Cohen 1997: 175). Moreover, these diasporas are successfully
developing new forms of communication that bridge the gap between the particular and the
universal (Cohen 1997: 175). However, others are not so positive. As these communities both
maintain links with their place of origin and continue to develop new associations and affiliations,
their sense of “self” is inevitably questioned. Globalization and transnational migration have
done away with notions of a “pure race” and “pure culture” that had typically been associated
with a given territory. Consequently, with cultural harmony no longer defined by uniformity,
people now construct their identities and communities by defining their interests in ways that
“exceed the priorities of the nation-state” (Papastergiades 2000: 92).
As the various viewpoints on transnationalism develop, all sides agree that the term is
multi-faceted and perhaps has been overused in recent years to describe a plethora of complex
migratory activities. Consequently, it has the potential of losing its original meaning. For
example, Basch, Glick- Schiller and Szanton-Blanc use the term to emphasize the social impact
on migrants as it “link[s] together their societies of origin and settlement” (1992: 6) while Luis
Guarnizo focuses on the economics of “socio-cultural, and political practices that transcend the
territorial jurisdiction of the nation-state” (Guarnizo 1997: 299). Peggy Levitt takes a collective
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approach to the term by studying all the facets of the transmigrant, individuals who engage
regularly in cross-border activities (Levitt 2001: 6). Questions concerning the concept remain.
Are transnational practices purely about economics? Are transnational migrants only those who
regularly engage in cross-border activities, or do those who remain behind also become
embedded in the transnational social fields created by migration and to what extent? What forms
do different transnational communities assume?
The Transnational Community
Beginning with an analysis of the transnational community will clarify several things
concerning the dynamics of this migratory process. First, communities are one of several
mechanisms mediating between “high” and “low” levels of transnationalism (Levitt 2001: 7).
When individual actors identify and organize themselves as transnational communities, the state
or international groups from “above” are more apt to respond. They will reach out to local
communities on both sides of the border to encourage individual members to maintain dual
loyalties. Second, communities that emerge from transnational migration offer migrants a variety
of ways in which to distribute their energies and loyalties between their sending and receiving
countries. When transnational communities establish diverse organizations across borders,
membership in both places is easier than when there are fewer, more narrowly focused
organizational groups. Third, a focus on community provides a constant reminder that the impact
of transnational migration extends far beyond the migrant to the individuals and collectivities
that remain behind (Levitt 2001: 7).
The development of transnational communities can be traced to a variety of sources.
Social, historical and economic actions of nation-states, multinational corporations, social and
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political movements and the actions of migrants themselves have all contributed to the
organization of transnationals abroad. In many cases these same institutions are responsible for
the very dispersing of people to a variety of locations, but they have “extend[ed] and redirect[ed]
interconnections between communities, states and regions” with technological innovations and
establishment of social organizations (Gold 2000: 75).
Transnational communities also popularly referred to as “villages” (Levitt 2001) have
several unique characteristics. First, actual migration is not required to be a member. Migrants’
continued participation in their home communities transforms sending-community context to
such an extent that non-migrants also adapt many of the values and practices of their migrant
counterparts, engage in social relationships that span two settings, and participate in
organizations that act across borders. This is not to say that those who migrate and those who
remain behind automatically live in an imagined, transnational space. Instead, they are all firmly
rooted in a particular place and time, though their daily lives often depend upon people, money,
ideas and resources located in another setting.
A second characteristic of transnational communities is that they emerge and endure
partially because of social remittances (Levitt 1999: 509-26) which can be defined as the ideas,
behaviors and social capital that flow from receiving to sending communities. They are the tools
transnational migrants use to imagine a new “cartography” (Appadurai 1990) that encourages
them to try on new gender roles or experiment with new ideas about politics. Once this process
has begun, daily life in the community is changed to such an extent, and migrants and nonmigrants often become so dependent on one another, that transnational villages are inevitably
established for the long term.
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A third feature distinguishing transnational communities is that they create and are
created by organizations that themselves act across borders. Examples are political, religious and
civic organizations that arise to meet the needs of their new transnational members. They enable
migrants to continue to participate in both settings and encourage community perpetuation. This
also means that migrants have multiple channels through which to pursue transnational
membership: “These religious, civic and political groups allow migrants to express and act upon
dual allegiances” (Levitt 2001: 11). Migrants organize groups across borders in several ways.
They may form receiving-country divisions of national political parties or establish hometown
associations, like theatre companies traveling back and forth, performing in home and host
communities.
A fourth feature characterizing the transnational community is its dichotomy. While
some community members use social and economic resources available to them across borders
to their advantage, others return to their home country not much better off than when they first
set out. Class, gender and generational divisions are continuously present, making a community
member’s reliance on a commitment to one another difficult. However, transnational villages
endure because they are flexible enough to tolerate status differences and the increased economic
and emotional attachments that accompany them.
By using the terms community and village, I do not wish to imply that all members feel a
sense of affinity or solidarity toward one another. There has been a continuous divisiveness and
hierarchical nature to transnational communities. Long-standing patterns of privilege and access
do not disappear merely because they are recreated across borders. In fact, though some predict
that transnational migration allowed its participants to rebel against global capital and the nationstate (Kearney 1991) or elude essentializing national identities (Bhabha 1990), this has not been
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the case for most Latinos. In their respective US based communities transnational migration recreates patterns of gender and class inequality and creates new frictions between parents and
children, men and women, and poorer and more advantaged community members.
Finally, I want to locate transnational communities with respect to the term diaspora,
which has also been used to describe a range of contemporary migration experiences. Diaspora
has traditionally referred to groups who were forcibly expelled from their homelands and who
remained socially marginal in the societies that received them as they waited to return. The
classic examples throughout history are the Jews, Greeks, and the Armenians. Of late,
researchers have begun using this term more broadly, defining those “dwelling in the diaspora”
as individuals who have been exiled or displaced to a number of different nation-states by a
variety of economic, political and social forces (Tölölyan 1996: 3-37). Michel LaGuerre
describes these individuals as residing “outside the formal boundaries of their states of origin but
inside the re-territorialized space of the dispersed nation” (1998: 45). Cohen suggests different
types of diasporas, distinguishing among those who are victimized, form part of imperialistic
projects, seek to trade or labor, or “form part of a cultural diaspora, cemented as much by
literature, political ideas, religious convictions, music and lifestyles as by permanent migration”
(1997: xii).
In essence, transnational communities are the building blocks of diasporas that may or
may not take shape. Diasporas form out of transnational communities spanning sending and
receiving countries and out of the real or imagined connections among migrants from a particular
homeland who are scattered throughout the world. Peggy Levitt articulates it in relation to
Dominican transnational migrants: those who
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…identify themselves as belonging to a diaspora might be transnational community
members or isolated individuals who, wherever they are, share a sense of common
belonging to a homeland where they are not. (Levitt 2001: 15)
The Political, Economic and Social Impetus of Transnational Communities
A combination of political and social factors has stimulated transnational migration.
Political and economic relations established under formal or unofficial colonial rule, as in the
case of the US and the Caribbean, for example, stimulated labor migration and the emergence of
transnational ties. Political events have been the basis for many of the transnational migrations
that have occurred and can account for most of the populations of South Asians and “Caribbeans”
in the United Kingdom. In more recent developments, the political and military relationships of
the Cold War era have resulted in the uprooting and resettlement of millions of refugees and
former residents of Warsaw Pact states. Transnational migration is a result of the establishment
of relationships between “client states” and geopolitical powers. Rubén Rumbaut notes that
major countries of immigration to the US are “characterized by significant historical, economic,
political and military ties to the United States” (1996: 28). A further political source of
transmigration can be traced to exiled populations, “dislodged former elites, ethnic outsiders and
other stigmatized groups” who have suffered “sanctioned harassment and deportation policies of
revolutionary, nationalistic and repressive societies” (Gold 1992: 12). Despite their being
removed, exiles often retain a strong interest and remain active in their communities of origin.
In examining the economic determinants of transnationalism, we would conclude that
global competition, economic crises, wars, demographic change and natural disasters have
compelled millions to seek employment abroad. Douglas Massey contends this employment
abroad will most likely be obtained because “market economies create a permanent demand” for
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both the highly skilled technical and professional worker and those “willing to labor under
unpleasant conditions, at low wages, with great instability and little chance of advancement”
(Massey et al. 1993: 441). Although under different circumstances, both categories of workers
are supplied through migration, the enhanced, increased “mobility of people, commodities, ideas
and capital on a global scale” (Gold 2000: 75).
Once the process is begun, it is maintained through established transnational networks,
“cross-border interpersonal ties connecting migrants, return migrants and non-migrants through
kinship, friendship and attachment to a shared place of origin” (Levitt 2001: 8). Established
networks also promote additional migration, as the risks and costs of movement for subsequent
migrants are lower because there is a group of “experts” already in the receiving country who
will help “newcomers” find jobs and housing, thus increasing migration’s economic returns
(Levitt 2001: 8).
The many social connections and organizations that tie these individuals to one another
create multi-leveled, border-spanning structures that enable migrants to remain active in both
worlds. A political party, for example, links non-migrants and migrants alike through their
membership in local, sending - and receiving - country chapters. However, Peggy Levitt
emphasizes the fact that transnational social fields encompass all aspects of social life and
[t]he more diverse and thick a transnational social field is, the more numerous the ways it
offers migrants to remain active in their homelands. The more institutionalized these
memberships become, the more likely it is that transnational membership will persist.
(Levitt 2001: 9)
Although research indicates that many migrants and non-migrants engage in some kind of
transnational activity, recent studies have indicated that not all migrants are embedded in
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transnational social fields, nor belong to transnational communities. There are transnational
migrants who travel regularly to earn their livelihoods; those who visit on a less frequent routine;
and those whose lives take place within a transnational social field though they have never
migrated. In this last case, transnationalism then refers to a series of material and symbolic
practices in which people move only sporadically, with less institutionalization and personal
involvement, but still use both countries as reference points. Examples are the parent who leaves
a child behind to be raised by a grandparent and the leader of an immigrant religious group who
travels periodically to his homeland to consult with superiors. These are individuals who are
based physically in their host countries but who engage in numerous activities and social
relationships spanning borders. Many of their social ties and practices are transnational, though
they themselves may only travel once or twice a year. Likewise, the individual who never
migrated, but who is completely dependent on the economic remittances he / she receives each
month and who lives in a socio-cultural context completely transformed by migration, also
inhabits a transnational social field.
An interesting facet is the fact that although numerous individuals embedded within
transnational social fields engage in high levels of transnational practices, communal activities
do not necessarily emerge. Luis Guarnizo uses Colombian migrants in New York as an example.
They have created a complex web of multidirectional relationships, but their mistrust and
fragmentation impede community organization (1999). However, certain sites within
transnational social fields become sufficiently organized and institutionalized to give rise to
some form of transnational community. In such cases, it is not merely that numerous individuals
live their lives within a social formation that crosses borders; it is that a significant number from
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a given place of origin and settlement share this experience collectively with one another,
transforming the way they think of themselves as a group (Levitt 2001: 11).
Consequently, many more migrants still use their sending community as the reference
point against which they gauge their status. One of the reasons so many Dominicans and Central
Americans contribute to development projects or help organize and participate in beauty
pageants and patron-saint celebrations in their migrant communities is to affirm their continued
membership in these transnational groups and to demonstrate their enhanced position within
them (Goldring 1999).
Contemporary American Transnational Migration
Since the 1960s the United States has become much more tolerant of ethnic diversity,
perhaps having realized that there is no monolithic “American” culture into which immigrants
can readily assimilate. Also, the demographics of migrant populations have changed. A
significant proportion of migrants today are “educated professionals, versed in the language,
culture and patterns of consumption of the host society” (Gold 2000: 76). Gold contends that
this new population of high-level migrants is in possession of substantial capital resources and
often has the ability to exert political-economic influence in both the country of origin and
country of settlement. In actuality, high-level migrants are often employed specifically for the
purpose of developing and maintaining transnational links between their countries of origin and
the diasporic communities in the host society. They work in fields involving multiculturalism,
ethnic assistance associations and bilingual education that encourage migrants and their children
to retain skills useful in interacting with their countries of origin. This is considered a significant
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advancement over earlier migrant populations that were forced to accept mainstream American
society’s cultural practices and traditions. (Gold 2000: 76)
Another element that marks the difference between contemporary transnational migrant
populations and their recent predecessors is the fact that the former group can often obtain
citizenship with relative ease, and use it for different reasons than permanent migrations. In fact,
their priority does not lie in becoming naturalized citizens of the host country; on the contrary,
they obtain citizenship in order to facilitate their access to other countries and societies. For
example, travel to and from the United States becomes much easier when holding a US passport.
Accordingly, “a resident alien who is content to live his/her life within US borders has far less
incentive to acquire American citizenship than does a co-national who intends to make regular
trips to the country of origin” (Gold 2000: 76-77). In contrast lower-level workers often enter the
host society without legal status or under strongly limited conditions of control. Many endure
abuses and suffer exploitation, isolation, and second-class status; without the feasible means to
travel to the homeland, they suffer from the separation of close relatives. These migrant workers
practice a transnationalism rooted in more personal and informal connections.
Researchers suggest that migrants’ feelings of connection to a geopolitical region may
facilitate their presence in it, even when national laws deem such a connection illegitimate (Gold
2000: 77). Mexicans, for example, believe that the Southwestern US is not alien territory. This
notion, exemplified in the popular Chicano expression “We did not come to America, America
came to us,”8 underlies the Mexican impetus and ability to migrate to the United States.
According to Alejandro Portes, “Mexicans in California may be legally illegal, but socially and
culturally they do not regard themselves as such, nor do their communities of origin” (1997a: 9).
While crossing into the US by less affluent migrants, such populations as Mexicans, Haitians,
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and Dominicans, may be initially more difficult and less comfortable than for those considered to
be of the high-level migrant set, today’s global economics have enabled lower-level migrants to
also “develop international ties to accomplish economic, familial and status-related goals” (Gold
2000: 77); so they are using the same forms of transportation and communication as travelers
with more means. In other words high-status and low-status migrants could easily sit next to each
other on a plane taking them to their respective migrant communities in the host country.
Transnational migration and the daily interconnection of communities in distant locations
have been greatly facilitated by the presence of low-cost, high-speed systems of communications
and transport. Phone, cable, fax, email, satellites and international banking systems have aided
in bringing far-off countries socially, economically and culturally closer and unlike before new
technologies are affordable to the working-class migrant. For example, residents of America who
hale from the Caribbean and Central America can afford to return home over a weekend to visit
family and “deliver moneys raised by expatriates for the maintenance of their village’s
infrastructure” (Gold 2000: 78). On the same note, automobiles in Latin America are often
marked with symbols of the north, ranging from decorative license plates from states like
California and Texas to adhesive logos of American Universities and athletic teams. The
consumer goods, remittances and social outlooks brought back by transnationals transform local
standards of consumption, language and gender roles, thus motivating further travel to El Norte
and “Americanizing” themselves.
Recently, sociologists have been researching the connections between transnational
migration and identity formation. Large segments of Latin America and the Caribbean feel that
their unique histories and values, once so prevalent in their societies, are dissipating so the “right
to be different” has become more a personal issue for Latinos based in the United States. For
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example, the US public education system has established services that cater to non-English
speaking, illegal residents; thus migrant populations defined by ethnicity, nationality, language
and/or religion have a choice whether they want to assimilate or not and to what extent.
Nonetheless, this appropriating of American culture by transnational populations has had
a major affect on the cultures of the countries of origin. They are becoming transformed to the
extent that even non-migrants are “socialized in the tastes, values and political expectations of
the country of settlement” (Gold 2000: 81). Migrant workers and their families back in the home
country can “switch places with relative ease” as a result of the “internationally distributed
cultures. Consumer goods, technologies and communication skills shrink many of the cultural
gaps associated with international travel” (Gold 2000: 81). Also, the United States, known for its
education opportunities, attracts the younger adults with career pursuits. The number of students
moving northward to study is so great in fact that a placement in an American university has
become a rite of passage and those young people who unfortunately cannot make the journey for
one reason or another are stigmatized and less attractive in the job market. In the practice of
transnationalism, assimilation to the host society has become obsolete.
American Economic Restructuring
Transnational migrants have had a major impact on the “industrial restructuring” of the
United States. As newcomers from impoverished nations, migrant workers are willing to accept
low paying jobs and poor working conditions that are rejected by native labor. In other words, as
George W. Bush repeated during campaigning for his immigration policies in 2006: “They do
the jobs Americans won’t do” (Bush 2006). These are typically low paying, manual farm and
factory work. Migrants, however, do much more than this. Often after having once acquired the
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capital to do so, they open businesses in neighborhoods and communities that are considered
high-risk, dangerous and undesirable by traditional standards. These businesses end up thriving
because there is relatively little competition from American counterparts.
A consequence of transnational migration is the fact that once the process comes into
existence it is very difficult for government to control it. This is evidenced by the fact that in the
United States various guest-worker policies implemented in the past with the precise intention of
preventing permanent settlement have ultimately resulted in increased numbers of migrants. The
United States is currently faced with having to quell what the Anglo majority considers an
immigration epidemic, stemming from Latin American countries, especially Mexico, but it has
repeatedly failed to do so. For example, the Immigration Act of 1965, stipulating the importance
of keeping families together, allowed migrants to bring their families with them to the United
States. It was originally intended to maintain a European majority among migrants to the US.
However, it enabled first-wave Latin American migrants, who had less distance to travel, to enter
the US with many of their relatives. Other examples are the implementation of such antiimmigrant laws as California’s Proposition 187 of 1994 which proposed the denial of social
services, healthcare and public education to all illegal immigrants and the more recent round of
scare tactics such as the automatic arrest and harsh prison sentences of all detained illegal
immigrants. But instead of curtailing immigration, this legislation has led Latin American
migrants to become more impassioned and more political. For example, the attempt to pass
Proposition 187 concluded in the voting out of office almost all California politicians in favor of
the bill, and the threat of arrest for being “illegal” brought nationwide strikes, boycotts and
protests, reigniting the age-old debate about territorial rights in the US, a land that was once
largely considered Mexico.
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Another unforeseen condition of transnational migration regards the United States active
student foreign exchange program and the welcoming of international students into its colleges
and universities. Perhaps introduced as an attempt to heighten its prestige factor or collect
international student fees, what is happening is that it has created a single lane of human flow,
with international students graduating from American universities deciding to remain and seek
employment in American companies. Many students have this intention to begin with when
entering a university in the US and while the US job market becomes increasingly more
competitive as a result, the other side of the issue is that Latin American countries are faced with
a “brain drain,” when “a poor country winds up donating a fraction of its best and brightest to a
developed one” (Gold 2000: 85).
However, many scholars studying contemporary migration patterns argue that the recent
effects of globalization have dispersed large groups of people who, perhaps as a result of
obtaining affluence through a US university education and because of the relative ease of modern
travel, are not assimilating into the social, political and economic facets of host countries. Instead,
they retain links to networks, cultures and political aspirations beyond the borders of their
present location. Their mobility enables them to resist the trends associated with the dominance
of nation-states, multi-national corporations and global cultures and to maintain a greater degree
of self-determination and autonomy. Transnational migrants are “shaping …the relations
between countries, people, regions, and political frameworks” (Gold 2000: 86). The fact that it is
its own separate entity, difficult to control, is an unnerving prospect for developed countries like
the United States, which welcomes the advantages and benefits transnational migrants bring to
its corporations and academic institutions such as lower labor costs and collecting higher tuition
rates, but is hesitant to accept the cultural side-affects, in making room for a second language and
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what conservative anti-immigration supporters call the “browning of America” (Rodriguez
2003). President Woodrow Wilson in addressing the American immigration of an earlier time
requested of recently arrived migrants to hold “ancient affections” for the country from which
they have come, but that their hearts should now be “centered nowhere but in the emotions and
the purposes and the policies of the USA” (qtd. in Mathias 1981: 99). While there are many
Americans who still believe this sentiment, transnationalism has led to the belief that “hearts”
and identities can successfully traverse borders.
Defining a Transnational Identity
In light of the processes of globalization and transnationalism, the issue of identity among
migrant populations is called into question. Hybrid is the term most widely used to describe the
transcultural practices of diasporas developing in the “contact zones” on the “borders” between
nation-states. But hybridity is a dubious concept because it presupposes prior states of purity and
authenticity, while in respect to the traveling populations of mixed African, Spanish and
indigenous blood stemming from Latin America this is anything but the case. In this culturally
fractured era, the use of the term hybridity has in fact become a form of comfort for those who
are regularly facing “multiple subjectivities” as migrant populations. In other words, the concept
of hybridity has become holistic, no longer pertaining to only race as it once had. It now offers “a
more neutral zone of identity” (Papastergiadis 2000: 168).
A glance at the history of hybridity will reveal its evolution. Considered nebulous,
abstract and enigmatic, original theories on the concept portrayed it as “too deeply embedded in
a discourse that presupposes an evolutionary hierarchy, and that it carries the prior purity of
biologism” (Fisher qtd. in Papastergiadis 2000: 169). However, more recent theories no longer
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consider hybridity solely a marker of difference. Homi Bhabha, for example, presents an
analysis of colonizer/colonized relations that stresses their interdependence and the mutual
construction of their subjectivities. Bhabha argues that all cultural statements and systems are
constructed in a space that he calls the “Third Space of enunciation” (1994: 37) where “[h]ybrid
hyphenations emphasize the incommensurable elements – the stubborn chunks – as the basis of
cultural identifications” (1994: 219). Cultural identity always emerges in this contradictory and
ambivalent space, hence Bhabha considers the concept of “hierarchical purity” and the
“exoticism of cultural diversity” irrelevant. He favors an empowering hybridity within which
cultural difference may operate to ultimately opening “the way to conceptualizing an
international culture…”(Bhabha 1994: 38). To Bhabha, it is the “in-between” space that carries
the burden and meaning of culture.
Mikhail Bakhtin also has made hybrid theory the subject of his research, focusing on the
mixture of languages within a text, which both “ironizes and unmasks authority, demonstrating a
new level of linking the concept hybridity to the politics of representation” (Young 1995: 21-2).
The language of hybridity becomes a means for critique and resistance to the monological
language of authority. In other words it suggests the disruptive and transfiguring power of
multivocal language and narratives.
The theorists who find the term hybridity useful are predominantly the Indian and black
cultural theorists writing in the postmodern world of late capitalism, whose history of
colonization differs from that in Latin America. However, recently it has gained wider
acceptance in regards to Latin American cosmopolitan centers such as Mexico City, a subject of
study in which cultural theorist Néstor García Canclini applies the term readily “because it
includes diverse intercultural mixtures – not only the racial ones to which mestizaje9 tends to be
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limited” (García Canclini 1995: ii). His application of the term is significant to this study on
transnational Dominican performance because it opens outward, making a plethora of
juxtapositions and new configurations possible, and thus emphasizing cultural heterogeneity as
an important quality in a contemporary reality when two, three or even four cultures are merging
into one.
Nonetheless, there are times in this study when other terms relating to cultural fusion are
incorporated, especially as they apply to Latin American and US Latino populations. Mestizaje,
for example, refers to the concept of biological and/or cultural fusion. As used in the Latin/o
Americas, it has a history, it tells a history and it embodies a history. The primary site of the
mestizaje is the body, linked as it is the mestizo/a, the child born of European and indigenous
parents. Its root from mixtus means both the child of racially mixed parents and the crossbreeding of the plants and animals. But it stresses the biological over the botanical. The
negotiated subjectivity of the mestizo/a speaks to alliances far exceeding racial ties, and the
intellectual, aesthetic, and political ramifications of the concept of the mestizaje shape Latin/o
American cultural histories. There is still deep social prejudice toward the mestizo and the
mestizaje on the part of the white father who withholds recognition of his darker-skinned
offspring. Chicana feminists such as Norma Alarcón, Cherríe Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa
emphasize the experience of mestizaje to articulate their own experience of straddling cultures.
An associated term with mestizo is nepantla. This has a rich Meso-American history as it
related to the space between the indigenous and Spanish cultures. Nepantla reflects the cracks,
the liminality of a zone that is no longer just indigenous but that is not yet quite Spanish. The
term nepantla has increasingly explored the possibilities and concomitant aesthetics of the
terrifying in-between space by contemporary theorists and performance artists. Latin Americans
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and Chicanos/as use it to describe their experience of living on the borders. The aesthetics
associated with nepantla is what Robert Stam calls “strategic redemption of the low, the
despised, the imperfect and the ‘trashy’ as part of the overturning” (qtd. in Taylor 2003: 97).
Like Mestizaje,
…it entails a doubling, a double-consciousness, both pre- and post-, both indigenous and
Spanish, bilingual, bi-cultural. Both mestizaje and nepantla allow us to understand the
racial and cultural continuities on the bodily scale – the microcosm in which these
conflicts were lived as embodied experience. Memories and survival strategies are
transmitted from one generation to another through performative practices that included
ritual, bodily and linguistic practices. These practices have histories; mestizaje, then takes
into account the way culture is transmitted by/through embodiment. (Taylor 2003: 100)
Transculturation involves a three-stage process consisting of the acquisition of new
cultural material from a foreign culture, the loss or displacement of one’s own culture, and the
creation of new cultural phenomena. Anthropologists such as Ralph Linton were advancing
theories of acculturation to understand cultural change10. Acculturation, however, stresses the
loss sustained by native peoples or immigrants when confronted with dominant cultural forces.
Politically, this dovetailed with assimilationist thinking when the United States proposed a postrace, melting pot vision of the changing populations and its cultural practices. For Latin
Americans who had no intention of melting into the US pot, acculturation needed to be
understood and resisted. Transculturation complicated the model by asserting the creation of
new cultural practices. Interestingly, the theory of transculturation, so vital in Latin American
scholarship, remains almost unknown in the US except by Latin Americanists. Transculturation,
by definition emphasizes the back and forth movement and exchange of culture. It is shifting
and reciprocal. It too has a potentially librating role because it allows the “minor” culture often
from a marginalized position to impact on the dominant culture, although the interactions are not
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strictly speaking equal. Transculturation suggests a shifting or circulating pattern of cultural
transference. The measurable impact of the “minor” on the major can be a long time coming.
Perhaps one all-encapsulating term is “border.” Situated between home and host country,
it is home to the mestizo, nepantla and transcultural and is fecund territory for hybrid
performance practices that voice unique histories and narratives. Guillermo Gómez-Peña for
example has gained an international following by way of his brand of Mexican/American
“border” performance that speaks to a much larger audience than just Mexican migrants to the
United States. All people who are “caught between legal categories, historical legacies, the
changing political landscape and the increasingly diminishing conception of the international in
the face of the elusive but seductive language of globalization” prove to be a willing and
informed audience (Taylor 2003: 101).
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Chapter 2
Mapping Transnational Performance
To cut across boundaries and borderlines is to live aloud the malaise of categories and labels. It
is to resist simplistic attempts at classifying, to resist the comfort of belonging to a cultural or
aesthetic genre, and of producing classifiable works.
--Trinh T. Minh-ha
Art movements today are increasingly turning towards what May Joseph and Jennifer
Fink recognize as a “retro-nationalist indigenization” to search for native roots. However, their
approach, living in a post-modern world, is fragmented and disrupted. For example, playwrights,
directors, visual artists and performers are “merging vernacular languages, folk forms, European
avant-garde forms, and secular concerns [to] offer a variety of interpretations of contemporary
aesthetics across national borders” (Joseph and Fink 1999: 9-10). Likewise, cultural theorists are
explaining this practice through concepts like ‘anthrophagy’ (Andrade), ‘mimicry’ (Bhabha),
‘syncretism’ (Gilroy), ‘cultural reconversion’ (García Canclini) and ‘creolization’ (Mercer) to
name a few11. In addressing these theories as well as others, this chapter serves to trace the
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lineage of contemporary hybrid performance by examining the components that constitute it in
order to have a better understanding of its emergence in the interstices of cultural boundaries.
Hybrid performance contains not only elements of past theatre traditions but is a reflection of
their evolution, a practice increasingly taking form that better addresses the specific cultural
communities today that transcend territorial borders.
Consider the term “performance.” It is a concept that has meant different things to
different people throughout the world and has been a subject of study for sociologists, historians,
anthropologists and theatre scholars who have been interested in its socio-cultural implications.
The shifting boundaries of the modern world have made the concept of performance especially
important as it has become a significant field in which diasporas are voicing their evolving
hybrid identities to not only their specific communities in the host country but also to audiences
back home that perhaps never experienced migration. Hence, as the concept of nation changes so
does the concept of performance.
Performance
Consequently, revisiting essential theories on performance as both a practice: dance,
theatre ritual, political rallies, funeral, etc., and an epistemology: civil disobedience, citizenship,
gender, ethnicity, etc., is an essential starting point, especially as we address the political,
economic and socio-cultural practices taking shape in the increasingly borderless Americas. In
the United States, for example, performance is seemingly stretching the limits of the
conventional theatre genre. Marvin Carlson indicates that the popularity of the term has grown to
such a degree in New York that “Both the New York Times and Village Voice now include a
special category of ‘performance’ separate from theatre, dance and films – including events that
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are also often called ‘performance art’ or even ‘performance theatre’”(Carlson 1996: 3).
However, despite or because of its many applications, the concept is esoteric and ambiguous, its
meanings “seemingly contradictory, and at times mutually sustaining or complicated layers of
referentiality”(Taylor 2003: 3). However, in realizing this, there have been those who have
attempted to reign in its many definitions.
Richard Schechner was one of the first from the field of theatre to do so. In a 1973
special issue of The Drama Review he listed seven areas where performance becomes a social
practice:
1. Performance of everyday life, including gathering of every kind.
2. The structure of sports, ritual, play and public political behaviors.
3. Analysis of various modes of communication (other than the written words);
semiotic.
4. Connections between human and animal behavior patterns with an emphasis
on play and ritualized behavior.
5. Aspects of psychotherapy that emphasize person-to-person interaction, acting
out, and body awareness.
6. Ethnography and prehistory – both of exotic and familiar cultures.
7. Constitution of unified theories of performance, which are in fact, theories of behavior.
(qtd. in Carlson 1996: 13-14)
Schechner built his analysis on the work of anthropologists Erving Goffman, Victor
Turner, and Georges Gurvitch who were calling attention to the field of performance
anthropology when studying the performative aspects of social ceremonies and gatherings
(Gurvitch 1956). However, given Schechner’s list, the concept of performance still appears to be
a catch-all for “anything and everything that happens” (Hymes qtd. in Carlson 1996: 14-15).
However, recent anthropological analysis of performance has emphasized how
performance serves as “acts of transfer” (Connerton 1989: 39), working within newly formed
societies, providing a site for the exploration of “fresh and alternative structures and patterns of
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behavior”(Carlson 1996: 15). In other words, performance that can work towards maintaining the
traditions and reflections of an established culture and society, while at the same time working to
provide a “site of alternative assumptions”(Carlson 1996: 15). This is the premise underlying
new performance forms in the field of social drama.
The Social Drama
Victor Turner regards social drama as an experiential matrix from which the many genres
of cultural performance have been generated. However, social drama and cultural performance
are not one and the same. Each has its own autonomy and momentum. However, what is
significant regarding the concept of the social drama and this study on transnational Dominican
performance is the fact that as societies evolve, becoming more heterogeneous and transcultural,
they also become more dexterous in their use of symbols, becoming skilled in “devising cultural
modes of confronting, understanding, assigning meaning to, and sometimes coping with
crisis”(Turner 1982: 11). By means of theatre, story-telling, dance drama, performance is used as
a device to probe a community’s weakness, calling its members to account, “desacralizing the
community’s most cherished values, and beliefs, portray[ing] its characteristic conflicts and
suggest[ing] remedies for them, and generally tak[ing] stock of its current situation in the known
world” (Turner 1982: 11).
To Turner, the social drama reveals the “subcutaneous” levels of a society’s structure.
Every social system is a collection of many groups, or what Turner refers to as “‘social
categories’, statuses and roles arranged in hierarchies and divided into segments” (Turner
1982:10) and in these social categories, religious or political affiliations are often in opposition
to each other. Social categories found in industrial societies are no different. Oppositions can be
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found among “classes, sub-classes, ethnic groups, sects and cults, regions, political parties and
associations based on gender, division of labor and relative age” (Turner 1982:10). Social
dramas have a habit of activating these “classifactory” oppositions: factions which may cut
across traditional caste or class divisions in pursuit of immediate, contemporary interests. Society,
then, even in its apparently tranquil moments, has the potential to produce social drama.
There are a number of examples of when the social drama and the theatre meet from
Greek tragedies and Shakespeare to Ibsen, O’Neill and Ionesco. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
(1952) is an example of social drama as it questions society’s seemingly futile belief in
something that will never arrive, leaving Vladimir and Estragon, the yin and yang of society, to
live out their lives in a static, liminal space. John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1958) also
could be considered a social drama. This pointed commentary on English society and the
dawning of the American age has left a generation of young men like Jimmy Porter to feel
trapped in an in-between space where he admits to feeling “angry and helpless.”
The roots of theatre, therefore, are in social drama, and it was Schechner who set out to
establish a greater link between the two, arguing that they are interconnected by way of serving
as mirror images of each other. While the theatre person uses the consequential actions of social
life as raw material for the production of aesthetic drama, the social activist uses techniques
derived from the theatre to support the activities of social drama, which in turn refuel the theatre
(Schechner 1977: 144).
His subsequent theories on “restored behavior” and “performing the experiental” in
which meaning emerges through “reliving the original experience” (Turner 1982: 18) offered
additional clarity on how theatre can serve as a piece of communicable wisdom, assisting others
to better understand not only themselves but also the times and cultural conditions in which they
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live. Although Turner and Schechner approached the issue from opposing sides of the mirror,
they clarified the potential for theatre to serve as a conduit, “an important means for the
intercultural transmission of painfully achieved modalities of experience” (Turner 1982: 18). In
other words, the stage drama, although intended to entertain, is also considered social metacommentary as it addresses present day wars, revolutions, and scandals.
The ethnographies, rituals, and theatrical traditions of the world now potentially serve as
the basis for a new transcultural performance tradition, making Schechner and Turner’s theories
all the more relevant. The increased sharing of cultural experiences can only be considered a
positive step for humankind in this rapidly changing world where marginal and mainstream
cultures are increasingly colliding into each other with a host of misconceived judgments and
opinions of each other in tow.
Liminal Performance
The liminal element is essential to social drama and hybrid cultures both. Meaning
threshold in Latin, the liminal is the marginalized space that holds a possibility of potential forms,
structures, conjectures and desires. Liminal theory is most often attributed to Arnold van Gennep
who determined that within the social drama there were included three distinct phases:
separation, transition and incorporation12. The first, separation, demarcated a sacred space and
time in which the performance took place that was considered separate from the ordinary, secular
time and place of everyday life and activity. This could be the entering of a temple, theatre or
rehearsal studio by both performers and audience alike. In the second, transition, participants
pass through a period and area of ambiguity, a sort of social limbo which has few of the
attributes of either the preceding or subsequent social statuses or cultural states. The third and
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final stage, incorporation or reaggregation includes symbolic phenomena and action which
represent the return of the subject to their new, relatively stable, well-defined positions in the
total society.
It is the second phase regarding transition that constitutes liminality. Van Gennep
referred to it as the marginal or limen phase that played special importance in rites such as
marriage, graduation and death. He also clarified that the transitional process could be different
in different regions and among different ethnicities. But what makes this particular phase
important to hybrid identity and contemporary transnational performance is the fact that it
signifies…
a no-man’s-land betwixt and between (…) symbols often expressive of ambiguous
identity (…) a storehouse of possibilities, not by any means a random assemblage but a
striving after new forms and structure. (Turner 1997: 11-12)
In the ritual process, Turner notes that liminality also referred to as marginality is a condition for
generating myths, symbols, rituals, philosophical systems and works of art and that these cultural
forms provide people with a set of templates, models or paradigms in which to gauge
relationships to society, nature and culture. It should be mentioned that liminal theory was
developed in regards to ritual within tribal societies where it was considered functional, in the
sense of it being a special duty or performance required in the course of work or activity.
However, there have been performance theorists bringing liminal theory into the center of
the debate on global cultural exchange. Susan Broadhurst, for one, writes of the liminal in terms
of contemporary experimental performance. She contends that in our culturally complex urban
societies, the liminal structure has been modified. Liminal performance now places a greater
emphasis on “…heterogeneity, the experimental and the marginalized” (Broadhurst 1999: 13).
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Moreover, it is a practice of “intersemiotics,” one that goes beyond language and incorporates
the corporeal, with Brechtian defamiliarization techniques such as gestus, turning performance
into what Jacques Derrida would refer to as “a writing of the body…” (qtd. in Broadhurst 1999:
13). In other words, the physical aspects of the performance are not secondary to something
spoken; they are directly contributing to the “speaking” of the performance. Consequently,
liminal performance is a fragmented genre not easily defined. Broadhurst refers to it as
possessing a “shift-shape,” indicating it has no fixed form, capable of continual transformation
and mutation and this ambiguity, she contends, leads to its popularity among high and popular
cultures. However, most significant is the fact that it is a hybrid process that blurs borders and
boundaries. An example would be the hybridized tanztheatre of Pina Bausch. Her work is nontraditional, aiming to avoid seamless impressions and standardized notions of beauty through a
delicate blend of theatre and dance. If there is text in her performances it is often fragmentary, an
ambiguous scattering of words that only serve as a mode of communication to provide clarity in
the transmission of primarily physical and emotive experiences.
Additional characteristics of liminal performance speak to the performance taking place
at the cultural margins of mainstream society. These include a stylistic eclecticism, a juxtaposing
of nostalgia with novelty in performances that include a combination of pastiche, parody,
cynicism, irony, playfulness and the celebration of culture. In the realm of the theatre, liminal
performance is done by auteurs who are largely creating autobiographical work, collective
autobiographies “by which a group creates its identity by telling stories about itself, bringing to
life ‘its definite and determinate identity’” (Myerhoff qtd. in Carlson 1996: 198). Broadhurst
considers a parallel between the liminal and the postmodern in this respect. Both are genres that
emphasize “self-consciousness and reflexiveness” in performance that is often ambiguous and
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open-ended, but addresses “the nature of reality” and “the destructed, dehumanized subject”
(Broadhurst 1999: 13).
The focus on enunciating identity is typical of liminal performance with its overt
awareness of both the production and reception of art within a social context (Hutcheon 1990:
127). Hence, its content and aesthetic qualities are naturally political. Considered the antithesis
of Aristotelian “theatre of illusion,” liminal performance tends to confront, offend and unsettle,
doing so most effectively through parody. However, it does not always intentionally aim to set
itself up in opposition to the structure of dominant ideologies. In fact, liminal performance
appears at times to be complicit with mainstream theatre traditions. However, while being so it is
still a questioning deconstruction which presents a resistance to the complacent status quo. “The
liminal mirrors and is an experimental extension of our contemporary social and cultural ethos”
(Broadhurst 2006: 9). This is what gives it a political edge.
The space in which the liminal is performed is equally significant. It normally takes
place in familiar territory, a local setting that attracts a smaller, localized audience, whether it is a
coffee house, a gallery, an independent theatre, a back garden or a living room. It is the intimacy
of the space which makes liminal performance a transformative experience for the audience.
Unlike traditional theatre that typically has its audience sit in darkness and kept separate from the
performer by an imaginary fourth wall, liminal performance is more interactive, audiences are
directly involved in the performance on emotional and often times physical levels. There is the
customary sharing of food, drink, and conversation before, during and after the performance. It is
a complete blurring of boundaries; art and life become permeable as if liminal performance is
more a “happening” than a theatrical experience.
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The relevance of the evolution of liminal performance is the fact that there is a redefining
of the boundaries of performance. Twenty-first century migration patterns have given a new
importance to the liminal and the “intersemiotics” and “heterosemiotics” (Bal and Morra 2007:
7-8) that accompany it, continually challenging traditional performance practice and aesthetic
concepts. Hence, liminal performance as a border, a margin, a site of negotiation, has become an
increasing area of interest for theatre scholars, so much so that the First Annual Conference on
Performance Studies held in New York in the spring of 1994 made it a major area of discussion.
Dwight Conquergood cited performance’s location on the borders and margins as that which
most clearly distinguished it from traditional disciplines and fields of study, concerned with
establishing a center for their activity (Carlson 1996: 20). Hence it is fast becoming one of the
most powerful and efficacious procedures that human society has developed for the endlessly
fascinating process of cultural and personal self-reflection and experimentation.
Cultural Performance
As mentioned, cultural performance has always been intertwined with the concepts of the
social drama and liminality, but with an increase in the formations of hybrid cultures in both
First and Third World societies the term has become more prominent. This is primarily due to
the fact that unlike social drama it allows for more flexibility, with more emphasis placed on the
actual defining of a culture and the often complex, fragmented identities found within it. John
MacAloon supports this primary difference with his defining cultural performance as an
…occasion in which as a culture or society we reflect upon and define ourselves,
dramatize our collective myths and history, present ourselves with alternatives and
eventually change in some ways… (MacAloon 1984: 1)
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Cultural performance, like social drama, is reflexive, its intention is to raise consciousness in the
members of a society, by offering them opportunities to see themselves being portrayed on stage
as heroes, victims and villains in their own dramas. Consequently, the audience is made selfaware and encouraged to change what they do not like being depicted. Thus, while social drama
reinforces instilled values, cultural performance has the ability to alter them.
In his research on carnival, Mikhail Bakhtin had similar theories to MacAloon on cultural
performance in explaining that carnival was
…a place for working out, in secretly, sensuous half-real and half-play-acted forms [and]
to experiment with a new mode of interrelationships between individuals, counterposed
to the all-powerful socio-hierarchical relationships of non-carnival life… (Bakhtin 1984:
131)
Thus, carnival served as an open testing ground for new social and cultural structures.
However, Bakhtin has admitted to the fact that over time, as societies have
metamorphosed, cultural performance like carnival has become “mediated and truncated,
spreading modern descendants” throughout the globe (Bakhtin 1984: 131). One of the
descendants is performance which has increasingly become a venue for social meta-commentary
in which a society and culture can tell stories of themselves interpreting life events in front of
and for the good of the community.
In large, complex societies, cultural performances arise in a variety of fields that include
not only art but entertainment, sport, games and recreation, and although they may not be
reflexive to the extent of the Greek tragedy, they do aim to spark the imagination of specific
audiences or constituencies. Marvin Carlson, building on Turner’s metaphor of the mirror in
reflexive performance, explains it thus:
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In a complex culture it might be possible to regard the ensemble of performative and
narrative genres active and acting modalities of expressive culture as a hall of mirrors, or
better, magic mirrors in which social problems, issues and crises are reflected as diverse
images, transformed, evaluated or diagnosed in works typical of each genre, then shifted
to another genre better able to scrutinize their certain aspects, until many facets of the
problem have been illuminated and made accessible to conscious remedial action. In this
hall of mirrors the reflections are multiple, some magnifying, some diminishing, some
distorting the faces peering into them, but in such a way as to provoke a powerful feeling
and the will to modify everyday matters in the minds of the audience. Mirror distortions
of reflection provoke reflexivity. (Carlson 1996: 105)
Cultural performance then takes into account the function of performance within a culture, the
establishment and use of particularly designated performative contexts, the relation of performer
to audience and the generation and operations of performance drawing upon or influenced by
several different cultures – all these cultural concerns have contributed importantly to
contemporary thought about what performance is and how it operates in a modern, complex
society. As these modern societies include many different forms of the cultural hybrid, the
ethnography of performance inevitably has to be factored into the equation.
Ethnography of Performance
It is important to realize that the field of performance has porous borders and that what
one considers cultural performance, another might consider ethnography of performance. By
attempting to map the field in nicely organized sections, I am fighting against the nature of the
subject. In recent years it has become even more difficult as anthropologists who typically
concern themselves with continuous traditions, singular and stable cultures, coherent structures
and stable identities have been faced with new concepts of identity and culture on the “border”
where “meaning is continually being created and negotiated” as the result of “the continual
displacement of peoples” (Carlson 1996: 189). It led Renato Rosaldo to write: “All of us inhabit
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an independent late-twentieth-century world marked by borrowing and lending across porous
national and cultural boundaries that are saturated with inequality, power and domination” (1989:
45). This increasing porousness of social and cultural structures has given rise to a new sense of
self, one that is reflective of the flux of the postmodern world. Robert Lifton recognizes
performance art as one of the key tools in experimenting with identity and the self in modern
society (Lifton 1993: 1)
Dwight Conquergood has also raised major concerns merging ethnography with
performance theory in arguing that globalization now has led to the “border” being a complete
physical and mental state of being (Conquergood 1991: 180). In other words modern
ethnography focuses on the total experience of a culture, the lived experience, the interplay and
interaction between cultures as they meet at a nation’s boundaries. Stephen Tyler supporting
Conquergood’s theory articulates it thus: “The postmodern ethnographic text will be a text of the
physical, the spoken and the performed” (Tyler qtd. in Carlson 1996: 191). This then can be
considered a liminal activity that accommodates the shifting of identities of populations
migrating across boundaries, populations that live in a third space “without certainty of
belonging and being estranged” (Jackson 1989: 2).
Ethnodramatics13 is emerging at a time when knowledge of other cultures, other world
views, and other life styles is increasing in order to effectively articulate current research
findings. It differs from traditional ethnographic models because the latter do not work in
depicting the desires and emotions, the personal and collective goals and strategies or even the
situational vulnerabilities of a given culture. If anthropology is effectively to understand the field
of ethnography as it relates to performance and become a sincere science of human action, it
must take into the account such factors.
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Multicultural Theatre
With an increasing number of diasporic populations housed within the borders of a single
nation-state, cultural performance is now becoming synonymous with multicultural performance.
However it is without the characteristics that traditionally have defined the genre such as colorblind casting and the staging of non-political material for mainstream audiences. Historically,
multicultural theatre usually was endorsed by well-intentioned national agencies wanting to unite
the country, but it did little for marginalized groups wanting to confront the hegemony of the
dominant culture. Consequently, new practices in multicultural theatre are being produced by
subaltern populations that specifically “speak to a politics of marginality” (Lo and Gilbert 2003:
34). They are practices that are more organic and that stem directly from a community-generated
consciousness. Moreover, they have become the subject of recent scholarship.
Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert in 2003 published in The Drama Review a comprehensive study
on the recent developments in multicultural or what they refer to as “cross-cultural” theatre. As
their findings indicate that there is substantial overlap between what they recognize as crosscultural and what I deem transnational, I refer to their work significantly in my mapping the
development of the latter.
Essentially, transnational performance is a new form of multicultural theatre that does not
typically aim to draw audiences outside of its community and is, therefore, performed in the
language of that community, staging “nostalgic narratives of origins and loss” (Lo and Gilbert
2003: 34). These theatres only cross-pollinate with “foreign” theatre practices when it suits their
artistic desires. Transnational theatre then is most definitely migrant theatre, a practice that
incorporates “narratives and adaptation, often using a combination of ethno-specific languages to
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denote cultural in-between-ness” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 34). Within migrant theatre there is a
more apparent attempt to explore foreign performance practices, producing a hybrid aesthetic
form in both style and content. Consequently, audience reception of such theatre is wider,
representative of both home and host country.
It is also important to realize that transnational theatre is also community theatre.
Characterized by social engagement and cultural activism, it attempts to bring about sociopolitical change in specific communities. This focus on cultural activism is what separates it
from nationally endorsed multicultural theatre which tends to encourage passivity in its
audiences (Watt 1991: 63). Community theatre has a sincere commitment to “cultural democracy”
and contains aesthetics that are shaped by the culture of its community due to the fact that the
performance group is an extension of it. Consequently, this form of theatre is the most effective
form of multiculturalism in terms of strengthening community and achieving social change.
Post-Colonial Theatre
Transnational theatre can also be identified as post-colonial theatre, a practice that
involves the merging of cultures as an expression of resistance politics, particularly concerning
race, class and/or gender oppression usually at the hands of Western imperialism. Post-colonial
theatre typically derives from indigenous groups in areas formerly colonized by European and/or
American cultures and interrogates the cultural hegemony that underlies imperial systems of
governance, i.e. education, social and economic organization, and representation, and to Stephen
Slemon anything that articulates “the forms – and modes and tropes and figures – of anti-colonial
textual resistance” (1990: 35) can be considered post-colonial. Consequently, there is a widerange of post-colonial genres that include realism, agitprop, forum theatre as well as political
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satires and allegories. Post-colonial theatre is an ambiguous, complex phenomenon that is
seemingly contradictory; both resistant to and complicit with the traditional practices of the
dominant culture.
One consistent quality of post-colonial theatre is that it entails a cross-cultural negotiation
at the dramaturgical and aesthetic levels. These cross-cultural processes are an important part of
the working practices especially in regions with bi-cultural populations because post-colonial
theatre assumes there is an encounter between differently empowered cultural groups.
Syncretic and Non-Syncretic Theatre: Elements of post-colonial practice
Post-colonial theatre consists of two principal components: syncretic theatre and nonsyncretic theatre. Syncretic means the integration of performance elements of different cultures
into a form “that aims to retain the cultural integrity of the specific materials used while forging
new texts and theatre practices” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 36). It is an integrative process that
highlights the shifts in the meaning, function and value of cultural fragments as they are moved
from their traditional contexts. In post-colonial societies, syncretic theatre typically involves the
incorporation of indigenous material in a Western dramaturgical framework, which is itself
modified by the fusion process. Christopher Balme argues that “syncretism activates a cultural
and aesthetic semiotic recoding that ultimately questions the basis of normative Western drama”
(1999: 4). This is not to be confused with “theatrical exoticism,” in which “indigenous cultural
texts are arbitrarily recoded and semanticised in a Western aesthetic and ideological drama”
(1999: 4-5). Well-known examples of syncretic post-colonial theatre include works by Derek
Walcott in the Caribbean and Wole Soyinka and Femi Osofisan in Nigeria as well as the work
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done by aboriginal and native North American theatre groups as part of their larger “agenda of
cultural recuperation” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 36) .
Nonsyncretic theatre on the other hand does not merge disparate cultural forms but rather
uses imposed imperial genres/aesthetics such as Western style realism to state anticolonial
narratives emanating from both indigenous and settler communities. However, performers of
different cultures (whose bodies are sign systems of indigenous cultures) will always bring an
element of cultural hybridity to non-syncretic performance.
Intercultural Theatre and Performance
Globalization has not only led cultural performance to become multicultural and postcolonial but intercultural as well as it is considered a “direct on-going, mutual exploration and
influence” of culture on performance (Lo and Gilbert 2002: 31). But the genre of intercultural
performance is wide and varied, largely considered to include: “public performance practices
characterized by the conjunction of specific cultural resources at the level of narrative content,
performance aesthetics, production processes and/or reception by an interpretive community”
(Lo and Gilbert 2002: 31). It is a historicized and politicized configuration as it always
articulates to a certain extent the power relationship between the cultures involved in the process.
Much has been produced by way of theory on the socio-political implications of intercultural
practice; however, there is little scholarship on the effects of globalization on interculturalism
and for this reason I include an introduction to the categories of this form of theatre as they
pertain directly to transnational Dominican performance, a practice like intercultural theatre itself
that can be defined as “a hybrid derived from an intentional encounter between cultures and
performing traditions” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 36). However, keep in mind that this overview
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comes with the understanding that borders and categories are not set in stone, one often blends
into another.
Categories of Intercultural Theatre
The first category is transcultural theatre which aims to transcend culture-specific
codifications in order to reach a more universal human condition. Transcultural directors are
interested in particularities and traditions insofar as they enable the directors to identify aspects
of commonality rather than difference (Pavis 1996: 6); in other words it is a search for a larger
universal meaning in local performance. Transcultural directors are often time travelers,
searching the globe for theatre traditions that in their “purity” have a greater truthfulness than
western practice and in their quest to possess these mythic qualities, transcultural directors will
partake in the practices of those foreign traditions.
Peter Brook and his production of Orghast (1970) serve as an example14. So does
Eugenio Barba and his work with ISTA15. However, Barba would perhaps prefer the term
“precultural” as his mission in his own practice is to discover the point in which culture begins
before it becomes “individualized or acculturated in particular traditions and techniques of
performance” (Pavis 1996: 7). This is what Barba intends with the practice of “pre-expressivity,”
the ultimate mode of communication and theatrical practice as it is untainted by cultural and
social trappings (Pavis 1996:7).
The second category, intracultural theatre, is a genre developed by Rustom Bharucha to
highlight cultural encounters between and across specific communities and regions within the
same nation. Bharucha emphasizes that within the boundaries of national spaces internal cultural
diversity abounds. Although Bharucha had in mind his home nation of India and the many
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different cultures found there, intracultural theatre has become increasingly more relevant in the
West in countries like the United States where minority cultures are gaining prominence. While
intracultural theatre appears strikingly like multicultural theatre in the fact they both assume the
interaction and coexistence of regional and local cultures within a single nation-state, Bharucha
points to a crucial difference: the “‘intra’ prioritizes the interactivity and translation of diverse
cultures, the ‘multi’ upholds a notion of cohesiveness” (Bharucha 2000: 9). Bharucha continues
by adding that intracultural theatre, in opposition to multicultural theatre actually highlights the
fact that societies are culturally fragmented entities. This should be celebrated rather than
ignored in the attempts to promote the process of assimilation through the “watered-down”
content and practice of multicultural theatre (Bharucha 2000: 9).
Although these categories do not represent the complete catalogue of practices identified
as intercultural theatre, they do highlight its potential to be either collaborative or imperialistic.
Also, it is important to note that individual projects may shift along the continuum and that the
collaborative transcultural mode unlike all other forms tends to be community-generated and
emphasizes the process and the politics of exchange rather than the theatrical outcome. There is
less of a focus on maintaining the “purity” of the form in transcultural theatre as its aim is to
produce a worthwhile cultural exchange. Ferdinand Ortiz’s concept of transculturation helps in
rounding out the definition of collaborative intercultural theatre.
In the transculturation process, elements of each system of culture are lost in the creation
of a third system. Cultural encounter of this kind can be potentially counterhegemonic; it
allows minor cultures to act on dominant ones rather than merely submit to cultural loss
in the transaction (Ortiz qtd. in Taylor 1991: 6162).
Intercultural exchange at the imperialist end of the continuum is often driven by a need
for Western culture to reinvent itself, injecting bankrupt theatre traditions with a sense of the
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“Other,” “cultural traditions perceived as ‘authentic’ and uncontaminated by (Western)
modernity” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 39). Imperialist intercultural theatre encourages cultural
diversity for the sake of the finished product, the desired aesthetic. There is no priority given to
distributing equal measures of power amongst those involved in the creative process and this
“inequity is often historically based and may continue in the present through economic, political
and technological dominance” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 39).
There is an element of selfish underhandedness that accompanies the label of imperialist
interculturalist. The image of a Western practitioner entering into exotic lands to export foreign
practices “back home” has become readily associated with the work of many, including one of
the leading interculturalists, Peter Brook. His ambitious production of the Mahabharata has
received disapproving reviews from theatre critics as a result of the apparent insensitivity shown
to the content and traditions of this particular work and the culture from which it comes
(Bharucha 2000). However, interculturalists such as Ariane Mnouchkine put forward the
argument that she borrows from “foreign” traditions as homage to that specific cultural practice.
Mnouchkine emphasizes that she is not intending to replicate foreign traditions but to explore the
limits of her Western system of aestheticism (Shevtsova 1997: 102). Others contemporary
interculturalists such as Robert Wilson and Tadashi Suzuki find support for their work in the
scholarship of ethnographic historian James Clifford’s The Predicament of Culture which
contends that societies are “[t]oo systematically interconnected to permit any easy isolation of
separate or independently functioning systems” and that everywhere individuals and groups
“improvise local performance from (re) collected pasts, drawing on foreign media, symbols and
language” (1988: 14).
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Responses to Interculturalism
The reception to interculturalism in the west has been mixed over the years. During the
1960s and 70s, what Schechner has referred to as the “golden years of innocence,”
interculturalism was an exciting prospect. It was not considered imperialist or exploitative:
“There was something simply celebratory about discovering how diverse the world was, how
many performance genres there were and how we could enrich our own experience by borrowing,
stealing, exchanging” (Schechner 1979: 19). With the process of globalization in the 1980s the
genre gained momentum at an industrial rate. The ease of travel made the social, cultural and
political boundaries of developing countries accessible to the outside and thus began an
intercultural practice that aimed to dilute cultural differences and discard unique cultural
histories.
This was an intercultural theatre practice by those considered intercultural themselves.
Performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña, for instance, a self-professed “child of crisis and
cultural syncreticism” (1993: 38), considers his performance work inherently hybrid. He is one
of a growing number of US Latino/a artists who see interculturalism as becoming an essential
component to contemporary North American theatre, and through both his scholarship and
performance art he has argued for a “more rigorous public debate about cultural issues…about
equity and diversity about definitions of ‘multi-, inter-and cross-cultural’…” (Gomez-Peña 1993:
57).
Theoretical Models of Interculturalism
The debate on intercultural theatre is relatively new, with many facets not having been
addressed. Patrice Pavis’s hourglass diagram has become the most associated model with the
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genre. The grains of culture that trickle down from the source culture to the target culture passing
through certain modifying filters along the way emphasizes how vulnerable culture is as it gets
passed from one party to the other (Pavis 1991: 5). Although considered the most accurate to
date, Lo and Gilbert find fault with the hourglass model, calling it too rigid.
The main problem with this model is that it assumes a one way cultural flow based on a
hierarchy of privilege, even though Pavis attempts to ‘relavitize’ the power relations by
claiming that the hourglass can be turned upside-down [when] the users of a foreign
culture ask themselves how they can communicate their
own culture to another target
culture. (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 42)
Lo and Gilbert argue that Pavis assumes that there is equality between the partners in the cultural
exchange and does not factor into the equation the effects of globalization and cultural and
political imperialism stemming from the West that automatically makes the exchange rather onesided and leads to what they recognize as a translation of culture instead of a sharing of culture.
Between Intercultural and Postcolonial Theory
The study of transnational Dominican performance falls most comfortably between the
concepts of interculturalism and post-colonialism. The latter places more emphasis on exposing
the “unequal power relationships” involved in cross-cultural theatre making, while
interculturalism concerns itself primarily with the aesthetics of cultural transfer. Post-colonial
theory offers a framework for analyzing the issues of hybridity and authenticity, issues “that lie
at the heart of intercultural praxis” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 42). Postcolonial theory offers ways of
relocating the dynamics of intercultural theatre within identifiable fields of sociopolitical and
historical relations, making it possible to understand the dynamics of individual and collective
power in an intercultural work. It addresses the following significant questions:
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Whose economic and/or political interests are being served? How is the working process
represented to the target audience, and why? Who is the target audience and how can
differences be addressed within this constituency? How does a
specific intercultural
event impact on the wider sociopolitical environment? (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 43)
The term “intercultural” suggests an exploration of the interstitial space between cultures.
The term draws our attention to the hyphenated “third space” separating and connecting different
peoples. The act of crossing cultures indicates a transnational, transcultural pattern of “mutual
contamination and interaction” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 42). Lo and Gilbert offer a model of
intercultural exchange that indicates the mutuality and collaboration that has been lacking in
previous models16. It highlights a “two-way flow,” both cultures acting as cultural sources with
the target culture positioned between them on the continuum. They explain that the location of
the target is not fixed, remaining fluid, able to shift position “depending on where and how the
exchange process takes place” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 44). In their model intercultural exchange is
characterized both by gain and by loss, “attraction and disavowal,” and locates all intercultural
activity within an identifiable sociopolitical context. It also illuminates the fact that artistic
endeavors cannot be separated from the sociopolitical context in which they are produced.
This harks back to the discussion of hybrid theory and its subsequent categories, organic
and intentional hybridity. Organic hybridity represents the concepts of creolization and mestizo,
two terms that have become less pejorative and more positive as cultures interchange between
different cultural diasporas producing new “synergistic” cultural forms. It is a form of hybridity
that thrives in the global cities where various cultures run up against each other with veritable
ease. Intentional hybridity focuses on the process of negotiation between different practices and
points of view.
It is characterized by division and separation and tends to be self-reflexive, with the
negotiation process inevitably pinpointing areas of conflict. In this instance, agency
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hinges on the degree to which cultural forms resists dilution and/or co-option. (Lo and
Gilbert 2003: 46)
According to Young, the two categories of hybridity, the intentional and the organic, can be
working simultaneously, in essence a
[d]ialectical model for cultural interaction: an organic hybridity which will tend towards
fusion, in conflict with intentional hybridity, which enables a contestory activity, a
politicized setting of cultural difference against each other dialogically. (Young 1995: 22)
In addressing intercultural theatre practices, post-colonialism must factor in the aspects of
language, space, the body, costume, and audience as “ideologically laden sign systems as well as
potential sites of hybridity” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 46) in order for there to be unproblematized
transfers of culture. As far as language is concerned, interculturalism needs to place as much
emphasis on the “significant language-based issues that pertain to both its processes and products”
as it does on the visual spectacle (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 46). In most cases in a culturally diverse
group that represent perhaps a variety of nationalities, the English language is the common
denominator. This gives the native speakers of English within the group an advantage in putting
forth their views and in “secure[ing] particular agendas” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 46). The fact that
the process of globalization has led to the English language being the endorsed “lingua-Franca”
has done nothing to support the independence of culturally marginalized groups.
Moreover, does the translator of language function as a negotiator or a type of “native informant?”
What happens to linguistic concepts that resist translation or adaptation? In terms of theatrical
product, language issues are equally complicated and pose many questions:
How do staged languages animate one another? Which carries the cultural authority?
What happens to the performative features of verbal enunciation, particularly when
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stories from predominantly oral cultures are presented? How might we reread verbally
silenced bodies in different ways? (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 46)
Issues in space are equally as complex.
Space is neither neutral nor homogenous; it inevitably colors those relationships within
its limits, especially on the stage where configurations of space take on symbolic
meaning. We need to ask then how the physical space/meeting place inflects intercultural
collaboration: Whose ground are we on? What are the power relations inscribed in the
architectural aspects of the place? How can theatre provide a space for negotiating or
subverting the relationships spatial configurations foster? We also need to examine the
ideological assumptions that are inherent in the imaginative space(s) created by the
scenography: What does the set, for instance, convey about the cultures involved in the
collaboration? Which actors and characters have access to /priority over what spaces?
Where are the borders between cultures and how are they maintained, traversed or
broken down? What kind of cultural landscape is suggested by the stagescape? (Lo and
Gilbert 2003: 46-47)
Postcolonial theories of geography, cartography and spatial history show how space is
constructed in the nexus of power and culture. “This kind of politicized approach brings into
focus the disjunctive gap between visible space and its fictional referent”(Lo and Gilbert 2003:
47). Is it possible then through interculturalism to “explore the multiple connections and
disconnections between cultural spaces” (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 47) and to create representations
that are unbounded and resistant to imperialist forms?
Postcolonial theory addresses the ways in which power is inscribed on and negotiated
through the body. It maintains that the body is not only a site of knowledge and power but also a
site of resistance which in Elizabeth Grosz’s words, “exerts a recalcitrance and always entails the
possibility of counterstrategic re-inscription [because] it is capable of being self-marked, selfrepresented in alternative ways” (1990: 64). The question then is how is resistance expressed in
relation to performative bodies? How do these bodies encode difference and specificity, and how
can they prevent the universalizing impulse of transculturalism? (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 47)
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Further issues to take into account are those of race and gender. Transcending biological
determinacy, these categories are considered complex and unstable as they are historically and
culturally conditioned. Intercultural theatre has been accused of practicing essentialism by
creating archetypes that can then be played by any skilled performer. There is no dialogic
interaction; instead a specific body is submerged in the archetypal role according to the aesthetic
principles of the project. Postcolonial theory warns against the dehistoricizing effects of such
distillation processes. It focuses on analyzing the gap between the material body and what it is
supposed to represent by examining movement as well as bodily appearance. Pavis notes, “actors
simultaneously reveal the culture of the community where they have trained and where they live,
and bodily technique they have acquired” (1996: 3). Rather than working from principles of
abstraction an intercultural practice informed by post-colonialism clarifies the significance of the
political and social underpinnings of the project.
The hybrid counter energies that result from the clash between the symbolic space and
the culturally inscribed body can then produce a radical heterogeneity, discontinuity, [and]
the perpetual revolution of the form. (Young 1995: 25)
Costume is similarly necessary to the formulations of a more comprehensive politicized
theory about intercultural performance. A popular conception concerning intercultural theatre is
that it allows for a certain “cultural transvestism” by stepping into the “native” costume. While
those that do this might have the best intentions of exploring and celebrating the exotic, the act is
an unavoidable implementation of power hierarchies. Gail Ching-Liang Low argues that a
dominant culture often consider the simple act of “cross-cultural dressing” enough “to cross the
class and cultural gaps” but to Ching-Liang Low it is usually a superficial act that does little in
the way of cultivating a sincere cultural exchange. It is the “transgressive pleasure without the
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penalities of actual change” (1989: 92-93). But postcolonial theatre, with its is emphasis on
costume as a “malleable,” “ambiguous,” and “subjunctive” signifier of culture, encourages
transvestism and the practices of mimicry and masquerade that accompany it can serve as an act
of resistance.
If intercultural theatre means to address the potential inequities involved in Western
appropriations of other cultural traditions, audiences of intercultural theatre have to become
active spectators, not solely looking upon the “Other” with an untroubled, “window shopping”
gaze of passivity found often on the festival circuit. Intercultural frameworks that include metatheatrical devices, such as intervention, direct audience address and forum theatre techniques
would actively encourage a proper cross-cultural dynamic and a self-reflexivity necessary in
cultural performance. It is what performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña describes as a genre
that aims “to trespass, bridge, interconnect, reinterpret, remap, and redefine” the limits of culture
(1996: 12).
The Third Theatre
Third Theatre is a tradition largely associated with interculturalism, marginal populations
and Eugenio Barba. It serves as a response to the capitalistic tendencies of existing dominant
varities of theatre due to the fact that its sole motivator is simply the practitioner’s desire to do
theatre, “to think, live and breath it so exclusively that the distinction between work and life and
between art and preparatory process, disappears” (Shevstova 2002: 112). Barba’s vision of the
Third Theatre is that of an autonomous organism which recognizes no external authorities, be
they “state, prince or the theatre,” and which generates the absolute freedom for individuals to
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pursue their identity, creative or otherwise without political and social encumbrances. Barba
considered the Third Theatre a seldom recognized (and researched) “theatrical archipelago [that
has] been forming during the past few years in several countries” (qtd. in Watson 1995: 18). He
believed it to be invaluable, because
[it] seems to constitute the anonymous extreme of the theatres recognized by the world
of culture: on the one hand, the institutionalized theatre, protected and subsidized because
of the cultural values that it seems to transmit, appearing as a living image of the creative
confrontation with the texts of the past and the present – or even as a “noble” version of
the entertainment business; on the other hand, the avant-garde theatre, experimenting,
researching, arduous or iconoclastic, a theatre of changes, in search of a new originality,
defended in the name of necessity to transcend tradition, and open to novelty in the
artistic field and within society. (qtd. in Watson 1995: 18-19)
If this interpretation is correct, the Third Theatre itself may be considered to occupy an
interstitial space of enunciation, mirroring the hybrid populations that most commonly produce it.
However, the criticism the Third Theatre receives as a genre is the same question these hybrid
populations are asked and ask themselves: if it is not part of the institution and not part of the
avant-garde - if it is not part of the First World or the Second, nor even necessarily the Third,
what type of theatre practice is it?
Although the tone of this line of questioning might appear pessimistic, Barba emphasizes
in his scholarship that those who work in the Third Theatre tradition are in a position of power.
Third Theatre
…lives on the fringes, often outside or on the outskirts of the centers and capitals of
culture. It is a theatre created by people who define themselves as actors, directors,
theatre workers, although they have seldom undergone a traditional theatrical education
and therefore are not recognized as professional (…) But they are not amateurs. Their
entire day is filled with theatrical experience, sometimes by what they call training, or
by the preparation of performances for which they must fight to find an audience. (qtd.
in Watson 1995: 19)
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However, during the 1980s and early 1990s interculturalism became a trend for an
increasing number of Western practitioners. For Barba, it had become a form of theatre defined
by its sole concern for “the autonomous construction of meaning which does not recognize the
boundaries assigned to our craft by the surrounding culture” (1991: 8). Instead, the Third Theatre
is concerned with exploring and cultivating a language of performance that promotes the concept
of doing theatre for theatre’s sake rather than succumbing to commercial considerations or
current trends in the avant-garde.
However, the attractive feature of Barba’s concept of the Third Theatre is the fact that it
is not a precise practice. It cannot be classified or “indicate an artistic tendency, a ‘school’ nor a
style” (Barba 2002: 187). What characteristics it does have are considered equally ambiguous.
For example, it is considered intercultural, for it crosses all cultures and it contains political
elements, but serves no particular political agenda. But to Barba this is of little importance. What
he does consider significant about the Third Theatre is the process not the product and the
emphasis on the audience, “the spectator’s principal and necessary role in the theatre” (qtd. in
Watson 1995: 191), in other words the shared experience between audience and performer.
Third Theatre in Latin America
Barba once stated that only in Latin America does the Third Theatre thrive. Whereas
European and North American theatre are preoccupied with filling seats in the “shells [of] stone
theatre buildings where people are recruited according to the demands of particular productions,
[and] where one director comes after the other…” (Barba 2002: 188), Latin American Third
Theatre is not a trend. It is a response to the precarious nature of existence in Latin America with
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its political dictatorships and economic hardships in abundance and its welfare programs in short
supply.
It is this reason that Latin America has given the Third Theatre its political edge. For
example, Augusto Boal shaped the Third Theatre into a culturally enriching, communitycentered practice by way of his Theatre of the Oppressed. It was Enrique Buenaventura17 and his
theatre collective TEC (Teatro Experimental de Calí) in Colombia who experimented with
nationalizing classic texts, staging works in public places for audiences not typically considered
theatre enthusiasts. In essence, Latin American practitioners adopted Barba’s understanding of
Third Theatre and made it a viable alternative to the tired mono-cultural commercial theatre of
their respective countries.
However, much credit should also be given to the times in which Latin American Third
Theatre developed. With its backdrop of penury, indifference and political instability, Third
Theatre on the continent adopted a guerilla stance, taking on the “life or death” quality of its
creators, who firmly held to the socialist beliefs of the charismatic Che Guevara. What followed
was a proliferation of community groups independently creating theatre:
Atahlapa del Chioppo from Galpón Uruguay, Santiago García (founding director of La
Candelaria in Colombia) Enrique Buenaventura (director of Teatro Experiemental de
Calí, Colombia), Augusto Boal in Brazil. Miguel Rubio with Yuyachkani in Peru. In
1979 Buenaventura estimated that there were 2000 groups alone in Colombia. (Watson
2002: 203-204)
The way they funded their art was through employment outside the world of the theatre, as
doctors and lawyers, farmers and teachers. But regardless of how they survived economically,
making theatre is a principal necessity for these people in a way that it rarely is in the
mainstream theatre of the United States (Watson 2002: 204). This is the heart of the Third
Theatre, a theatre that is forced to exist on the cultural periphery with little money and whose
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members frequently find themselves forced to earn a living outside of what is the major focus of
their professional lives.
In addition to introducing the Third Theatre to Latin America, Barba also introduced the
concept of the “actor’s art” and training techniques that have since largely shaped Latin
American popular theatre practices. For example, both Grotowski and Brecht have been
dominant influences on Latin American practitioners who otherwise had very little technical
training outside of what was offered at conventional theatre schools (Watson 2002: 174).
Consequently, such critically acclaimed Latin American companies such as Cuba’s Tercet
Mundo, Peru’s Yuyachkani and Mexico’s La Rueca have all experimented with some or all of
Barba’s ideas and have adapted them to their particular needs.
The relationship between Barba and Latin America is rather complex. It stems beyond his
professional interest in the continent’s popular practices. As somebody who has lived and
traveled across many cultural and national borders, he has pursued questions concerning cultural
identity, the same questions that have consumed many populations of Latin America. To clarify,
many Latin American countries consist of populations of European immigrants and the
descendents of colonial rule who have mixed and married within indigenous and African slave
populations to create often tri-racial ethnic groups. Consequently, it is difficult to define the
Latin American identity, but those who have are increasingly doing so with the term creole.
Creolization is the ultimate conclusion of the relationship between the self and the “Other.” Even
if the so-called “Other” culture is not an equal partner to the process of hybridity, it is still
capable of absorbing and discarding elements of the dominant culture as is evident in Latin
American popular theatre and increasingly in US Latino theatre and performance. (Watson 2002:
180-181)
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Chapter 3
The Evolution of the
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US Latino Identity and Theatre
The most intense and productive life and culture takes place on the boundaries.
--Bakhtin, Mikhail
The Latino actors trained in the best schools now wish to return to their roots: some out of a
sense of fashion, others out of the discovery of truth.
-- Marvin Camillo
In 1790, the first census ever taken in the newly established United States of America
counted a population of 3.9 million people, including 757,000 African Americans, of which 90
percent were slaves (Rumbaut 2003: 91). There were also many other populations including
Germans who were quickly establishing themselves in Pennsylvania, as well as over 600,000
Native Americans. However, British colonists disregarded any and all populations inhabiting the
land they called theirs if they were not Anglican. They were merely invisible, except when on
occasion their presence became unavoidable, leading Benjamin Franklin to call for an
“Anglifying” of the “aliens” in order for them to be counted as Americans.
Cultural critics have argued that in the United States today much remains the same. The
US government still calls immigrants “aliens” and those that are not considered Anglicans are
still considered to be separate from mainstream American society. The census numbers of Latino
populations have led contemporary politicians to echo the thoughts of Benjamin Franklin. For
example, Pat Buchanan, a well-known political pundit, ran for the Republican presidential
nomination in the 1990s on the platform “America First,” which called for an immigration “time
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out.” If accepting immigrants was necessary, the basis for granting admission should be based on
“ease of assimilation…language, culture and background” because “[I]f we had to take a million
in, say Zulus next year or Englishmen, and put them in Virginia, what group would be easier to
assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?” (qtd. in Rumbaut 2003: 91)
However, traditionalists such as Buchanan have had to adjust their mode of thinking in
recent years. In 1966, Latinos made up just 4 percent of the total population. Today the
proportion is 14 percent and by the year 2050 it is projected to be 25 percent. Spanish speakers,
largely from Mexico, accounted for more than half of last year’s American population increase,
and now Latinos are the largest minority in the United States with 41.3 million of the 300 million
total population (the entire population of Canada is 32 million). This is roughly one out of every
eight Americans. A piece of anecdotal evidence in conjunction with all this is that when the US
population did reach a staggering 300 million people this year, there was a well-publicized
search for that one individual considered the 300 millionth million American citizen. It was
determined to be baby Anarli Lopez from Mexican-American parents born in Los Angeles, a
rather symbolic discovery.
As mentioned, those whose origins are from Mexico are clearly the largest group,
constituting sixty percent of the total Latino population living in the United States. The other
forty percent are made mostly of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans and Salvadorians.
Alejandro Portes explains the Latino migration stemming from just south of the US border as a
direct result of the
expansionist patterns [of] US intervention (…) In a sense, the sending populations were
Americanized before their members actually became immigrants to the United States
(…)The rise of Spanish-speaking working class communities in the Southwest and
Northeast may thus be seen as a dialectical consequence of past expansion of the United
States into its immediate periphery…(Portes 1990: 16094)
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Consequently, it is not surprising that these same countries do not take issue with large
numbers of their populations immigrating to the United States. In fact, they have enabled their
citizens to do so by permitting bi-national citizenship, allowing them to maintain active roles in
their home country while living in the United States, as Mexico and the Dominican Republic
have. It is not completely an altruistic gesture, but more a strategic economic maneuver by home
governments in order for immigrants to maintain economic connections with their home
countries by way of financial remittances, the money that migrants earn working abroad and then
send back to their countries of origin. With estimated remittances of nearly four billion dollars
for Mexico and one billion for the Dominican Republic, it is no wonder why these governments
encourage their populations to migrate abroad. It is a substantial boost to their economies.
However, the United States government in recent history has also enabled immigrants to
settle in the country. The 1965 Immigration Act, for example, eliminated racist quotas and
opened the door to immigrants from all countries on an equal basis. The US immigration Act of
1990 has increased authorized immigration by forty percent annually by encouraging the
immigration of professional executives and other skilled persons of exceptional ability. It also
provided another 10,000 visas per year to immigrant entrepreneurs who invest a minimum of one
million dollars in a new US commercial enterprise employing at least ten full-time workers.
However, in seeking to lure only the best and brightest, the 1990 law has limited the legal entry
of low-wage unskilled workers such as nannies, maids, restaurant workers to 10,000 annual visas
and increased the waiting period to more than ten years. This new law, although meant to
benefit American business, has unwittingly increased pressures for illegal immigration among
the less skilled and has deepened class inequality among incoming groups (Isgro 1991: 34-37).
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While there is plenty on record concerning the “endorsed” migrants who make their way
to the United States legitimately, there are countless others who go unreported. Their journeys
are much more harrowing. They walk the unforgiving Mexican terrain for days to sneak across
an un-patrolled stretch of the two thousand mile long Mexican/US border or set off from Cuba
and Haiti on makeshift rafts, hoping to drift their way to Florida. They risk their lives in the
process, all for what they consider to be an opportunity for a better life.
Building on research by Portes, Rumbaut argues that this overwhelming desire to migrate
to the United States must be understood in the “macrocontext of historical patterns of US
expansion and intervention” (2003: 94). Many sending countries have long felt America’s
presence at home. Historically, the Caribbean basin was always considered part of the United
States, whether officially or not. Benjamin Franklin is on record for stating that Mexico and
Cuba were primary goals of American expansion and Thomas Jefferson viewed the Caribbean
countries as belonging to America by “laws of political gravitation” (qtd. in Rumbaut 2003: 94).
By sheer osmosis these countries have become Americanized, instilling American style
education programs and consuming American products, with their citizens working for American
corporations and acquiring English as a second language. Psychologically, they feel as if moving
to the US is a grasp within reach. However, Latino migrants are not a homogenous group; rather,
they reflect different social and ethnic histories, settlement patterns and modes of incorporation
in to the US. In support for this argument I want to briefly highlight the Mexican, Puerto Rican
and Cuban historical migrant experiences.
Mexicans, both the largest and oldest Hispanic ethnic group in the US, were incorporated
into the US economy as manual laborers. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ceded the
Southwest territories to the US in 1848 and as a result perhaps 80,000 inhabitants of Mexican
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and Spanish origin living in the territory that would become Texas, California and New Mexico
became Americans. They were promptly put to work expanding railroads, farming and mining.
They were considered the primary source of cheap labor. The US government took advantage of
Mexico’s capitalist development, or lack thereof, and gathered additional Mexican workers from
interior Mexico by train, sending them to the coal mines of Arizona and Colorado and the steel
mills of Chicago and Pittsburgh, a vibrant transnational population in the making (Montejano
1987).
While the American agricultural sector encouraged such migration as it afforded them
inexpensive labor, much of the newly established United States was feeling a bit uncomfortable
with the Latino presence and as a result developed “repatriation” drives back to Mexico,
“Operation Wetback”18 that took place in the 1950s being one of the largest and most notorious.
However, America’s need for cheap labor never went away. The Bracero Program that
took place between 1942 and 1964 was a contract-labor initiative where, upon the finishing of a
work contract, Mexicans by law had to promptly return to their home country. Although this
seemed to work at first, progressively over time, fewer and fewer returned home, finding ways to
maintain employment and remain in settler communities in the US. When the Bracero Program
ended and Mexicans realized that they could still obtain work in the United States with or
without a contract, illegal immigration across a highly porous border rapidly developed. The
offspring of this population of illegal Mexican migrants born and subsequently raised in the
United States became known as Chicanos, a population that stems principally from the US
supported migrant worker programs that helped establish US steel, mining, railroad and farming
industries, an identity Chicanos carry with great pride. (Cardoso 1980)
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Puerto Rico, a rural society based on subsistence agriculture and coffee exports, was
occupied by the United States in 1898 and formally acquired as part of the Treaty of Paris, which
settled the Spanish-American War. The status of the island territory was left ambiguous until the
passage of the Jones Act in 1917, which gave Puerto Ricans US citizenship and made them
eligible for the military draft, which many argue was a strategic move as the US military was
entering into World War I and needed fresh recruits. In 1947 the island became a commonwealth
of the United States. This status afforded it a sense of security and granted its inhabitants
automatic US citizenship at birth, enabling a free and easy flow back and forth between the
island and the mainland without having to cross a literal border.
The US considered the island nation an investment and the program Operation Bootstrap
in 1948 saw the spending of vast amounts of financial resources to build up its economy. But
with the younger, more able population moving to the mainland as a result of free citizenship and
low airfares, there was little possibility to industrialize the island. Mass immigration from the
island to mainly the City of New York led Puerto Ricans to be considered “the first ‘airborn’
migration in US history” (Rumbaut 2003: 95). The Puerto Rican population in mainland United
States reached 888,000 in 1960 and by the 1980s had reached 3 million people, but in the last
twenty years there has been a drop in the migration rate as more and more Puerto Ricans are
returning to the island. Perhaps as a result of globalization and the easy communication and
travel it affords, there is no longer a need to be on the mainland to reap all the social, political
and economic benefits.
The Cuban presence in the United States goes back to the nineteenth century as well,
when Cuban exiles began establishing themselves in New York and Florida while at the same
time the US targeted Cuba for annexation, trade and capital investment. By 1929 US direct
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investment in Cuba totaled nearly one billion dollars; this was more than one-fourth of total US
investment in all of Latin America (Rumbaut 2003: 96). By 1902 the Platt Amendment made the
United States Cuba’s military protector and Guantanamo Bay a US naval base. Needless to say,
this agreement right from the beginning bred deep resentment in Cuba as the country saw its
Latin island culture become Americanized, a process that eventually led to the country’s
revolution.
This revolution led by Fidel Castro, in turn generated an exodus of all Cubans in support
of American policies. Largely from Cuba’s middle and upper classes, they arrived in Florida and
New York easily able to set up home for themselves as political exiles. Today, Miami is
considered the receiving capital of Cuban immigrants, home to more than one million CubanAmericans. This is a fact that many Cuban exiles and Americans alike find ironic, because Fidel
Castro, with his anti-American stance may have done more to deepen structural linkages between
Cuba and the US than anyone else in Cuban History (Montaner 1984: 13-46).
Latino Cultural Identity
Although US Latinos share a common language, they represent a variety of nationalities,
cultures, races and histories. For example, Caribbean Latinos are more influenced by African
culture, Mexico/Central American Latinos by indigenous Meso-American cultures and South
Americans by Euro-colonialism. Another facet that should be considered is the difference
between first and second generation migrants from the same country, each at different levels of
assimilation. This has led to a variety of Latino identity formations in the US. There are Tejanos
in Texas, Chicanos in the Southwest, Nuyoricans and Dominicanyorks in New York and
Cubanos in Florida, and while they speak and live in “Spanglish,” the transnational in-between
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border space they occupy is not necessarily located on the physical border. There is much to
consider in discussing their individual cultures: “national origins, racial-ethnic and class origins,
legal status, reasons for migrating, modes of exit and contest of reception” (Morales 2003: 104).
For this reason, I am approaching the remainder of the discussion on US Latino Indentities by
dividing it into two halves: East Coast and West Coast.
The East-West divide is primarily defined by the two dominant Latino groups in the US:
Puerto Ricans and Mexicans. While Cubans and Dominicans are also developing a significant
presence in the East and Salvadorians in the West, the highly defined hybrid cultures of New
York “Nuyoricans” and Los Angeles Chicanos are what I will emphasize in this chapter in order
to highlight the distinctions among US Latinos.
The essence of the East Coast-West Coast split can be attributed to the legendary
differences between the coasts’ principal cities, New York and Los Angeles. New York has
been settled by a variety of Latino cultures from all over Latin America, particularly those from
the Caribbean: Cubans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, all with individual political,
social and economic ties to the US, all with unique cultures unto themselves. While each group
has its own distinct community in New York, there is cross-over, mixing and merging socially
with each other to create a truly Latino melting pot. In Los Angeles, however, the communities
are sharply defined. There are no real opportunities to interact. New York, with its crowded
downtown streets, subways and neighborhoods, pushes people together; the wide spaces of Los
Angeles provide plenty of opportunity for communities to isolate themselves from one another,
and in terms of Latino culture, Chicanos have a hegemonic presence in the city. This is supported
by the fact that only fifteen percent of Mexican-Americans marry outside their community
(Davis 2001). Furthermore, Puerto Ricans have a relatively young migrant history, only having
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begun the migration wave to the United States in the twentieth century, while “Chicanos have
roots in the US that go back to the days when California was part of Mexico”(Morales 2003:
204). Consequently, Mexican-Americans are much more assimilated into the mainstream
American culture. There are actually Mexican-American neighborhoods in Los Angeles and San
Antonio, Texas that reflect different levels of assimilation.
Another key difference between the coasts is each region’s approach to immigration.
California is a place where difference is smoothed out in an attempt to create a “generic”
American. This is reflected in the non-regional accent the state cultivates, making it a recruiting
ground for broadcast journalists. Also in an ironic twist, many Mexican-Americans support strict
controls on immigration, perhaps not wanting late-comers to spoil it for those who are already
there. This is supported by the fact that “…in 1996, a solidly Latino congressional district in El
Paso County, Texas, elected Silvestre Reyes, a former official of the US Border Patrol and a
planner behind Operation Hold the Line, the INS strategy to prevent illegal immigration along
the Southwest Border” (Morales 2003: 205). Consequently, minorities especially from different
cultural backgrounds, look upon each other with suspicion. In New York, ethnic difference is
celebrated. To a certain extent it always has been. The speaking accent is a mix of “European
ethnic groups like Irish, Italian and Jewish and African American” (Morales 2003: 204).
Although a conservative, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani had always supported
immigration rights. It must be noted that in addition to all this, Puerto Ricans are technically not
immigrants as Puerto Rico is a commonwealth and thus they have automatic American
citizenship.
One of the main reasons US Latinos have had a difficult time promoting a united political
agenda is the East Coast – West Coast split in political alliances. While African Americans have
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the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples), Latinos have the
national Council of La Raza, which despite its attempts to act as an umbrella group, is
predominantly a Mexican-American power base. Moreover, this political group is considered
North American with more ties to the United States than Mexico. Consider the remarks made by
Mexican president Vicente Fox’s foreign minister Jorge Castañada, who said that Mexico should
pursue a foreign policy that conformed to the interest of Mexico and not Chicanos (Morales 2003:
206).
Nuyoricans are somewhat distanced culturally from Puerto Rico as well. In fact the term
Nuyorican is meant to differentiate between the Puerto Ricans of New York and the Puerto
Ricans of the island. The latter group critically judges the former for speaking too much English
and developing apathy towards homeland politics and the heroes of their indigenous Taíno
culture. While Mexican-Americans on the other hand may consider themselves more American
than Mexican, they are still very loyal to the concept of Aztlán, the indigenous land comprised of
the US Southwest territory and Mexico and the mythological figure of La Malinche19, the mother
of Mexico and the mestizo race, “the intermediary between the conqueror and the conquered”
(Taylor 2003: 92) that connects Chicanos to their Mexican ancestry. Nonetheless, many
Mexicans, especially Chilangos (citizens of Mexico City) consider themselves to have little in
common with Chicanos: “At present the only thing that unites those who left Mexico and those
who stayed is our inability to understand and accept our inevitable differences”(Gómez-Peña
2001: 628).
The psyche between East and West is also quite different. The Spanish Caribbean,
despite its reputation for being a relaxed tourist location, is hot, aggressive and impatient;
Spanish is spoken there in a fast, abrupt fashion and the urban areas rival the hectic streets of
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New York City. In contrast California and Mexico present an arid expanse of calm. The Spanish
language is delivered in softer tones. It is a place where the siesta is still part of the daily routine
and tequila and marijuana are the popular pastimes (and exports).
The many differences I have listed barely scratch the surface of the East Coast-West
Coast divide and the prospect of a Pan-Latino harmony in the US is less than likely in the next
fifty years. However, it is a landscape that is constantly evolving. For example, Cubans have
largely moved out of the city and into the suburbs of New Jersey; their old neighborhood of
Washington Heights in Manhattan is now dominated by a new wave of migrants from the
Dominican Republic. Colombians, Peruvians and Argentineans are also currently making their
presence felt on the East Coast urban areas. Furthermore, cities in the center of the US like
Chicago, Dallas and Minneapolis have also had long-term relationships with Latino populations.
A symbolic piece of evidence for this is the fact that the twentieth anniversary revival of Zoot
Suit did not premiere in Los Angeles, but in Chicago.
Inevitably, the Americas are becoming increasingly considered one. The complex
demographic, social and linguistic processes that are a byproduct are challenging notions of an
American mono-culture of a white, middle-class world, existing outside of the international.
Thus prefixes like trans-, inter- and multi- are becoming more prevalent in the US in order to
define new cultural categories and processes, but perhaps the best term to encapsulate the new
American cultural topography is border culture. In a sense Latinos and non-Latinos alike
experience cultural transformation, redefinition, and recontextualization in their lives.
Consequently, border culture can help dismantle the mechanisms of fear and
…guide us back to common ground and improve our negotiating skills. Border culture is
a process of negotiation towards utopia, but in this case, utopia means peaceful
coexistence and fruitful cooperation (…) In fact, the only way to regenerate identity and
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culture is through ongoing dialogue with the other. A dialogue that is not paternalistic,
neo-colonialistic. (Gomez-Peña 1993: 47-48).
US Latino Theatre: establishing a context
The difficulty in attempting to summarize the history of US Latino Theatre lies in the fact
that the theatre traditions that fall within this category are as diverse as the Latino-American
populations that practice them. But offering a succinct history of US Latino theatre is necessary
in order to reflect on the evolution of the practices and in mapping out their possible futures. It is
important to mention right from the beginning that even with the experience of being conquered
and uprooted, Latinos who found themselves residing in a new country called the United States
never gave up their Latin American cultural institutions. Theatre, whether commercial or
amateur, professional or folkloric, has been “one of the most important of these institutions and
has been essential in maintaining a sense of identity and community solidarity throughout the last
one hundred and thirty years” (Kanellos and Huerta 1989: vi). At each significant turn in the
development of the Latino communities in the US, appropriate theatrical expressions have
emerged to reflect their historical, linguistic, economic and spiritual circumstances.
Latin American drama taking place in the US during the early 1900s was folk theatre and
Spanish-language, romantic melodramas performed by professional companies on horse-drawn
wagons and under tents in towns and cities throughout the Wild West from San Francisco to
Mazatlán (Kanellos and Huerta 1989: vi). With the significant events of the Mexican Revolution
and the advent of the railroad, professional Mexican companies traveled quite easily from Texas
to California with their repertoire of lyric and dramatic works performing to ever-growing
communities of Mexican immigrants. What soon followed were coast to coast theatrical circuits
for Spanish language theatre companies from various countries including Spain, Cuba, Puerto
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Rico, Mexico and the United States. The cities of New York, San Antonio and Los Angeles
quickly became theatre capitals where one could see a classic Spanish production in a purpose
built theatre, a traveling company performing melodrama in a saloon or a variety show outside in
the town square.
As the Depression approached, vaudeville became the popular theatre to both Latinos and
Anglos alike. These two separate traditions increasingly ran more parallel as they found
themselves now competing with a burgeoning motion picture industry, and while the Anglo
theatre had the formal support of the government’s Federal Theatre Project20, Spanish language
theatre companies scrambled to make financial ends meet. Consequently, Latino theatre became
adept at fund-raising and building community support. It is a quality that to this day defines the
ethos of many Latino theatre companies in the US. But such governmental policies as the
Repatriation Act in the 1940s, which forcibly encouraged Mexicans to return to their homeland,
hindered the development of Latino theatre in the US and it was not until the mass migration of
Puerto Ricans in the 1950s and 1960s after the annexation of their small island nation, that
Spanish language theatre really started to take root in the US and lead to New York City
experiencing unprecedented cultural growth.
US Latino theatre at this time in history was referred to as “an octopus with many legs”
(Sandoval Sánchez 1997: 66-77) because of the many different paths the movement was taking.
This was because unlike Anglo theatre, which was centered on Broadway, Latino theatre was
dispersed throughout the country, serving distinctly different Spanish-speaking communities
comprised of Chicanos in the Southwest and Nuyoricans and Cubans in New York City, the
latter group also having a substantial presence in Miami.
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Understanding the Chicano and Nuyorican Theatre
While all three communities were staging political theatre, Cuban exiles and Cuban
Americans had a distinctly different approach to creating theatre in the host country of the
United States. Whether settled in New York or Miami they were a political community, but were
also a population of middle to upper class educated migrants who had a loyalty and fondness for
the “precious bourgeois conventions and Eurocentric ways of doing theatre such as teatro bufo
(Commedia dell’arte) and teatro del absurdo (Theatre of the Absurd)”(Sandoval Sánchez 1997:
67). Thus, Cubans in exile stayed loyal to the theatrical canon of Mexico and Spain, performing
solely in Spanish for Cuban exile audiences. On the other hand, the Chicano and Nuyorican
theatre movements quickly appropriated street theatre techniques, agitprop and protest theatre in
order to “mobilize and raise consciousness among working-class audiences in ghettos and
migrant communities” on their respective coasts in order to fight “against exploitation, racism
and marginalization of people of color” (Sandoval Sánchez 1997: 67-68).
The Chicano theatre movement is largely attributed to the work of one man, Luis Valdez.
A playwright by trade, Valdez formed a theatre company in the mid-sixties with Dolores Huerta
called EL Teatro Campesino (ETC) in order to stage consciousness-raising actos with the
Mexican United Farm Workers Union (UFW) which was comprised of largely first generation
migrants feeling victimized by agricultural big business. These actos, one-act Brechtianinfluenced pieces of epic theatre, consisted of simple plot structures that depicted the economic
and political strife of the Mexican farm worker and then offered a solution. As Valdez recalls it
was a variation of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed: “‘…I asked for volunteers to act out what
was happening out on the picket lines’. One of the first workers who improvised and
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subsequently became an ‘actor’ for ETC was farm worker Felipe Cantú, a self-taught mime in
the Mexican carpa, or oral tradition” (Valdez qtd. in Broyles-González 1994: 19-20).
Community-based collective creation became the defining characteristic of ETC and
subsequently for the ensuing Chicano Theatre Movement of the 1970s. The movement grew so
quickly in fact that Valdez established the Teatro Nacional de Aztlán (TENAZ) in order to help
archive the work created by Chicano theatre companies and to host a national Chicano theatre
festival. It has since become the chief communications network and overseer of the artistic and
political growth of the Chicano theatre movement.
By the mid-1970s ETC had moved out of the farming community of the UFW and had
developed into the premiere Chicano theatre company. They were venturing away from the actos
and were now staging Mexican mitos and historias. Consequently, their productions began to get
bigger and more elaborate. They were even touring extensively throughout the US and Europe
now which inevitably affected the direction of the Chicano theatre movement.
Thematically, dramatically and visually, ETC offered the world a repertory that has
come to be associated with Chicano theatre as a whole: works based in the MexicanAmerican community and deeply rooted in Mexican religious folklore, popular theatre
and associated with Latin American ‘New Theatre’, the revolutionary theatre stimulated
by the Cuban Revolution and the theories of Brazilian Augusto Boal and the Colombian
collective experimentation led by Enrique Buenaventura. (Marrero 2002: 43-44)
The Chicano people took great pride in their theatre because they saw it as a symbol for who
they were as a population, uniquely American without the pretense of assimilation.
A turning point for Valdez and perhaps to a certain extent Chicano theatre in general, was
ETC’s commercial mainstream production of Zoot Suit, a story based on the true events of the
Zoot Suit Riots and the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, when a group of Mexican-Americans were
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wrongfully accused of murder. José Delgado, a member of ETC from November 1971 through
December 1984, gives a detailed account of the motivation for this particular piece of theatre:
After performing before packed theatres across Europe, receiving praise and adulation,
Luis [Valdez] realized that no one in this country [the United States] would acknowledge
our success simply because this country’s idea of success is measured through economic
success. It was then that he decided that we needed to come back and produce something
that would be financially successful. What he decided to do was to not tour in 1977 in
order to develop something that would bring the teatro a bigger audience. The first
project that came up was in the fall of 1976…Michael Shultz invited Luis to participate
in writing a section of the film Which Way is Up? The second possibility that opened was
the project that eventually became Zoot Suit… (Delgado qtd. in Marrero 2002: 45).
Zoot Suit had extended sold-out seasons at the Mark Taper Forum and the larger
Aquarius Theater in Los Angeles and eventually made its way to Broadway opening at the
Winter Garden Theatre in 1978. But this momentous occasion, the first authentic Latino play to
make it to Broadway and receive a national audience, did not live up to the expectations. Instead
of it helping Valdez garner artistic legitimization for the Chicano community, it was largely
misunderstood by audiences and critics alike and thus quickly folded.
To be fair, Zoot Suit was at an extreme disadvantage in trying to compete with
mainstream Anglo commercial theatre. The non-Chicano critics and audience alike were
unfamiliar with the Mexican Rasquache21 aesthetic of the production (Ybarra-Frausto 1991: 12562). In fact the working-class Rasquache style of bilingually delivered political content through
stylish improvisation on a bare stage runs contrary to much of what Broadway stands for and
consequently met with harsh reviews in New York. Broadway theatre critic John Simon’s
critique is perhaps more a commentary on just how great the cultural divide is between Chicano
theatre and the Anglo mainstream:
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To espouse the terminology of Zoot Suit (a lengthy glossary of caló is provided by the
program), I can only describe the cheap set by Thomas A. Walsh and Roberto Morales as
Qué desmadre!, though the costumes of Peter J. Hall rate a guarded Orale!, where as the
staging by Luis Valdez is as pinche as his dramaturgy. The acting is hard to evaluate,
since the writing is mostly pendejadas, although an audience of theatrical verdolagos
(many more Hispanics than gabachos) lapped it all up as if everyone on stage were a
chignon. I myself could latch on to merely one line in all this puro pedo…” (qtd. in
Sandoval Sánchez 1997: 93)
The title of this review is particularly telling, “West Coast Story,” a play on the title West Side
Story, the popular musical by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. It serves as evidence to
the fact that Anglos perhaps have a misguided notion of what it means to be a Latino in the
United States. The huge success of West Side Story has the mainstream thinking that all Latinos
are light skinned, sing and dance jazz and, as the song from the musical goes: “want to be in
America.” As a side note, I find it ironic that the major depiction of the US Latino experience
would come from West Side Story. Its leading actress, Natalie Wood was not a Latina, but of
Eastern European extraction and in actuality there were originally only two Latinos in the entire
cast.
At any rate, regardless of the failed success of Zoot Suit in the east, the Chicano Theatre
movement continued to thrive in the west in the 1980s. TENAZ was registering the work of
numerous new companies in various cities from Los Angeles and Chicago to Detroit and Seattle.
The practice of collective creation gave way to formal playwriting as many young companies
such as El Teatro de la Esperanza and El Teatro de la Gente were generating anthologies of
scripts that explored the Chicano experience through more poetic means incorporating allegory
and symbolism. However, no matter what advances were made, Chicano theatre companies
never stopped being community-based organizations.
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As the communities evolved the companies had to as well. The biggest challenge they
faced in doing so was developing new talent. Resources were always limited and as younger
generations were increasingly more assimilated into the Anglo culture, there was a greater
temptation to cross-over to English-language mainstream theatre. In order for companies to exist
beyond the careers of their founders they became in part theatre schools, cultural centers,
community out-reach programs and producing organizations while still maintaining an active
theatre season. Chicano companies who have found security by going in this direction were
again El Teatro de la Esperanza in San Francisco, but also La Companía de Teatro in
Alberquerque, El Centro Su Teatro in Denver and Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San
Antonio. They found success in large part due to the role they played in the community in which
staging productions is just one component. Company members had proved extremely dedicated
as they worked other jobs during the day and served as actors, theatre teachers and workshop
leaders in the evenings and on weekends.
The Nuyorican theatre movement can also greatly be attributed to the work of one
individual, Miguel Piñero. Like Valdez, he was a playwright who came from humble beginnings,
born in the US to Puerto Rican migrants. However, unlike the college educated Valdez, Piñero
never finished high school. He developed a passion for theatre while in New York’s notorious
Sing Sing prison. It was there he began writing his definitive work Short Eyes, a story of the
harsh realities of prison life. Upon his release he staged the play and it earned instant notoriety
for not only its raw language and subject matter but for the fact that the cast was made up
entirely of ex-convicts, leading one critic to state: “This production is significant not only as
theatrical event but also as an act of social redemption” (qtd. in Morton 1976: 48). Either despite
the cast of convicts or because of it, the play garnered the New York Drama Critics Award for
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Best American Play for the 1973-74 season and found short-term success on Broadway.
Consequently, Nuyorican theatre took on the identity of Piñero himself, a theatre of the ghetto.
It was a movement that quickly gained momentum in the 1970s with companies consisting of
largely untrained poets and writers theatricalizing the life of the gritty New York City streets.
Drug dealers, petty thieves, prostitutes and corrupt law enforcement were stock characters in
such works as Hector Rodriguez’s Hoe Stroll, a Nuyorican play described as
a stylized sketch of three prostitutes who work the corner of Third Street and the
Bowery. Hoe Stroll refers the nightly rounds of the Vice-Squad in their search for
prostitutes and it involves the competition between the women and the violence
between them and the ‘johns’. (Morton 1976: 44)
Companies such as the Puerto Rican Playwrights and Actors’ Workshop, El Teatro
Ambulante, Teatro Quarto and the Puerto Rican Traveling Company quickly established
themselves as Nuyorican theatre companies who, like the Chicano companies, had a deep rooted
connection to the community. However, as this was New York City, the original melting pot,
their Latino community was substantially more diverse than that of the West Coast. It
incorporated not only Puerto Ricans but other Latin American nationalities as well as African
Americans and working class whites, a proper cross-section of the urban East Coast ghetto.
Consequently, Nuyorican plays were written and staged in the language all its own: “perhaps
sixty percent ‘pure’ English; fifteen percent ‘Afro-American’ English and fifteen percent ‘Puerto
Rican’ Spanish; the remainder is a mixture of all of these” (Morton 1976: 44).
Despite the often reported feuding between the two communities, Nuyorican theatre
artists, inspired by the Harlem Renaissance, had a sincere respect for the African American
population who at the time were occupied with their own Civil Rights movement. They were two
communities committed “to the act of liberation” and found commonalities in their language,
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style and passion for political expression. In real terms the Nuyorican identified more with the
urban African American than with the mainstream image of the Puerto Rican migrant depicted in
West Side Story.
Today, Nuyorican theatre has grown in size and complexity. Presently, there are easily
over twenty-five Latino-American theatrical companies performing in New York. As a result of
the boom in the Latino population in the city, those companies who began as Nuyorican now
consist of a variety of Latino nationalities and a few Latino organizations have even opened their
doors to community members who are not necessarily Latino themselves but instead Haitian and
African who have arrived to the country and have inadvertently settled in a predominantly
Latino-American community. Thus, to be better able to serve the wider community, Latino
Theatre companies have become community and cultural centers and their stage productions
have increasingly become bilingual and English-language. Two examples of such Nuyorican
theatre companies are Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre and Pregones Theatre; they have built
long established careers as a result.
The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre was founded by actress-director Miriam Colón, who
since the 1950s has been active in developing Hispanic theatre in New York. In 1967, Colón
founded the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre with the purpose of performing “professional
bilingual theatre written and produced by Puerto Rican and Nuyorican writers as well as other
Latin American playwrights” (Vásquez 2003: 29). Originally funded by a single modest grant,
Mayor John Lindsey’s Summer Task Force22, and barely able to remain in operation, it now has
its own theatre located in a converted fire house in midtown Manhattan, where it also operates a
successful drama school for actors and playwrights. For close to thirty years it had
promoted self-esteem in alienated ethnic minorities (…) [brought] free, high quality
entertainment to neighborhoods that cannot afford to pay Broadway or off-Broadway
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prices (…) [and] offer community participation, vocational opportunity and talent
development to our youth. (Vásquez 2003: 30)
Teatro Pregones, unlike the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, originally set out to produce
quality Puerto Rican theatre solely in Spanish. Rosalba Rolón, a founder of the company,
emphasizes the importance the Spanish language to the identity of the company:
As we understood it, it [Teatro Pregones] was a theatre created by Puerto Rican
playwrights. Also, it was a little bit didactic. We even stated that it was only in Spanish
(…) We saw Spanish language as a political weapon, as a way to reinforce a
seriousness of things for us. (qtd. in Vasquez 2003: 40)
However, the reality of the Nuyorican identity required a more hybrid approach to theatre
and Pregones found themselves having to make the necessary adjustments to maintain relevancy
in the Latino community:
It took a long time, almost ten years to begin working in English. We thought that
somehow Spanish was a necessary connection for people here. We began to
recognize that we came here [New York] with lots of prejudices that were hard to
eliminate...the richest moment of our history; the moment when we made a
transition to a new reality, a bilingual reality where we have some plays in
Spanish and others in English. (Rolón qtd. in Vásquez 2003: 40-41)
With time, the company matured to a more artistically committed body of work. Their new
agenda addressed a variety of issues, including the cultural and linguistic concerns of nonSpanish speaking Puerto Ricans, the problems faced by the working class and issues of political,
social and personal struggle.
Consequently, Teatro Pregones has become a pillar of the Puerto Rican and the broader
Latino community of the South Bronx where they have just recently built a four million dollar
theatre and cultural center. In addition to keeping an active main stage program with over
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twenty Spanish, English and bilingual productions in its repertoire, it conducts host programs
from children and young adults’ theatre to theatre training workshops and community outreach
presentations on such topics as AIDS and gang violence.
Nuyorican theatre by way of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre Company and Teatro
Pregones has come a long way from the early days of Miguel Piñero and his brand of street
theatre. It is a fact that these companies like to emphasize, for Rolón admits that a principal goal
for Pregones has always been
to emphatically [commit] to offering positive images of Puerto Ricans (…) People feel
that because you are going to work with the community you have to bring them a theatre
about junkies, about prostitutes, about the ghetto mentality. Part of the purpose of
Migrants! 23 was to break the myth of Puerto Ricans in the United States, about Puerto
Ricans begging, about Puerto Ricans living in slums. (Rolón qtd. in Vásquez 2003: 46)
Contemporary US Latino Theatre: Swimming against the mainstream
For all the discussion among scholars on how the individual traditions in US Latino theatre differ,
they face many of the same issues. Their audiences are generally working class people who have
been transplanted to the United States often out of necessity and have found themselves having
to balance their lives between two cultures, two languages and two homes. As a result, US
Latino theatre has become
…a specialized artistic tool for educating and arousing awareness (…) It incorporates
the more passive agents into its mode of access and communication, but its task is more
far reaching; it constantly compares minority and majority cultures, standards of living,
attitudes and beliefs; it celebrates native cultural manifestations, raising them to a
position of equity with the modes of the majority culture; and it actively asserts the right
to exist without erasing the Hispanic heritage (…) The theatre exists as a voice and a
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conscience for a community of people demanding to survive [as Latinos]. (Márquez and
Fiet 1983: 420)
In the 1980s The US Latino theatre carried the heavy burden of trying to be many
different things to a diverse population and it was inevitable that it would eventually meet with
criticism even by those from within the community. For example, Hispanic women often felt
alienated by the genre, as it did not provide much opportunity for female actors and playwrights.
The argument is valid when considering that original Chicano theatre was directed towards an
audience of male Mexican farm workers and that the Nuyorican theatre of the seventies most
often cast women in subordinate roles, usually as prostitutes. However, much has changed in
recent years regarding the role of women in US Latino theatre. They have taken a more
prominent role in writing and staging their own specific cultural histories. No one doubts that it
is a positive change for the genre: “as a historical moment when male playwriting and patriarchy
ran out of stories, Latinas invigorated the theatre with plays that cross over and attract new
audiences” (Sandoval Sanchez 1997: 69).
The same criticism was made by the gay Latino population who felt they had no voice in
the theatre let alone the Latino community. However, due to the AIDS epidemic, safe-sex, drug
abuse and gang violence have come to the top of the list of community issues. Latino theatre
practitioners during the 1980s saw their communities as needing saving: “When it is a matter of
life and death, when there is an urgency to save our people from dying, art is political” (Sandoval
Sanchez 1997: 69).
Another criticism of US Latino theatre and perhaps the one that stings the most is its
seeming desire to cross-over and reach mainstream non-Latino audiences. When reflecting on
the evolution of US Latino theatre this case can certainly be made. Earlier generations of Latino
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practitioners blame it on the younger generations who are being trained and educated in US
academic institutions and are, therefore, being instilled with a middle-class set of “Anglo” values.
The fact that the founders of modern US Latino theatre, Valdez and Piñero, both had taken
productions to Broadway and have worked in Hollywood gets over-looked by those who make
this argument. Regardless of who is to blame, the non-Latino audience is apparently willing now
to experience what the Latino theatre community has to offer. With an image of Chicano actor
Edward James Olmos on the cover of the magazine, a special issue of Time ran a cover story in
July of 1988 entitled “Magnifico! Hispanic Culture Breaks Out of the Barrio.” It explains how
“…the Hispanics seem to be moving beyond an initial preoccupation with anger, self-pity and
reductionist politics toward a state literature that communicates rather than
confronts…”(Sandoval Sanchez 1997:74). This rather Eurocentric critique is evidence that
mainstream audiences who were once uncomfortable with the original political agitprop
practices of US Latino theatre are warming to the idea that the US Latino arts movement has
come around to softening its edges and seemingly assimilating into the American culture.
However, the prospect of a US Latino theatre ever fully homogenizing is unlikely. It is a
tradition built on difference, hybridity and what Michel Foucault calls monstrosity, difference
“…without law and without any well-defined structure(…); the monster provides an account [but]
in caricature…” (Foucault 1973: 156-57). Furthermore, the debate on whether or not US Latino
theatre is gradually crossing-over to the mainstream, begs the question of what is it crossing over
to?
If Latino theatre is the “monster,” an indefinable voice of the marginalized mainstream,
the same mode of thinking would lead one to conclude that Broadway is then the “fossil,” a
homogenous staple that miraculously stands the test of time, “condemned to stage revivals,
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British imports, or flops that continually signal its death” (Sandoval Sanchez 1997: 70). The
stagnant state of Broadway theatre has been the topic of much discussion lately and can be
summed up aptly by New York Times theatre critic David Richards in his article “On Stage:
Survival of the Fizziest”: “It’s long been known as the fabulous invalid and the Great White Way,
but we may have to start calling it Six Flags24 over Broadway” (1994). While mainstream
theatre has always been a source of entertainment, the image of Broadway with its fantastic light
shows and costumes has increasingly come to resemble an amusement park exemplifying the
garish American philosophy of “bigger is better.”
Crossing-over leads to a host of problems for the Latino theatre artist. Most significantly
to do so denies the individual’s cultural otherness and encourages stereotyping. In this matter,
Alvan Colón Lespier has observed on the dangers of crossing over to mainstream audiences:
Recently some producers have unsuccessfully tried to insert Latino theatre into
the mainstream currents of American theatre. Latino theatre cannot be used as bait. When
our theatre is presented as an exotic cultural product or when it is watered down to make
it palatable to Anglo audiences, the result is a deformed or distorted version of our culture.
(qtd. in Sandoval Sanchez 1997: 75)
Moreover, Jorge Huerta’s article “Looking for the Magic: Chicanos in the Mainstream” provides
an achingly accurate picture of the problems associated with staging Latino theatre in Anglodominated mainstream by observing that “mainstream theatres are more interested in Chicano
plays that do not attack the power structure.” Of those Latino plays that are getting produced, he
observes, “Is it a coincidence that they leave the audience free to blame the Chicano’s problems
on the Chicanos?” (Huerta 1994: 43) Consequently, what Anglo audiences experience is a
Latino theatre devoid of any substantial discussion concerning the asymmetrical social structure
of the US regarding race and ethnicity. “This avoidance of conflict on the stage implies the
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assertion of an oppressive world view, especially when we consider colonizing characteristics of
Chicano theatre” (Martinez 2002: 24).
It is a challenge for Latino playwrights to write both for their own community in an idiom
they understand and also for an audience that perhaps lacks an understanding of this particular
language, dialect or vocabulary. Sacrifices are inevitably made, which means forsaking their
native tongue and voice to write in English “for a community that remains at best indifferent to
their cultural experience” (Martinez 2002: 26). Eventually this leads to them being labeled just
another playwright instead of a Latino playwright, and thus the cultural identity is erased from
the equation.
Nonetheless, Latino theatre artists are willing to meet the mainstream halfway. Gone are
the plays of prostitution, poverty and other ghetto realities. To reach wider audiences US Latino
theatre is moving away from “ghetto” theatre and the kitchen sink drama. Instead, Latino artists
are staging plays that depict “rags to riches” success stories that emphasize a “…prosperous,
assimilated, anglicized and elitist social group of middle-class Latinos that will fulfill the horizon
of expectations of the Anglo-American audiences” (Sandoval Sánchez 1997: 74).
Along similar lines, Latino theatre companies on the West Coast such as The East LA
Classics Theatre Company occupy themselves performing Shakespeare and other European
classic plays with many fine Chicano/Latino actors for schools and regional theatres. However,
avoiding plays from the Latino tradition, whether it is the kitchen sink drama or any other form
of Spanish or bilingual theatre, seems “to indicate an endorsement of a status quo definition of
Latinos” (Martinez 2002: 27).
So where does that leave US Latino theatre? It is a difficult question as the demographics
of the United States continue to change. The rapid influx of Colombians, Dominicans,
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Argentines, Salvadorians have added new dimensions to the genre of Latino theatre taking place
in the United States. It cannot be homogenized into a single practice that represents the many
diverse groups that constitute the Latino minority. The issue of a single Latino identity is further
complicated when taking into consideration the fact that the many categories already in use are
not always accurate. For example,
Not all Cubans are trapped in reactionary nostalgia and upper class. Not all Chicanos are
migrant peasants who take pride in an Indian past and legacy or a mythical Aztlán. Not
all Puerto Ricans live on welfare or are delinquents in the streets of New York.
(Sandoval Sanchez 1997: 73)
Furthermore, there are Puerto Ricans who detest the term Nuyorican or Mexican-Americans who
avoid the label Chicano due to their working-class associations. Second and third generation
Latinos perhaps consider themselves more American than any nationality associated with their
ethnic origins. The often cited metaphor of American society as a sophisticated, transmutating
plant, needing new kinds of cultural food in order to survive is an apt one. The cultivation of
new aesthetic currents in the United States will help maintain its stability, because the including
of these currents can shape evolving social values of the country that are indispensable to the
healthy functioning of its multicultural society.
Contemporary Latino Theatre: Turning a corner, performing the border
The boundaries of the United States have currently become some of the most significant
and contested borders of modern times, especially the “tortilla curtain,” the 3,100 mile long
border that divides Mexico from the United States. In 2007 it became central to the country’s
debate on illegal immigration and the War on Terror as a result of immigrant and diasporic
communities settling in the region and challenging the conceptual foundation of these seemingly
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static boundaries, destabilizing long-held notions of national identity. Many terms are associated
with this border population, ranging from multicultural and hybrid to transcultural and
transnational. But regardless of the terminology used to identify it, this population of Latinos is
evidence that there are shifting notions of center and margin in the United States of today as
migrants coming from south of the border negotiate their way through the polarities of poverty
and power, through “a cherished mythology of a white America and an always evil, threatening,
invading ‘Other’” (Shapins).
However, it need not be the cultural minefield that many critics in Anglo-America depict
it to be. Instead, the border should be considered an “intellectual laboratory for experimentation”
(Gómez-Peña qtd. in Birringer 2000: 79) and according to Michal Kobialka “a locus of hope for
a better land, a model for a new consciousness, a place where an identity is formed…”(Kobialka
1999: 3). Ultimately the North/South dialogue that stems from the border will lead to a more
unified society on both sides of it.
An aesthetic current emerging as a contributor to this dialogue is the concept of border
performance. It is an emerging pluralistic theatre practice that is breaking the historicist and
aesthetic notion of the Latino minority held by the Anglo mainstream. It is a less passive more
vocal practice that speaks directly to the clashing of cultures that takes place on and within the
borders of the United States by addressing national stereotypes concerning race, class,
immigration, national origin, gender and ethnicity. Increasingly cultural critics are recognizing it
as a bicultural performance tradition for bicultural audiences that serves…
as conduits for crucial lessons on social gains and cultural pride while demonstrating the
problems that arise from negative images, concerning race, national origins and ethnicity.
Latino situations are semiotic appropriations of a marginal social reality where
individuals, both audience and performers are struggling to measure and mediate space
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between the culture of origin and the culture toward which they are headed. (RamosGarcía 2002: xiv)
Rather than assimilating, Latinos that live on the border are attempting to maintain an
unaltered identity while navigating there way between home and host cultures by experimenting
with performance genres that explore their complex cultural identities. Thus Latino performance
taking place on the border cannot be classified; it has rejected the “comfort of belonging to a
cultural or aesthetic genre and of producing classifiable works” (Minh-ha 1991: 108-109). In
other words, its practitioners are side-stepping the Mainstream bourgeois theatres in order to
present images of Latinos that will counter the
… passive historicist images [of Latinos] existing outside of history, outside of society,
outside of the present, outside of the borders of the US, but as a contemporary citizens in
this time and place. (Gómez-Peña qtd. in Birringer 2000: 79)
The most recent assessments of border performance have emphasized its ability to
transgress the actual geographic locality of the physical border. It is not solely a practice by
Chicanos taking place on the border between Mexico and the United States. Although perhaps
that is where it began, there is currently a variety of distinct Latino identities navigating the inbetween space of the border through performance. Nuyoricans, as well as the Neoricans25 and
Dominicans and Colombians as well as Haitians and other immigrant populations from the
Caribbean and Latin America are just a few of the communities. In most cases these populations
are well aware of the concept of hybrid identity, for not only are their ethnicities comprised of
African, Spanish and indigenous ancestry, but they are also populations in a constant state of
development. For example, for Cuban-Americans
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the first generation consists of the oligarchy and well-respected professionals who
brought to America memories of comfortable lives and money; a second one who was
born and raised here, using a new language with new parallel sceneries, flavors and
rhythms; and in between exists the denominated ‘1.5’ generation, who although they
were born in Cuba, followed the will of their elders and emigrated abroad as children or
adolescents. (Gonzalez qtd. in Ramos-García 2002: xx)
This last generation, although feeling marginalized, moves with great fluidity across the border,
between “tradition and translation; immersed in both cultures” (Gonzalez qtd. in Ramos-García
2002: xx), enabling a wealth of possibilities especially in terms of creativity, perhaps more than
the first generation of Cuban-American theatre practitioners, as they were a population
“entrenched in the past, producing a theatre full of nostalgic references, resentment, distress and
hate” (Gonzalez qtd. in Ramos-García 2002: 79-92). The “1.5” generation has the luxury of
distance from the history of their exile experience and therefore has a freedom to explore their
memories and their parents’ memories of the homeland from across the border.
Also, unlike perhaps the Latino theatre practitioners of previous generations, border
artists have no desire to cross-over into the commercial American mainstream. “Many of us
don’t aspire to make it in Hollywood or New York. We want something more ambitious. And
that is to be in control of our political destiny and our cultural expressions” (Gomez-Peña 1993:
52). Gómez-Peña argues that crossing-over has never had a direct positive impact on the Latino
community; that in essence it has led to the “domestication of the Latino” in which the popular,
non-political notions of identity are celebrated, providing “enlightenment without irritation,
entertainment without confrontation” (Gomez-Peña 1993: 51). The Puerto Rican-American
entertainers Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin and the Colombian born Shakira are the epitome of
the “domesticated latino/a,” who is eager to perform in English rather than Spanish and
perpetuate primitive stereotypes such as that of the “hypersexual” Latino/a. They present to the
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American mainstream a wild and exotic Latin America waiting to be “discovered, enjoyed and
purchased by the entrepreneurial eye of the North” (Gomez-Peña 1993: 51). The border artist
perceives this as the act of colonizing (once again). “We must politely remind the art world that
hype is never a substitute for culture. It is a reality that must be addressed no matter how painful
or complex it might be”(Gomez-Peña 1993: 51).
While many argue that crossing-over can offer opportunities to Latino artists that
otherwise go unnoticed, border artists claim that it also offers a contaminated foreign value
system. In the mainstream competition and art become intertwined. With crossing-over comes
the pressure to compete, keep up and “become more slick and professional,” pushed to produce
twice as much as before. This has led to a confused community, divided into those who “make it”
and those who do not and those left behind are slowly poisoned by jealously and defeat (GómezPeña 93: 52).
Artists who negotiate the border voice the reality of Latino populations in the United
States. Through their work they address important issues to the community often overlooked by
mainstream society, such as the alarming high school drop-out rate among Latinos and the
extremely high percentage of Latinos in US prisons, who may have contracted AIDS or suffered
from police brutality, alcoholism or drug addiction. These artists have created a performance
tradition that emphasizes the community’s intellectualism not its “exoticism,” and that combines
the acknowledgement of ethnicity and origins with a desire for redistribution of power. This is
border performance, a practice steeped in Latin American dramatic sensibility inclusive of the
“investigative aesthetic of underdevelopment, the theorization of nostalgia and memory [and]
equipped with viable strategies for the understanding of plurality” (Ramos-García 2002: xx).
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Tracking the Components of Border Performance
Defining the border performance aesthetic is difficult. The term has been associated with
a plethora of theatre and performance work since the early 1990s. Best known is the work of
Guillermo Gomez-Peña and his Border Arts Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronteriza which has
consistently made art that is considered both experimental and accessible. However, increasingly
there has been a variety of high quality monolingual and bilingual performance work, both in the
theatre and outside of it, that effectively speaks to the interface between the United States and
Latin America by way of a transcultural performance practice, taking external distinctly
American elements and transferring them to their own ideological structures. This is the practice
that artist Amalia Mea-Bains refers to as “the process of chronicling the historical self” (qtd. in
Gómez-Peña 1993: 45), and it requires the border performer to fill the roles of “social
thinker/educator/counter-journalist/civilian and diplomat/human rights observer” (Gomez-Peña
1993: 49). The “historical self” is vital to the Latino American as well as all communities living
in the margins of a dominant society, because knowledge of the past brings a clear map of the
future.
It is convenient to label border performance as simply an example of the avant-garde, but
the term does not fully represent all that the genre encompasses. The practice is an intentional
blurring of genres, a unique form of cultural performance that travels over a wide array of terrain
that includes politics, anthropology and ethnography, ecology and the many social issues
immigrants and disenfranchised communities face. It can be staged in the theatre, the street, the
art gallery or on the literal border dividing Mexico from the United States as Gómez-Peña has
done because it is significant for border performance art to be a meeting of high and popular
culture, “exhibit[ed] in both artistic and non-artistic contexts: to operate in the world, not just the
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art world…” (Gómez-Peña 1993: 49). It is a syncretic practice, a cross-over art form that
borrows from the many traditions of which the artist comes into contact. It takes place in the
interstices of two communities and/or two countries and attempts to craftily depict the bi-cultural
reality of the border (Birringer 1999: 74-75). The hope is that this experimentation will then
…generate a national dialogue, the need to create cultural spaces for others, and the
need to redefine the asymmetrical relations between the North and the South and among
the various ethnic groups that converge in the border spiral (Gómez-Peña 1993: 50).
It is a curiosity that within the avant-garde theatre movement in the United States, the
genre of border performance is largely overlooked. The principle reason given for this is the fact
that the border performance aesthetic, in following the tradition of Latin American popular
theatre, encourages the most economic methods in which to articulate the cultural message.
There is no gratuitous use of technology or costume in border performance and this does not
mesh with the high-end performance innovators of the Anglo-driven art world. Another reason
why it perhaps has been excluded from the avant-garde is the fact that performance that gives
ethnocentric commentary is most often critically associated with ritual and folklore. Those critics,
comfortable with the content of Anglo-experimental art, do not know how to read border
performance and thus disregard it as simply a primitive practice of amateurs.
However, with the recent shifts in the demographics of the United States, hegemonic
centers like New York City which have had a long established “sacred canon of universality and
excellence” in the art world (Gómez-Peña 1993: 51) is beginning to recognize the relevance of
ethnic work. Seemingly, the aesthetic canon has shifted and consequently so has the validating
criteria of what is recognized as American performance art.
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Having discussed the idea that border performance is a genre that is perhaps indefinable,
I want to expand upon the qualities that a variety of border artists and their work have in
common. As mentioned above, this is theatre/performance that draws on a broad repertoire
including original work and adaptations of both English and Spanish language plays from either
the United States or native Latin American countries. The artists are shaped by living in two
cultures at once, and this cross-cultural aesthetic underlies many new works developed by the
border performer. However, there are additional traits that help in shaping this practice into a
definable genre.
The Solo Performance
Much of the border performance being created today is by those who opt to work alone.
In part, it is out of economic necessity as theatre companies and other artistic groups are
becoming rather expensive to maintain. Artists in the United States and many other places
elsewhere around the world are faced with the practicalities of having to support themselves
financially. This means having to maintain employment outside their work as an artist, so time is
a luxury many US Latino border performance artists cannot afford. Therefore, one-person or
small group shows have become attractive alternatives. These enable artists to create, write and
rehearse in the comfortable confines of home, creating pieces consisting of very little scenery
and/or capable of being set up and struck with ease, thus able to travel easily. Solo performance
today is pervading the US Latino communities of the urban centers and there has been an
increase in the quantity of venues that specifically cater to the solo performer. Ironically though,
the quality of such performances has increased as well, leading to solo border performance artists
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often being recognized as on a par with theatre companies and consequently having to compete
against these companies when it comes to obtaining what little public funding is offered.
The Practice of Decolonization
The motivation for creating border performance is the desire to explore social and
political issues that stem from cultural and racial marginalization and to clarify the
bicultural/bilingual perspective (Martinez 2002: 20). For the many marginalized communities in
the country, the colonial legacy of the United States is still felt as they struggle for equity and
democracy. Border performance gives a voice to the formerly colonized, providing a nurturing
and decolonizing effect on its community. Aesthetics for decolonization could include original
Latino plays or performance pieces that reflect an awareness of oppression. Because border
performance mainly concerns itself with the Latino presence in the US, one that is a direct result
of US colonialism through subjugation and military conquest, the impressions of reality it brings
to the stage require an authenticity of experience. The border performance aesthetic is one that
has been shaped in part by “a desire for justice in the face of oppression” (Martinez 2002: 28).
While this is not the genre’s only theme, it is clearly a concern for Latinos in the US and a source
for establishing a connection between performer and community.
Another feature is the exploring of the issue of the migrant Latino identity. It has always
been held up for study in order to determine its place within the larger American identity. The
personal and cultural problems or struggles associated with being a Latino in US society have
been a consistent theme and can be seen in the characters often portrayed in Latino border
performance. They are well-rounded mutations, often larger-than-life depictions of the hybrid
Latino migrant that symbolize a resistance to mainstream social norms, never affirming the status
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quo. Depicting these characters requires a repertoire of physical movement/gestures and a
monolingual, bilingual or “broken” language. This repertoire then consists of the tools necessary
for creating the archetype Latino/a characters. Portraying the archetypal characters is a tradition
of Latin American popular theatre that has migrated to the United States along with the first
traces of US Latino theatre. A perfect example of an archetypal character in Chicano theatre is
El Pachuco from Zoot Suit, the quintessential Mexican-American gangster of the 1940s, an
iconographic character of US Latino heritage and one who serves as a sort of Greek chorus to the
action in the play.
The border performer incorporates irony in the development of his/her characters when
dealing with such topics as racism and cultural insensitivity. However, this does not mean that
the work is directly about racism but that race and ethnicity are made integral to the character’s
universe. This could be considered a political act, portraying a subject matter considered
unpopular or inaccessible by a dominant culture, but these characters are considered essential
representations of the Latino community and are needed to bring a new perspective and
dimension to previously covered subject matter.
An example of Latino border performance I want to illuminate is not the solo work of
Guillermo Gomez-Peña but his collaboration with Coco Fusco in a piece called The Couple in
the Cage: A Guantinaui Odyssey. This well-known performance, although not officially referred
to as border performance, does indeed consist of all the attributes of this genre. It explores the
relationship between the colonizer and colonized as they came into contact at an historical border
- Christopher Columbus and his meeting and subsequent kidnapping of Arawak Indians to take
back to Europe - and as they come into contact at the border within the actual performance space,
with a cage as a border between the so-called primitive and the First World. The performance
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also acts as a commentary on the subsequent anthropological research which tends to “exoticize”
the cultural other, “taking [it] out of context and isolating it, reducing the live performance of
cultural practice into a dead object behind glass” (Taylor 1998: 164). It is the popular practice of
museums, of National Geographic and of societies and cultures in First and Third World
societies alike and is mirrored in the notorious image of Abel Gúzman, the marginal cultural
leader of the ruthless Peruvian terrorist organization El Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path).
Gúzman was finally caught and caged and placed in a public cell for all to see, especially the
journalists who captured the defiant, fist-shaking leader of this lost socialist outpost in the
mountains above Lima.
Fusco and Gomez-Peña, in a “sardonic response” (Taylor 1998: 167) to the
quincentennial celebration of the New World, wanted to put the audience in the role of a
privileged spectator once again viewing “exotic natives,” to parallel the fact that in this
contemporary world most if not all native peoples have been “uprooted, forced to migrate, or are
pushed onto reservations of some sort or another” (Taylor 1998: 167).
Fusco describes their “Cage Performance”:
Our plan was to live in a golden cage for three days, presenting ourselves as undiscovered
Amerindians from an island in the Gulf of Mexico that had somehow been overlooked by
Europeans for five centuries. We called our homeland Guatinau, and ourselves
Guatinauis. We performed our ‘traditional tasks’, which ranged from sewing voodoo
dolls and lifting weights to watching television and working on a laptop computer. A
donation box in front of the cage indicated that, for a small fee [one dollar], I would
dance (rap music). Guillermo would tell authentic Amerindian stories (in a nonsensical
language) and we would pose for polaroids with visitors. Two ‘zoo guards’ would be on
hand to speak to visitors (since we could not understand them), take us to the bathroom
on leashes, and feed us sandwiches and fruit. At the Whitney Museum in New York we
added sex to our spectacle, offering a peek at authentic Guatinaui male genitals for $5. A
chronology with highlights from history of exhibiting non-Western people was on one
didactic panel and a simulated Encyclopedia Britannica entry with a fake map of the Gulf
of Mexico showing our island was on another. (qtd. in Taylor 1998: 163).
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This highly controversial performance traveled around the world challenging audiences to
reconsider their perceptions of colonialism and the idea of how history and culture are packaged,
sold and consumed within hegemonic structures. “The point of the performance was to highlight,
rather than normalize, the theatricality of colonialism”(Taylor 1998: 167).
The two Amerindian characters were fetishized representations of the native thrust into a
transcultural world. Fusco, her face painted, wore only a grass skirt, bikini top, wig, sunglasses
and tennis shoes. Gomez-Peña wore a traditional Mexican headdress, sunglasses and black boots
and carried a briefcase. With Fusco’s exposed torso and Gomez-Peña’s bared chest, they both
displayed ample skin emphasizing the enticing, exotic nature of the subaltern “creature.”
However, according to Taylor, there was something “proud, rebellious, humorous and
contemptuous in the way Fusco and Gómez-Peña approached their audiences” (1998: 165).
Fusco admits that the significance of the “Cage Performance” was the audience’s role
within it, the “live encounter”:
For me it was very important that we were doing a site-specific performance outside of
the context of a theatre. There was something about being unannounced, not being
presented as artists. Just being out there. It enabled us to enter into direct interaction with
audiences about very sensitive issues. You can’t do this in conventional settings or
conventional media. People are very guarded and very defensive about their feelings
about racism (…) no one’s going to show it to you unless you catch them off guard. (qtd.
in Birringer 2000: 76)
Consequently, there were mixed reactions to the piece. Many thought the performance was real,
that Fusco and Gómez-Peña were actually undiscovered natives of a lost world; others were in
on the joke, but did not necessarily enjoy the fact that the joke was on them as they carried out
the role of voyeuristic colonial oppressor. It sets up the “us” and “them” paradigm between
performer and audience that is representative of the much larger social model of colonialism, and
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this makes audiences who otherwise deem themselves progressive uncomfortable. In the
tradition of Latino border performance, it is creating a community of resistance.
Perhaps in the beginning translocal border performance was located on the literal
Mexican/American border, as seen in the earlier work of Gomez-Peña and the Border Arts
Workshop. But it can now be considered a practice along emerging borders well inside the
perimeter of the United States, where decolonized migrants with hybrid identities are living what
Homi Bhabha call “border lives” with a “double consciousness”(1994: 1), contributing to a
“borderization of the North American hemisphere” (Birringer 2000: 69). The responsibility for
the artist then is to “construct ‘alternative realities’ through cross-collaboration and international
dialogue” (Birringer 2000: 69).
Border performance is the new priority in culture and performance theory in the United
States. Through their work, artists in this field enable the transnational / transcultural Latino for
whom transgressing the literal border is a regular occurrence to acquire a sense of self.
Therefore, this type of performance has the potential, perhaps more than any of its predecessors,
to address the asymmetries in the cultural relationship between the United States and its Latino
other as well as to challenge the concept of a national American theatre.
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Part 2:
Transnational Dominican Performance
in
New York
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“My old man died in a fine big house/My ma died in a shack./ I wonder where I’m gonna die,/
Being neither white nor black” (Hughes 1974: 158).
“What the map cuts up, the story cuts across” (Certeau 1984: 129).
Chapter 4
The Dominican Republic:
Confronting Americanization
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Diasporic communities do not form overnight, but there is a point in their existence when
they seemingly reach their tipping point and suddenly spill out of the margins of society and are
recognized by a host country’s mainstream population. Most often this recognition comes in the
form of economic, political and social crisis. For Mexican-Americans, it was perhaps the Sleepy
Lagoon Murder Trial in California of 1942; for Cubans, it was the Mariel boatlift crisis of 1980
and the more recent case of Elían Gonzalez in 200026. For Dominicans living in New York it was
the mysterious death of José Kiko García. It is still a sensitive topic for Dominicans, evidenced
by the fact that almost all books that address the New York Dominican diaspora make reference
to it in some form or fashion27. García was a Dominican migrant who, in the summer of 1992,
died while in police custody in the lobby of his apartment building in the Dominican community
of Washington Heights. Rumors of police brutality quickly spread and Dominicans from all over
the area took to the streets in protest, demanding answers to the “unsolved mystery” of José
“Kiko” García. For three days along Broadway and St. Nicolas Avenue in the northern part of
Manhattan, there were various displays of civil disobedience. Television and the print media
captured images of angry Dominican rioters setting ablaze car tires and trash bins, confronting
and defying law enforcement. Any demonstration is ominous, but this one directly followed the
riots in Los Angeles stemming from Rodney King’s police brutality case, and so the García riots
and New York’s Dominican community had the nation’s full attention (Torres-Saillant and
Hernandez 1998: 9).
In response, New York’s police commissioner, many elected officials and the mayor
attempted to placate the Dominican community by consoling the family of the young man who
had lost his life. They promised that the city would hear the community’s complaints. They
urged area residents to trust that justice would be done in the case of verifiable wrongdoing on
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the part of the police officer in question. The riots ended after three days but the verdict in the
court case was of little satisfaction. It was concluded that the officer shot García in self defense
as he wrestled this would-be drug- peddler to the ground, and thus he was cleared of all wrongdoing. While the city braced itself for another round of riots as a result, Dominican-New Yorkers
were surprisingly quiet. Perhaps there was no further need to protest as the Dominican
community had accomplished what it set out to do, making its presence felt (Torres-Saillant and
Hernandez 1998: 9).
Unfortunately, to mainstream America watching the events transpire on television,
Dominicans became the scapegoat for the drug trade that was currently running rampant in the
US. The García riots led to the national debate on immigration being rekindled by nationalists,
who considered Dominicans as yet another fast-growing minority population flooding the
country, “disrupting our institutions (…) with foreign languages, pagan religions and oddly
spiced foods” (Miles 1992: 42).
However, Dominicans are not just any other US Latino minority. They have gained a
reputation for being principally a transnational community, legally and regularly moving back
and forth between their two homes, one in each country. It took another tragic event to bring this
fact to light, American Airlines flight 587. On November 12, 2001, only a couple of months
after 9/11, an airbus flight departing from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport bound for Santo
Domingo crashed, landing in a residential area in Queens. There were no survivors. President
George W. Bush recognized it as another event that has led New Yorkers to “suffer mightily”
(2001). However, a startling fact about this horrific event is that out of the 246 passengers that
died, 150 were Dominican citizens. They were traveling that day on what Dominicans commonly
refer to as the guagua aérea, the daily flight that shuttles Dominicans back and forth between
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Santo Domingo and New York. Its nickname is in reference to the local Dominican mode of
surface street transportation and is a telling symbol of the transnational space in which this
particular US Latino community lives.
Both these events no doubt sparked the realization that Dominicans have a significant
presence in New York; however, what is often still disregarded is the fact that this presence
stems from a complex relationship between the United States and the Dominican Republic, a
relationship that ironically begins with the invading presence of the former into the political,
economic and social systems of the latter. Therefore, in discussing Dominican migration and the
contemporary Dominican migrant theatre makers that emphasize various cultural
interconnections in their performance work, it is necessary to gain the proper perspective. This
entails first discussing America’s political, economic and social influences on the Dominican
Republic and the transnational links they have created.
The Forming of a Caribbean Nation: Tyranny Tempered by Assassination
For good or bad, the United States played a significant part in the modern formation of
the Dominican Republic, whose history is described by G. Pope Atkins and Larman Wilson as
mired in “chaos, dictatorships and foreign domination” (1998: 6). However, once it had become
an “independent” republic the country continued to experience dictatorships and foreign
occupation through most of the twentieth century. But foreign domination in this last century has
meant American domination, as the US has felt the continuous need to provide political and
economic stability in the wake of corrupt leadership. To the US, their intervention has been an
attempt to avoid the Dominican Republic becoming another poverty-stricken Haiti or worse yet
another communist Cuba. The Dominican Republic did not want this for themselves either so
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they begrudgingly tolerated the American presence. What Dominicans resented most about these
American interventions, however, has been the arrogant paternal approach the US has taken
towards what it deems a “banana republic.” According to Atkins and Wilson, there has been very
little effort to understand the diverse cultural history of the country and island, not to mention the
culture of the Caribbean in general (1998: 7).
To shed light on this culture, it is important to realize that historically those who would
become Dominicans are not simply all Spaniards that arrived in 1492. The first people to inhabit
the land were a Neolithic population of fishermen, hunters and gatherers who arrived via canoe
sometime between 5,000 BC and 4,000 BC - 5,500 to 6,500 in total. These earliest “Indians,” as
Columbus would later call them, are known to archaeologists and historians as the Guanahatabey
(or Ciboney) people. They most likely migrated to the island from the Yucatán Peninsula via
Caribbean islands that are now submerged, but that used to lie between the eastern tip of Central
America and Jamaica. Several other waves of Indian peoples migrated up the Antillean chain
over the next four millennia, mostly emanating from the Orinoco River Valley region of northern
South America. They are known as the Pre-Igneris and Igneris
Christopher Columbus anchored in 1492 along the shores of the island that the Taínos
called Quisqueya—it was Columbus who dubbed it La Española (Little Spain), or Hispañola as
it is known today. Columbus found the Taínos a highly developed people living in an
interconnected polity of cacicazgos (tribes), with at least five supreme caciques (chiefs).
Behecchio, the most powerful of those five supreme caciques, appears to have been in the
process of consolidating the cacicazgos into one unified state (“A Country Study: The
Dominican Republic”). It is speculated that had Columbus not interrupted the Taínos’
development so abruptly at the close of the 15th century, they eventually would have developed a
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political state, society and culture as advanced as the Aztec and Incan civilizations and Central
and South America. Just how many Taínos were on Hispaniola in 1492 we will probably never
know. Demographers are still arguing numbers that vary from as few as 200,000 to as many as
two million (“A Country Study: The Dominican Republic”). Tragically, somewhere between 8090 percent of the population of Taínos who inhabited Quisqueya when the Spaniards arrived
were dead within a few generations of Columbus’s landing. Although many died in battles and
from slave labor, most died from disease as they were not immune to the many viruses and
bacteria to which the Europeans and the African slaves they imported exposed them. While
many historians such as Bartolomé de las Casas document that Taínos were erased from history
as a result of Columbus, others claim that between ten to twenty percent actually survived to
mingle their genes and their cultural traditions with those of the African and European colonials.
Spanish Colonists arrived in steady streams from 1493, first settling on the northern side of the
island and then subsequently establishing a capital in 1496 on the southern coast at the mouth of
the Ozama River, the city of Santo Domingo. It was the first permanent settlement in the New
World and the mark of the beginning of the Spanish-American Empire.
The Spanish-American Empire
This Spanish colony grew quickly, serving as a center for mining and farming in order to
send back to Spain any silver and gold they could find and provide sustenance for Spanish
explorers delving deeper into the South American continent in search of further riches. As such
the colony became a symbol of immeasurable opportunity and it grew rapidly. What followed on
the island were cotton and sugar plantations, a web of roads that crossed the island and an
additional thirteen towns. By 1514 the colonial population stood at about sixty thousand people
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and to this day sugar is still the largest export for the Dominican Republic (Atkins and Wilson
1998: 7).
The fact that Hispañola largely served as a way-station for explorers venturing into South
America would eventually lead to the colony’s demise. The conquistadores (Spanish conquerors),
having realized that much gold was to be had through overtaking the Incas and the Aztecs on the
mainland, lost interest in the island colony and it soon fell into decay becoming a “neglected,
poverty-ridden isolated backwater of the great Spanish-American empire” (Atkins and Wilson
1998: 7).
Nonetheless, Spain developed long-standing colonial institutions during its three-century
rule in Santo Domingo, such as a political system based on religious authoritarianism, a slave
economy and rigid hierarchical society. As a result of the mountainous interior that created
natural boundaries between towns, regionalism emerged, making it a challenge for the colonial
government in Santo Domingo to exercise national control. Sugar and cotton plantations soon
became political autonomies in their own right, especially those in the town of Santiago de Los
Caballeros within the Cibao valley. Considered the urban core and economic center of the island,
the region known as the Cibao was an important economic and political factor in the colony’s
development, as was African slavery. With the native Taíno Indians virtually eliminated within a
half century of the Spanish arrival, slaves from Africa were imported as laborers in the mines
and fields and quickly became the major portion of the population by the mid-1500s (Moya Pons
1995: 33-37).
The demographics of the Caribbean region were quickly changing under Spain’s control,
which was under constant threat from pirates and other invading countries such as England, the
Netherlands and France. Spain fended off all until French buccaneers were able to establish a
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west-coast colony in 1630. With an interest now in “discovering” mainland Latin America, Spain
eventually ceded the western third of the island to France in the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697, an
agreement also used to establish national divisions between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
However, the treaty did not precisely delineate the border between Spanish and French
Hispañola and this has led to ongoing disputes concerning land rights between the two countries
that still exist today. In the early history of the two nations, Haiti thrived with its successful
agricultural economy and the Dominican Republic floundered upon Spain’s pulling out and
moving south. However, France soon pulled out of Haiti in the wake of a massive African slave
uprising, leading to the western third of the island becoming a sovereign nation of free slaves in
1804. Consequently, Haiti instantly became a haven for diasporic Africans everywhere even
attracting a significant number of both escaped and free slaves from the United States. Hence,
Haiti grew increasingly stronger and would eventually attempt to take control of the
entire island.
In 1822 the Haitian army, commanded by General Toussaint L'Ouverture,
invaded and occupied Santo Domingo. The Haitians seized all governmental posts, abolished
slavery, and redefined the laws and court systems, including land-holding laws. Understandably,
the Haitian invasion was met with relatively little resistance as there were not sufficient
resources to stage an opposition (“A Country Study: The Dominican Republic”). Slaves in the
eastern part of the island welcomed the Haitian invasion as it meant their freedom, while most
whites fled to neighboring countries such as Puerto Rico, Cuba and the United States. Those that
remained, however, complied with Haitian rule, while secretly preparing for a coup d’ état.
There were many attempts at an overthrow, but it was the one staged in 1844 by the secret
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society La Trinitaria (The Trinity) organized by a young white Spaniard named Juan Pablo
Duarte that finally proved successful.
Consequently, having secured the nation’s freedom, Duarte is recognized as the
Dominican Republic’s founding father. However, within this new found country, there was
instant conflict on how best to govern it. Political factions grew and instantly armed themselves
in preparation for civil war. The conservative element in the country, more concerned with
serving themselves, invariably outsmarted the liberal patriots, ironically leading Duarte to flee
into exile to Cuba from the republic he founded.
Right from the country’s inception, however, its leaders turned to the United States for
guidance, hoping to incorporate “American values, institutions, consumer products, and popular
culture” (Torres-Saillant and Hernandez 1998: 10). Consider as evidence the Dominican
Republic document of liberation from Haiti entitled the “Manifesto of the Residents of the
Eastern Part of the Island Formerly Known as Española of Santo Domingo on the Causes of their
Separation from the Haitian Republic” dated January 16, 1844:
A decent attention and the respect owed to the opinion of all men and civilized
nations
demand that, when a people that has been united to another, should wish to reassume
their rights, to claim them back, and dissolve their political bands, they ought to declare,
with frankness and in good faith, the causes that move them to separation (Bobadilla, et
al. 1992: 219; Torres-Saillant and Hernandez 1998: 14)
The wording is strikingly similar to Thomas Jefferson’s American Declaration of Independence
from Britain in which he states:
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another and to assume, among the
powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which laws of nature and of nature’s
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God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation. (Torres-Saillant and Hernandez
1998: 14)
The Dominican document is laced with language and ideas borrowed from the American
experience. It is not surprising, therefore, that the country’s first chief of state, General Pedro
Santana, should yearn for recognition from the US. Such recognition would enhance the
country’s credibility commercially and diplomatically at the international level, without which
the newly born Caribbean republic would have little chance of surviving in the world economic
system.
The United States at the time had its own reasons for recognizing the young nation.
Having witnessed Haiti’s quick rise to becoming a free nation of ex-slaves, US President John
Tyler wanted to be in a position to keep this from happening again and in recognizing the
Dominican Republic as a sovereign country, in his mind he would be “preventing the further
spread of negro influence in the West Indies” (Welles 1966: 76). However, Tyler ran up against
opposition in his own government. Senators from the southern United States would not support
in any form or fashion the recognition of a country “based upon negro or mulatto supremacy”
(Tansill 1938: 181). Consequently, the US publicly distanced itself from the young Caribbean
country, but privately continued to carry on relations.
The American Presence
The Dominican Republic, with its rich, fertile lands, has always been a tempting
investment for individual Americans and the United States Government alike. Powerful new
agro-industrial capitalists of the twentieth century quickly settled in the country wanting to take
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advantage of the tobacco, cacao, coffee and sugar industries that had the potential of producing
large sums of capital. With American investment came urban development, the laying of
railroads and highways across the country, as well as new waves of immigration from the
surrounding region, including the Cocolos from the West Indies who arrived at the turn of the
nineteenth century in search of economic promise by way of employment on American-owned
sugar plantations.
American investment, however, could not alone solve the Dominican Republic’s
economic crisis. By 1900, the country officially owed foreign governments more than 34 million
dollars, while governmental income was only two million dollars annually (“A Country Study:
The Dominican Republic”). It was President Carlos F. Morales Languasco who allowed the U.S.
“to help” with the collection of customs taxes and negotiation of the country's external debts in
exchange for economic and political support. Therefore, President Theodore Roosevelt drew up a
policy that would be later termed
…the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that European powers would
not be allowed to collect by force debts owed them by Latin American nations. Besides
Germany’s, Roosevelt did not really fear European intentions. His main concern was the
‘corrupt or irresponsible’ governments that led to an uncomfortable instability just south
of US borders. Under this extension of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States formed in
essence an international police force to secure law and order in Latin America. (“A
Country Study: The Dominican Republic”)
The agreement was not popular with Dominicans nor with the foreign lenders and many in the
Dominican Republic feared that any one of the foreign lenders might attempt to recoup their
money by force.
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According to the mandates of the Monroe Doctrine, to prevent any European power from
seizing control in the Americas at any cost, the US set up a “protectorate” in the Dominican
Republic in 1905. However, this did not prevent instability within the country. A subsequent
Dominican President by the name of Ramón Cáceres, who had cooperated with the U.S., was
assassinated in 1911. The Dominican Congress appointed Eladio Victoria to the presidency in
February of 1912, but it did not prevent civil war. In addition to this, Haiti took advantage of the
situation and encroached upon recognized Dominican territory. The U.S. sent in a “pacification
commission” to try to resolve all the problems. More than 750 U.S. Marines accompanied the
commission, but petty skirmishes continued until July 1914, when the U.S. government stepped
in to control the fighting, provisionally appointing Ramón Báez to the presidency on August 27,
1914. Finally, democratic elections were held in October of that year. Juan Isidro Jimenez had
won, but it was a short-lived victory as he refused to capitulate to all the terms demanded by the
U.S. government. Impeachment was threatened and the delicate political situation was
unbalanced yet again.
On May 16, 1916, U.S. Marines moved in to occupy the capital of Santo Domingo and
eventually the rest of the country over the course of the next three months. The first U.S.
Occupation would last until 1924. During that eight year period, Dominican affairs were directed
by Captain Harry S. Knapp, then by General B.H. Fuller, and finally by Rear Admiral Thomas
Snowden. Among the many changes implemented during this time were highway construction,
improved mail service, expansion of an American style public school system, institution of a
public health and sanitation division and changes to the judicial and penal systems. It was the
most evident process of Americanization of the Dominican Republic to date, leading one
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informant of mine during the course of my research on the subject to articulate the effects of
America’s first occupation thus: “Before the Americans came, this country was the wild west.”
The U.S. Occupation was slowly phased out under the Hughes-Peynado Plan negotiated
between U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and the Dominican diplomat “Pancho”
Peynado and officially ended on July 12, 1924. Despite significant advances made in the
country’s infrastructure because of the occupation, Dominicans were delighted to see the
Americans go. They greatly resented the loss of their sovereignty to foreigners, few of whom
spoke Spanish or displayed much real concern for the welfare of the republic. However, before
leaving, the United States government established the U.S.-Marine-trained Dominican National
Guard, whose name was changed to the Dominican National Police in 1921 and then to the
National Army in 1928. To Dominicans this was both a blessing and a curse as it provided
security against potential foreign invaders, but also produced the most tyrannical dictator in
Dominican history, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina.
The US and Trujillo: The Enabling of a Caribbean Dictator
Upon the Americans’ departure, Horacio Vásquez was president. While Dominicans saw
him as nothing more than a puppet of the American government, maintaining US instilled
policies, he remained in office six years until 1930. His leadership was relatively peaceful, but
the same could not be said of his vice president José Dolores Alfonseca who had dangerous
enemies in the military as a result of his gaining a personal fortune through military concessions.
His most significant adversary was Rafael Trujillo himself, who by this time had risen to the
position of Chief of the Dominican National Army.
There has been much speculation by historians on just how much Trujillo benefited from
the US occupation. He came from very humble beginnings in the small town of San Cristobál
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outside Santo Domingo, but was able to enroll in the American instilled military training
program from which he graduated and went on to rise through the ranks of the newly established
Dominican military. However it was America’s ambitious action of entirely disarming the
country’s general public that benefited Trujillo most for when he staged his coup to overthrow
Vásquez and Alfonseca no one was armed to stop him. The only party in possession of weapons
was the military of which Trujillo was chief. Hence, his take-over of the presidency was
effortless. In the beginning, while Trujillo was traveling the country making speeches claiming
he was an honest leader for the people, he was secretly forcing into exile all his political
opponents. To appease the public, he would show his “honesty” by hosting elections and
claiming that if he were not to win, he would gladly step down as leader. However, as he had
exported all his opposition, he won with ease. He was sworn into office on August 16, 1930.
Trujillo, known simply as El Jefe (The Boss), ruled the country for the next thirty-one
years with an iron fist until his assassination in 1961. During that time he amassed a fortune,
ruling supreme throughout the economic “boom” that followed World War II. He privatized the
country’s economy but there was no industry in the Dominican Republic, no matter how small,
in which he or a member of his family did not own the majority share. Moreover, all of his
economic operations were granted special tax exemptions as well as protection from foreign
competition and internal trade labor demands. He envisioned himself the “Father of the New
Fatherland” and had Santo Domingo renamed Ciudad Trujillo in 1936. If anyone stood in
opposition to his rule, they were quickly arrested, tortured and / or “disappeared” by his private
squad of assassins known as La 42 (also known as the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar or SIMs).
Trujillo’s reign was oppressive, and includes a documented massacre of Haitians and the
infamous assassination of the Mirabal sisters
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28
. However, it was also Trujillo who modernized the country. He implemented many programs
to promote national patriotism and international recognition and worked to unify the Dominican
Republic’s fragmented political system. In modeling the country after the United States, he
restructured the national education, health and sanitation programs, developed a national
symphony orchestra and funded the operating of television and radio stations and the building of
cultural plazas and monuments.
In modernizing the country Trujillo also imported the cultural values of the United States,
but this, however, would lead to his most lasting legacy, his racist tendencies. They have had a
profound impact still seen today on the way Dominicans view their ethnicity both on the island
and in the diaspora. His dictatorial control of the country helped perpetrate the mythical cultural
and racial image of Dominicans as exclusively of Spanish heritage, not only in terms of culture
and Roman Catholic religion but racial purity as well (Logan 1968: 14-16). Throughout his
reign he denied the overwhelming African influence of his country that stemmed from the many
years of intermingling between African slaves and Haitians with Dominicans. Instead he made
great efforts to blanquear (to whiten) his people, creating his policy of La Hispanidad that
included denouncing “Ethiopianization” and miscegenation, literally banning Haitian
immigration into the Dominican Republic while welcoming any and all white Europeans who
were escaping Nazi oppression (Atkins and Wilson 1998: 78). The Dominican government
provided these white Europeans with land and subsidies and eventually the north coast town of
Sosua became the site of a well-known Jewish farming community. Ironically, in the process of
endorsing these campaigns, Trujillo was denying his own “blackness” as a grandparent on both
sides was Haitian. He even recast pictures of his family members and had their racial history
officially and falsely authenticated, issuing a limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) document
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certifying that his mother’s family was “pure French” while his father’s was “pure Spanish.”
Moreover, Trujillo was known to powder his face before public appearances so in order to offer
a “whiter” appearance to his constituents and the outside world (Logan 1968: 14).
There were many speculations as to why Trujillo conducted such racist practices. First,
he thought this would put him in good stead with US civilian and military decision-makers in a
racist US society that at the time had legal racial segregation policies of its own (Atkins and
Wilson 1998: 78). Second, he had experienced at first hand the racial views of the US Marines
during the military occupation and conceived a strategic maneuver; he could deflect growing
Dominican frustration with him by redirecting it towards Haitians, a people with whom many
still felt hostility as a result of the 1822 occupation.
Dominican historian Frank Moya Pons argues contentiously that these racist policies
were necessary in the short term as they restored Dominican confidence in their ability to
advance themselves over the Haitians, resulting in the release of dormant energies causing new
increases in the production of wealth that served as the basis for Dominican economic
development (Moya Pons 1986: 246). However, the long-term effects have been detrimental in
the Dominicans’ search for an ethnic identity. Today, the country’s ethnic composition is
difficult to pinpoint; according to the 2007 edition of The CIA World Fact Book, sixteen percent
is of European descent, eleven percent African descent and seventy-three percent mixed or
mulatto. However, the Dominican government as a result of Trujillo’s La Hispanidad campaign
implements a different system of racial classification, apparent in official documents such as
passports and birth certificates: blanco (white), Indio claro (light Indian), Indio (Indian) and
Indio oscuro (dark Indian). This racial continuum enabled Dominicans to “dissociate themselves
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from their blackness” (Howard 2001: 39). However, for the Dominican migrant living in New
York it has led to an outright identity crisis. It is in the diaspora where many Dominicans are
becoming aware of the fact that they are indeed members of the black race and perhaps have
more in common with African Americans and even Haitian-Americans then they do with AngloAmericans. It has led one informant I interviewed about Dominican migrant identity to realize “I
didn’t know I was black until I got to New York.”
The United States government took a “wait and see” approach to Trujillo. The US
Government liked the fact that he was an avid supporter of capitalism and consistently
denounced Fidel Castro. However, Trujillo’s paranoia and thirst for power finally got the better
of him. After orchestrating the attempted assassination of Venezuelan President Romulo
Betancourt and the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Columbian University professor, Jesús
de Galíndez, two outspoken adversaries of his, the United States had little choice but to
encourage the end of Trujillo’s reign with a CIA implemented plot to assassinate him. It played
out like a scene from a gangster movie; in 1961 Trujillo and his chauffeur were gunned down by
once loyal military men in the dead of night while on their way to Trujillo’s hacienda outside
Santo Domingo. It coincidentally yet symbolically occurred along a stretch of road called George
Washington Boulevard.
The years following Trujillo’s reign were tumultuous to say the least. Political parties
were essentially forming over night. They included the Movimiento Popular Dominicano (MPD),
the Unión Cívica Nacional (UCN), Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), Vanguardia
Revolucionario Dominicana (VRD), and the Movimiento Revolucionario 14 de Junio (MR-1J4).
Together, they worked to expel the Trujillo family and Trujillo supporters from the country in
order to regain control of the government. However, this proved more difficult than originally
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imagined. Joaquín Balaguer, Trujillo’s second-in-command took over the presidency
immediately after Trujillo’s assassination and held the position until the next election when a
charismatic writer and social-democrat Juan Bosch, leader of the PRD returned from exile to run
against him. On December 20, 1962, Bosch won the presidential election.
Under his leadership, the Dominican Republic seemed to be coming into its own. Bosch
lifted cultural barriers and offered a middle ground between Americanization and La
Hispanidad. Black and mulatto Dominican writers and artists began to explore AfricanDominican themes and Dominican-African roots were made respectable, a different (more
positive) view of Haiti was offered, and a new form of social criticism emerged, themes that the
government presented on radio and television (Del Castillo and Murphy 1987: 65). This led to a
sense of national pride within the country, especially in the younger people and in the middle and
lower classes, that began to produce art and literature at unprecedented rates in a movement
referred to as the Nueva Ola (New Wave). This cultural movement was pro-criollo (indigenous
black), anti-Trujillo and anti-Americanization. The members set out to develop strictly
Dominican forms of expression in art: sculpture, literature, dance, music and painting (Wiarda
1969: 119-20). However, the American government was skeptical of Bosch due to his socialist
tendencies and his friendly rapport with Castro (Bosch had spent his years in exile in Cuba). The
last thing the US wanted in the Caribbean just south of their borders was another leftist nation, so
in another plot implemented by the CIA, Bosch was deposed on September 25, 1963.
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Figure 4.1
162
The next two years were characterized by conspiracies and denunciations, revolts and
rebellions, overthrows and takeovers, demonstrations and strikes. In an apparent effort to prevent
all-out civil war and the takeover of the Dominican Republic by communists, the U.S. Marines
landed in force on April 28, 1965. While many Dominicans were opposed to this second
occupation, only fifty years after the first, others were grateful as it stopped the local battles
between political factions taking place in the street. Free elections were scheduled for June 1966
and U.S. troops remained in the country to make sure they ran peacefully and were nonfraudulent. It did not work. The political campaigns between the two leading candidates, Bosch
and Balaguer, were violent and bloody. The U.S. supported Balaguer, who ended up winning the
presidency as a result of Bosch being under house arrest during the entire election process and
unable to campaign effectively.
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All that Bosch had achieved in his two years as president was abandoned. The
Americanization process increased at a feverish pace during this turbulent time. US goods
flooded the country, as did American-made radio, television and motion pictures, all depicting an
American way of life and promoting American cultural values. It is not a coincidence that
migration to the United States increased dramatically during this period. In large part it was to
escape the Balaguer regime that continued to operate unopposed, winning elections in 1970 and
1974. However, Balaguer was popular with the Dominican elite because despite the increased
US influence on the country, he publicly denounced Americanization and encouraged what
historians refer to as the “Dominicanization of the Dominican Republic” (Atkins and Wilson
1998: 4). This meant stressing the Spanish legacy of the nation by continuing Trujillo’s policy of
La Hispanidad and encouraging xenophobia towards the US and Haiti. Unfortunately it also
meant once again denying the la cultura criollo, the African roots of the vast majority of
Dominicans. In essence it was “Trujillism without Trujillo” (Atkins and Wilson 1998: 158).
Despite his heavy-handedness in running the country and the speculation that he, like Trujillo,
supervised death squads and a secret police organization, Balaguer managed to sidestep most of
the bad press until 1978 when his military officers and soldiers were televised live destroying
ballot boxes bearing the votes proving that Antonio Guzmán of the PRD had won the election.
Balaguer resigned in favor of Guzmán three months later.
In the depths of the world-wide oil crisis, the Guzmán’s administration was wracked by
financial mismanagement and accusations of corruption, leading Guzmán to kill himself on July
3, 1982. Meanwhile, Balaguer set his propaganda machine to work at repairing his damaged
reputation, and after a single-term by Salvador Jorge Blanco of the PRD, Balaguer was able to
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come back and win the presidency once again in 1986, defeating his long time rival Juan Bosch.
Through subsequent victories he was able to hold the position for the next ten years.
Despite his efforts to promote “Dominicanization,” the process of Americanization
gained momentum in the eighties during Balaguer’s third presidency, as a result of the
transnational linkages between the United States and the Dominican Republic that began to
develop. These linkages included not only the movement of Dominicans back and forth between
their homeland and the US but also the growing Dominican economic dependency on the US and
the international trafficking of illicit narcotics, with the US a major market and Dominicans both
at home and in the US participating in the illegal industry. The combination of US foreign policy
and the private economic and commercial impact on the Dominican Republic indicates the
accuracy of the description of the US relationship as one of “supersovereignty” and the
Dominican Republic as an “unsovereign state” (Wiarda and Kryzanek 1992: 126).
Dominicans resented this situation. They realized they could not advance without the
help but were indignant about taking it (Moya Pons 1986: 336-337). The country’s political left
was especially critical of Dominican economic dependence, which Juan Bosch viewed as a form
of perpetual US intervention promoting materialist and secular values and designed to keep
Balaguer in office (Atkins and Wilson 1998: 157). The process of Americanization resulted in
something of a Dominican sense of inferiority as they saw their own culture being abandoned
and even denigrated by the large number of lower-and middle-class Dominicans who developed
a preference for US products and lifestyle. This made more difficult the development of an
independent Dominican identity. Instead what thrived in both the homeland and the diaspora was
the beginning of the Dominican-American “dual identity” made readily apparent by the next
president of the Dominican Republic to take office.
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The 1996 election marked a significant turning point in Dominican politics. A young
American educated lawyer by the name of Leonel Fernández, a Dominican who migrated to New
York as a young boy, returned to his homeland to run against Balaguer. He offered a fresh
perspective on Dominican politics and promised to eradicate corruption and introduce an era of
economic prosperity. It was the beginning of a new era symbolized by the Dominican-American
transnational dynamic. Fernández was young, in his late-thirties, and spoke fluent English. He
ran an American-style political campaign that included consultants, constant polling and slick
television advertisements. To prove his youthful energy in comparison to an aging Balaguer,
who by this time was in his nineties and blind, Fernández was shown in these advertisements
playing the American sport of basketball (not the Dominican national sport of baseball) in a
Chicago Bulls basketball uniform, which consisted of the same colors as those of his political
party. As a black man living in New York, he was well aware of his African roots and openly
spoke of how all Dominicans should celebrate their true ethnicity. This was in direct
confrontation to Balaguer’s continuous support of La Hispanidad which was growing archaic in
the age of globalization. Fernández won with relative ease, serving a single term before running
and winning the presidency again in 2004. His second victory was claimed to be largely the
result of the new election policies in the country that allowed Dominicans living in the diaspora
to vote. Consequently, during the 2004 electoral process Fernández found himself doing much of
his campaigning in New York, speaking to the substantial Dominican community there.
Throughout his two presidencies, he has maintained a cooperative and friendly relationship with
the United States, comfortably moving back and forth between the political, economic and social
customs of the two countries.
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Culturally, the many McDonald’s, Blockbuster video stores and Dominoes Pizzerias that
dot the country’s urban landscape are evidence of the process of Americanization currently
taking place in the Dominican Republic. Billboards advertising American made products such as
Pepsi, Gatorade and English-language schools are planted along boulevards and highways named
after American presidents such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.
The capital of Santo Domingo and rural towns alike play host to a number of amateur baseball
leagues filled with young hopefuls striving to be drafted by professional American teams as their
heroes Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez and many others once were.
There is no doubt that the recent process of Americanization of the Dominican Republic
has been the result of globalization. This phenomenon has ensured that the country remains
linked to the United States through such practices as economic reform, military relations,
environmental issues and even narcotics trafficking. But just as significant are the transnational
relations between the two countries. While the Dominican Republic has clearly experienced the
process of Americanization, since the 1970s there has been a process taking place which Atkins
and Wilson call the Dominicanization of the United States (part of the larger Caribbeanization of
the US) (1998: 4). Today, Dominicans constitute the fastest growing diaspora in the United
States and nowhere is their presence felt more than in New York City, home to the largest
population of Dominicans outside the Dominican Republic.
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Chapter 5
Transnational Migration and the Creation of the
Dominican Dual Identity
One of the difficulties in studying racial, ethnic and immigrant groups such as
Dominicans in the United States is the elusiveness of the numbers. Official statistics including
censuses usually undercount populations that contain a significant percentage of undocumented
immigrants. Because of transnationalism, it is this particular category of people that constitute a
significant component of the US Dominican population. Nonetheless, there are semblances of a
record concerning Dominican migration to the US that date back to as early as 1920. However,
once Trujillo gained control of the country, he kept tight control of his borders allowing no one
to emigrate from the country except those who were extremely loyal and did so in order to do his
bidding abroad. In actuality, it was not until the US Intervention of 1965 that Dominican
migration to the US became a marked modern phenomenon.
Migration originally developed ironically at the urging of the US Government and
American military officials based in the Dominican Republic who considered the process an
escape valve. Encouraging leftist dissenters to leave would avoid potential political skirmishes in
the Dominican Republic. Disgruntled Dominicans were encouraged to relocate to the United
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States, where, in theory, they would witness the positive attributes of capitalism and thus realize
the futility of their political beliefs. This was Washington’s passive aggressive and perhaps naïve
method in combating communism in the region. According to Max Castro and John Boswell in
their leading study on Dominican migration, the American ambassador to the Dominican
Republic during the 1965 Intervention, John Bartlos Martin, doubled the size of the consular
office in order to handle the extra load of visas being processed (Castro and Boswell 2002: 4).
But what began in the mid-1960s has only gained momentum since.
According to Figure 5.1, the highest levels of Dominican migration to the United States
have only recently occurred in the 1990s well after the demise of Trujillo and communism in the
west. Although it does not consider the substantial number of the undocumented, the US census
still presents the most current official count on Dominican population in the United States,
putting the number at 1,014,879. This is roughly ten percent of the total Dominican population
and makes Dominican the fourth largest group of Latinos in the US behind Mexicans, Puerto
Ricans and Cubans (US census 2002). As mentioned, Dominicans are the fastest growing Latino
diaspora in the US and most likely by 2007 will have surpassed Cubans to become the third
largest Latino group in the US. While US immigration officials are perhaps hoping these
numbers will eventually diminish, they clearly have not thus far. This chapter addresses a series
of issues raised by this migration boom including why it has continued to increase and what
impact it has had on the host location of New York City and on the Dominican migrant identity.
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Figure 5.1: Population of Dominican Immigrants Admitted to the United States
(in thousands)
300,065
252,035
148,135
93,292
1961-1970
1971-1980
1981-1990
1991-2000
Source: 2000 US Census and INS Statistical Yearbook, 1998
Figure 5.2: Percentage Growth of US Latino Population between 1990-2000
61%
US Latino Total
70%
Mexican
35%
Puerto Rican
Cuban
23%
104%
New Latino Groups
109%
Dominicans
108%
Central American
98%
South American
Source: (Castro and Boswell 2002)
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A Matter of Economics
While many in 1965 sought political asylum in their journey to the United States, in the
subsequent years many more came for better economic opportunities. When Balaguer was
reinstated as president in 1965, he opened the Dominican economy to international forces, a
policy that stayed in effect through his terms in the 1970s (1966-1978). While this policy created
brisk economic growth, it soon became apparent that there were not nearly enough jobs to
employ the ever-increasing labor force. According to Dominican scholars Silvio Torres-Saillant
and Ramona Hernandez, Balaguer’s “ill-advised economic policies” led to a “systematic increase
in unemployment” in the country (1998: 36). This in turn led to a substantial differentiation
between the upper and lower social classes in the country that can still be seen today, symbolized
by affluent condominium complexes and gated communities neighboring shanty towns filled
with out-of-work laborers.
Then things got worse with the 1980s recession that devalued the Dominican peso to
unprecedented levels.
By 1991 the purchasing power of the minimum wage reflected half the value it had in the
1970s. Salary readjustment in the large companies of the modern sector brought these
salaries down to 60% of their value in the 1970s. During the 1980s, members of the
middle-class sectors did not escape the negative effects of the economic changes
occurring in the country. (Torres-Saillant and Hernandez 1998: 35)
Both Dominican lower and middle classes felt the only option out of their financial predicament
was emigration to the United States where one could generate an income in more stable US
dollars.
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Economically, Dominican migrants cannot be portrayed monolithically. They are poor,
unskilled laborers as well as members of the “urban middle-class sectors of Dominican society”
(Ugalde et al 1979: 243-44). Research conducted by Castro and Boswell indicates that while
only one in ten is college educated and less than fifty percent have finished high school,
Dominican migrants still earn an average income of US$27,258. This automatically places them
“within America’s working class” (Portes and Rumbaut 2001: 50-51). While the average income
for US-based Dominicans does not quite measure up to that of Cubans (US$ 40,056) or Puerto
Ricans (US$ 31,851) it does surpass that of Mexicans (US$23,727) and that of Dominicans in
the homeland which is the equivalent to US$2,080 (Castro and Boswell 2002: 8).
Figure 5.3: Average Yearly Income per US Latino Population
45000
40000
35000
30000
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
US Average
Cubans
$40,645
$40,056
Puerto
Ricans
Dominicans
Mexicans
$31,851
$27,258
$23,727
Source: Castro and Boswell 2002
Where migrant Dominicans have made a mark for themselves economically is in
entrepeneurship. The small corner grocery store known as the colmado, a staple of the
Dominican barrio has been exported to New York. In the 1990s it was estimated that
Dominicans owned seventy percent of NYC corner stores, which generated $1.8 billion in annual
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sales (Castro and Boswell 2002: 12). The boom of Dominican “micro-enterprise” by way of
owning these corner shops is a survival strategy “in the absence of well-paying benefits-laden,
desirable jobs” (Torres-Saillant and Hernandez qtd. in Castro and Boswell 2002: 12).
Unfortunately, economists are predicting these financial figures will decline.
Globalization has made the global-city job market increasingly more competitive. Dominicanowned businesses are becoming unable to compete and the working-class occupations such as in
the garment and manufacturing sectors, once performed by Dominicans, are being out-sourced to
countries that can provide even cheaper labor costs. Consequently, since the mid-1990s the USbased Dominican population has faced increases in unemployment which have been difficult to
combat as a result of their being considered “devalued workers owing to their low education”
and their lack of English-language skills (Torres-Saillant and Hernández 1998: 36). As of 2000,
thirty-six percent of migrant Dominicans live below the poverty line and eighteen percent are
unemployed (Hernández and Rivera-Batiz 2003: 4). Perhaps this has been the impetus for
remaining largely a transnational population of migrants. Knowing there is little future in the
United States, they have preserved the lives to which they ultimately will return in the homeland.
Economic Transnationalism
In the last twenty-five years air travel has been made accessible to Dominicans living in
the United States. They are able to travel back and forth for Christmas and Easter holidays,
summer vacations, and for the purchase of real estate, business ventures and retirement.
According to the Dominican Secretary of Tourism, Dominicans living abroad account for onefifth of the total number of international visitors to the country and contributed almost one-third
of the total revenues from tourism in 1985 (Guarnizo 1994: 77). Dominicans, are one of a
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growing number of American transnational populations that have realized they can have it both
ways, earn American dollars, have their children receive an American education and superior
healthcare and then, when ready, return to the Dominican Republic, where they can spend their
savings knowing it will be worth three times as much in the local economy. To facilitate this
process, Dominicans living in the United States will continue to own a home or property in the
Dominican Republic in order to maintain permanent legal residency status, which facilitates the
return process.
An economic process operating in conjunction with transnationalism is the regular
sending of earned dollars to the Dominican Republic in the form of remittances, money that is
sent back to family members who then invest it in the Dominican economy by way of
establishing small businesses, buying real estate or simply spending it recreationally. In 1970 the
remittances to the Dominican Republic totaled 8.5 million dollars, 33.3 million in 1975 and
today the average yearly remittance is 1.9 billion dollars (INS Statistical Yearbook). “The
Dominican Central Bank has estimated that migrants’ remittances today are the country’s second
most important source of foreign exchange, trailing tourism but surpassing the earnings from
sugar and other traditional export commodities” (Guarnizo 1994: 78). With this evidence, it is
hard to deny the fact that the diaspora has become an invaluable component of the Dominican
economy.
However, the large amount of remittances sent from the US bound for the Dominican
Republic has drawn the attention of the United States government. It has consistently been
pursuing ways of restricting this migration driven resource between the two countries (Duany
1994) and thus visa controls and raids by immigration on Dominican businesses have intensified
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in the last ten years. But they began in 1990 when, at the urging of the US government, the two
countries established the Binational Tax Information Exchange Agreement, aimed at
“interdicting migrants’ monetary transfers that evade US fiscal controls” (Duany 1994: 85).
In addition to this, the Dominican government has been working with the US government
in preventing illegal departures by boats or more precisely yolas (rafts) from the Dominican
Republic to Puerto Rico via the shark-infested Mona Passage, a popular surreptitious route to the
US mainland. It is a life-threatening journey and many die en route. Of those that survive the
voyage, a significant number decide to stay in Puerto Rico, but many more risk their lives
further, stowing aboard a cargo ship, forging travel documents or in more extreme cases stowing
away in the wheel wells of airplanes. The increase of illegal entry to the US by Dominicans has
led US authorities in San Juan, Puerto Rico to propose imposing a US$1000 fine on the
Dominican government for the handling of each undocumented person captured. Consequently,
the city of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico hosts the only border patrol post outside the continental US
(Duany 1994: 85). Nonetheless, Dominicans, both legal and illegal, keep arriving in the US
contributing to the size and development of the Dominican diaspora.
The Dominican Diaspora
While Boston and Miami have significant Dominican populations, New York City is
home to 67.9 percent of all Dominicans living in the United States. As a result, the city,
especially northern Manhattan has a Dominican culture and community that produces a wealth of
economic, political and artistic endeavors. However, only recently has this New York diaspora
become a source of pride in the homeland. Originally, those that remained behind in the
Dominican Republic ridiculed transnational Dominicans who settled in the city in their pursuit of
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economic advantages. This was primarily due to the anti-Americanization sentiments that still
either lingered there among those who were unable to make the journey themselves or made the
morally conscious decision not to. The resentment was especially heightened when New YorkDominicans would return with their American cultivated tastes, styles, values and dollars.
The New York-Dominican culture clash is most evident in the younger generations of
migrants. More than their elders, they have come to terms with their ethnicity and consequently
have developed a penchant for a language that is a mixture of Spanish, English and AfricanAmerican slang and gravitated towards American rap culture which celebrates the black identity.
However, as this culture often includes loud music and brash jewelry, clothing and mannerisms,
not to mention the glorification of drug trafficking, it is typically considered an affront to
traditional Dominican culture by those in the homeland. They consider these transnational
migrants gauche victims of American consumerism and refer to them as Dominicanyorks to
emphasize the ill effects of transculturalism. Another derogatory term used to characterize this
younger generation of Dominican migrants is Joe in reference to the idea that by living in the
United States, the youth have lost their Latin identity completely, and are unable to speak
Spanish properly and / or dance meringue. In essence they have become generic Americans.
“His parents are Dominican, but he’s a Joe.”
Moreover, there is not only name-calling that occurs. Cultural critic Luis Guarnizo in his
study on bi-national Dominicans recorded the feelings of an anonymous Dominican national
business and political leader:
Those who emigrate are the cancer of our society for that reason their departure is not
that negative for the country. When they return, they bring the vices of drugs. Their
ostentatious wealth induces others to emigrate too (…) Migrants exercise a very
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damaging influence on workers. Nowadays employees rebel more easily against
employers because they say if fired they can always go to New York. (qtd. in Guarnizo
1994: 81)
However, there are those in the Dominican Republic who admire transnational Dominicans
whose financial success is seen as a contribution to the “economic democratization” of the
country. Consequently, they are willing to forgive any perceived pretentious behavior. Another
anonymous Dominican national Guanizo interviewed for his study explains it thus:
Migrants show off their power and their wealth precisely because most Dominicans don’t
have either of them. Instead of diminishing, discrimination enhances migrants’ selfesteem. The tradicionales [traditional bourgeoisie] criticize their sumptuous consumption
but that consumption generated development, created more businesses. (qtd. in Guarnizo
1994: 81-82)
Regardless of what opinions Dominicans in the homeland might have regarding
Dominicanyorks, the transnational Dominican population continues to grow. This fact has led
Wiarda and Kryzanek to formulate the idea of living in a “dual nation: half here and half there,
feeling that they really don’t belong in either place” (1988: 114). The most important political
effort that symbolizes the concept of the “dual nation” has been the Dominican migrant’s push
for the approval of a unilateral dual citizenship. Under such an arrangement, while residing as
legal citizens in the US they would also maintain their Dominican citizenship, but essentially
keep it inactive until they return permanently. In this sense they would enjoy the right to live and
work in either country and “formalize their current informal access to the two countries’
opportunities” (Guarnizo 1994: 85). Thus no longer can the Dominican Republic and the United
States be considered “separate, isolated national domains, but part and parcel of a single sociocultural, economic, and political field” (Guarnizo 1994: 76).
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Figure 5.4
178
The New York’s Dominican Community: Washington Heights
Since the mid-1960s New York has witnessed a constant surge in its Dominican
population. According to the 2000 census, with the population of New York Dominicans over
700,000, it is considered the fastest-growing new immigrant group in the city. It comprises
roughly ten percent of the total New York City population and thirty-eight percent of New
York’s total Latino population. Since 1990 the Dominican population in New York City grew
by over 200,000. This growth can be attributed to both new arrivals and to an increased birth
rate that typically only follows established settlement. The Dominican population is a relatively
youthful group; those under the age of twenty-one accounted for approximately thirty-six percent
of the population in 2000 (US census 2000). Many in the second generation, the so-called
population of Joes, are becoming increasingly important actors in the shaping of the
community’s perspective on race and politics.
The Dominican population has grown in all the boroughs of New York City, changing
the physical, social and political landscapes of their adopted neighborhoods, but the Manhattan
district of Washington Heights is known as the epicenter of New York’s Dominican community,
home to four out of every five Dominicans living in the city (Duany 1998:161). Named after
General George Washington who lived in the area during the Revolutionary War in 1776,
Washington Heights is located on the northern tip of Manhattan Island, demarcated south to
north by streets 155th and 200th, east to west by the Hudson and East Rivers and by various
districts: School District 6, Community District 12 and City Council Districts 7 and 10 (Aparicio
2004: 35). In 1991 it produced its first Dominican elected official, Councilman Guillermo
Linares.
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But Washington Heights as Dominican enclave did not develop overnight. It began as
early as 1950 when the area had experienced a cultural recession. Originally an upper-middle
class neighborhood for white residents, its real estate values quickly plummeted when the first
Black and Puerto Rican families moved into the area, leading the white families to leave and
property values to depreciate further. In and around 1965, when Balaguer became president of
the Dominican Republic, Dominicans arrived en masse, attracted by the neighborhood’s low
rent, spacious apartments, and transportation facilities. Early on they were just another Latino
population moving into Northern Manhattan, along with Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Ecuadorians,
Salvadorians and Mexicans.
Today though, Washington Heights is predominantly Dominican and although it is still
topographically located between 155th and 200th Street, its everyday cultural and sociopolitical
borders, indicated by Dominican owned businesses and population, have stretched beyond these
boundaries and into the surrounding neighborhoods of Harlem and Hamilton Heights (Aparicio
2004: 35). In a recent New York Daily News article, journalist Leslie Casimir traveled through
the public space Dominicans inhabit in northern Manhattan and described it thus:
On any given summer weekend, Sylvia Perez swears she’s back home, surrounded by the
sights, sounds and tastes of her native Dominican Republic. She can smell the pork
sizzling in cauldrons of oil. She hears the lilting meringue and the nostalgic chatter of
her fellow Dominicans. Perez spends many of her weekend days relaxing in a concrete
lot at [Riverbank State Park]…where a merengue riverside party has been drawing
hundreds of homesick Dominicans for more than a decade. With large stereo speakers
blasting away the area is transformed into a New York version of the popular stretch
known back home in Santo Domingo as El Malecón – the Seawall…The crowd manages
to make the best of the Dominican Republic come to life here – a joyous place far away
from the cramped walkups in Washington Heights. The partygoers are miles from
immigration problems and the financial stress related to supporting families on two
shores. This malecón, the Hudson River serves as the backdrop, standing in for the
Caribbean Sea. Shiny sport utility vehicles and vans – all loaded down with musical
instruments like metal guiras and bottles of the national rum, Brugal – jam the riverside.
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‘This is a small piece of Dominican land’ said Perez’s son, William (30) who was born
and raised in Washington Heights. ‘We have created this paradise’.(qtd. in Aparicio
2004: 35)
Within Washington Heights many aspects of the migrant’s traditional lifestyle and
institutions have been reproduced, from their political parties and trade unions to their hometown
social clubs and religious practices. In the 1980s there were already 125 voluntary associations
catering to New York’s Dominican community, most based in Washington Heights (Duany
1998: 163). A few include the Dominican Roundtable and the Dominican American National
Foundation, which seek to develop an agenda for the community, including the promotion of the
yearly Dominican Week. Non-profit organizations such as the Asociación de Profesionales
Dominicanos and the Center for Dominican Assistance aid in immigration issues and offer
English classes as well as promote the work of a network of Dominican studies scholars by way
of internet websites and university libraries, in particular the Dominican Studies Institute at the
City University of New York.
These many organizations that help offer affirmation to the migrant Dominican have
ironically also provided a voice for migrants in homeland politics as well. While there has
always been support in the diaspora for certain political candidates in Dominican elections by
way of financial contributions, the absentee voting policies in the Dominican Republic have
enabled the New York Diaspora to become a powerful voting contingency that can have
substantial influence on homeland elections. Consequently, almost all Dominican political
parties have a chapter in New York. The politicians with serious aspirations regularly make the
journey to New York to campaign in person. Balaguer, Bosch and Guzmán had all visited
Washington Heights in their time, but it was Leonel Fernández, who actually came from the
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community to become the 1996 and 2004 president of the Dominican Republic, largely as a
result of his New York constituency.
Migrant Dominicans have also taken a more prominent position in local New York
politics as well. For example, upon arriving to New York, Dominicans had very little say on
matters such as education for their children. Until the late 1970s, a well-established Jewish
minority maintained control of the board of education of Washington Heights while Dominicans
accounted for the majority of the student population. One of the first victories for Dominicans
was gaining positions on the school board followed by their entry into the city’s broader political
arena (Guarnizo 1992: 104-5). Dominicans from Washington Heights now have several
representatives in visible positions in the city government, as well as in various other agencies
controlling local community development. They have given Dominican migrants a voice and
consequently the community of Washington Heights the moniker “Quisqueya Heights,” after the
indigenous name for the Island of Hispañola (Duany 1994 :163).
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Figure 5.5
183
“Quisqueya Heights” is an eminently appropriate term for this transnational space, where
“significant features of immigrants’ ‘Dominicaness’ are reproduced in their everyday social
interactions and are imprinted on the urban space” (Guarnizo 1994: 80). They import
newspapers, food, music, fashion, television programs and other Dominican-made products, in
attempts to replicate homeland life in the diaspora. In “Quisqueya Heights” Spanish is the
preferred language and Catholicism is the official religion (Duany 1994: 163).
With the substantial presence of Washington Heights, it is difficult to understand how the
Dominican community progressed seemingly unnoticed in New York until the riots sparked by
the death of José Kiko García and the crash of American Airlines flight 587. Through my
research, I have concluded there are a few possible explanations. First, compare Dominican
migration to that of the migration taking place from Haiti and Cuba, two Caribbean nations that
currently are and have established American diasporas respectively. Haitians and Cubans draw
far more attention than Dominicans because they are often migrating under tragic, life-risking
circumstances. The stories of Haitian boats and Cuban rafts collapsing under the pressure of
over-capacity, leaving half-starved survivors to swim to American shores make the headlines.
Moreover, in the case of Cubans, their journey is automatically linked to politics; each new
arrival means another moral victory over Castro’s communist regime. Meanwhile, in relative
terms, Dominicans are arriving to the United States unscathed and by significantly less dramatic,
more legal means. If they are arriving illegally, they are doing so without getting caught as they
are supported in their illegal journey by a strong and loyal communal network on the receiving
end. Consider the statistics; between the years 1988 and 1998 a total of 401,646 Dominicans are
on record for being admitted to the United States, nearly twice the amount of those from Haiti
(211,657) and Cuba (184,147) (US census).
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A second theory considers the idea that Dominican migrants have been going
unrecognized in recent history because it is difficult to stereotype them. Unlike Cuba, the
Dominican Republic today has a free-market economy, a democratically elected government and
unlike Haiti, the country is not rife with political and economic turmoil. To the contrary, the
Dominican Republic has experienced high rates of economic growth throughout the 1990s.
Finally, unlike Haitians and Cubans, Dominican migrants are largely a transnational
population with the ability to travel between home and host countries and as such they are
regarded as less a permanent presence in the United States and thus draw less concern from
mainstream society. For example, while the majority of Dominicans have been in the US since at
least 1989 (62.5 percent with 37.5 percent entering the US between 1990 and 2000), most are
foreign-born (56.6 percent) and more than 67 percent have not acquired US citizenship (Castro
and Boswell 2002: 22).
This temporary US residency, however, has created a number of challenges for the
Dominican migrant. In maintaining transnational mobility, Dominicans are essentially bypassing assimilation, perpetuating an unbalanced power relation between host country and
diasporic community that leaves the latter feeling as socio-cultural and economic outsiders in the
margins of mainstream society. Moreover, this hesitancy to assimilate often results in a “reactive,
cultural identity and perspective” that confronts the seemingly “…pervasive discrimination [by
the] mainstream power structure”(Guarnizo 1994: 82). To the host society this “reactive identity”
appears antagonistic and to the home country as offensive parody.
Dominicans in New York want to be more Dominican than the Dominicansthemselves
(…) Partly due to their subordinate social position in the city, partly because of their
sheer numbers, their high concentration (…) Dominican immigrants reaffirm and re185
create their origins to a degree rarely seen among other Latin American groups.
(Guarnizo 1994: 80)
The issue of Dominican transnational identity is profound and addressing it is essential as its
complexities pervade the work of most contemporary Dominican theatre makers and
performance artists.
Defining the Dominicanyork Identity
In understanding the Dominican transnational identity, it is important to keep in mind that
the Dominican community of New York is heterogeneous, transcultural terrain. Each individual
Dominican ultimately decides for himself how best to navigate this territory in order to avoid
feeling completely isolated within it. It is also important to understand that identity is realized
through a variety of perspectives. For example, the aforementioned Dominicanyork identity is
one determined not so much by the actual transnational himself, but by those in the homeland
who perceive him as such. Another perspective of the Dominican migrant stems from the
mainstream host society. However, its gaze has shifted somewhat. In the 1980s, it saw
Dominican migrants as largely an undesirable facet to New York’s underbelly. Currently,
however, mainstream society is becoming aware of the increased affluence within it. Despite the
Dominican migrant unemployment figures presented by Hernández and Rivera-Batiz, more and
more Dominicans living in New York are doing so on their own terms. They are wealthy enough
to move out of Washington Heights and onto Park Avenue and into social circles that transcend
the Dominican diaspora. Although these success stories are rare, they garner press coverage
nonetheless and consequently have the power to obliterate any previous negative perceptions of
the collective Dominican migrant identity. For example, a New York Times article referred to
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affluent migrants from the Dominican Republic as the “new Dominicans.” It profiled
businessman Fernando Mateo and his wife who
…travel first-class between their Dominican homeland and their New York abode. Many
a day, he and his wife, Stella, start out in blaring traffic on the Grand Central Parkway
and end up on horseback in the verdant Dominican countryside, cantering down to a river
to feast on rum and goat. (Sontag and Dugger 1998: B, 6)
The article continues to describe the new Dominican migrant as…
A dual citizen of the Dominican Republic and the United States, he wears a custom-made
lapel pin that intertwines the Dominican and American flags. He is fluent in Spanish and
English, in the business handshake and the business hug, in yucca and plantains, bagels
and lox. But there is nothing fractured about his existence. (Sontag and Dugger 1998: B,
6)
What helps the mainstream readily accept the “new Dominicans” is the fact that they have
something of cultural value to offer the host society. For example, Dominican Oscar de la Renta
has become synonymous with American fashion while professional Dominican baseball players
Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez and Alex Rodriguez have served as role models to American
youth.
Being a “new Dominican” also has its political implications. For example, there was an
ulterior motive behind President Bill Clinton’s asking Sammy Sosa to sit beside the First Lady
during the 2000 State of the Union Address. It was not so much to honor a baseball legend as a
tacit strategic acknowledgement of the importance of Dominican voters in New York. For
Dominicans, Sammy Sosa is a superhero and his inclusion on such a personal level appeared as a
sympathetic bow to Dominicans, whose votes would be important to Hillary Rodham Clinton
who was currently campaigning for a New York Senate seat. It is dangerous, however, to paint
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Dominican migrants with such a broad stroke, as either Dominicanyork or “new Dominican.”
Most typically they fall somewhere in-between these two extremes.
The most effective way to understand the Dominican transnational identity is through
proper study of the community. Many scholars have done so, but their results have been less than
conclusive. However, after examining the research, I have determined that the discrepancies lie
in the fact that the Dominican diasporic community of New York is constantly evolving and the
results from research conducted ten years ago are now irrelevant. But what is significant about
these studies is that they indicate that the ways in which migrant Dominicans perceive
themselves are changing. For example, a study conducted by Luis Guarnizo in 1994 determined
that eighty-four percent of Dominicans who lived in Washington Heights identified themselves
as Dominicans, not Americans, not Dominican-Americans nor Dominicanyorks (Guarnizo 1994:
80). Most remained firmly loyal to their “Dominicaness” rather than any North American
identity they may have inadvertently developed. This might also have something to do with the
fact that the vast majority of Dominican immigrants during this time were not actually American
citizens. In reality, only eighteen percent of legally admitted Dominicans to the US in 1977 were
naturalized by 1989 (Sontag 1993: E, 1).
In the last ten years this has changed substantially. The Dominican Republic’s
governmental policy of allowing dual citizenship has enabled Dominicans to see the United
States as a place of long-term residence. Air travel and communication is more convenient to the
working class Dominican migrant who, therefore, feels less fearful of losing his Dominican
identity and more willing to accept an American identity as well. While two out of every three
Dominicans living in New York still want to return to the Dominican Republic, the desire is not
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to do so immediately but only upon approaching retirement so twilight years can be spent in a
more amiable climate. In the meantime they get all they want from both societies by traveling
regularly back and forth between the two. In this capacity, identity has become increasingly
more informed by the process of transnationalism.
Regarding Race
Another way Dominican transnational identity has changed over time is in attitudes to
race. The Dominican ethnic identity has always been informed by complexities and subjectivities
that stem from the historical notions of color that originated in the homeland. However, they
have also consistently run up against the ideological constructions of race established by North
American mainstream society. Jorge Duany explains it thus:
Two different models of racial hegemony are juxtaposed in the process of moving from
the Caribbean to the US. On one hand, Caribbean migrants, - especially those coming
from the Spanish-speaking countries of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico –
tend to use three main racial categories – black, white and mixed – based primarily on
skin color and other physical characteristics such as facial features and hair texture. On
the other hand, the dominant system of racial classification in the US emphasizes a twotiered division between white and non-whites deriving from the rule of hypodescent – the
assignment of the offspring of mixed races to the subordinate group. (1994: 147)
To earlier waves of Dominican migrants, especially those who lived through La Hispanidad, this
meant identifying themselves as white, denying their “blackness” in order not to be associated
with African Americans. In Duany’s 1998 study on New York Dominicans, 80.2 percent
considered themselves white rather than black, almost the mirror opposite of the racial composite
of the Dominican Republic (over eighty percent mulatto or Black) (Duany 1998: 150). To further
distance themselves culturally from African Americans, Dominicans preferred to maintain their
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Spanish language, rejected black hairstyles, and made sure to associate primarily with other
Latinos. Moreover, perhaps out of confusion or as an additional act of self-reinvention upon
arriving to the host country, a substantial number of Dominican migrants also denied their
nationality by registering themselves as “Other Hispanic” instead of “Dominican” on the US
census. According to the last census conducted in 2000, 31.8 percent of the Dominicans were
discovered to have recognized themselves as “Other Hispanic,” more than any other US Latino
nationality: Mexicans 10.5 percent, Puerto Ricans 6.4 percent and Cubans 6.5 percent.
Obviously, this denial of an ethnic identity was the Dominican migrant’s method of combating
intense stigmatization, stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination in the host society of which
there was plenty, a condition Frank Moya Pons has referred to as the “traumatic racial
experience” (1986: 247).
However, in the last ten years as Washington Heights spills over into the substantially
more African American neighborhoods of Harlem and Hamilton Heights, Dominicans are
beginning to come to terms with their own black identity and Washington Heights itself is
claiming that three-fourths of the residents are clearly Black, mulatto or mestizo (Duany 1998:
161). Also, younger generations of Dominican migrants are continuing to now adopt the black
dialect, hip-hop fashion and rap music popular among African American teenagers. Many darkskinned Dominicans are solely using as a main frame of reference an adversarial African
American culture rather than a mainstream white identity. This in turn has led Dominicans in the
diaspora to reach out to another Black Caribbean migrant population, Haitians, forming
relationships with them that would never have existed on the Island of Hispañola.
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The Dominican predicament raises an interesting issue. Is racial identity a question of
self-determination, of birth or of ancestry? The change in how Dominicans see themselves would
support Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s (1994) argument that race is historically flexible,
“not a fixed essence” or “concrete and objective entity.” In actuality it is a “cosmically
constructed meaning subject to change through power relations and social movements” (qtd. in
Duany 1998: 148-149). In this context, the wide significance of the Dominican experience in the
US is twofold. On one hand, the reconstruction of racial identity among Dominican immigrants
confirms that all systems of racial classifications are arbitrary and contingent on varying forms of
cultural representations (Omi and Winant 1994). On the other hand, the racialization of
Dominicans in the US is part of a larger phenomenon affecting Caribbean communities in the
diaspora in general. Dominicans reconfigure their racial identity in order to combat social
oppression as black and colored races are typically seen as culturally inferior by mainstream
Anglo society.
The dominant racial discourse in the US assigns an upper status to white groups of
European origins and lower status to black and brown groups from other regions, including the
Caribbean and Latin America. As a result, the social distance between such groups is much
greater than that between, say, the Irish or Italians and Germans who are all deigned as “white
ethnics.” The racialization of Caribbean immigrants has slowed their structural and cultural
assimilation into North American society. Only with the process of globalization has a more
positive image of the African, African American and Black identities been transmitted to
societies that otherwise do not have access to them. Globalization has also led Dominicans to
accept their own black identity by realigning the racial continuum in the United States. No longer
is skin simply black or white. Scholars and the press in regards to the ever-increasing US Latino
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population have spoken of the new middle “brown” race more frequently (Domínguez 1973;
Rodriguez 2003).
To conclude, Dominican transnational migrants face different often conflicting
definitions of their racial identity in the receiving society of New York. This ideological
discrepancy confirms the absence of any essential characteristics or fixed meanings in racial
discourses and focuses attention on the socially constructed and invented nature of racial
classification systems. Regardless of their imaginary and arbitrary character, cultural conceptions
of racial identity have a practical and material impact when they are applied to concrete groups
and individuals in social interaction. The racialization of Dominicans in New York excludes
them from the hegemonic cultural practices of the mainstream society. This, compounded with
the fact that most are of working class standing, encourages a public perception of them as ethnic
and racial outsiders. This intersection of ethnicity, color and class makes it difficult for the
Dominican diaspora to shed its multiple stigmas.
However, in recent years, the Dominican diaspora has resisted its subordination as a
racialized ‘other’ and attempted to redefine the terms of its incorporation into the host society.
This is partly due to their increased transnational status that gives them the freedom of mobility
and thus part-time escape from a potentially oppressive environment. It also offers them a certain
amount of stability and acceptance within the host society who perhaps recognize the legitimacy
of the American “middle race” concept or a wider pan-Caribbean identity. However, with this
stability and acceptance comes the opportunity for cultural expression. Transnational migration
has transformed the cultural conceptions of racial identity among Dominicans in the US and it is
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the arts, specifically theatre and performance that are serving as a conduit, confronting not only
mainstream perceptions of the community but perceptions Dominicans might have of each other.
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Chapter 6
The Development of Dominican
Theatre in New York
From the intricate historical, economic and socio-political relationships between the
United States and the Dominican Republic come the equally complex forms of transcultural
expression. While homeland music, art and literature have all made their way to the diaspora, it
is Dominican theatre and performance that clearly articulates through practice and content the
transnational identity of the Dominican migrant. This chapter serves to trace the roots of New
York Dominican theatre to highlight the fact that in a relatively short period of time it has grown
from being virtually “non-existent” (Palma) to “something to do on weekends and after work”
(Rielke) to eventually becoming what it is today, a constantly evolving and viable means for an
economically and racially oppressed, transcultural and transnational minority to practice selfaffirmation.
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There is litte existing research on Dominican theatre in New York so consequently I was
required to gather the material for this chapter from conducted interviews with various artists,
patrons and community organizers in the field as well as comb a wide array of play reviews,
local newspaper articles and journal entries archived at the Dominican Studies Institute at the
City University of New York that made even the slightest reference to Dominican and Latino
theatre taking place in the city. However, in doing so, I discovered Manuel Martín’s article for
Ollantay Theater Magazine entitled “The Development of the Hispanic-American Theatre in
New York City from 1960 to the Present” (1997). I make special mention of his concise survey
here because at the time of composing this chapter it was the only piece of obtainable published
material that directly addressed the subject. It thus provided me a profound starting point as I
developed my own assessments on the subject.
The incubation period for New York-Dominican theatre was the 1950s when it developed
within the larger, all-encompassing Latino theatre community dominated by Puerto Ricans. After
the Second World War the mainland borders opened to Puerto Ricans and thousands left the
Caribbean island of Puerto Rico to relocate to New York, specifically East Harlem where they
quickly began to outnumber the Spaniards (Martín 1997: 11). It wasn’t long after this that the
Spanish zarzuela once so popular in this sector of New York was replaced with the Puerto Rican
variety show. This new genre of theatre was most successfully staged in the 1950s by a company
called El Teatro Hispaño located at 126th Street and Fifth Avenue in an area that is the heart of
the Puerto Rican community of Spanish Harlem. They produced theatre that enabled Puerto
Ricans and other Latino nationalities from the subcontinent to laugh at “stock characters based
on familiar types and to sing along to the popular songs of the time” (Martín 1997: 12).
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With the success of El Teatro Hispaño, other variety show companies quickly formed and
although they were mostly organized by Puerto Ricans, being Puerto Rican was not a
prerequisite. These companies welcomed any and all from the Latino community who could
contribute to the genre, and soon after companies such as Grupo Futurismo (Rolando Barrera)
and La Farándula Panamericana (Edwin Janer) were actually founded by Dominicans. However,
lacking significant resources and with its members preoccupied with economic survival, these
companies did not last long and have little to offer by way of archives.
La Carreta and Beyond
Consequently, the main point of reference in discussing Dominican and Latino Theatre of
New York in general is René Marqués’s La Carreta (The Oxcart) (1954). In 1954 this
“extraordinary play came to serve as a link between the immigrants as an audience and the
Hispanic theatre as a professional institution” (Martín 1997: 12). La Carreta, directed by Puerto
Rican Roberto Rodríguez Suárez, had a multi-national Latino cast including Dominicans, and
played to full audiences in the Church of San Sebastián, a five-hundred seat auditorium in East
Harlem, and then at the Units Point Place, a one-thousand seat dance hall in the Bronx. In the
1950s, Spanish-language plays had very short runs of typically one to two performances. So in
order to meet the demand of the audience, it had to be performed in such a large venue as Units
Point Place. There it ran for five performances selling out every night (Figueroa 1977: 22).
The play was successful as it struck a personal chord with and united all Latinos who
now found themselves a struggling migrant population in New York. The play deals with the
saga of a poor peasant family as they migrate from the Puerto Rican countryside to the slums in
San Juan and then finally to the Puerto Rican ghetto of New York City. It brought people to the
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theatre that had never been before and in essence did for East Coast Latino Theatre what Luis
Valdez’s Zoot Suit did for that on the West Coast: it sparked an ethnic theatre movement.
In the 1960s New York Latino theatre flourished. No longer was it simply the varietyshow genre but it became more socially and politically charged theatre inspired by South
American directors such as Augusto Boal and Enrique Buenaventura. Groups like El Nuevo
Círculo Dramático, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, The Greenwich Mews Theatre (later to
become Repertorio Español), INTAR (International Arts Relations, Inc.) and Teatro 69, later to
become New York Theatre of the Americas were just a few of the more successful companies
able to survive on a repertory of Spanish-language plays in their own theatre spaces (Martín
1997: 13). The Latin American popular theatre influence was evident in these companies’
principal objective. Although their styles and tastes varied, they all aimed to do quality “poor
theatre,” a practice cultivated by Jerzy Grotowski that focused on the actor-audience dynamic
and less on sets, costumes, lighting and props. This type of theatre translated well to US Latino
popular theatre practitioners of the time who did not have the economic means to stage largescale spectacles. This particular form of theatre also had become an effective way for a migrant
Latino community to reach out to itself, a community that existed in the margins of society and
that did not make a habit of going to the theatre. For some companies such as Adal this meant
staging pared-down, Spanish translations of well-known American plays; for others, like the
Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, this meant staging works that could be presented in parks,
streets and playgrounds while Duo Theatre staged experimental productions in both English and
Spanish. However, the bane of existence for these numerous companies was a lack of financial
resources. It led each of these three eventually to close its doors.
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However, with the advent of the 1970s, city, state and federal governments began to
realize the relevant connection between culture and community and began offering monies to
Hispanic organizations that offered a “national interchange program for empowerment,
education, and mutual cultural identity [in a] pluralistic American society” (Peña). Consequently,
in order to receive funding and solidify their existence, theatre companies became cultural
centers. For example, there is the Centro Cultural Cubano, El Teatro Ambulado, Nuyorican Poets
Café, Pregones Theatre, Teatro Cuatro, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre Company. They all
receive stipends for their work within the community by way of offering acting classes, hosting
festivals, providing out-reach programs in addition to staging theatrical productions. Most are
still in existence today as a result of this funding. They are located in coffee houses, storefronts,
old firehouses and former factories all over the city from the Lower East Side to East Harlem,
and in the boroughs of the Bronx and Brooklyn.
It was during the 1970s as well that Dominicans began to seriously populate New York
and prominently enter onto the New York Latino theatre scene. Balaguer was president of the
Dominican Republic and elements of the Cultura Criollo movement that he quelled in the
homeland eventually made their way to the diaspora. Migrant Dominican companies formed
producing original works that were distinctly Dominican in form and content. For example,
Dominicans Mateo Gómez and Carlos Espinal founded Latin American Theatre Experiment and
Associates (La Tea) in 1982. They staged works that avoided popular trends, opting instead for a
more experimental and physical approach to theatre, incorporating Lacoquian mime, monologists
and commedia dell’ arte. They were also the first Dominican company to take advantage of city
funding by offering theatre workshops for young actors in the Dominican and the larger Latino
communities as well as offering conferences and concerts (Martín 1997: 23). Another
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Dominican company that originated at this time was Teatro Cuarto founded by Oscar Chicote. It
created collectively and encouraged experimentation in the devising and writing processes.
Through their workshops many more Dominican artists developed who have since gone on to
pursue their own careers as theatre makers, including a case study in this research, Josefina Baez.
Meanwhile, there were a number of other New York companies led by Dominicans such
as the collectives Caney and TADY as well as Escuela Solidario Humana (later to be known as
Centro Cultural Dominicano) that also nurtured the work of further Dominican performance
artists and solo performers. All these companies together contributed to the formation of a New
York Dominican artist network known as the “nueva canción” (new song) that became
established to the point of eventually being recognized in the homeland. This led fledgling fringe
companies in the Dominican Republic to migrate to New York to be a part of it. TEPISCORE,
for example, was a Dominican theatre that relocated to the South Bronx in 1974, when its
members became students at Hostos Community College. This group’s productions would not
only play in New York, but the group also took their work back to the Dominican Republic often
between school terms to impress their contemporaries there. This could be considered the first
step towards a transnational Dominican performance practice, and TEPISCORE as a result had a
powerful impact in the homeland as the company inspired further theatrical experimentation
there among university students who for so long had felt suppressed by a theatre curriculum
endorsed by Balaguer’s government which heavily favored the traditional Dominican canon.
Meanwhile in New York, further Dominican groups developed. Jóvenes Sin Frontera
(Youth without borders) (JSF) was based out of St. Elizabeth Church in Upper Manhattan. This
company incorporated mostly Dominicans but also at given points in time included Cubans,
Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans. JSF was unique in that it was one of the first that aimed
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specifically to address the migrant experiences of the Latin American through theatre. It created
original works that were autobiographical, stemming from the member’s own personal journeys
to New York. It became a company true to its name, Youth without Borders, that largely defined
itself by the concept of journey, creating and performing a work in New York and then taking it
on a journey to the Dominican Republic and all other Dominican communities throughout the
United States, Canada and Puerto Rico to make connections through theatre.
The 1980s offered a new dimension to the Dominican diasporic theatre movement.
Alongside the development of even more Dominican companies in New York, an annual
international theatre festival was being established in the Dominican Republic. Organized
jointly by local theatre company El Teatro Gratay and the fringe theatre venue Casa de Teatro, it
was an opportunity for Dominican theatre companies practicing outside mainstream theatre
circles to display their work. They invited New York Dominican theatre companies to participate
as well, which they did enthusiastically. It was an opportunity for migrant theatre makers to
connect with Dominican artists and audiences in the homeland and while the festival was not
meant to be competitive, it inadvertently was. Homeland Dominicans could not help but hold
some contempt for companies based in the diaspora who they considered patronizing (Minero
1994: 25). But this rivalry between the two groups, each determined to display their ability and
impress, encouraged a superior level of technical expertise and creativity from participating
theatre makers rarely seen at other festivals in the region. It also continued to strengthen the
fringe theatre movement in the home country and bridge the gap that separated it from the New
York Dominican theatre community.
However, the 1990s brought difficult economic times; New York was becoming
increasingly more difficult to afford and Dominicans once again were preoccupied with having
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to survive economically. In addition to this, funding for community arts projects was cut back, so
if there was at one time any trace of a secure and stable environment for New York Latinos to
create theatre, it no longer existed. Only the most successful companies were able to remain in
business and they did so by staging conventional, safe productions that had broad appeal.
Ironically, those artists looking to do more creative, experimental work moved back to the
Dominican Republic where there was now a thriving fringe theatre movement.
New York Dominican theatre artists had to adapt. Many disbanded their own groups and
joined the more established and successful Puerto Rican-and Cuban-directed companies such as
Pregones, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre Company, Repertorio Español, Teatro Rodante and
Teatro Moderno de Puerto Rico. In doing so, they had to forfeit their Dominican voice and
participate in the staging of these conventional productions for both a generic US Latino and
Anglo audience. Hence, if they were actors they often had to be prepared to perform in both
Spanish and English on any given night, but since English proficiency for Dominicans was not at
the level equal to that of Puerto Ricans or Cubans who had been in the US for a longer period of
time, they often were relegated to secondary positions in these companies. They became
wardrobe assistants, dramaturges29, technicians, both metaphorically and literally waiting in the
wings for the opportunity to perform or direct, but the opportunities to do so were rare as the
competition was great. According to New York Dominican theatre artist Manuel Herrera,
Dominicans were at a disadvantage entering into what was considered “professional US Latino
theatre” because they were:
…under-trained and under-experienced. They need to live the theatre, but they don’t.
They don’t have the skills necessary to make it into one of the major theatre companies.
Latino actors who were born in New York and trained in New York have had an
integrated education; they have experience in singing, dancing, choreography and acting.
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Those coming from the Dominican Republic have only been trained to act. (qtd. in de la
Cruz 2004: 233, translation mine)
Consequently, Herrera articulates the state of New York Dominican theatre during the 1990s as
thus: “there [was] not one company in the hands of Dominican actors, in this sense we [were]
dispersed and we [could] hardly talk of creating a theatre, a movement…”(qtd. in de la Cruz
2004: 234, translation mine).
The Precursors: Mañon and Payán
However, after having talked to a number of Dominican theatre artists who have lived
and worked in New York through the nineties, I myself cannot be as pessimistic.
Many attempts were made by Dominican artists during the 1990s to break out of this mode of
existence. It is significant to discuss two in particular as they, through their lives and work,
indicate the efforts made by Dominicans at this time to “apply theatre to [their] community’s
social reality” (qtd. in Acedo 1997: 21, translation mine) despite the economic challenges they
faced.
The first example is Juan Carlos Mañon. Like many of his contemporaries, he was born
and raised in the Dominican Republic where he started acting in 1974 with a company called el
Teatro Experimental Ambulatorio led by his teacher Giovanny Cruz, an artist along with Manuel
Chapuseaux who was largely responsible for the Brechtian popular theatre movement that
developed in the country during the 1970s.
From the Dominican Republic, Mañon went to Moscow to study Stanislavski at the
Conservatory of Piotr Ilich Tchaikovski and then to St. Petersburg to study at the Superior
Institute of Dramatic Art and Cinematography under Georgii Tovstonogov, a disciple of
Stanislavski himself. Upon completing his training he went to New York in order to establish
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himself as a professional actor. Because work was difficult to find outside the large wellestablished Puerto Rican companies, he became a member of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre
Company, working as a director, actor and teacher.
But while working there, he was busy writing and adapting works that were specifically
aimed at the Dominican community, a community he saw at this time in the 1980s and 90s
falling victim to drugs and economic hard times. Therefore, inspired by the earlier Nuyorican
theatre movement, he set out to create theatre that matched the times in which migrant
Dominicans lived, theatre that was “aggressive and modern and appealing to the youth in the
neighborhood” who potentially could “see theatre as a way out of the challenges they face[d]”
(qtd. in Acedo 1997: 21, translation mine). His first effort was an original work entitled Blue
Jean that “addressed the drug problem, violence and the importance of family in Washington
Heights” (qtd. in Acedo 1997: 21, translation mine). It was his second, however, that became
indicative of the transcultural trend that would come to define the contemporary transnational
Dominican theatre movement.
Mañon, with his newly formed Upper Manhattan Theatre Company, staged a version of
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet that blended home and host Dominican cultural traditions to
give it a distinctly Dominicanyork flavor with the direct intention of bringing together the
community of Washington Heights. It is ironic that Mañon’s production of a Shakespearean play
and its cast, solely comprised of Dominican residents of the community, did more to
authentically represent the New York Latino experience than the Broadway production of West
Side Story mentioned in Part 1 ever did. However, Mañon not only set out to entertain through
this work but to promote his community of Washington Heights, a district that “has the tendency
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to be overlooked [but with] the potential to possess […] a theatre tradition”(Mañon qtd. in
Minero 1994: 25).
Mañon’s adaptation, Romeo y Julieta, set the two opposing families, the Montagues and
Capulets in Washington Heights. The Montagues were a New York Dominican family,
Spanglish speaking, well-acquainted with North American customs, their scenes often played out
to the soundtrack of rap. The Capulets, on the other hand, were direct from the Dominican
Republic, traditional Dominicans, Spanish-speaking, dancers of meringue and civilized
Caribeños (Caribbean bourgeois class). Within the production Mañon boldly blends the politics,
vocabulary and languages of both regions arguing that with respect to Shakespeare’s writing
“…theatre makers must take the community into consideration when staging productions” (qtd.
in Minero 1994: 25).
The production had a short run, as there was not much funding to keep it going, but it was
a valid attempt to enliven the youth of the community and introduce them to the magic of theatre;
however, his production did something more. It gave diasporic Dominican theatre of New York
an agenda; Dominican artists began to practice theatre in order to communicate directly with and
articulate the concerns of their community.
This form of “activist art” can be seen in the work of a second Dominican artist worth
mentioning, Ilka Tanya Payán, who practiced despite the economic, political and social
challenges she faced during the 1990s. She has become synonymous with the birth of
contemporary New York Dominican theatre, but only after having experiencing the trials and
tribulations of migration herself. As many Dominican artists in the diaspora believe that “no
investigation of Dominican Theatre in New York is complete without her” (Rielke 2005), a
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discussion of her life as both a migrant and artist is necessary to indicate just how significant a
precursor she has been to the current transnational Dominican theatre movement.
In an interview Dominican-American Roy Arias referred to her as an “inspiration” (Arias
2006), many others I talked to make a point to mention her altruism and with a park named in her
honor in Washington Heights, it is clear that Payán is highly regarded in the New York
Dominican community. However, published material regarding her life and her work is
practically non-existent. What I use as the basis for this section are selected reviews of her work,
interviews with people who knew her and principally a final interview she granted before her
death to a small, locally distributed health magazine POZ Journal: Kiki Mason’s “The Lady Is a
Champ: Actress/Lawyer/Activist, Ilka Tanya Payán Is a Fighter” (1995: 8).
Born in 1943, Payán experienced misfortune early in life, her mother having died
tragically while giving birth to her. Her father, a doctor and loyal supporter of Trujillo, had been
found to have a number of mistresses and seventeen other children and so had little time for her.
Accompanied by two older sisters, Payán went to live with her maternal grandmother, who had a
variety of jobs from baking pastries to selling lottery tickets to help make ends meet. It was her
grandmother who encouraged Payán to perform as a young child in the Dominican Republic,
singing in contests in hopes of winning prize money. Dominicans have a penchant for legends
and in death Payán’s life has become filled with them. For example, legend has it that during one
of these contests a nineteen-year-old boy fell in love and became obsessed with a twelve-yearold Payán. As women were second class citizens in Trujillo’s Dominican Republic, possessions
to be taken, it was agreed upon by her immediate family that it would be best if Payán were to
leave for New York right away with her virtue intact. Washington Heights would be her new
home, living with relatives she hardly knew.
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It was 1955; Washington Heights as a Dominican enclave was just beginning to form. In
an interview she conducted only months before her death in 1996, she described her
neighborhood then as having “only three Dominican families... There were a lot of Jews and
Irish, and some Cubans -- but they weren't even from Cuba. I hated it”(qtd. in Mason 1995: 8).
She explains she learned American culture and the English language through comic books and
although she grew up with relative security in New York surrounded by her mother’s family, she
missed the Dominican Republic, yearned to return, and out of an act of rebellion, did so. As a
young woman, she rushed into marriage with a young Dominican man so her family would allow
her to stay in her homeland. “That's when my daughter Gigi was born. But I couldn't fit into that
life. I found myself not really belonging in either place, so I came back to New York”(qtd. in
Mason 1995: 8).
With a divorce behind her, Payán returned with her daughter to New York during the
height of the 1960s civil rights movement when ethnic groups were fighting for freedom of
expression and celebrating their roots. Payán began to act, first becoming a member of a
Spanish-language theatre company, El Centro Cultural Dominicano (Dominican Cultural Center),
so as to “not lose the language,” and then with La Mama Experimental Theatre Company. At this
time La Mama was still a young, but thriving fringe theatre located in the Puerto Rican
neighborhood of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For Payán, there was no intention of
becoming a professional actor; it was just an opportunity to get involved in the Latino
community. However, with each acting experience, her skills sharpened; and she eventually
found herself beginning to work in Spanish-language television advertisements in order to earn
quick money to pay bills.
The 1970s was a period in which many US Latinos were breaking
into mainstream television and Payán had been cast in an English-language television series
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called Roosevelt and Truman with Michael Keaton and Phillip Michael Thomas. It meant her
having to leave New York for Los Angeles, which she reluctantly did. But upon arriving she
found out the show had been quickly cancelled, leaving her in a foreign city with no prospects
and less money. In the interim she worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and became
interested in law. Through The People's College of Law, an institution founded in the wake of
the Watts riots of Los Angeles that enabled minorities to study law in order to serve their
communities, she became a lawyer. She returned to New York in 1981 with a law degree and
planned to set up a practice specializing in immigration law that would serve the residents of
Washington Heights. However, what she found upon her return was another issue that she felt
needed addressing: HIV/AIDS. It was the 1980s and HIV/AIDS was still a taboo subject, but
Payán began witnessing a number of her friends in the New York Latino theatre community fall
victim to the mysterious illness. As she explains, she became depressed as a result and began
drinking and making “foolish choices” in regards to relationships (Mason 1995: 8). This
eventually led to her getting tested for the virus in 1986 and subsequently realizing she was HIV
positive.
The doctor called me, and he wouldn't tell me the results over the phone, so I knew.
When I went to his office, he told me, ‘You have five years to live; relax and make your
will’. There was no counseling, no intervention, nothing. I don't know how I got home.
(qtd. in Mason 1995: 8)
She decided to keep it a secret in large part because shortly after having been diagnosed,
she was offered the greatest opportunity of her acting career. In 1987 Angelica, Mi Vida
(Angelica, My Life), the first Spanish-language soap opera created for the American market, was
in development. Payán had auditioned for a small “art imitating life” role as an immigration
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lawyer, but the producers of the telenovela cast her instead as the arch villain, Carmen Delia.
“The soap had an incredibly convoluted plot, but everyone remembers Carmen. She was truly
evil. That's why people loved her” (qtd. in Mason 1995: 8). The program made Payán a
household name in Latino communities throughout the United States.
By 1992 and with her diagnosis still a secret she had become so prominent in New York
for her work as both an actress and a lawyer that the Mayor of the city at the time, David
Dinkins, offered her a position on the city’s Commission on Human Rights, on which she served
for the remainder of his term. But the burden of keeping silent regarding her health was taking its
toll. Upon leaving her position on the commission, she held a press conference in which she
publicly declared she was HIV-positive.
When news of her illness made its way to the Dominican Republic, it mortified her
family who lived there. This was not due so much to her being ill, but instead because AIDS in
this homophobic Caribbean nation was seen as the “gay cancer” and those associated with it
even in the most remote sense were tarnished. “My sisters called me, furious. One of my brothers
is a general in the [Dominican] army and they said it would affect his position” (qtd. in Mason
1995: 8). Although she would have preferred to have sought a hospice in the Dominican
Republic, she knew she could not. With her having gone public with the illness, it would place
too much strain on her family.
Ironically though, breaking the news gave her a new-found freedom. She became a
volunteer lawyer for the Gay Men’s Health Clinic (GMHC), starting a program to help
immigrants with HIV which eventually received federal funding through the Ryan White CARE
Act 30. In the process, she inadvertently became the official spokesperson for AIDS in both the
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US Latino communities and the Dominican Republic. Much like Rock Hudson had done in
mainstream America, she put a face to the disease in these locations and in the process changed
people’s perceptions of it, especially in the Dominican Republic where she called the ignorance
regarding HIV/AIDS
…atrocious (…) People have an exaggerated idea of how HIV is transmitted. They don’t
know how AIDS is not transmitted (…) when AIDS patients go home [Dominican
Republic] to die, many families are ashamed to tell the truth and list the cause of death as
something else (…) There’s an epidemic of brain tumors right now. (qtd. in Navarro
1993: n.p.)
She added that it was bad enough that Dominicans in the homeland had these perceptions, but
when they migrated to the US, they brought these prejudices with them.
To combat these perceptions, Payán stepped up her campaign to get her story out there to
the Latino community. El Diario-La Prensa, the Spanish-language daily newspaper of New
York, gave her a four-page cover story titled “A Lesson in Courage.” She has also had ample
television time in both New York and the Dominican Republic delivering AIDS education.
My message is, ‘Look at me’, I’m a relatively healthy woman. Why must I be looked
upon as being a pariah? I won’t accept it. And that’s the way it is when you’re hiding
and when you’re in fear. (qtd. in Navarro 1993: n.p.)
Her outspokenness on the subject did finally have an impact back in the Dominican Republic
where she received a number of awards from a variety of agencies, including the Medal of
Honor, presented to her by President Balaguer.
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In her final interview she explained that it was her illness that became the driving force
behind her last theatrical endeavors. Perhaps looking for more direct communication with her
New York Latino audience, she left television acting to begin staging monologues rich with
social commentary, a genre she was first introduced to through the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
One of her last was a Spanish translation of Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s We All Have the Same
Story (1977), a tale of a woman who, during a hum-drum session of love-making with her
partner, drifts off into a fantasy of men getting pregnant. Typical of Fo and now Payán, it was a
distinctly political commentary:
You have me, or the woman, being made love to by her lover and finding out that she has
not taken her contraceptive and that he refuses to put on a condom. Of course, she gets
pregnant. The woman is forced to make a decision. Should she have a clandestine
abortion or carry the child to term? (qtd. in Routte-Gomez 1993: F, 8)
Payán plays a variety of characters in the piece from the woman giving birth to the midwife and
the child. It was through such monologues like this that she saw the transformative effects of the
theatre on the audience who she would often address directly throughout her performances,
conveying the importance of communication between men and women and between community
members:
Seduction, abortion, manipulation and the physical and mental violence of men against
women are some of the subjects of the play, and how this violence of the father is often
visited upon the daughter and son. (qtd. in Routte-Gomez 1993: F, 8)
We All Have the Same History was representative of Payán’s new found passion to
deliver her message.
210
Some of the language and scenes are graphic…People may be offended but that’s just the
point…What’s more offensive? What happens on stage or what happens in real life?
(qtd. in Routte-Gomez 1993: F, 8)
With this piece she conducted a post-performance forum with audiences in order to discuss the
production and put the violence occurring both on stage and in real life in the proper perspective.
She would mention the fact that in 1992, the year she performed the piece, there were over one
thousand cases of domestic violence in New York and over nine thousand in the Dominican
Republic (qtd. in Routte-Gomez 1993: F, 8).
With it receiving critical success in New York she took Fo and Rame’s piece to both
Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, performing it in fringe theatres in both countries. It
was in her home country of the Dominican Republic where upon its run, she earned a Cassandra
Award, the country’s highest theatre honor. She also had a retrospective of her life run on
Dominican television, but most importantly her theatrical success had helped heal old wounds
between her family and her.
In Payán’s life she was identified as many things: actor, writer, activist, but never
American. It was an identity she herself was reluctant to adopt, despite having lived in New York
most of her life, but “…every time I return to the Dominican Republic they call me Americana”
(qtd. in Mason 1995: 8). This is the typical Dominican migrant experience, trapped in a space
between homes, and while the traveling back and forth among them has become a normal
procedure for New York Dominicans, Payán is evidence that it becomes more of an issue when
approaching death. Where was she to be buried? Where was home in this instance? According
to her obituary in the New York Times she died surrounded by her daughter and her two sisters in
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her New York City apartment, a residence described in a subsequent article as filled with a vivid
collection of pastoral artwork of the Dominican Republic, “paintings of little thatched houses
surrounded by lush greenery and animals in the bright colors of the Caribbean” (Mason 1995: 8).
Seemingly, it was Payán’s attempt to be in both places at once.
Ilka Tanya Payán will be known for many things but to Dominican theatre artists living
and working in New York she will be remembered for proving the viability of the monologue,
the solo performance with one performer portraying an array of characters, breaking the fourth
wall and interacting directly with the audience. This genre has offered the Dominican artist
unprecedented freedom. For example, no longer was effort and expense needed to maintain a
large company and/or theatre space; artists could rehearse and set up work within the confines of
their own homes. Also, as they had no one to answer to but themselves there was freedom within
the writing process. This led to remarkable personal and political stories being created in
unconventional ways that helped define the Dominican identity and document the migrant
experience. Frank Disla, Claudio Mir, Roy Arias, Josefina Baez, Waddys Jaquez and Lenin
Compres are just a few of the artists that have picked up where Payán left off, contributing to
what I consider to be the current transnational Dominican theatre movement.
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Notes
Economic instability from 1982 to 1990 was a result of the “El Niño weather phenomenon in 1982-83. It caused
flooding in some parts of the country and droughts in others. Consequently, the fishing industry, a principal source
of national revenue, was decimated which then led to depressed wages and unemployment among the working class
population of the country and eventually to the emergence of terrorism in the country” (US Department of State).
1
2
Third Theatre and Poor Theatre: Terms developed by Eugenio Barba and Jerzy Grotowski respectively. Third
theatre is a practice defined by its practitioners, artists who work “independent[ly] of the state or city financed
theatre complexes which constitute the ‘official theatre’” (Watson 2002: 171)
In direct contrast to “Rich Theatre” which suffers from “Artistic Kleptomania”, Poor Theatre aims to redefine the
actor-audience paradigm. The audience is often confronted and incorporated into a work of Poor Theatre while
certain stage effects such as lighting, costuming and props are often omitted. Rather the actor is to “transform from
type to type, character to character, silhouette to silhouette…using his own body and craft” (Grotowski, 1968 [1991]:
19-21) .
Stuart Hannabuss addressed this question in detail in his article “Being There: Ethnographic research and
autobiography.” Library Management. 21.2 (2000): 99-107.
3
4
Founded in 1987, Alianza Dominicana is a non-profit organization that serves the Dominican community of New
York City. “Alianza's mission is to assist children, youth and families break the cycle of poverty and fulfill their
potential as members of the global community” (Alianza Dominicana). According to its website, it serves 17,000
individuals and has a yearly budget of ten million dollars.
5
There is much debate surrounding the term Hispanic. It is typically recognized as a term created by the U.S. federal
government in the early 1970s in an attempt to provide a common denominator to a large, but diverse, population
with connection to the Spanish language or culture from a Spanish-speaking country. The term Latino is
increasingly gaining acceptance among Hispanics seemingly due to the fact that the term reflects the origin of the
population in Latin America (Noble and LaCasa 1991).
6
See Appadurai 1996; Sklair 2002.
According to the sociologist Roland Robertson, who is credited with popularizing the term, “glocalization”
describes the tempering effects of local conditions on global pressures. An example would be McDonalds, it is an
international restaurant chain that alters its menu slightly to appeal to local tastes (see Robertson 1995: 25-44.).
7
8
This statement is most often credited to Luis Valdez, Latino Playwright and filmmaker.
9
Mestizaje is an ideology which believes that the fusion of various cultural traditions (including language, religion,
food, music, etc.) in the Americas created a new and better mestizo race. This idea gained strength after the Mexican
Revolution, and José Vasconcelos popularized it in his 1925 essay La raza cósmica (The Cosmic Race).
10
American anthropologist Ralph Linton edited a book entitled Acculturation in 7 American Indian Tribes in which
he discuses the concept of cultural diffusion when two societies come into direct contact with each other and as a
result cultural traits of one society or ethnic group are spread to other geographical areas.
11
The concept of anthrophagy was reported on in 1928 by Oswald de Andrade in his work Manifesto Antropofágico.
This is a form of fusion in which the artist, like the cannibal, would not take in the foreign influence in a passive
way, but rather by transforming it into something new. Homi Bhabha wrote extensively on the topic of “mimicry” in
his “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse." An article first published in October 28 (1984):
125-33; frequently reprinted (in anthologies and in Bhabha's Location of Culture. Kobena Mercer’s work Welcome
to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, 1994 discusses in depth the notion of
creolization.
213
12
For further reading on Liminal Theory see Van Gennep 1960.
Historically, Ethnodramatics “emerges when knowledge is being increased about other cultures, other world
views, other lifestyles; when Westerners, endeavoring to trap non-Western philosophies, dramatics, and poetics in
the corrals of their own cognitive constructions.” Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of
Play. NY: PAJ Publications, 1982. “Performing Ethnography.” The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ
Publications, 1988: 146.
13
14
In this production, Brook incorporated an original tonal language by tapping into a primeval consciousness as if to
indicate that we are all one and the same before becoming tainted by culture. (Bharucha 2000)
15
ISTA stands for International School of Theatre Anthropology. Founded in 1979, it is a multicultural network of
performers and scholars that “serves as a laboratory for research into the technical basis of the rperformer in a
transcultural dimension” (Barba and Savarese, Eds.1991: 270).
16
A diagram of the model is included in the Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert TDR article (Lo and Gilbert 2003: 3153).
17
Buenaventura, a playwright, director, essayist and leader of the Nuevo Teatro Colombiano, incorporated public
participation and addressed social issues in his theatre practice. He founded TEC (Teatro Experimental de Cali) in
1955. Many attribute the success he had in his country to the success Boal subsequently had with a similar practice
in his own country of Brazil. For further information on Buenavenutura and TEC see the company’s website
<www.enriquebuenatventura.com>
18
18
Feeling the pressure to do something about immigration, the commissioner of the Immigration and
Nationalization Service at the time, Gen. Joseph Swing under President Eisenhower put in place a plan to sweep
Mexican barrios along the Mexican / US border. No mercy was had. Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and American
children of Mexicans were rounded up without trial and deported. By 1954 it is estimated that nearly one million
Mexicans were discovered through this method. The US was increasingly becoming a Police State for its efforts in
repatriating Mexicans. However, this policy was terminated once word of it spread across the US and to other
countries. (See Juan Ramon Garcia’s book Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented
workers in 1954 for a full account of the policy and the events surrounding it.)
La Malinche, Hernan Cortes’ beautiful Indian translator and mistress, however, is often portrayed as a cultural
metaphor by Mexicans for all that is wrong with Mexico today. A 1997 New York Times article entitled “A historic
Figure is Still Hated by Many in Mexico” explains that “to be called a malinchista is to be called a lover of
foreigners, a traitor” (Krauss 1997: A, 5).
19
20
The Federal Theatre Project, led by Hallie Flanagan and funded by the US Federal government, attempted to put
unemployed theatre workers back to work by staging theatre that was socially and politically relevant. It was
grassroots theatre that addressed community issues.
21
Rasquache is commonly recognized as an important component of Chicano art. However, the original meaning of
the term was derogatory. Tomás Ybarra Frausto explains that to have rasquache characteristics meant being of low
class, crude and impoverished (Griswold del Castillo et al 1991: 155). However, the concept of rasquache has
evolved along with the Chicano art movement and has since taken on positive characteristics such as resourcefulness
and determination. These qualities are often recognized in Chicano theatre through the practice of telling stories
relevant to the community in a style that is simple and direct and that does not involve much technical production.
22
This was a program established by the then New York Mayor Lindsey (1966-1973) to provide worthwhile cultural
programs for citizens of the city during the hot summer months, a time when crime rates had a tendency to rise in
the city.
214
23
24
For a full account of this play see Vásquez 2003.
Six Flags is a franchise of amusement parks in the tradition of Disney World located throughout the United States.
25
The term Neorican is also used in Puerto Rico to describe those who return to the homeland after an extended stay
in the United States. It is often said with an air of envy and resentment.
26
The Sleepy Lagoon Murder Trial in California of 1942 involved the conviction of seventeen young MexicanAmerican men for the alleged gang slaying of fellow youth Jose Diaz. Five months later, the so-called Zoot Suit
Riot erupted, as white soldiers in the city attacked minority youths and burned their distinctive zoot suits. Eduardo
Obregón Pagán covers the event extensively in his book Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race and Riot in
Wartime L.A. (UNC Press, 2003). The Mariel boatlift is named after the event when Cuban migrants began
departing Mariel, Cuba, in April, 1980 after Castro declared the port of Mariel "open." Hundreds of small craft
departed Miami and sailed to Mariel, where they loaded up with refugees and then attempted to return to Miami.
Approximately 124,000 undocumented Cuban migrants entered the United States by a flotilla of mostly US vessels
in violation of US law. Elían Gonzalez in 2000 was a five-year-old Cuban boy who was found on Thanksgiving Day
clinging to an inner tube three miles off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Fishermen rescued him and he was
taken to a hospital for treatment. But his mother and 11 others on the raft had drowned in their attempt to come to
the U.S. from Cuba. Much of the publicity surrounding this event was a result of the ensuing custody battle over the
boy. American relatives fought to keep him in the States, while his father fought to have him return to Cuba. After a
quick court decision, Elián Gonzalez returned to Cuba where he lives today and where he is considered a national
hero.
27
For a detailed account of the Kiko García case see Torres-Saillant and Hernandez 1998.
28
The Mirabals were four sisters who grew up in a city in the Dominican Republic called Salcedo. Three of them —
Minerva, Patria, and Maria Teresa — were killed by Trujillo's henchmen for their alleged involvement in efforts to
overthrow the fascist government. The Mirabal sisters have since become national heroines of the country,
immortalized in poetry, fiction, art. For more information on the assassination of the Mirabal sisters see Crassweller
1966.
29
The definition of dramaturge varies slightly between the English and Spanish languages. While in English to be a
dramaturge means to be in part a literary advisor, a theatre historian that assists the playwright and the director; in
Spanish, the term dramaturgo, is a broader term that often simply means to be one who creates theatre.
30
In August 1990, Congress signed the Ryan White CARE Act and in doing so created a system of social programs
that has greatly improved the quality and availability of health care services for people affected by HIV and AIDS. It
is named for Ryan White, an HIV positive teenager from Indiana who made headlines with his brave fight against
ignorance and prejudice.
215