Confessions of a Sanky Panky

AlterEgo

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Computer translation, see web page for photos and maps of where they 'operate':

PROSTITUTION| 02 AUG 2017, 12:00 AM |MARIELA MEJÍA

Confessions of sankipankis: tourists, sex and visa

Men that are located in tourist areas count how they benefit from those who visit the Dominican Republic looking for sun, beach and sexual satisfaction

This report is part of the series "Hot Lxs in Latin America", the Latin American Network of Young Journalists, which coordinates Distintas Latitudes.

_____

He is 19 years old and receives monthly money from three foreigners. One can send you $ 150, another 100 euros. AB was a minor when he began to sexually engage with tourists on Boca Chica Beach.

It is Sunday, the sky has few clouds and the weather is warm. AB sits next to a woman who tans lying down and courts her. He does not care if a Russian "bride" is in the process of taking him to his country. He is all a sankipanki.

"That's what we do: meet friends, treat them, give them a good service, so that when they leave, at least remember one," says the brown-haired young man who hides his eyes in dark glasses.

His words are a simple description of a sankipanki. The dictionary of Dominican Spanish defines it as crude: Man who engages in prostitution in tourist areas. This individual relates to people of either sex, but mostly women.

"Are you offended if they tell you sankipanki?" He asks.

- No, I say I am, because many would like to be in the place that a sankipanki is, because not everyone has the luxury to say: we are going to stay in this hotel today.

Boca Chica is a popular destination, located more than 37 kilometers from Santo Domingo. Together with Juan Dolio has an average annual occupancy rate of tourist establishments of 69, according to a database of the Central Bank. In high season, it has surpassed 91, becoming equal to Bavaro-Punta Cana and La Romana-Bayahibe.

On the beach where AB passes the day there are more sankipankis, to whom tourist policemen watch their behavior, although the office is not typified as illegal. The location of hotels nearby is convenient. The staff let them be in the vicinity and stay with the foreigners, who pay the stay, whose cost, in a four star hotel, is around US $ 150- $ 200 per night, depending on the season.

Although some sankipankis have fees (for example, $ 25 or $ 50 per service), it is common that they seek a more lasting benefit. They build an affective-economic relationship that can lead to a marriage that allows them to emigrate and be emitters of remittances.

The Dominican Republic is an unequal country with 10 million inhabitants, middle-income and developing countries. Creoles and men of Haitian descent take advantage of the fact that it is also one of the best vacation destinations in the Caribbean and that it is promoted in some forums - according to Unicef ​​points out - as a place for sex tourism. Only last year 5,134,110 non-resident foreigners arrived by air, 6.23% more than the previous one, according to official figures.

Americans, Canadians, French, Russians, Germans, English, Spaniards, Argentines and Brazilians are among the most visited in the country. The 50.4% of the tourists that arrived in 2016 was female. The spending per day of each in that year averaged US $ 130.66.

Joel Santos, who chairs the National Association of Hotels and Restaurants (Asonahores), identifies the bulk of these visitors as family tourism practitioners and considers the impact of the Sankipankis as a minority. He states that hotels establish controls, together with the authorities, to prevent them from proliferating, although it is difficult to eradicate them. It is a question of demand.

Thus, sankipankis employees of hotels linked to animation have been identified. They dance well, they are nice, they are mulattoes, they know how to massage ... and convince.

Dreamed of the Major Leagues and finished as sankipanki

When CD was 17 years old they were going to sign him to be a Major League player. The lack of documents prevented it. He did not go to school; Preferred to be a coach and at 22, with an athletic figure, began to go to the beach to practice exercises. And there it began to be sankipanki. Her first time was with an Aussie.

By the 1970s, when there was a boom in tourism in northern Puerto Plata, the Sankipankis began to proliferate. The filmmaker José Enrique Pintor sought to explain the complexities of this character in the film Sanky Panky.

It is said that sankipanki is a derivation of hanky-panky English. Madonna used the term in a song from her album I'm Breathless (1990). It refers to unacceptable or dishonest behavior, especially related to sexual activity or money. How many are in the country, is uncertain, but they are less than the sex workers, which surpass 50 thousand, according to estimates the Center for Orientation and Integral Research (COIN).

CD divides the Sankipankis into two levels: the high, who do not go out with anyone, and low, who consume drugs, alcohol and have sex with "old, fat women and men."

Santo Rosario, director of COIN, an organization that works with prevention and health in marginalized groups, indicates that sometimes the tourist is the one who brings the drug or the sankipanki gives him where to get it.

-The use of drugs and alcohol is an explosive element against sexually transmitted diseases. Sex work exists because there is a demand, not because they harass tourists here - says Rosario.

With the money that CD gets, he contributes to the modest home he shares with his mother Florangel Ortiz. He believes that if he had grown up with his father, his career as a player would not have been broken and would not be sankipanki.

"Shame on you, but sometimes they call you sankipanki and you say you're not Sankipanki because you do not do what others do, I'm different because I do not play with drugs, I do not go out with all the women and I do not play with men," he says.

At home, the mother of CD confesses:

"I've always been worried about my son. I am father and mother. My son one day came upon a sankipanki and they fought. Remember that CD day was going to come out with a Swedish, 32-year-old medical student, and got rid of not being caught by the brawl. She is satisfied with the solution of the problem because the foreigner fell in love with him. In February they were married and began the process to take her 25-year-old husband to Europe.

"Nothing more to see a black man with a pretty white ..."

Juan Inocrecio descends from Haitians. He has 27 years and two trades: rent boats and be itinerant sankipanki (sometimes in Bavaro or Boca Chica). He has had offers from men to participate in triplets; Says he has rejected them.

"Russian-American, Russian, German," he says, going over his dating history. Some time ago a "gringa" sent dollars.

"One does not show them the interest that you want money, even if you need it." Nothing more to see a black with a nice white, soft-haired, walking around, everyone sees you on the street and says: Wao, the dark mango! You shine for that moment, you feel good, "he says.

With six years as sankipanki, Inocrecio sometimes becomes discouraged. "People appear who do not love you alone, they love you all." He has had clashes with the police, claimed paternity and is exposed to sexually transmitted diseases; Has used tests to be sure.

Although they are guided by COIN and government programs, Rosario observes that in the first sexual intercourse the condom intervenes, but later they move on to affective trust and the condom is left out.

"Some tourists are tested and sankipanki too, and they create the false perception that by showing it (the test) they are free of any disease," he says.

Inocrecio lives in free union and his partner cela him by his wanderings. However, it analyzes offers from an American and a German to migrate. They like their dark skin and mood. "I need to sort out my passport."

*****


To Samana to look for "extra money"

At the age of 16, he traveled more than 170 kilometers from Santo Domingo to Samana in the northeast. He liked Italians "because they were the loosest"; French, although they were difficult "because they did not loose the money so easy", and Spanish, "because they only wanted sex without commitment".

He was a university student and his mother preferred to keep him to study. "I needed extra money and on the weekends, when I visited Samana, I would throw myself on the beaches with three friends, what we called hunting," recalls EF, a thin, dark-skinned young man.

"One practically prostituted himself, the key was to fall in love," he confesses. With a face more as a child than an adult, he would take them out to dance. "One was laughing a lot, made the monkey part, in a few words, and when it happened, one went to the village she had, the normal sexual act was performed; If he liked it, because you did all kinds of things they asked for, you stayed that night.

But there was something that bothered him. "At that time some ships with only homosexuals came to Samaná; They offered money to have sex, just for them to receive-remember. It tempted him that with men he could get more money, but he preferred not to give in. "Some friends would, then we'd enjoy the money together."

At age 17 he met a foreigner of 21 with whom he wanted to get married. His mother objected; I had to wait at 18 to be of age. "When I did, I lost touch with her."

"Did you consider yourself a Sankipanki?" He asks.

"No, because the sanki of these times lives on that and I just enjoyed what I did.

She stopped looking for foreigners 12 years ago. "I was scared for fear of contracting a sexually transmitted disease."

He graduated as a publicist and married. At 31 years of age, he premieres as the father of a son who, if one day takes his way, would recommend:

"Protect yourself from disease, that's all."

*****

A retired sankipanki

In old photographs you see a dark and thin man, who has on his lap a woman with legs uncovered and he hands on the female chest. In others it shares in a discotheque, it rides with two young people and goes aboard a motor with a foreigner.

They are memories that conserves GH of its life in the northern Sosúa, Puerto Plata, to more than 200 kilometers of Santo Domingo. He evokes that he favored family tourism, for women came, even with their husbands, and sought the service of a Sankipanki.

"I have had women from all countries: American, Canadian, German, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese. You lose count.

Threesomes, being in a house with multiple foreigners, zero commitment ... was his life. They also made their plays. One dark dawn, one abandoned him in a bar. Without money, he walked for five kilometers until a vehicle rescued him.

GH did not go to school, learned on his own to read and write, and "on the street" French, English and some German. When he began to be sankipanki he was a twenty-year-old who lived with his mother, who died without knowing how he managed the brides.

As he sold beers on the beach, he learned to treat tourists. "We held the services first, we took care of them, we went for walks, we showed them the nice places, they took photos. We did not charge, because the sankipanki does not charge the woman's departure; The sankipanki goes out with the woman, becomes the woman's boyfriend, then he lives for the woman, until there comes a time when one of them gets tired.

Many sankipankis of Sosúa emigrated by foreigners. GH also did it for 1989-1990. He had a son with a Canadian, married and left for Canada, but after three months he decided to leave. "It was very cold in Quebec," he recalls. There he left the woman and her son, who is 26 years old. He returned to the warmth of Sosua, to seek tourists. Until he got tired.

He is 48 years old. He has lost hair and gained weight. He is a taxi driver and is attracted by Christianity. He returned to be the father of a child, a Dominican mother, who does not think to tell his past.

"One did things, but one did not know what he was doing; One thought it was good, for lack of experience and an adult people advising one- think. Summoning a mature man's wisdom, he advises the young men: "Just have a girlfriend."

________


* Regularly the term has been written sanky panky, however for this report was taken writing registered by the Dominican Academy of Language in the Dominican Spanish Dictionary that accepts two meanings: sankipanki and sanquipanqui.

https://www.diariolibre.com/economi...-sankipankis-turistas-sexo-y-visado-GC7598109
 

sanpedrogringo

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"Boca Chica is a popular destination, located more than 37 kilometers from Santo Domingo. Together with Juan Dolio has an average annual occupancy rate of tourist establishments of 69, according to a database of the Central Bank. In high season, it has surpassed 91, becoming equal to Bavaro-Punta Cana and La Romana-Bayahibe."
This quote from the article is simply not true, which leads me to question the integrity of the rest of the piece. Maybe if it was written 20 years ago, but not today, on all accounts within the piece.
 

Africaida

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Jun 19, 2009
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It s interesting that in this article they solely focus on men Sanky. Where as, in my experience, solely based in LT, there are fare more women buscando etrangeros than men.

Even among the non- pros, that is the ones who don't hang out nightly in discoteca (where women far outweigh guys trying to score a gringa/o), at some point or others, I get the unavoidable "trae me un gringo, me quiero ir pa' fuera". I know a Woman Sanky for example, whose 2 daughters do the same (one is now in Italy). Don't think I know of a guy whose dad was also a sanky. Heck, I have seen Dominican men picking up their esposa from the discoteca after an unsuccessful night I suppose (both couples I "know"*, have kids together).

In any case, the Haitiano in the video has the classic case of self hatred issue. :cross-eye

*Not my friends, but LT is small and with Dominican gossiping so active, I get to know everyone's business :laugh:

Last thing, the haitiano is playing himself, Sanky (men) are looked down upon, even though people might envy the material things he gets. No one wants to be in his shoes.
 

AlterEgo

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It s interesting that in this article they solely focus on men Sanky. Where as, in my experience, solely based in LT, there are fare more women buscando etrangeros than men.

Even among the non- pros, that is the ones who don't hang out nightly in discoteca (where women far outweigh guys trying to score a gringa/o), at some point or others, I get the unavoidable "trae me un gringo, me quiero ir pa' fuera". I know a Woman Sanky for example, whose 2 daughters do the same (one is now in Italy). Don't think I know of a guy whose dad was also a sanky. Heck, I have seen Dominican men picking up their esposa from the discoteca after an unsuccessful night I suppose (both couples I "know"*, have kids together).

In any case, the Haitiano in the video has the classic case of self hatred issue. :cross-eye

*Not my friends, but LT is small and with Dominican gossiping so active, I get to know everyone's business :laugh:

Last thing, the haitiano is playing himself, Sanky (men) are looked down upon, even though people might envy the material things he gets. No one wants to be in his shoes.

I had the same reaction reading the article - where are the sankettes??? Maybe will be interviewed on a different day, lol

Mr.AE found the article online this morning, he lives in his own world and didn't know these people exist, at least not with a name, hah. Our 11 year old grandson is here today, and he was a little wide eyed listening to his Papa translating the article. :)
 

mofongoloco

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Feb 7, 2013
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THe attached article includes a short video.  If anyone views it would you please comment on the accent of the guy with the braids.  It sounds distinctive.  Or at least different from what I hear among Dominicans in Boston. In some ways it was very clear.  Seemed like he was speaking more slowly than the average Dominican. 

I know there are regional accents related to L and R.  

Anyone besides me find this man speach to be distinctive?  
 
Aug 6, 2006
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I wonder where the term "Sanky-Panky" began in the RD. Obviously, it is derived from the English expression hanky-panky, but hanky panky describes a type of behavior. not an occupation. It is more humorous than 'gigolo'.
 

Africaida

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Jun 19, 2009
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THe attached article includes a short video.  If anyone views it would you please comment on the accent of the guy with the braids.  It sounds distinctive.  Or at least different from what I hear among Dominicans in Boston. In some ways it was very clear.  Seemed like he was speaking more slowly than the average Dominican. 

I know there are regional accents related to L and R.  

Anyone besides me find this man speach to be distinctive?  

He sounded Haitian to me, he is probably been in DR for a long time as its accent is not as strong as others. I am sure a native Dominican could confirm.
 
Last edited:

Africaida

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Africaida, looks like you answered my question. 

Haitian slightly sounds like they could be French in their accent to my native French ears, but Dominican are experts because I never get mistaken for Haitians despite my accent. To my surprise, they say my accent sounds different.
 

Lobo Tropical

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Aug 21, 2010
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No exceptional journalism or anything new here.
Who is this supposed journalistc obscure group?

Peoples interest in sex and money is found world wide, in many forms.

Why bother with this dribble? 
 

Africaida

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Jun 19, 2009
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THe attached article includes a short video.  If anyone views it would you please comment on the accent of the guy with the braids.

There are dreads Mofo. :)

I noticed that Sanky have higher percentage of dreads and braids than the rest of men in DR (besides may be artists), I always wondered why...
 

AnnaC

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Jan 2, 2002
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It s interesting that in this article they solely focus on men Sanky. Where as, in my experience, solely based in LT, there are fare more women buscando etrangeros than men.

Even among the non- pros, that is the ones who don't hang out nightly in discoteca (where women far outweigh guys trying to score a gringa/o), at some point or others, I get the unavoidable "trae me un gringo, me quiero ir pa' fuera". I know a Woman Sanky for example, whose 2 daughters do the same (one is now in Italy). Don't think I know of a guy whose dad was also a sanky. Heck, I have seen Dominican men picking up their esposa from the discoteca after an unsuccessful night I suppose (both couples I "know"*, have kids together).

In any case, the Haitiano in the video has the classic case of self hatred issue. :cross-eye

*Not my friends, but LT is small and with Dominican gossiping so active, I get to know everyone's business :laugh:

Last thing, the haitiano is playing himself, Sanky (men) are looked down upon, even though people might envy the material things he gets. No one wants to be in his shoes.

Yes there are sankettes as well but for the most part the women have no problem excepting what they are "play for pay" where men do not like the dreaded word prostitute or heaven forbid a sankie. Men would rather a woman fall in love and take them away. This is what I've learnt from years of preaching the gospel in Mars Venus. ;
 

sanpedrogringo

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Sep 2, 2011
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One of the reasons they are looked down upon is because the concept is archaic, and there are guys still trying to make it work. It's like seeing the 80 year old wearing the banana hammock on the beach, or the guy that shows up to that beach with knee length black socks. At first sight, it makes you chuckle. For today's generation there are tons of more lucrative scams, whether they be 'catfishes' on social media or just plain pimps. The creeps still make their money off the women, but yet can sit home with a full stomach, bottle of Johnny Walker Black, hookah pipe, and their video game console. The game has changed, but exists in a very different manner today in 2017.
As far as the dreads, from the people I see that still have them, it's usually due to poor hygeine.
 

Africaida

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Jun 19, 2009
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off topic but...

One of the reasons they are looked down upon is because the concept is archaic, and there are guys still trying to make it work. It's like seeing the 80 year old wearing the banana hammock on the beach, or the guy that shows up to that beach with knee length black socks. At first sight, it makes you chuckle. For today's generation there are tons of more lucrative scams, whether they be 'catfishes' on social media or just plain pimps. The creeps still make their money off the women, but yet can sit home with a full stomach, bottle of Johnny Walker Black, hooka pipe, and their video game console. The game has changed, but exists in a very different manner today in 2017.
As far as the dreads, from the people I see that still have them, it's usually due to poor hygeine.

Not at all, many spent a crazy amount of time twisting them to shape them, it s actually a lot of work, it s just a hairstyles (we are not taking about the one that has 3 trunks on the head), I have seen Dominicans with dreads at the barbershop many times (both in NYC and DR).
 

sanpedrogringo

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Most of the people that play the old time sanky role, are the motoconchos, taxi drivers, and believe it or not, karaoke hosts. These are the types that are chasing women 40+ here, at least on the south coast. The only four that I have seen playing the "true sanky" role of working on the beach or within the animation group of a hotel were all Haitian, and they were in Juan Dolio at the time. They bounce from hotel job to hotel job all together. I believe they are in Bavaro now, as their act wore thin here. Kind of like the Michael Jackson after dinner show.
 

ElVenao

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"Boca Chica is a popular destination, located more than 37 kilometers from Santo Domingo. Together with Juan Dolio has an average annual occupancy rate of tourist establishments of 69, according to a database of the Central Bank. In high season, it has surpassed 91, becoming equal to Bavaro-Punta Cana and La Romana-Bayahibe."
This quote from the article is simply not true, which leads me to question the integrity of the rest of the piece. Maybe if it was written 20 years ago, but not today, on all accounts within the piece.

what part is untrue about the quote??
 

DRob

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Aug 15, 2007
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One of the reasons they are looked down upon is because the concept is archaic, and there are guys still trying to make it work.

Not really. That "archaic" game is in full effect every weekend wherever tourists gather. Using apps and whatnot may be a new wrinkle, but the fabric is the same.

It's like seeing the 80 year old wearing the banana hammock on the beach, or the guy that shows up to that beach with knee length black socks. At first sight, it makes you chuckle.

I think the important thing to remember is these folks are offering a service. Really, it's no different from the motoconcho or the person serving your meals. A sanky/sankiette is trying their best to make you enjoy your trip by creating the fantasy that, yes, you're older and overweight, can't dance or really speak the language, but despite all that (and the fact they look like a dancer from "Despacito"), they just can't resist your charms.

There IS laughter, but it's much louder than anything you might be doing.


As far as the dreads, from the people I see that still have them, it's usually due to poor hygeine.

It's "hygiene." And properly-maintained locks have been a fashion style around the world for about 4,000 years.