MERENGUE AND THE POLITICS OF NATIONHOOD AND IDENTITY
IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
> Gus Puleo
Columbia University
"Soy merenguero hasta la tambora."
"Merenguero hasta la tambora"Oddly enough, contemporary debates over nationhood and identity in the Caribbean have ignored music, an important component in this region's culture. Musicians, defined as "organic intellectuals"(136) by Cornel West, possess an understanding that enable them through their music to focus upon the crisis of identity and modernity in the world. Considered scholars in the Gramscian sense, merengueros and other musicians operate without benefits and ties that flow from secure institutional locations within the modern state (Gramsci 251). Today in the fragmented, post-modern world, this unique type of intellectual offers a different perspective since his/her cultural politics remain outside of the traditional dialectic between the academic elite and the masses.
Dominicans, using the converging musical traditions of the Caribbean world and the post-modern conditions of endless pressures of economic exploitation, political racism, colonialism, sexism and exile, have consistently reevaluated and reinvented their own ethnicity and national identity through the musical genre of merengue. Any contemporary, post-modern identity, and especially a Dominican one, can no longer be considered insular due to the constant migrations of peoples. In the field of music, the constant coming and going of Dominicans to other nations has fostered a sense of borrowing from many different sound systems and cultures from continents as diverse as Africa and Europe, from such "Caribbean" countries as Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Panama, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, and from the sounds and hip hop styles of black America. Also, the inclusion of modern musical techniques like mixing, scratching, and sampling serves to create a new cultural production with an identity to match. The experiences of Dominican emigrants in New York City and other islands in the Caribbean provide further examples of a complex cultural exchange that fosters new political and social identities.
I
Nowadays, the Dominican Republic is commonly known as "the land of merengue." However, this has not always been the case. Merengue did not become popular in the Dominican Republic until as late as the twentieth century. In fact, the Dominican elite did not accept merengues as a ballroom dance until the 1920s (Mercado 86). Outside of the Dominican Republic, merengues only gained a solid audience in the l960s, and today the current international explosion of this musical form is largely due to Juan Luis Guerra and his Group 4.40.
The notion that this national musical form began first as a "rural folk dance" is not entirely accurate. Merengue has been traced back by musicologists and sociologists to two original sources. One theory, proposed by Austerlitz, is that its origins are found in the French court of King Louis XIV in the 17th century (71). There, this folk dance evolved into a formal one as it acquired a genteel nature. French colonists, emigrating to the Caribbean, had taken this musical and cultural form with them, and during the eighteenth century this musical genre, called mereng in Haitian Creole and méringue in French, was heard in upper-class salons in Saint-Domingue (Fouchard 96-97). On the island Hispaniola, merengue would become a couples dance performed first in upper-class contexts, and afterwards reinterpreted by rural populations. These same transformations would then, also, evolve into vocal genres.
Another theory, supported by Davis, postulates that merengues can be traced not to Europe, but back to Africa ("Aspectos" 260). African slaves, as documented by Moya Pons (Manual 32), were transported to the Dominican Republic as early as 1518 to substitute for the then-decimated Taíno population in order to work in the sugar industry. These slaves brought with them a musical tradition that would combine with European musical forms to become merengue. This early merengue, as both theories concur, was created from the syncretization of European and African traditions to form a new, hybrid musical form and dance with a definite, Afro-Caribbean flavor. Typically, merengue was played by an ensemble of guitar, or the guitar-like cuatro, a güira, a tambora drum, and a marimba. These instruments are typically associated with Africa. The wooden accordion, an important instrument in playing merengues, was either brought by German, Italian or Spanish immigrants much later in the l800s and would replace the softer string instruments (Hoetink 64).
Throughout almost five hundred years, the Dominican Republic has long designated itself as white and Hispanic. In fact, it prides itself on being the first Spanish colony in the New World. This unrealistic, official self-definition is directly juxtaposed to the neighboring country of Haiti, which has always defined itself as not only an Afro-Caribbean country, but also the first independent nation in Latin America. Despite the data that three-quarters of the population of the Dominican Republic is mulatto (Manuel 98), there is little public acknowledgement of the country's African heritage. In the Dominican Republic, as in other Caribbean nations, there is much racial diversity according to social class and region. As to class, the landed oligarchy considers itself as mainly white; the upper-middle class is either white or light-skinned black; and the lower-middle to poor represent themselves in different ways according to regions as González describes the racial make-up of the nation ("Patterns" 110). In the southern region and the border area with Haiti there are mostly black and African-influenced peoples; in the Cibao Valley to the north, mostly Hispanic; and those in the eastern part of the country are mixed. Cities and towns have been, historically, thought of as traditionally white, but surrounded by black communities as in the case of the capital and the southeastern city, San Pedro de Macoris. However, these seemingly simple ethnic patterns have been complicated by the immigration of various groups since the nineteenth century, especially American blacks, Jews, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Syrians, Lebanese, and Haitians as documented in "Patterns of Dominican Ethnicity"(González 112). Also, mass migrations from rural to urban centers due to changing economic forces have driven many peasants and working class peoples to relocate to towns and cities, and then even beyond to New York City.
Within this racial and cultural mix called el pueblo dominicano, this country's black population and its African influence represent an important layer of culture laid down over its five-hundred year history. The first blacks to arrive in Santo Domingo were, in fact, not slaves, but Christians from Spain who had been living in that European country since the 1300s as Davis documents ("Music" 124). In the seventeenth century, slaves were introduced directly from the continent especially from the southern parts of Africa, specifically from Senegambia and the Guinea regions (Curtin 45-47). The aspects of musical culture, considered typically "Dominican," such as tamboras and merengue, may well come from these African nations. The more obvious African customs such as foods and dance forms, associated largely with black enclaves, are probably from a more recent origin, from slaves from the Congo-Angolan region in the eighteenth century (Curtin 48-49).
Dominican culture and even its population are additionally rendered complex by immigrations of African peoples from three foreign origins: Haiti during various historical periods even up until the present; the deep South of the United States with African-American emigrations; and an influx of African peoples from the Anglophone Caribbean. Haitians, in particular, have made important contributions to the development and nature of Dominican music and culture, ever since the division of the island with the French occupation of the western third in 1697. This is due to their geographic proximity, their numbers and their Catholicism, which provides a way into Dominican folk religion. In fact, Haitian residents in the Dominican Republic, whatever their legal status or length of stay, have assimilated and even have influenced Dominican national culture. However, in the Dominican Republic there has always been a strong anti-Haitian and anti-African sentiment. Ironically, as Frank Moya Pons in his study El pasado dominicano points out, "One of the greatest paradoxes in the formation of the Dominican nationality is that as the Hispanic population blackens, the Dominican mentality whitens"(239). Alcántara Almánzar traces how anti-Haitian prejudice and Dominican identity developed side by side (163). In general, Africanness has been associated with Haiti and its people have always been depicted in Dominican history and literature as "bloodthirsty, cannibalistic, demon-ridden, and inherently evil and jealous" (González, "Social Functions" 331).
While the ruling class in the Dominican Republic has traditionally identified with Spain, the other classes that are made up of a large number of mulattos and Afro-Caribbean peoples euphemistically refer to themselves as indios or indios oscuros on their national identification cards. Alcántara Almánzar has noted in literature that many Dominican writers, among them the poet José Joaquín Pérez (1845-1900) and the novelist Alfredo Fernández Simó (1915-1992), seek the origins of Dominican culture in an idealized Indian past (163). Even in contemporary literature, Pedro Mir in his poem "Hay un país en el mundo: poema gris en varias ocasiones" speaks only of the descendants of European and indigenous inhabitants of the country, more specifically the "campesinos que no tienen tierra"(18). This romanticized indigenismo minimizes African influences in Dominican culture, and often erroneously attributes many aspects of this nation's culture to Taíno Indians rather than to African peoples (Deive 105-106).
Dominican history is also filled with anti-African sentiments. An important example is Moya Pons' portrayal of the Haitian occupation of the entire island from 1822-1844 as a "brutal nightmare"(Manual 230) with many families fleeing to other Caribbean islands. Ironically, during those same twenty-two years of Haitian control, slavery was officially abolished and freed slaves were parceled out small plots of lands by the government for their own farming (Manual 225).
In 1844 when the Dominican Republic freed itself from Haitian control, Dominican identity became marked by racial and ethnic competition with Haiti. Dominicans defined Haitians as blacks, while they continued to view themselves as white, European and Indian. They boasted of being the "cradle of the Americas" since Santo Domingo was the first main European settlement in the New World. Moreover, Dominicans emphasized their strong tradition of Catholicism as opposed to the African cults or voodoo practiced by the "savage" Haitians. For Dominicans, Spanish was seen as a symbol of their identity. It was thought to be more important and accepted in contrast with Haitian Creole, which many Dominicans considered a patois rather than a language. According to Rodríguez Demorizi, the struggle against Haitian domination contained "three dominant elements: color, language, and race. The strongest and most decisive of these elements was language"(Lengua 290).
Accordingly, Dominican nationalism and identity developed in opposition not to Spain, but to Haiti. In fact, the Dominican Republic's independence day, February 27, does not commemorate freedom from centuries-long Spanish domination, but from the twenty-two year occupation by Haiti. Another example of the denial of an African past is that the negritud movement, that was so prevalent in the Caribbean in the l920s and 1930s, had little impact in the Dominican Republic, even though the Dominican poet Manuel del Cabral was one of its founders. Even today in the Dominican Republic, there are no well-known contemporary writers that treat Afro-Caribbean themes such as the Cuban poet Nancy Morejón.
This anti-African, and more specifically anti-Haitian environment, has often culminated in overt racism and even brutal incidents, such as the slaughtering of over twenty thousand Haitians near the Dominican border by Trujillo's forces in 1937 (Manual 519). The most recent concrete example of this anti-Haitian attitude was seen in the massive deportation of Haitian immigrants and their descendants from the Dominican Republic between June and September 1991. During those four months the Balaguer government in the Dominican Republic sent back more than 50,000 Haitians to their country of origin (Duany 71). This recent government action demonstrates how Haitians are still viewed as unassimilative elements in Dominican culture. The Dominican sociologist del Castillo captures this antagonism and hatred towards Haitians with these words: "The prolonged period of Haitian domination, the wars and invasions by the 'Westerners,' the constant immigration of workers throughout the present century, have shaped the collective image of Haitians and their attributes as agents of evil and experienced practitioners of paid rites" (Ensayos 175).
II
Nevertheless, the Dominican Republic's strong African heritage is quite evident not only in the racial mixture of its population, but particularly in the realm of folk religion and music. For example, many popular beliefs are based on West African and Congolese spirits, like Yemáya, and Kalunga. Dominican folk religion, also, bears obvious affinities to Haitian vodou and Cuban santería. In music, the Dominican Republic's most important musical genre, merengue, is clearly a product of the syncretic creolization of African, European, Caribbean, North American and indigenous cultural forms. Some accounts report that merengue was first danced in 1844 in the northwestern region of the country, near the Haitian border, to celebrate the victory by Dominicans in the Battle of Talanquera against the Haitians (Coopersmith 120). If it were, in fact, first observed in that region of the country, then Austerlitz's argument that it may have descended from the Haitian mereng seems quite plausible (71). However, this point has been widely contested by Dominicans who deny any African or Haitian influence on their national music.
Dated from 1854 and 1855, the first printed, historical documents referring to Dominican merengue consist of diatribes, often in verse, condemning the genre. These attacks were published in literary journals and newspapers and decried the fact that the vulgar merengue was being danced in polite society (Jorge 31). In 1875, Ulises Francisco Espaillat, a Dominican intellectual who later served as President of the Republic (March 1876-December 1876), renewed the campaign against merengue, which by then had displaced other musical genres. At that time, Espaillat appropriated European customs and traditions as the major components of Dominican culture while he deemed African-influenced culture inappropriate fare for the salons in Santo Domingo. Rodríguez Demorizi documents that Espaillat through his writings had persuaded Dominicans to emulate only European, North, and South American countries which he considered more "civilized than the Caribbean islands"(Música 137). Therefore, the "vulgar" dance ceased to be performed in Dominican salons after these strong attacks.
During the nineteenth century, the vast majority of Dominicans were peasants: the 1880 population of the republic is estimated as 97% rural as cited by Moya Pons ("Modernización" 213). Rural versions of merengue, which differed in instrumentation and musical style from salon merengue, had emerged by the middle to late 19th century. This musical form, according to some historians who wished to emphasize the European influence in Dominican culture, was documented as coming from the northeastern Cibao region, a place inhabited by Europeans and named as "the cradle of merengue"(Mercado 86). Others argue that merengue was born near the "white" city of Puerto Plata on the northern coast (Mercado 86). Merengue, by then, was becoming vocal music that straddled worlds--European and American, urban and rural, and folk and cultured. However, towards the end of the l9th-century merengue would remain essentially rural music played at family parties and community celebrations, such as fiestas patronales.
During the United States' occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1916-1924, popular music from the United States lost favor with the ruling class. Dominican high society violently opposed the performance of merengue at their functions as late as 1911, five years before the United States invasion, and then more or less accepted it between 1922-1924. Merengue, once scorned by the Dominican ruling elite because it was so identified with the rural, vernacular culture, for that same reason after the invasion supported and danced to this music as it became a symbol of national identity (Black 23). However, before this musical genre could enter elite society, it needed to be adapted. This process took many years as composers searched for a way to transform merengue from a rural folk form to urban salon music. In 1918, the formally trained musician and composer Juan Francisco García published the first arrangement of a merengue; however, this musical composition was intended to be heard in a concert hall rather than danced to in salons. Four years later, Julio Alberto Hernández followed García's example of basing arrangements on folk merengues, but unlike García, Hernández added lyrics (Jorge 102). However, upper circles of Dominican society moved slowly in accepting this musical form. Del Castillo and García Arévalo cite a newspaper article which describes how members of the elite were so scandalized by merengues that they walked out of a well-known night club in protest: "In the Commercial Club of Puerto Plata, those present at the dance left the salon in repudiation of the audacity of playing a popular and vulgar tune in such a distinguished place"(26). In Lengua y folklore de Santo Domingo, Rodríguez Demorizi cites a rich Dominican in 1922 who describes merengue as "the typical music of our countryside, with a very danceable and lustful rhythm"(137). For many years, the upper class objected to the sexual connotations of couples dancing close. However, with refinements provided by formally trained musicians, merengue would later be heard in salons and dance halls of the elite.
During the U.S. occupation, a campaign of international diplomacy and propaganda proved to be the only effective means of resistance by Dominicans. Calder writes that victory by Dominicans would be achieved only by a "program of protest . . . that would eventually force the United States to abandon the occupation"(241). Eco argues that this type of guerrilla warfare and resistance via expressive culture are analogous; he calls the latter "semiotic guerrilla warfare"(135). Dominicans undermined the North American enemy psychologically through the use of sabotage, terrorism, and propaganda, including merengue with its subversive lyrics. Calder considers the interest of the elite in merengue as crucial to the movement (249-259). After the U.S. Marines withdrew from the Dominican Republic, merengue reverted back to being a marker of class rather than national identity. By the time Rafael Trujillo came to power in 1930, merengue was once again principally associated with rural traditions, and in urban areas with bars and brothels.
During the second decade of this century, Trujillo used merengue to obtain and then consolidate his power. In this way, merengue lost its subversive character, and became a musical and cultural form that openly supported an established, conservative regime. As Miniño observes: "Merengue was one of the means that the tyrant used to break the resistance of the social elite, who had previously rejected him, this being a subtle way of imposing one class upon another"(17). In 1936, Trujillo brought Luis Alberti's Cibao dance band to the capital, then renamed Ciudad Trujillo, to play merengues at formal balls. This musical group was persuaded by Trujillo to change its name to "Orquesta Presidente Trujillo" in order to aid the dictator in flaunting this musical form as a symbol of his regime.
The dictator's influence on Dominican popular music was by no means limited to supporting certain musical genres and bands. Under his tutelage, Dominican music responded to his very specific agenda: propaganda (Jorge 76-77). No criticism of the regime, either explicit or implicit, was tolerated in music, or in any other media for that matter.
Merengue has always been a vehicle for social commentary of all sorts, so this brutal censorship represented a radical departure from its original form and purpose. Musicians were forced to prove their loyalty to Trujillo by composing songs praising his every action. Thus, during his thirty-one year regime, thousands of merengues extolling the dictator and his activities were composed. An anthology of songs from the period titled Antología musical de la era de Trujillo 1930-1960 contains three hundred of the best merengues, among them "Gloria al benefactor"(1932) and "Trujillo es grande e inmortal" (1953) as compiled by Crassweller (78).
Trujillo espoused a Hispanophilic, racist sense of a national identity that overtly rejected African-influenced culture. Trujillo selected the merengue cibaeño to construct it as strictly European in origin and legitimized throughout the centuries by the approval of the Spanish elite. Trujillo, even though he had a Haitian grandmother, was rabidly anti-African and anti-Haitian. He tried to associate merengue with a European, creole tradition; however, he could not mask its strong African elements. Melodic and rhythmic improvisation found in merengues is based on the African tradition of keeping a constant rhythm and changing the variations of melody that accompany such a piece, much like North American jazz.
In 1961, Trujillo was assassinated and thus ended the thirty-one year rule of the dictator. In 1962, in a landslide decision, a social democrat Juan Bosch was elected President. However, during the following year the oligarchy considered him a leftist and a military coup overthrew him. A period of social unrest followed, and in 1965 President Lyndon Johnson sent 23,000 U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic to ostensibly protect American lives and to prevent a "second Cuba." José Moreno qualifies this action by Johnson as "the largest military operation in the Western Hemisphere since 1898"(1).
One might expect that the military invasion by the United States would motivate Dominicans to reject all that was associated with North America. However, a form of contradictory popular culture emerged that combined both native and foreign elements. One example of this mixing of cultures was the "new merengue." Johnny Ventura defines this new cultural form in an interview:
When the dictator Trujillo died, many people will remember that we had a more or less traditional merengue, that soft and monotonous merengue that already was beginning to lag behind a people who were moving quickly towards their liberty and progress, most of all because of the opening of the country's frontiers to all modern currents, of politics, of ideas, of the high arts and the popular arts. (23)
According to Austerlitz, Ventura's innovations of merengue and the idea for his "combo-show" were borrowed from Elvis (80); however, the important influence of the North American soul singers Chubby Checker and James Brown should not be discounted or even ignored. Ventura in his own words alluded to these important influences as he explains how he tried to save merengue from extinction:
Although I did my acrobatics to the beat of rock and twist as a teenager, I carried the spirit and vocation of merengue within me. It had occurred to me to mix classic merengue with "rock" and "twist." If I had more power in those days, I might have done other things to save merengue from extinction. . . I had to limit myself, heeding the advice of a saying that I later learned: "If you can't beat'em, join'em." (24-25)
Ventura's music serves as an example of the new vision embraced by younger Dominicans. He describes how with merengue at that time "modern Dominican orchestras and groups in fact marched shoulder to shoulder with the progress of popular music all over the world" (26-27). As Ventura's comments reveal, the younger generation wanted to openly and fully embrace the outside world and its modernity, while the older generations simply wished to maintain a national identity grounded in the country's "white-washed" traditional past.
In reaction to anti-U.S. sentiment in the aftermath of the l965 invasion and the U.S. support of the military regime of Balaguer, the country's attraction to North American or English rock began to decline in the l960s. At the same time in Latin America, there was an enormous proliferation of other musical forms, such as balada, bolero and salsa. By far, the most visible musical competition in the l970s was between merengue and salsa. Salsa was undeniably the product of the modern pan-Caribbean experience: salsa musicians were mostly Puerto Rican, its rhythms were principally Cuban, and its social context was primarily the Latino barrios of New York City (Rondón 67). During the entire decade of the l970s salsa was promoted aggressively all over Latin America and its popularity grew. During that time, merengue was only heard on radio stations in the Dominican Republic.
The relationship between these two Caribbean musical forms, salsa and merengue, is multidimensional and complex. Salsa, like merengue, appealed to Dominicans because it was considered great dance music. Unlike rock and balada, salsa is a close relative of merengue since both share several Caribbean features: African-derived rhythms; danceable improvisational sections; and spicy, satirical lyrics drawn heavily on Caribbean vernacular language. One of the first great salsa contributors was the Dominican musician Johnny Pacheco, which meant that Dominicans could claim strong bonds to salsa. Another important point of contact between salsa and merengue is the long-standing and active tradition of Cuban son. Finally, salsa's grounding in New York Latino barrios and its urban lyrics were easily understood by Dominicans who were similarly experiencing difficulties in Santo Domingo or as immigrants to Puerto Rico or New York City. In this respect, the Balaguer years constituted a new era, with marked effects on music. The greatest change was the dramatic urbanization of the country, fueled by the land acquisitions of multinational corporations which uprooted thousands of farmers. Many peasants flooded into the capital and other cities. As a result, the character of this nation's culture drastically changed, as a population that in 1960 was 70% rural then became predominantly urban.
As salsa became more commercialized in the l970s, it also became more homogenized and less creative. By the end of the decade, merengue began to replace salsa as the preferred dance music not only in the Dominican Republic, but in Puerto Rico and among Latinos in New York as well. However, salsa's role in Dominican national culture has been ambiguous. On the one hand, it is considered a dynamic symbol of cultural resistance to North American cultural imperialism, but for many it is still seen as the more popular Caribbean, musical form. For many, the triumph of merengue in dance halls and on radio stations was sweet revenge, and musicians who helped in this victory were regarded as warriors and heroes. Willie Rodríguez describes merengueros at that time as "the guerrillas of music, who go to Puerto Rico and place a bomb in the places where they play"(21).
As Rodríguez Demorizi points out, from its beginning "the lyrics of merengues were frequently quite pedestrian or nonsensical"(Lengua 330). In contrast, in Latin America in the l970s musicians were seeking to employ their own folk music as vehicles for commentary and critique on social issues. Thus, artists joined forces to develop a movement known as "nueva canción" which had a clear sense of mission and purpose, part of which was to establish new, progressive patterns of music making and consumption that would befit an idealized society envisioned by musicians and composers. Morris defines this movement as "a fusion of traditional and folkloric musical forms with sociopolitical lyrics. This music intended to express current reality and social problems in a meaningful style" (1-2).
In 1974 an international "Nueva Canción" Festival was held in Santo Domingo. Johnny Ventura closed the concert with a merengue that had become popular, because its refrain "los indios" had been adopted by those opposed to Balaguer's regime. When the national guard would arrive to quell a protest, the words "los indios" would be shouted out and sung as a sign of resistance to the oppressive regime, and as a signal to disperse. Johnny Ventura, one of the few black musicians of merengue, was an affront to Balaguer not only because of his revolutionary lyrics, but also due to his mere presence. This antagonism between the two was articulated through art, literature, music and even politics. Balaguer in 1937 wrote a book demeaning Haiti, beginning with its title, La isla al revés: Haití y el destino dominicano. This dictator's policies and literary output not only served to foment further anti-black sentiment, but it also promoted racism and discrimination in the country. As a result, merengue was carried abroad by the massive emigration of many discontented Dominicans. Ventura would travel abroad and play concerts, especially in New York City, and again merengue would become the vehicle for Dominicans to resist an authoritarian and tyrannical regime. Ironically, while the Trujillo regime had restricted emigration, Balaguer encouraged it in order to destroy opposition to his racist policies, but these harsh measures served only to bring international attention to his cruel and oppressive rule.
At the same time that merengue was finding a new home in the diaspora, debates on how this national musical form was linked to the configuration of a Dominican identity were heard in the Dominican Republic. These discussions would culminate in two conferences held in Santo Domingo in the latter years of Balaguer's regime. The first was organized by a research-musical group Convite in 1976 and was designed to expose the then-current tendencies of commercial merengue, which according to many was absorbing too many outside influences, particularly from salsa. During this conference, merengue's African roots were hardly mentioned, and were definitely not emphasized.
Two years later another conference "Encuentro con el Merengue" was organized. Among the many presenters were the folklorists Fradique Lizardo and Manuel Rueda, musician Johnny Ventura, and Dagoberto Tejeda of the musical group Convite. Tejeda insisted on the importance of merengue's African roots and asserted that Convite's investigations were contributing to the rediscovery of a Dominican musical patrimony. To the group's credit, Convite composed a merengue for that conference titled "Salve de Mamá Tingó," which is a song based on the oral tradition that commemorates a black peasant woman from Yamasá who faced troops with a shotgun to defend her rights as a squatter. In the many debates and presentations concerning the cultural identity of the Dominican Republic, the outcome of the two conferences was to embrace modernity and progress through unity, which inherently conflicted with the notion of emphasizing an African past. The conservative political climate of the time is suggested by the arrest of Convite and Ventura after playing their songs at an open concert in Santo Domingo in 1978, just a few months after the conference.
Such cultural conservatism might be explained by the country's rather turbulent path to nationhood. The Dominican Republic was a colony of Spain, France, and then Spain again. It was occupied by Haiti and twice by the United States. It also has the ignominious distinction of being the only country in Latin America to request annexation both to Spain (1861) and to the United States (1865). Given this irregular and sometimes humiliating path to nationhood, it is not surprising that the notion of continuity is a quality that Dominicans insist on in the construction of their national identity. This preference for continuity can be observed in Dominican music in the persistence of the term merengue throughout its history.
This term, of course, refers to the music and the dance that have been around for over two hundred years. At most, the term has been modified by the addition of the word típico to distinguish the accordion-based groups from the big band orchestras, but essentially the name has been constant. Cubans, on the other hand, routinely give each new variation of rhythm that comes into vogue a distinctive name without feeling that the integrity of their musical traditions is being compromised by the many innovations. Similarly in Haiti, even minor musical variations of Haitian music are given different names, i.e., konpa-dirék and kadans pampa, which are almost identical rhythmically but have different names for marketing purposes (Averill 71). Given this deeply ingrained conservatism, the efforts by Convite and Ventura in having conferences to promote a more flexible concept of cultural authenticity did not succeed.
After a number of years of dissatisfaction and opposition to the repressive regime and its conservative cultural values, Dominicans came out in record numbers and voted against Joaquín Balaguer. The merengue "Llegó la paz" by Blas Durán (under the pseudonym "El Solitario") would mark not only this electoral victory of Antonio Guzmán from the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), but also the end of military repression and abuse.
In the l980s merengue, revamped by Johnny Ventura and Wilfrido Vargas, definitely triumphed in the Dominican Republic, dominating the TV programs and the many radio stations there. More remarkably, this musical genre invaded the homelands of salsa, Puerto Rico and New York City. Due to political, economic and social conditions on the island, well over 10% of the Dominican population has emigrated to the United States since 1961. Many desperate citizens continue leaving illegally, even by constructing small boats and rafts trying to pass the turbulent Mona Passage between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Wilfrido Vargas in the merengue "El Itinerario" captures this desperation and warns Dominicans: "don't go in a yola (launch), don't kid yourself/because in the Mona Passage, the sharks will devour you."
Another merengue that deals with this constant theme of migration in Dominican history is "Visa para un sueño" by Juan Luis Guerra. The song consists of four coplas and a series of seguidillas, both of which are formal literary rhymes in Spanish poetry. Like most merengues, the meter is 2/4 and the music is allegro or andante (Coopersmith 24-28). As heard in this song, Guerra follows in the newer tradition of political and social commentary in merengue, as first started by Ventura and later by Convite. In fact, Guerra composes carefully crafted verses that address modern contemporary issues, a technique which has earned him the title of "poet of merengue." Peter Manuel classifies Guerra's songs "as a sort of neo-nueva canción, in their singer-songwriter lyricism and their frank confrontation of social themes"(116). In interviews with journalists, Guerra enumerates his sources of inspiration: the poetry of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, the highly politicized verses of the Chilean Pablo Neruda, and the popular oral forms by the European immigrants in the Dominican Republic (del Castillo and García Arévalo 61). However, in this same interview, Guerra never mentions African traditions and influences, but only Spanish poetry and other European influences.
As with Wilfrido Vargas, Guerra in his song recreates the typical preoccupation of Dominicans in everyday life: the desperation to emigrate in order to survive. In his song, he observes Dominicans from all social classes gathering early in the morning to apply for a visa. By nine o'clock in the morning there are no more visas. Since the goal of many is to end up in New York and there is no way to get there legally, the only option left is to cross the Caribbean Sea, enter Puerto Rico clandestinely, somehow make it to San Juan and finally take a plane to New York City. Moya Pons documents this recurrent trip by Dominicans in search of work and a better life (Manual 581). However, this merengue ends on a tragic note. The Dominican's dream becomes a nightmare as we hear the sound of a helicopter at the end of the song which reminds listeners that U.S. immigration authorities constantly patrol the waters and are always waiting to capture and deport undocumented immigrants. If Dominicans are lucky enough to avoid the U.S. Coast Guard, another equally tragic outcome of their voyage is that the fragile boats might sink and then passengers become bait for the sea.
Another song by Guerra, "El costo de la vida," laments the difficult situation of Dominicans who live within the nation's borders. The lyrics of this song describe how no one, not even Dominican politicians, care about el pueblo dominicano and their worries about the high cost of living, bad medical care, and the no-win situation of emigrating. This song which chronicles everyday life in the Dominican Republic makes important social statements that reflect popular concerns and hopes. However, Guerra's merengues, even though very popular and supposedly representative of the nation's culture, never address the nation's African past or even mention African influences in Dominican culture.
A merengue that vilifies the African influence in this nation is the popular song "El Africano" by Wilfrido Vargas. The chorus of this merengue is made up of the words of a child who wakes up from a nightmare and asks his mother: "Mami, ¿qué será lo que quiere el negro?" This song underlines the anti-African sentiment found in Dominican culture since it is really about the "black bogeyman" who will not allow this child to fall asleep. This fear of a menacing black image is historically part of a Dominican, and also a Caribbean, consciousness dating as far back as the Haitian Revolution of 1803. When Haiti became a free nation, French colonists fled to neighboring islands out of fear of reprisals by liberated slaves. The blubbering and "tribal" sounds at the beginning and end of the merengue reinforce this stereotypical depiction of blacks as uncivilized savages.
Along these same lines, Las Chicas del Can reiterate this same feeling of fear and hatred with their merengue "Un negro no puede". In this composition, the black man is feared by these women. In this context, this song is even more problematic, because of obvious sexual innuendoes inherent in the lyrics. Racist and stereotypical images associated with the sexual virility of black men and the allusion to the crime of rape are obvious themes.
Another group Pochy y su Cocoband sing of "La Negra Pola." La Pola, in this song, is the name of a black woman, probably a foreigner, who leaves the country to go dance the "chachacha" instead of the merengue. She is the prototype of a sensual mulatta who seduces a man and then leaves him. La Pola is, of course, constructed as the Other, and never as a Dominican.
In the Dominican Republic, no black consciousness movement stressing racial pride ever developed, as it did in other Caribbean countries. What is also noteworthy is that there is an obvious absence of positive representations of Afro-Caribbeans, Africans, and Afro-Dominicans in official discourse and even in official public areas in the Dominican Republic. With the exception of the maroon leader Lemba outside Santo Domingo's anthropological museum, there are no monuments to important individuals associated with black pride, whether from the Americas or Africa. On the other hand, many of Santo Domingo's streets are named after Dominican "creole" patriots and statesmen, such as Duarte and Mella, or after white international statesmen, such as Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and John F. Kennedy, but not one street name honors a black leader. Political experts have theorized that in the last Presidential election in 1996, Peña Gómez, a celebrated black politician from the Dominican Republic, lost by a small margin due to his obvious African, and perhaps Haitian, past.
For decades, the white peasant of the northern region of the Cibao has been constructed as the image of Dominicanness, and his merengue is deemed the symbol of Dominican identity. Likewise in Puerto Rico, the white jíbaro has become a symbol of boricua identity. However, in 1980 the Puerto Rican author José Luis González published El país de cuatro pisos y otros ensayos that documented the strong African influence in that nation's history, culture and development. In the Dominican Republic, no author has done the same. As to salsa, its creation is based on African, Caribbean, jíbaro, European, and African American influences. Merengue is undoubtedly a hybrid, cultural form with the same origins, but it has been reinvented and described by many as merely a variation of European and indigenous elements and influences. Even today, lyrics of certain merengues praise the life of the rural, "white" peasant and his "música de la montaña" as seen in the song by Conjunto Quisqueya "¡Qué bueno está este país!" Again, no African influences are explicitly stated in this song.
However, for the past two or three decades, lyrics from the merenguero Johnny Ventura have expressed a view of this creole national identity as not an incarnation of European race and culture, but rather a New World creation born of influences from Africa, other countries in the Caribbean, the United States and also Europe. For example, his song "Merenguero hasta la tambora" celebrates the African influence in Dominican music. In this song, he defines himself as a musician who plays merengues, but more importantly he proudly sings that he is a lover of this musical form to the core of his being. Another musician who has been influenced by Vargas is Luis Díaz, who included congos in the video of his recording "Ay, hombre africano" in 1988. Díaz takes risks by creating a hybrid fusion of salsa, son, bachata and merengue in his songs. This innovative cultural form speaks to a revolution in music which reclaims and reinforces an authentic and historical past grounded in African, American, European and indigenous influences.
The Dominican population residing in the diaspora seems to be more conscious of its African past. For example, those living in New York City are often in contact with Puerto Ricans and African Americans who have been active or at least influenced by the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the l960s in the United States. In addition, Dominicanyorks have experienced North American racism; so, they are definitely more aware of their hybrid African and Hispanic identity. New York is the "Dominican" city where musicians and composers such as Luis Díaz and Johnny Ventura have a following, because it is where African American, American and Caribbean cultures meet, collide, and mix. The new culture produced in that particular setting often transcends island borders and barriers of politics, race and class. Therefore, it is not surprising to see the Puerto Rican singer Olga Tañon crowned "La reina del merengue". Merengue is, again, becoming a pan-Caribbean, cultural form that is not necessarily marked by a national boundary. Of course, merengue will always reflect the folklore of the Dominican Republic, but times and traditions are changing. New York, for some musicians now the "home of merengue", is a unique location in this postmodern world of chaos where creative risks with musical genres, themes and compositions are permitted. This "Caribbean" city is where Dominican identity and music are being influenced, redefined and reconfigured. Ironically, in New York City, far from the waters of the Caribbean, Dominicans can rediscover their authentic identity which is rooted in Africa, America, Europe, a Taino past, on other islands of the Caribbean and even in the United States.
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Puleo, G. Merengue and the Politics of Nationhood and Identity in the Dominican Republic. Latin American Issues [On-line], 13(6). Available: http://webpub.allegheny.edu/group/LAS/LatinAmIssues/Articles/Vol13/LAI_vol_13_section_VI.htmlVolume 13 (1997)
The Caribbean(s) Redefined
