The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity

Abstract

The Mulatto Republic offers a compelling look at Dominican anti-Haitianism and Hispanophilia. The book examines these subjects from the perspective of the racial, gender, and class dynamics that developed in San Pedro de Macorís in the late nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. The choice of this sui generis province evinces April Mayes's intricate understanding of Dominican history and culture. The curious use of the word mulatto in the book's title is the result of Mayes's conscious attempt to reinscribe an old and lesser-known utopian vision of dominicanidad that was (and may be again) ready to take in blackness and historical black resistance alongside or in place of its privileged adoption of a de-Africanized narrative of racial mixing. The title epitomizes Mayes's main objective: producing more nuanced accounts of the ontology of Dominican racism. This nuance is more often than not absent in the psychologized and decontextualized explanations that are often offered in popular reactions to the subject. The book adds to the line of scholarly efforts that have raised questions about assumed notions of exceptionalism attached to Dominicans' relationship to blackness and Hispanophilia (or “hispanidad nationalism,” as Mayes calls it). Mayes moves the conversation forward by tracing the historical and sociological roots of antiblack and anti-Haitian hispanidad and empirically examining specific configurations of anti-Haitianism and antiblackness in time and space.Mayes historicizes hispanidad ideology and shows how although it consolidated in the 1930s and 1940s, it cannot exclusively be interpreted in connection to the Trujillo dictatorship. Mayes demonstrates that historicizing the issue involves the question of when and how anti-Haitianism became politically meaningful. Mayes argues that this occurred when the boundaries of dominicanidad were drawn around the privileges of a Latin identity. Mayes reminds us that the historicizing of racist hispanidad involves not only examining the ideological role of racist Dominican elites at particular conjunctions, a role that some scholars have made clear in previous works, but also other factors such as the legacies of authoritarianism, including Trujillo-era Hispanophile historiography, the role of exploited Haitian labor in the Dominican economy, the historical, political, ideological, and cultural significance of the border and the othering of Haitians, and everyday social interactions among nonelite Haitians and Dominicans. It involves investigating the intersections of race, class, culture, nation, and region at specific historical moments, the legacies of the Haitian occupation (1822–1844), the War of Restoration (1863–1865), the 1937 Haitian Massacre, and the first US occupation (1916–1924). Consistent with previous scholarship, the US occupation emerges as the key historical moment in the consolidation of “hispanidad nationalism.” In particular, Mayes highlights how the racist treatment of Dominican elites by US administrators generated a conservative response from elites, who embraced a Latin identity that was devoid of connections to Haiti and blackness and that was marked by patriarchal ideals of citizenship. While Mayes focuses on the long-lasting hegemony of antiblackness and anti-Haitianism in Dominican society and culture, she also maintains a nuanced approach and brings to surface less explored conceptualizations of Dominican identity that, while never dominant, were not based on racist hispanidad. This way, the reader is forced to see the consolidation of antiblack and anti-Haitian hispanidad as a process with simultaneous connections to space, population movement, gender, social policy, and politics.In what is one of the book's main historiographic contributions, the reader learns how this process unfolded in San Pedro de Macorís. Mayes discusses the well-known movement of black immigrants into San Pedro de Macorís and their racialization, noting that it occurred at the same time that wealthy Cuban, Puerto Rican, and American entrepreneurs, professionals, and administrators also settled there, creating a unique set of social, economic, and cultural circumstances. In this way, Mayes provides historical insights that allow for a comparison of the status of Haitians and black immigrants from the British West Indies amid the economic transformations produced by the growth of the sugar industry, increased state intervention to control labor, and expanding concerns over whitening among the San Pedro de Macorís elites. By discussing the status and policing of black immigrants from the British West Indies — migration that was promoted by the US occupation — Mayes emphasizes the gender, class, and sexual aspects of racialization while shedding light on the interaction between antiblack and anti-Haitian prejudice and the Dominicanization of white immigrants.Not all the historical facts established in the book are completely novel, but Mayes integrates established and new facts creatively and compellingly with the help of provincial archives. The archival evidence supporting the book's major findings is very solid, although arguments on how Latin identity became dominant still rely too heavily on data about the racist ideologies and practices of the elite sectors of the San Pedro de Macorís province. That being said, this book is an unequivocal contribution to the scholarship, adding significantly to the conversation about race and Dominican identity and opening up new repertoires of inquiry and research.