Rafael Trujillo Influence

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In July 1502, Fray Nicholas de Ovando sailed to the island of Hispaniola, or, as it is more commonly known, the island of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean; irretrievably changing it forever. Newly appointed as the Governor of Santo Domingo by the Spanish imperial duo, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Ovando brought with him the first black slaves from Africa into the island. Christopher Columbus’s monumental colonising voyage in 1492 not only brought about the “discovery” of the “New World”, but was also instrumental in creating a new world order based on race and discrimination; the most startling example of which is the transatlantic slave trade. Originally imported from Africa to work on the plantations, the incursion of slaves into the…show more content…
(1998: 33) Trujillo’s death in 1961 resulted in a civil war in 1965, with those demanding a constitutional form of government clashing with Trujillo’s proponents. The direct intervention of the US marines (which was in support of Trujillo’s army) in 1965, first brought about the significant influence of US military power in Dominican politics and set the ground for emigration and the rise of the Dominican diaspora in the United States. Torres-Saillant and Hernandez note that as migration laws freed up, all classess and sections of Dominican society began to migrate to the United States; the Dominican community in the United States thus became “increasingly darker and poorer... [and] many Dominicans joined the ranks of the unemployed, the destitute, and the hopeless.” (1998:…show more content…
As opposed to public state accounts of Dominican demographics in America, Yunior’s account is often “minor”—made in footnotes, oftentimes undependable. The personal narration of Dominican history follows the curiously fluid and multivalent nature of Dominican-American identity. It is through this unreliable personal account that Diaz sketches a picture of Dominican nationhood, a nationhood that is multiple, fluid and imagined. Oscar Wao’s history therefore resists the militant nationalism that the Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo espoused, and challenges the boundaries of “Dominicanness”. What is effectively challenged, therefore, is Trujillo’s eurocentric notion of “Dominicanness” based on an enforced Dominican identity divorced from black identity. Under Trujillo, therefore, Dominicans are distinct from the neighbouring Haitians because whereas Haitians are “black”, they are
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