Her being a mulatto was not the issue.
That's what you say, but its your word against those of quite a few Haitians I talked to about this. She was too light, that was the real issue. The faulting of Dominicans for the 'wrong' selection to represent Haiti was even couched within the actual issue surrounding that problem, which was her color.
The government should concentrate on national production starting with agriculture...and gradually reinstate high tarifs against imported goods as national production rises.
If you knew how much tourism can impact the rest of the economy, you will see why Haiti should focus on developing its tourism sector if it wants to created a meaningful demand for the national industries. That will in turn create a nice internal market of people with some disposable income who will then add an additional ring on the demand, but the big driver for the benefit of Haiti in general will be mass tourism. Haiti has double the kilometers of beaches than the DR has, including some 25 kilometers along its southern shore of uninterrupted white sand beach similar to B?varo's but with the added bonus of having a mountainous backdrop (and those mountains are not as denude from their vegetation as some of the other mountain chains such as the Noirs or Matheux chains).
Haiti's population simply doesn't have enough purchasing power to ensure a significant development of its domestic industries.
Two separate issues NALs
Haiti's internal color issue has been part of its culture since it was the colony of St-Domingue.
Yes Baby Doc lost support by marrying Michelle.
Even Aristide lost some support by marrying Mildred.
But it is an internal family dispute.
It has ZERO repercussion on Haiti/DR relationship.
That is an external issue between two different people ...natural enemies some would say.....unfortunate enough to share a small piece of land.
I'm not fully convinced by this yet. Our experience with Haitian rule clearly shows that there is a underlying problem that at its root is the Haitian color issue. In fact, the strong basis of race and color on the building of the Haitian national consciousness is what lead Jean Price Mars to completely miss the mark on his evaluation of Dominican society. His evaluation, which was done in the mid-20th Century, has not only influenced the entire Haitian point of view of Dominican society due to the high esteem that his contributions are held amount Haitian intellectuals; but, he is also indirectly the source for the image that has been spread about the DR internationally, which has lead to the creation of a plethora of sociological works/books/etc with the initial Haitian point of view as the basis of their studies.
Its completely irresponsible to sweep under the rug the role the color issue in Haiti itself has had on Dominican-Haitian relations. This is a subject that hasn't been much studied yet, on the one hand because its not something of interest in Haiti and on the other, because Haiti is rarely studied by Dominican intellectuals. But if it was the basis of a serious study, I have no doubt interesting conclusions that will even change the entire perspectives from which Dominican-Haitian relations have been studied and understood thus far.
Let me give you an example.
It was Jean Price Mars who initiated the notion of categorizing the Dominican Republic as a racist country that practiced bavorism. His entire analysis of Dominican society was approached from a racist point of view that took the concept of negritud as the filter from which everything was analyzed. That concept works well for understanding Haitian identity and mannerisms, because Haiti was initially based on racial concepts as is clearly evident in its very own declaration of independence, where race and color is the foundation of that nation. Dominican society has to be analyzed from a cultural aspect to fully understand it and within that cultural point of view, the influence of Haiti can't be ignored because it is central to Dominican identity formation.
Some of his arguments have not only dominated sociological studies of the DR from the outside looking in, but also from within the Dominican intellectual establishment; mostly because almost no one has taken into consideration the influence of Haiti in Dominican affairs and the influence, most likely indirectly, that Haiti's internal racial issues have had in its influence on Dominicans.
One of his most basic notions that has dominated almost every single sociological study on Dominican identity is his notion that Dominicans are racist because during his visit of the country he noticed that all Dominicans, regardless of color, said that they descended from the Spaniards. His racial basis for judging Dominican society lead him to completely miss the mark, because to understand why Dominicans of all colors claim to descend from Spaniards, a person must first ask themselves who exactly was considered Spaniard during the colonial period.
Price Mars reached his own conclusion based on his racially based point of view without even attempting to study Dominican colonial history, and that is why he concluded that every time a Dominican claimed to descend from a Spaniard, that the Dominican was referring to some white ancestor. While it is true that most Dominicans have some Spanish blood mixed in, from the days of Columbus even Taino indians were considered Spaniards if they adopted mostly Spanish customs and way of doing things. During the invasion of Dessalines in 1805, Jos? Campos Tav?rez, a mulatto from the Spanish side of the island, warned the Santiago population of Dessalines' bloody intentions and in his speech, he even said that "I speak to you as a fellow countrymen,
as a Spaniard..." and even Gaspar Arredondo y Pichardo referred to Campos Tav?rez as "a Spaniard." In the first Spanish Constitution of C?diz, the section that defines who was to be considered a Spanish national clearly states "Spanish are anyone born free within the domain of the Spains (with the S) and that lives in any of the Spanish territory" and it also stated "anyone freemen that has gained his freedom within Spanish territory", with Santo Domingo (DR) being considered a full fledge
province of Spain on par with the other provinces on the Spanish peninsula. Everyone that was free, which in the Dominican case was most of the population, was a Spanish national. Even the indians were included in the category. And any slave that gained their freedom, from that very moment they became Spanish nationals. It didn't stated that non-whites were not Spanish nationals, it didn't state that of the non-whites only the mixed blood were Spanish nationals; in essence, even the blacks that were free were Spanish nationals. It was a cultural term.
This misunderstanding made by Price Mars was also made by some other foreigners that visited the DR in the early 20th Century. It was usually foreigners that arrived from societies where race was central to their sense of identity from colonial days, such as Americans. In fact, one American (who's name I don't remember right now) in the 1920s visited the DR and even mentioned that (I'm paraphrasing) "the Spanish mentality is so ingrained in the Dominicans despite most are mixed with African blood, that on one occasion a pure black Dominican said 'that may be fine for you people, but
we Latins are different". He highlighted that because for an American, used to having race as the most central aspect of their sense of identity, for a non-white to consider themselves "Latin" was an error, because "Latins" can only be those people that racially can trace their origin to Spain, Portugal, France, Italy...
Do you notice the error made in trying to understand Dominican society?
This error has had a tremendous impact on the way Dominican society is seen from the outside and even from within by some of the intellectuals that haven't taken the time to take into consideration the racial issues within Haiti itself and the effects these have had on Dominican-Haitian relations, even informal ones such as Price Mars sociological perception of Dominican society.
I'm in the midst of my own investigation regarding this and when I'm done, I will post my findings here. I wasn't planning to post this here, but now I think I should and fully documented and cited.
There is no point in going into a debate on the origin of the different focuses (racial vs cultural), because its very clear that it originated in the different point of views that the Europeans had in their own colonies.
There was even a French politician that visited both sides of the island when Santo Domingo was part of Spain and Saint Domingue a colony of France, who said (I'm paraphrasing):
"Its unbelievable that on the same island, while the French are doing everything in their power to limit racial mixture and to limit the power of the mulattoes, on the Spanish side the conditions are set for the fusion of the two races."
Even in colonial Asia, the few European visitors to various colonies there often commented (and this is documented) on how different things were in the Philippines (a province of Spain at the time) where the whites sat with the non-whites to talk political matters and impose the rule of law, something that in the British/French/Dutch Asian colonies was not only not seen, but actively discouraged and looked down upon.
The British and the French even ridiculed the Spanish for their relaxed attitude towards racial mixing.
