Transcript Prof. Roland The Caribbean in Post-Colonial Perspective ANTH 1115  Hispaniola (1492) to Mainlands (1509) • Early creole identities • Racially mixed populations live off land • Class/color mobility and inter-marriage  MESTIZAJE 

Prof. Roland
The Caribbean in
Post-Colonial Perspective
ANTH 1115
 Hispaniola
(1492) to
Mainlands (1509)
• Early creole identities
• Racially mixed
populations live off
land
• Class/color mobility
and inter-marriage
 MESTIZAJE
 Creole
cultural
identity
• Marginalized attempts
to maintain identity,
while resisting
hegemonic
manipulation
 Neglected
residents Hispaniola trade beyond Spn
empire
 Depopulation/Burning of NW coast
 French create wealthy sugar colony, St. Domingue
 Impoverished Sto. Domingo supports neighbor
via small-scale trade (cattle/agriculture)

Dominican Independence (x3)
• 1795 Spanish surrender Sto Domingo to French during Saint
Domingue uprising
• Haitian Independence in 1804 includes “Spn Haiti”
 1844 independent of Haiti/Re-annexed to Spain
• 1865 Dominican Independence

Dominican = NOT Haitian
• Trujillo defines DR identity
 Largely white, Catholic, Spanish
• De-Haitianization campaign of 1937
 Perejil (Parsley) Massacre
• Darker Dominicans=Indios
 Whiteness/Spanish ID also resisted
 Borderland theory
• Attends to frontiers between nations
• Considers shifting cultural meanings from place to
place
 Contesting DR as white
 Constructing new meaning Taína as original
 Dominicans globally linked
• Early contraband trade, US occupation/influence,
FTZs/Structural Adjustment, Family networks, Media
 “Being Dominican” has distinct meanings
• Social location, Racial location, Geographic location
• http://youtu.be/WPEVxHmujKk
 PR
as neglected peasant colony of Spain
• Brief mass African slavery for sugar
• Vagrancy laws enlist jíbaros on plantations
alongside slaves
• Creolized mixture softened racial lines
 “Remember
the Maine?”
• US enters Cuba’s war for independence
(“Spanish-American War”)
• Cuba, PR, and Philippines territories of US in
1898
 Foraker Act of 1900 makes PR a US colony
 PR
civilizable “nobles” v Filipino resistant “savages”
 Education as a means to “Americanization”
 PR passive resistance via “jaíba” strategies
• Moving sideways to move ahead
 Recovering
indigenous identity as
resistance (neo)colonialism
• Boríken = Taino name for the island
• Boriqua = Taino name for the people of Borinquen
Commonwealth (PR status since 1952)

Estado Libre Asociado (Associated Free State)
 Statehood
 Independence
3
roots of PR nat’l origin
• Spanish (European)
• Taíno (Indigenous – early decimation)
• African
 Recall: History
as construct
 Stage I: Criollo PR elite distinguish from Spn
 Criollo=everything native, local, typical of Americas
 Mestizaje=racial mixture, esp. Euro/Indig
 Stage II: Scientific search
 Stage III: Nationalist re-appropriation post WWII
 Stage IV: Distancing from Spn heritage
 Stage V: (1990s – present) Debates over indigeneity
re statehood/independence positions
 Erasure/Banalization
• Emphasis on color
• Africans inferior to Tainos who were inferior to Spn
 Cultural evolutionist rankings
 Blackness
masked by indio
• Tainos as natives
• Spn as conquerors
• Africans as newcomers/outsiders
 Boriquen
ID resists US but may marginalize
African heritage
 What
is the most significant difference
btwn DR’s indios and PR’s Taínos?