A Tale of Two Cities

My journey to Notre Dame took two days, during which I passed through three countries, two states and a US territory. When my flight from San Juan was preparing to land in Chicago, I was all irritated because it was landing almost an hour late. Then the pilot came on and said we were preparing for an early arrival. I looked at my watch, perplexed. Then I figured out that San Juan is in a time zone EAST of Eastern time, so I needed to set my watch back two hours for Chicago time. I reached in my pocket as I prepared to get off the plane to dig for money to buy a long awaited Starbucks latte, and had to dig through the Haitian Gourdes and Dominican Pesos before I found any good ol’ greenbacks. On the way back to Haiti I was amazed to discover that the journey from Chicago to Santo Domingo took about seven hours, while the bus ride the next day to Port au Prince took nine. Anyway, it was a complicated journey but so good to be at Notre Dame with many people that I love to share in a beautiful farewell to such a special person. And three days in the United States reminded me once again how much I love hot showers, and what a gift it is that we can drink the tap water.

This journey also included my first ever visit to the other side of this little island, and … I had some serious culture shock when I got there. Before I describe Santo Domingo, I need to note that Haiti and the Dominican Republic have shared so much history, but also have an extremely tumultuous relationship. I’m not much of an expert on Dominican history, though I plan to educate myself a bit more in the next few months. Here’s what I know … before Columbus arrived on this island, the native Taino people who lived here called it Ayiti, which means something about rocky ground. They lived in grass huts, in small family based communities. They fished gathered what they could from the land, and were generally peaceful among themselves. Columbus arrived and forced them to mine for gold. In less than 200 years after the arrival of the Spanish, the Taino people were all but extinct, the victims of violence and smallpox. The next three hundred years brought sugar plantations and slavery and battles between the Spanish and French over this little island which would make both European empires incredibly rich. At some point in the 1600’s, the Spanish ceded the western half of the island to the French, as part of some treaty that I can’t remotely remember the specifics of. And so, the western half of the island, Saint Domingue developed its unique culture based on French culture, slave culture, and the distant memories of Taino culture. The Eastern half of the island meanwhile developed more or less as the other Spanish colonies did. Slavery was less prominent. The Church was more powerful. And there was more mixing among the different ethnic groups on the island, creating a still diverse, but less binary racial climate. In 1804 when the former slaves successfully expelled the French for the last time, they then expanded beyond the old boarder and took over the Spanish side of the island. Though they abolished slavery, the Haitian leaders treated the Dominicans brutally, and about 40 years later, the Dominicans fought for and won their independence from Haiti. The next hundred years brought dictators, military juntas, and dubious foreign involvement to both countries. In the 1950’s, the Dominican Republic languished under the brutal rule of Rafael Trujillo while Haiti suffered under Francois Duvalier. Ironically, these two sadistic dictators hated each other, and did their best to brutalize each other’s people. And here’s where the similarities end. After the DR forced out Trujillo, something changed. While Haiti plodded along under the dictatorship of Duvalier and his hapless son until 1985, the DR was developing. While Haiti stumbled through coup after coup and unimaginable political chaos from the early 1990’s until 2006, Santo Domingo was becoming a mini Miami. I don’t know anything about the last fifty years of Dominican history, but wow … something different happened on this side of the island.

Santo Domingo is really like a little Miami. After about three hours there, I decided that I could absolutely, comfortably live there. There are six lane divided highways. There’s organized public transportation. The city is well lit at night. There are tall buildings and fast food restaurants and ice cream places and fancy hotels and dance clubs on the strip in front of the main beach front. There are families walking around with little kids at night. There’s a big plaza by the water with karaoke bars and outside seating and little kids riding bikes and couples strolling and bachata music blasting from passing cars and nearby bars. The night I got there happened to be Dominican Independence Day, and they were shooting off fireworks all along the beach in a relatively well organized (though definitely not OSHA approved) fashion. I ate the best pizza I’ve had in so long. And here’s something strange … there were a lot of overweight young people, something you just don’t see much of in Haiti. It was like being on another planet. On the one hand it made me so sad to think of people who share so much history, so close by living in such drastically different circumstances. On the other hand, it made me sort of hopeful. They’ve built this recently, after a tumultuous history. There must then be hope for Haiti. I don’t know what the development lessons are … but I hope someone does and I hope they’re in Port au Prince right now helping to plan for the rebuilding of Haiti.