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Not Everyone Who Speaks Spanish Is From Spain: Taino Survival In The 21st Century Dominican Republic, Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The national identity of the Dominican Republic is based on an idealized story of three cultural roots-- Spanish, African, and Taíno--with a selective amnesia of the tragedies and struggles inherent to the processes of colonial domination and resistance. Further, African, Taíno and mixed AfroMestizo culture have been marginalized in favor of nationalist ideologies of progress and civilization found in the embrace of Hispanidad and Catholicism. In such a way, Dominicans have been disconnected from their African, their indigenous, and their mixed Afro-Mestizo Criollo (Creole) ancestry and cultural heritage, even though it is these ancestries and heritages which mark Dominicans with …