F
franco1111
Guest
When a brand new public school in La Romana did not open today and no parents or students were notified, I was going to write something about how this kind of thing is part of the reality of life in the DR for many Dominicans. (Danilo came and cut the ribbon for the school last week and it was supposed to open today. Parents arrived with their children and no director, no teachers, were there to tell them anything. Supposedly now the school will open on Thursday.) Minor incident among many that are far more inconvenient and sometimes deadly.
But, I found something more profound that starkly illustrates what life is like for some and the contrast between actual life here and what tourists see and/or experience. A short description of conditions in El Hoyo de Friusa. Friusa is an enclave near Bavaro/Punta Cana. There is an intersection of streets where there are commercial developments and a new bus station. Normal, more or less. But, down the hill is El Hoyo.
[Google translation]
The Hole of Friusa, what we don't want to see ...
"When we want to hide something, we throw it in a 'hole,' store it in a drawer or throw it in a zafacón. How could we teach millions of tourists how close to their paradisiacal rooms thousands of Dominican and Haitian citizens crowd together, living in unacceptable conditions because there is a lot of wealth and full employment in this area.
"It's half past ten on this Sunday night and I just got back from the Friusa Hole. I can not think of another topic for my weekly article that vent this sorrow that takes my sleep, because of impotence.
"It is not the first time that I go to the Friusa Hole. In 1991, when I first came to the area, I was just a 19-year-old man, to open my first business at the RIU Taino hotel before finishing my university studies. At that time, the road that brought us from Higuey to Bavaro crossed a particularly large area at that time, in which the communities were small and the less than 2,000 hotel rooms attracted about 20,000 Dominicans.
"Behind that famous crossing, there was a particular descent into those clay lands where improvised hovels built by people who did not want to move to Higuey, which at that time was more than an hour away, began to rise. That hole continued to be populated without planning or attention from the State or the Municipality, in the same way that belts of misery can be seen in the periphery of Santo Domingo, or the famous favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
"That hole, hidden from tourists, continued to grow, at the same speed as the destination has grown. Along with the hundreds of hotel rooms, thousands of rooms are built in quartets, hovels and shabby pieces where thousands of migrants from other parts of the country and from outside the Dominican Republic, mainly from Haiti, are crowded. The rise of hotel construction and infrastructure and services, attracts a lot of supposedly temporary work, stop raising complex millionaires but end up staying permanently.
"And in the same way that on a personal level, housing is improvised and an irregular and informal economy develops, it continues to grow in a tree-bottomed and disorganized way and it is increasingly difficult to meet such basic needs as water, in the absence of a system of water and sewer. Water extraction wells are improvised next to septic tanks, as a prelude to what can be a major health crisis.
"The Hole of Friusa is not enough to bury our shame and that extreme poverty can no longer be hidden in the heart of the area that generates our greatest wealth.
"It's time to get out of inertia and indifference. I count on you."
And, people talk about this place as paradise. I have been to El Hoyo for a few different reasons. One of them recently is that there is a new PN station there.
http://bavarodigital.net/2019/08/19/el-hoyo-de-friusa-lo-que-no-queremos-ver/
But, I found something more profound that starkly illustrates what life is like for some and the contrast between actual life here and what tourists see and/or experience. A short description of conditions in El Hoyo de Friusa. Friusa is an enclave near Bavaro/Punta Cana. There is an intersection of streets where there are commercial developments and a new bus station. Normal, more or less. But, down the hill is El Hoyo.
[Google translation]
The Hole of Friusa, what we don't want to see ...
"When we want to hide something, we throw it in a 'hole,' store it in a drawer or throw it in a zafacón. How could we teach millions of tourists how close to their paradisiacal rooms thousands of Dominican and Haitian citizens crowd together, living in unacceptable conditions because there is a lot of wealth and full employment in this area.
"It's half past ten on this Sunday night and I just got back from the Friusa Hole. I can not think of another topic for my weekly article that vent this sorrow that takes my sleep, because of impotence.
"It is not the first time that I go to the Friusa Hole. In 1991, when I first came to the area, I was just a 19-year-old man, to open my first business at the RIU Taino hotel before finishing my university studies. At that time, the road that brought us from Higuey to Bavaro crossed a particularly large area at that time, in which the communities were small and the less than 2,000 hotel rooms attracted about 20,000 Dominicans.
"Behind that famous crossing, there was a particular descent into those clay lands where improvised hovels built by people who did not want to move to Higuey, which at that time was more than an hour away, began to rise. That hole continued to be populated without planning or attention from the State or the Municipality, in the same way that belts of misery can be seen in the periphery of Santo Domingo, or the famous favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
"That hole, hidden from tourists, continued to grow, at the same speed as the destination has grown. Along with the hundreds of hotel rooms, thousands of rooms are built in quartets, hovels and shabby pieces where thousands of migrants from other parts of the country and from outside the Dominican Republic, mainly from Haiti, are crowded. The rise of hotel construction and infrastructure and services, attracts a lot of supposedly temporary work, stop raising complex millionaires but end up staying permanently.
"And in the same way that on a personal level, housing is improvised and an irregular and informal economy develops, it continues to grow in a tree-bottomed and disorganized way and it is increasingly difficult to meet such basic needs as water, in the absence of a system of water and sewer. Water extraction wells are improvised next to septic tanks, as a prelude to what can be a major health crisis.
"The Hole of Friusa is not enough to bury our shame and that extreme poverty can no longer be hidden in the heart of the area that generates our greatest wealth.
"It's time to get out of inertia and indifference. I count on you."
And, people talk about this place as paradise. I have been to El Hoyo for a few different reasons. One of them recently is that there is a new PN station there.
http://bavarodigital.net/2019/08/19/el-hoyo-de-friusa-lo-que-no-queremos-ver/