Imagine getting lost here...at night...

suarezn

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Feb 3, 2002
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What if you found yourself lost in one of these Santo Domingo hoods (Capotillo, Los Guandules, Las Canitas, etc)? I got curious and decided to take a look at these hoods from the "air" using google maps and it really drove the point home why cops don't even bother trying to go there or if they go sometimes end up fleeing for their lives. Look at this...absolutely crazy. Think for a minute that in each one of those tiny specs live 4,5, 8, 10...or who know how many people. Imagine if you lived there? Wouldn't you take the first Yola to Puerto Rico you could get a hold of.

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DavidZ

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Aug 29, 2005
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wow!!!!! that's an amazing sight... like a flat version of the favelas in Brazil...probably built alongside the ozama river or other water source that floods every times it rains...
 

Golo100

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Jan 5, 2002
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While all the above comments are well intended and have truths in it here's the other side.
Poverty or not, people in our barrios appear on the surface(and that says a lot)to be happier than people in Anacaona Avenue. I recall a study or something that indicated that Dominicans were the happiest people in the planet(electricity or not). They were not refering to Dominicans who own Casa de Campo villas or Miami Beach condos. They were refering to the real Dominicans living in Capotillo, Libertador de Herrera, Buenos Aires, Sabana Perdida, etc.
When you got nothing to lose you have a certain happiness."What can you loose?" Like the song by Brazil's Isabel Antena with the band Thievery Corporation. It can't get any worse. We can only go up.
Years ago those same barrios were mostly wood and zinc tops. No radio or TV. No refrigerators. No cell phones.
Today, an interminable wall of concrete alleys with cement block houses, many with no "empa?ete" on the side walls has replaced those hurricane weak wooden shacks. TV dishes fill the roofs with SKY cable.
Cable TV has arrived there. WiFI. Huge Coca Cola and Presidente beer trucks drive thru narrow streets looking for this profitable markets of drinkers, who have now arrived, thanks to the golden parachutes sent by their brothers and sisters abroad, wire transfers via Vimenca and setting up all kinds of small businesses and chimichurris.
If it weren't for the poor service and unequal return of their taxes in services and paved streets, these barrios would even look beautiful. Their houses painted with bright colors that people in Piantini would not dare use in their mansions. The same colors used by those beautiful wooden houses in the road to Bavaro. Yet, this colorful picture paints the dynamic of a vibrant community.
It's amazing how at night, when electricity is on, the barrios look beautiful with their lights on. These tiny houses don't look so bad. You can see their living rooms lighted up with their doors wide open not fearing anything. Lively loud music. Loud vendor trucks exceeding the decibel limit of funny cars. Religious fanatics walking down with loudspeakers praising their religion. Haitian women screaming "Aguacate"! "Guineo maduro"!
Beauty parlors on sidewalks with electric generators to dry their beautiful women's hair so they can go to the disco or colmadon.
And yes, this is the best...the most beautiful and exciting women in the country are in the barrios.
Las Menores, they call them, underage teens with adult bodies, and curves that can only be driven with a Mitsubishi Evolution at 5000rpm. They are the queens of the barrio. They own the men. They own the streets. They name the price. They sing along, dance and shout in the streets to the music of PEPE and reggaeton. They are happy, unlike girls in rich neighborhoods. They show their bodies and move their hips, as if life is forever.
The palomos, the young generation of mostly unemployed men in the barrios now drive motorcycles and passolas to impress Las Menores. They pay their loan doing motoconcho. But it's rich guys from Piantini, Anacaona, NACO, Casa De Campo and Punta Cana who come to the barrios driving their Porsches GT3's and Mercedes SL63AMG's who eventually, at least for the night, take them out to expensive Caba?as in San Isidro.
But the palomos in the end win their hearts. They own the streets doing their motorcycle wheelies.The viejevos are no match, except when they show up with their wallets full and ready to burn nitro. Just for the night of course. Their boring wrinkled and Prozac wives are no match for Las Menores.
It's not all that bad in Las Ca?adas.
 

suarezn

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Good post Golo...of course you're romanticizing it a bit, but you're correct in places like this is where the soul of the country lies (even if we're afraid to visit there).

I think we all at a certain point in our lives probably wish we could live such worry free lives. No meeting to attend at a certain time, no schedules to keep, no time and expenses to submit, etc...But the truth is that life in these Canadas can be tough and rough. Maybe not as tough as it looks from the air, but still not a place to visit / live in just for giggles.

I do admire the fact that you stay current with the slang / talk of the street in spite of your age. Tiene bujia el viejo...
 

Berzin

Banned
Nov 17, 2004
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Photographic evidence that there are too many people making too many more people.

Sorry, but you are way off base. It's not about overpopulation, it's about unequal resource distribution.

If these people had access to the same opportunities your pals over in the better neighborhoods have to education and jobs, you really think that photo would look as it does now?
 
What if you found yourself lost in one of these Santo Domingo hoods (Capotillo, Los Guandules, Las Canitas, etc)? I got curious and decided to take a look at these hoods from the "air" using google maps and it really drove the point home why cops don't even bother trying to go there or if they go sometimes end up fleeing for their lives. Look at this...absolutely crazy. Think for a minute that in each one of those tiny specs live 4,5, 8, 10...or who know how many people. Imagine if you lived there? Wouldn't you take the first Yola to Puerto Rico you could get a hold of.

2vwcr2r.gif
[/IMG]

I did find myself lost in there one afternoon, I was thinking with the wrong head and volunteered to drive this girl home, I made so many turns and streets just ended for no reason,streets were torn up in parts it was pretty scary and the sun was going down. I finally paid someone to get in and get me out of there.
 

suarezn

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Feb 3, 2002
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Haha...You sound almost like a vampire movie where you're trying to get out before the sun goes down and it ominously just starts to descend in horizon. That's a situation where I would definitely be giving some cab fare.
 

AZB

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Jan 2, 2002
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Yes, golo is one heck of a writer and can paint anything colorful.
Now lets look at the reality of the barrios, and not from your airconditioned viejvito, baja panty suvs.
The barrio folks do tend to live a simple life, yet its not carefree by any means. They also have their problems cut out for them. The people have to endure the hot sadistic summer nights without electric. Get used to getting eaten up by furious mosquitoes in the hut where walls have openings for a hand to slide through from the outside. Then you wake up to a bright morning without running water.
They eat mostly boiled bananas or yuca with salami slices or fried egg on top.
The young girls have no future what-so-ever. They learn to get what they want by offering sex to young tigres on pasolas and motorcycles. If they are asked to go out with a guy, they either have to have sex with them or simply give them oral action. This is what the under-age girls do if they want to go out with young studs from ghettos. Then they get advance training from their older sisters or cousins and get introduced to guys in cars. Once they find out what they are worth, this is all they will do until they get knocked off by someone. Then forget school and job, now they rely completely on strange men to give them money. They will do whatever to make ends meet. many become full time hookers and get used to the easy life of drinking and going clubbing every night and eat out, not to mention, buying clothes and etc. When some money is left over, they send it home to cover the expenses of kids who are raised by their single moms. These girls will go back home to rest once in every few days.
They have all the problems in the world just because they are always on zero tank of gas. They have no money to do anything. If they have a cell phone, then they have no money for calling card, then on top of that, they have no electric to have it charged. Then the phone gets robbed by some tigre on a motor-bike. Then the phone gets dropped and broken. So these barrio folks always have a problem with cell phones. Then they have no skill to seek anything worthwhile. The money they make is not enough to cover anything. They get easily replaced by another person if they screw up. So many are jobless and have no hopes of finding anything good. They all live in a dead-end poverty culture with no way out. This is the cycle that make up the barrio culture and perpetuates it forever.
The guys like golo simply drive through to get a glimpse of their night life from the security of their locked cars. The reality is not so pretty if you have to live among them.
AZB
 

Chirimoya

Well-known member
Dec 9, 2002
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It's a vicious circle that can only be broken by increasing education and affluence. In all societies where that has happened the birth rate has gone down.

You wouldn't think so to see the barrios, but the birth rate here has declined over the last couple of generations.
 

Yayow

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Sep 4, 2007
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Yes, golo is one heck of a writer and can paint anything colorful.
Now lets look at the reality of the barrios, and not from your airconditioned viejvito, baja panty suvs.
The barrio folks do tend to live a simple life, yet its not carefree by any means. They also have their problems cut out for them. The people have to endure the hot sadistic summer nights without electric. Get used to getting eaten up by furious mosquitoes in the hut where walls have openings for a hand to slide through from the outside. Then you wake up to a bright morning without running water.
They eat mostly boiled bananas or yuca with salami slices or fried egg on top.
The young girls have no future what-so-ever. They learn to get what they want by offering sex to young tigres on pasolas and motorcycles. If they are asked to go out with a guy, they either have to have sex with them or simply give them oral action. This is what the under-age girls do if they want to go out with young studs from ghettos. Then they get advance training from their older sisters or cousins and get introduced to guys in cars. Once they find out what they are worth, this is all they will do until they get knocked off by someone. Then forget school and job, now they rely completely on strange men to give them money. They will do whatever to make ends meet. many become full time hookers and get used to the easy life of drinking and going clubbing every night and eat out, not to mention, buying clothes and etc. When some money is left over, they send it home to cover the expenses of kids who are raised by their single moms. These girls will go back home to rest once in every few days.
They have all the problems in the world just because they are always on zero tank of gas. They have no money to do anything. If they have a cell phone, then they have no money for calling card, then on top of that, they have no electric to have it charged. Then the phone gets robbed by some tigre on a motor-bike. Then the phone gets dropped and broken. So these barrio folks always have a problem with cell phones. Then they have no skill to seek anything worthwhile. The money they make is not enough to cover anything. They get easily replaced by another person if they screw up. So many are jobless and have no hopes of finding anything good. They all live in a dead-end poverty culture with no way out. This is the cycle that make up the barrio culture and perpetuates it forever.
The guys like golo simply drive through to get a glimpse of their night life from the security of their locked cars. The reality is not so pretty if you have to live among them.
AZB

Although I don't have the time here of some of you vets (and therefore risk being ripped by others with more posts that disagree w/ my take), I also have found this to be a more accurate depiction of life in the barrios. I too have spent some time in a few barrios, on occasion, and they do appear to have a certain repetive no way out take to them. Talk about ground hog day, it appears to be ground hog generations.
 

ExtremeR

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Mar 22, 2006
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I did find myself lost in there one afternoon, I was thinking with the wrong head and volunteered to drive this girl home, I made so many turns and streets just ended for no reason,streets were torn up in parts it was pretty scary and the sun was going down. I finally paid someone to get in and get me out of there.

Haha, good one. I once went over there looking for somebody who owed me money, I almost had to go down to the river to find him. Nevertheless, I'll never go back down there, as Badpiece said, lots of streets ending for no reason, and cars parked in the middle of the streets.
 

Berzin

Banned
Nov 17, 2004
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Not exactly the same, but I do think there would be too many people making too many more people in better houses. The resources on this planet are finite, but the human race's ability to breed is approaching infinity at an alarming rate.

In large part I do not agree. There is no question that unequal resource distribution plays a part, but increasing the population won't make that any easier. There will just be less and less for more people to share.

If you are taking this stance based on personal opinion and casual observations, there is nothing wrong with educating yourself in terms of the economic underdevelopment of so-called third world countries.

The countries that have suffered underdevelopment all have one thing in common-they have suffered economic and political oppression at the hands of a western power. This is true of Africa, during and after the slave trade and has been true of Central and South America.

As an example, Brazil is no longer under the thumb of the Portuguese but the wealthy elite classes still dominate as a de facto arm of their European ancestors. And this is a country with one of if not thee worst wealth distribution percentages in the whole world.

"The Instituto de Pesquisa Econ?mica Aplicada (IPEA) of the Brazilian Government in a recent study stated that in S?o Paulo the wealthiest 10% controlled 73.4% of the city's wealth, while in Rio de Janeiro they retained 62.9% and Salvador 67%.

Also, IPEA attributes the primary cause for the poor wealth distribution to an outdated tax system that taxes the least wealthy up to 44% more than the most affluent.

Near the end of the 1800s, the richest 10% in Rio had 68% of the wealth."
When you have this sort of stagnation in terms of wealth distribution over centuries, the inevitable outcome is a permanent lower class who own no land ownership rights who are beholden to large scale farmers and industrialists for their meager existence.

And a meager existence is all but guaranteed to this portion of the population. When a country like the DR relies so heavily on tourism, rest assured the jobs on offer, while some may argue is better than no jobs at all, does nothing but keep the lower classes right where they are while the lion's share of the profits are siphoned off by the wealthy elites.

This is how underground economies emerge-from the advent of the sanky to micro drug distribution centers in the barrios. Law and order will do nothing to stem this tide, it will just be contained in certain unsavory parts of the island and will continue to operate.

Look at Jamaica's relationship with the IMF. Their domestic agricultural base has been decimated by the draconian measures instituted by the IMF. To qualify for loans, they had to open their markets to US farm corporations where local agricultural interests could not compete. What you have now is a small island-nation dependent on exports in a world market they could not compete in. This documentary will give you a better look into the effects the IMF deals have had on the country's economy-
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Your point about the world having finite resources doesn't take into account how much is controlled and consumed by such a small percentage. Case in point-North America is 6% of the world population, yet control 50% of the world's wealth. These aren't esoteric abstractions, this is the truth.

And out of this statistic, a staggering 1% of the US population have more combined wealth then the the bottom 90%.

In Walter Rodney's excellent book "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa", he states the profound negative effects of colonial imperialism very clearly-

"A second and even more indispensable component of modern underdevelopment is that it expresses a particular relationship of exploitation: namely, the exploitation of one country by another.

All of the countries named as ‘underdeveloped’ in the world are exploited by others; and the underdevelopment with which the world is now pre-occupied is a product of capitalist, imperialist and colonialist exploitation.

African and Asian societies were developing independently until they were taken over directly or indirectly by the capitalist powers. When that happened, exploitation increased and the export of surplus ensued, depriving the societies of the benefit of their natural resources and labour. That is an integral part of underdevelopment in the contemporary sense."


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Just look at the effects of imperialism on the island of Hispaniola. The indigenous populations were wiped out and replaced by African slaves for the sole purpose of extracting the country's natural resources to be exported for the benefit of Spain. Other western nations followed suit all over the Americas and in Africa.

As for the DR, "the GNP is currently divided so that the top 10% gain 40% of the wealth, with a very stratified social system". They have also suffered an intellectual brain drain, with many top students choosing to go abroad because the overall feeling is that nepotism and limited opportunities severely hinder their socio-economic advancement on the island.

What you have now are countries that are economically dependent on the west due to centuries of this type of exploitation. So saying that the Earth's resources are finite is but a very small part of the overall picture and not intellectually correct when you consider how these resources have been historically divvied up.

It is quite easy to see how the west flourished while many of the Earth's countries floundered given the imperialistic nature of their relationship. Sucking all manner of resources out of one country for the benefit of another will do that.

This stuff is not left-wing liberal drivel. I believe in an exchange of ideas as free as possible from any one particular political ideology. You are free to dismiss it, but the facts remain and they say more about the state of the world's poor than an overly simplistic view of overpopulation that you have put forth as the reason why these people live the way they do in places like Capotillo.
 
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Chirimoya

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Dec 9, 2002
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The growth of these barrios is the combined result of rural -> urban migration and a high birth rate among the poorest and least educated members of society.

Up till the early 1970s 70% lived in the rural areas and 30% in the cities. The situation is now reversed - roughly 30% rural, 70% urban.
 

El Tigre

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Jan 23, 2003
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I thought Buenos Aires, Los Salados, Camboya in Santiago were bad. But this is beyond bad.
 

Yayow

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Sep 4, 2007
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Just a thought

I thought Buenos Aires, Los Salados, Camboya in Santiago were bad. But this is beyond bad.

I know this is a little off topic, but..... in the light of these living conditions, and lack of opportunity to make a good wage for an honest days work, and lack of educational opportunities, and some wonder why, there are so many who do things that many consider morally wrong??

Faced with dire straits such as these I still wonder how many of us, would not, especially if we viewed it as our only chance to support our family, or to make a better life for ourselves wouldn't do the same.

It is so easy to be moralistic, judgmental (and above the fray) when you are not facing the same things, that those who have to make those tough decisions are. By the way I am not saying making these choices are right or wrong, I am just saying that before criticizing somebody's survival instincts, we may need to walk in their shoes, or at the very least look at things from their perspectives.

Before you start sending in those cards and letters folks, I am not saying all are moralistic and judgmental etc., but those that are know who they are.
 

jalencastro

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Dec 15, 2004
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Excellent Post

They have also suffered an intellectual brain drain, with many top students choosing to go abroad because the overall feeling is that nepotism and limited opportunities severely hinder their socio-economic advancement on the island.

What you have now are countries that are economically dependent on the west due to centuries of this type of exploitation. So saying that the Earth's resources are finite is but a very small part of the overall picture and not intellectually correct when you consider how these resources have been historically divvied up.

It is quite easy to see how the west flourished while many of the Earth's countries floundered given the imperialistic nature of their relationship. Sucking all manner of resources out of one country for the benefit of another will do that.

Great post Berzin, this is one thing I notice happening a lot in Latin America when looking at the state of a country's education, I see a lot of people wanting out of their home land to study or live abroad given the sad state of affairs and economic conditions at home. Lack of jobs, lack of morale, dependancy on the west is so apparent and discouraging...who wouldn't want out? And this mentality continues as part of every day life...dog eat dog world... :ermm: