What your wife says is completely true.
Next time a Dominican tell you things are bad, ask him/her if he/she remembers a time when things were good.
Even in the US Dominicans complain. The complaints range from "in this country people live to work like animals" to "Americans are so cold, look how they throw their elderly parents into homes and forget about them and that's what our kids will do to us as they pick up the habits of these gringos" to "the way Americans rear their kids is wrong, a kid needs to be spanked to learn values and the difference between right and wrong, that's why this country's youth is full of shyte" and everything else you could possibly imagine a Dominican complaining about.
Plenty of stereotypes are mixed into the complaints as well as nonesense, but they are there and every Dominican has heared one or two from the mouth of other Dominicans.
I'm convinced that the fatalism present in all Dominicans (I find myself complaining at time for no reason and even when I have nothing to complain about :ermm: ) is a cultural legacy of the past when progressive years were followed by war and destruction. Thus, what's the point of expecting the future to be better than the present when the future almost always ended in social chaos and turmoil.
Of course, the long stretch of stability in the DR has been since the time Trujillo died to today with a few bumps along the way and before that the longest period of stability was the Trujillo dictatorship itself. Prior to that the DR was ravaged by guerrila warfare, periodic foreign invasions, etc.
It's a cultural legacy spread from generation to generation. Children grow up listening to either their parents or acquaintances complain about everything even when things are good that they too learn to expect the future to be worst than the past.
And public opinion in the DR only coincides with the data when the data are negative, when the data are positive the public opinion continues to be pessimistic, at best.
Another reason for the fatalism is the constant comparison (Dominicans refer to each other as comparones for a reason) we make against our acquaintances relative social standing.
For example, if I and a "compadre" are both doing well economically, both have stable families, and both are "moving up in the world", but I move further "up" than my compadre; don't be surprise if my compadre says that his lot has gotten worst, even when in reality it has not.
He is comparing his success against mine and despite the fact that both experienced an increase in well being, my increase which exceeded his causes him to feel as a loser and in the process, he becomes disatisfied with his accomplishments. Ask him if things are good, he's going to say no. Ask him if he was better before, he will say yes because before he and I were on a more "equal" level in well being vs. now. Ask him whose fault is it for his "worsening" condition and he will blame the current political/economic situation.
He will believe that my greater well being is due to connections I might have and he will convince himself (rightfully or not) that my connections are related to the administration in power. Thus, the reason why he didn't do as well as I did has to do with my connections and his connections and if he's to do better than I, then he needs to get the political/economic connections he has in a position to bring him greater success.
That means playing real politik and finding fault in everything an administration in power does in order to use it as a reason for why his "lack" of success is so. His answer to his "problem" is that another politician needs to come in place, preferably a politician whose party he may have some sort of connection to.
Despite all of that, few people truly want the old times to become a reality again. Everybody knows things are better today than ever.
-NALs
Seems I'm not alone: see the readers' letters: