Taina Mirabal

[NALs]

Why has he/she not commented negatively about S?nchez , Mella and Luper?n but only Duarte. Me thinks this person is the racist.

Or Toussaint Louverture or Jean Pierre Boyer?

I mean, if racist individuals is what she truly is going after then those individuals should appear on her radar. Those individuals truly had racist ideologies and tendencies when they founded and ruled over Haiti, unlike Duarte whose actions, quotes, and aspirations that exist to this day in written form show no signs of bigotry other than a desire for Dominican self rule.

Duarte and other members of the Trinity didn't went about expelling the non-whites from the country once the independence was achieved or attempted to commit a massacre of some sort. The same can't be said of Haiti's liberators, based on its initial anti-white laws and constitution and in later years a full fledge massacre of many of its own mulattoes by its own blacks.

Duarte himself once said he admired the Haitians when he said:

Entre los dominicanos y los haitianos no es posible una fus?n. Yo admiro al pueblo haitiano desde el momento en que, recogiendo las p?ginas de su historia, lo encuentro luchando desesperadamente contra poderes excesivamente superiores y veo c?mo los vence y como sale de la triste condici?n de esclavo para constituirse en naci?n libre e independiente. Le reconozco poseedor de dos virtudes eminentes, el amor a la libertad y el valor, pero los dominicanos que en tantas ocasiones han vertido gloriosamente su sangre, ?lo habr?n hecho solo para sellar la afrenta de que en premio de sus sacrificios le otorguen sus dominadores la gracia de besarles la mano?

That woman is pathetic to say the least. Using wishful thinking as if it was fact to perpetrate a personal grudge is pathetic.

"Los enemigos de la Patria, por consiguiente nuestros, est?n muy acordes en estas ideas: destruir la Nacionalidad aunque para ello sea preciso aniquilar a la naci?n entera."
Juan Pablo Duarte

-NALs

 

[Exxtol]

I'm going to get it for this one

Duarte and other members of the Trinity didn't went about expelling the non-whites from the country once the independence was achieved or attempted to commit a massacre of some sort.

How could they? As Criollos, they were the minority. Pretty hard to massacre folks when you're outnumbered.

Duarte himself once said he admired the Haitians when he said:

Entre los dominicanos y los haitianos no es posible una fus?n. Yo admiro al pueblo haitiano desde el momento en que, recogiendo las p?ginas de su historia, lo encuentro luchando desesperadamente contra poderes excesivamente superiores y veo c?mo los vence y como sale de la triste condici?n de esclavo para constituirse en naci?n libre e independiente. Le reconozco poseedor de dos virtudes eminentes, el amor a la libertad y el valor, pero los dominicanos que en tantas ocasiones han vertido gloriosamente su sangre, ?lo habr?n hecho solo para sellar la afrenta de que en premio de sus sacrificios le otorguen sus dominadores la gracia de besarles la mano?

Great, now we know that all the haitian leaders were racists and Duarte and his crew were all non-racialized saints, even though they were the offspring of european imperialists who benefited from the plantation complex in Hispaniola--nice, objective, and balanced. I like it.

This isn't directed towards you Nals but question for the thread:

Why do those that criticize Duarte have an agenda, but those that praise him do not?

I don't know much about Duarte's ideological views on race, but is it possible there is some truth to her words?

--Exxtol

 

[Ogre of the Caribbean]

Exxtol, please, read a few books(even one) on this topic before you make these comments. It's obvious you don't know what went on during the Haitian occupation. It's quite obvious to anyone who has ever studied Dominican history that these attacks are agenda driven.

 

[Chip]

I don't know much about Duarte's ideological views on race, but is it possible there is some truth to her words?

--Exxtol

How can anyone take this lady seriously when she equates the Trinitartia with the KKK????!!!! That kind of ruins it for me their, and really tells me that she is either ignorant or stupid to even make such a claim. The next question is what type of people would believe her, they would have to be awfully ignorant or worse. If nobody knows what the KKK thinks of blacks and what some of the "Dominican mulatto/white elite" think, there are WORLDS of differences.

 

[asopao]

Great, now we know that all the haitian leaders were racists and Duarte and his crew were all non-racialized saints, even though they were the offspring of european imperialists who benefited from the plantation complex in Hispaniola--nice, objective, and balanced. I like it.

The real Domincan racists were the ones that didn't believe in independence and wanted to sell the country to some power like Britain, France or the U.S. Who were real racist societies at the time.

Duarte understood that for DR to function as a sovereign nation, it has to include the vast majority of people who weren't of heavy European extraction.
He saw how the Mulattoes in Haiti couldn't have total grip of that country by not including the vast Black majority in their government

You forgetting that the cop d'etat against Boyer in 1843 was a combination of Riviere's " the reform movement" and Duarte's " La Trinitaria" movement. It was later that Riviere went against La Trinitaria when he saw that they wanted to separate from Haitian rule.

 

[NALs]

How could they? As Criollos, they were the minority. Pretty hard to massacre folks when you're outnumbered.

They had enough man power and will power to repel Haitian forces, why would they not use such to, at the very least, expel non-whites?

Where theres a will, there is always a way.

The independence of the DR is proof of that given that against all odds the independence of the country was achieved.

However, where a will is lacking, nothing will happen. The lack of anti non-white actions or even rhetoric from the part of the founders (at a time when the entire country had a few thousand individuals total) is proof of that.

Otherwise, there would have been some tremendous racial tensions in the DR at that time and quite frankly there are no indications of racial tensions at that time.

The idea of indigenismo didn't evolve until well after the Trinity was a part of history. Let's not forget that Trujillo is the main reason for the current identity that exist in the DR and Trujillo came well after the Trinity, and when I say well after, I'm talking a little more than a century.

Thus, this notion that Dominicans were "fooled" into believing an identity and that such was started by the Trinitarians is absurd at its most basic level.

The reality is that had Trujillo never come to power, the DR would not have had the identity issues it currently has today. Trujillo's ideology on how things should be were dramatically different from that of the Trinitarians, beginning with the use of authoritarian rule which was despised by Duarte himself!

Great, now we know that all the haitian leaders were racists and Duarte and his crew were all non-racialized saints, even though they were the offspring of european imperialists who benefited from the plantation complex in Hispaniola--nice, objective, and balanced. I like it.

Please quote word for word where ever I have said that all Haitian leaders were racists.

Once you do that, then I'll continue discussing this with you.

BTW, there is no need to see beyond what is being said, unless of course you are one of those people who develop and ideology BEFORE collecting all the facts.

This isn't directed towards you Nals but question for the thread:

Why do those that criticize Duarte have an agenda, but those that praise him do not?

I don't know much about Duarte's ideological views on race, but is it possible there is some truth to her words?

--Exxtol

1) Because many of them are taking the role of re-inventing history based on preconceived notions before they collect the facts. In other words, they come to the conclusion that "Duarte must have been racist since he was white" and then they devote time and effort to find proofs to support their claim. Often times, they misinterpret things and/or see things that are simply not there, all in attempt to connect dots to support their preconceived "theories".

That is not how theories are created, the facts comes BEFORE the theory, not the other way around.

2) The possibility that she might be right is more or less the same as that of neo-nazis who reconstruct history to fulfill their preconceived notions (ie. to avoid criticism concerning Hitler's genocide of Jews, they simply deny that the holocaust ever existed).

Now, read this clearly, I am not saying that she is a neo-nazi or something similar; but what I am saying is that its very clear when people come up with theories prior to facts.

She is not presenting this as a hypothesis or a potential reality, she is presenting this as a proven theory and quite frankly, she is wrong; not because I say so, but because their is no proof what-so-ever that effectively backs up her claims.

Even the suppose "proofs" that she uses are evidently flawed.

-NALs

 

[NALs]

To conclude:

To make sure that I don't get more ridiculous responses regarding this vagabond using in very bad taste the name Taina Mirabal (most likely is not her original name), here are a few examples of flaws in some of her erroneous claims:

Claim #1: The image of Duarte as a Jesus Christ was created in the last 60 years to control the Dominican masses.

Reality #1: The very first individual to liken Duarte to Christ was the mulatto and member of the original Trinity Franc?sco del Rosario S?nchez when he claimed that Duarte is our equivalent of “Jesus of Nazareth”. S?nchez died well over 60 years ago and the modern Dominican state was not fully formed until after Dictator Lil?s was killed in Moca in 1899. Thus, this notion that it was a lie created in the last 60 years to control the masses is ridiculous at best.

Claim #2: Duarte was educated in Spain where he received a pro-white, pro-Catholic education.

Reality #2: Duarte finished his university studies in France; during a time when Republican ideas from the French Revolution and the declaration of human rights was the norm in francophone universities. Duarte received such type of teachings, internalized the liberal ideas that was common in France at that time. To my knowledge, France has never been a part of Spain, so its very hard to believe her story that he got his education in Spain.

Claim #3: Duarte added the color blue when he divided the Haitian flag and placed the white cross as symbol of white supremacy.

Reality #3: The Haitian flag derives from the French flag, and the Dominican flag derives from the Haitian flag, thus by default the Dominican flag has a French foundation. The elimination of the white color from the French flag is what converts such to the Haitian flag, that means that when Duarte took the Haitian flag and modified it to the Dominican flag the color blue was already there, thus he never added the color blue. In addition to that, the white cross was added to represent the Christian faith and unity of the Dominican nation with the two upper squares being red and the two lower squares being blue; only later in the early 1900s the flag being modified to its current form with blue square in upper left, red in upper right, and the opposite on the lower left and lower right. Much in the same pattern as the Haitian flag, the Dominican coat of arms is in the center.

As if that was not enough, the fact that Duarte’s Trinity included Francisco del Rosario Sanchez, a mulatto; immediately discards the notion that he was a racist. Since when do true racists unite with people they consider inferior to them, especially when it was such a tiny group composed of three men. For certain, there must have been many white men that could have taken Sanchez’ place and yet, that didn’t happen.

Then there are the poems and other literary works that Duarte created where the unity of the races to form one nation.

To conclude, Taina Mirabal is nothing more than a good for nothing charlatan.

-NALs

 

[Chip]

To conclude, Taina Mirabal is nothing more than a good for nothing charlatan.

-NALs

De acuerdo, chantajista, chismosa, habladora y culito seco(for good measure, haha!)

 

[Xavier_Onassis]

De acuerdo, chantajista, chismosa, habladora y culito seco(for good measure, haha!)

The KKK was founded by Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was a a slave trader before the Civil War and the only noncom in the Confederate army top attain the rank of general. One of his pals was the ambassador of the CSA to Spain, who borrowed the pointy hoods of the penitentes in the Holy Week parades in Sevilla, The pointy hats (like the dunce caps) points upward towards heaven. The bearers of the Nino Jesus and other statues might seem to become a prestigious (and therefore prideful) honor, so they are masked so no one can recognize them.
The KKK, the Knights of the White Camilia and others were night riders who donned hoods and raided Blacks who had settled on plantations. It was always a racist White Supremacist organization. A book called The Clansman was made into an epic film by David Wark Griffiths and the Klan was reorganized around 1918.

I doubt that the Klan and Duarte are related in any way. It does sound like a good way to sell newspapers to claim that Duarte was a racist.
In the period that the DR was governed by Haiti, the people of both countries suffered.
Dessalines the Haitian general was clearly an anti-White racist.

 

[NALs]

Dessalines was anti-white, but if we go by what Haitian historian Jean Price Mars said about him, he had a binary way of looking at things. To him, if a person was not black then he was white.

Dessalines also had a mistrust towards the mulattoes, due to having white blood mixed with the black. The only way a mulatto would eliminate any doubt in Dessalines mind was by killing white people in his presence. Dessalines enjoyed making mulattoes kill their white father or mother or brothers or sisters or cousins in front of him, those that refused would witness his soldiers torture them to death and then the mulatto himself was killed in the same manner.

Any mulatto or black that show the slightest opposition or doubt towards the massacre of even those that helped create the uprising was treated as a white by Dessalines, with everything that entailed. 

Its also said that when Dessalines committed the massacre at Jeremie, two things happened. 

The first was that a mulatto general was disgusted with the widespread killings without regard of who was innocent and who wasn't, he refused to take part of the event. He told the other soldiers that they should tell Dessalines that he know of his loyalty and his willingness to fight an enemy that was armed and who's wrong doings was evidently clear, but that he was not going to take part in the massacre because he was not a murderer. When news reached Dessalines, he went into a tantrum and demanded his soldiers to bring to him the mulatto general so he can kill him himself. When the soldiers arrived at the general's house, he ran to the second floor and on the balcony he shot himself in the head.

The second was that after the massacre was complete, Dessalines ordered that the heads of the victims had to he placed on a mount all facing towards the road, so that the blacks of the area can see the faces of their oppressors. Most of the blacks and mulattoes of the area avoided that bloody scene. Dessalines was bothered that most of the blacks were not particularly happy with what he had done, most being visibly saddened. According to the accounts of many survivors, many mulattoes went to the sites where the corpses were lumped in an attempt at identifying their family members, neighbors, and friends. 

At the end of the day, the reality is that the average Haitian is simply not an evil person, unlike Dessalines.

 

[NALs]

When it came to the Dominicans, Dessalines' widespread massacre and destruction was much more general. Remember that Dominicans refused to unite with Haiti, which was a blow to Dessalines ego, but Dominicans decided to unite with the French. With a population composed mostly by whites and mixed people, plus the lenient treatment the blacks were given; the fact that the Haitians were killing mostly whites and mixed people up to the very border sent chills in the Dominican population. The French that managed to flee Haiti and avoid being part of the massacre didn't help by telling the Dominicans the things they witnessed. Events such as what happened to Madame Chanlotte near Ouanaminthe, she was forced to watch her husband and children tortured to death, then she was forced to eat the raw flesh of her husband before they tore open her belly and ripped out the fetus and forced it down her throat. Is it any wonder Dominicans refused to accept Dessalines' invitation to unite with Haiti? That negative made him go into a tantrum and initiate the horrible invasion of 1805, with the pretext he wanted to fight the last French remnant in Santo Domingo but brought massacres and devastation everywhere his troops passed through. 

According to Price Mars, once Dessalines was back in Cap Haitien and he got news that the French fleet he saw off the coast of Santo Domingo (he ordered the retreat of the troops back to Haiti thinking the French were going to invade its undefended ports and cities) was not headed for Haiti,  Dessalines show tremendous pride in ordering the destruction of the Dominicans and that he boasted about it with an immense happiness. 

The Dominican women that he took as prisoners, along with many cattle; after being raped on the bank of the Esperanza River (near modern day Mao in Valverde province), once they arrived in Haiti were forced to watch their children thrown into the cattle pen. Once inside, the cattle was angered and frightened by whippings and random branding, to the point that the beasts took their anger on the children that were moled and trampled to death. Then the women became sex slaves to various Haitian generals. 

The Dominicans on Dominican soil that survived the onslaught were those that managed to runaway and hide in the mountains and forest before the Haitian army arrived to each town and passed through each campo along the way bringing death and destruction. From that small group of survivors is that a significant proportion of modern Dominicans descend from.

Now many parts of the DR is peopled with 'newer' Dominicans. Places such as much of the east, the Samana peninsula, many areas along the coast such as Puerto Plata vicinity; a large percentage of Dominicans either descend or are mixed with people that arrived from other parts of the Caribbean and the world decades after Dessalines' invasion. But in many parts of the interior, especially in the Cibao Valley, in the Cordillera Central and The Sierra, in places such as El Seibo and Sabana La Mar, in the San Juan Valley and other places; most Dominicans are direct descendants of those that survived the horror imposed by Dessalines.

This is the general history, but there are countless family stories about specific events that took place to direct ancestors. Those stories, of course, take a much more personal dimension.

Their ability (or luck) to effectively hide from Dessalines is the reason many of us are alive today. Had it been Dessalines (and Herard and Solouques) desire that prevailed, we should had never been born. Not a single Dominican or Spanish speaking person would had survived had Dessalines, Herard, and Soulouque's plan been successful. Also, the DR itself would had never been created.

 

[mofongoloco]

Nals, do you know what Taína's real name is.  Her nom de plume is an obvious creation. I haven't been able to find the film, just references to it and her handbills. 

 

[Gurabo444]

This is the general history, but there are countless family stories about specific events that took place to direct ancestors. Those stories, of course, take a much more personal dimension.

I grew up listening to these type of stories, especially from older folks (My great grandmother's generation), though the stories weren't about my direct ancestors being killed (Thank god Gurabo at that time was a far away campo from Santiago and it seems like my ancestors just heard the horror stories from the surviving Santiagueros). The two more frequent stories were that of a lady with the last name "Reyes" who was doing some sort of diligence in the city and ran from Santiago to Gurabo in less than 20 minutes after witnessing the atrocities committed by the Haitian troops under Henry Christophe's orders. The other one was about Haitian soldiers throwing Dominican children into the air and catching them with their Bayonets, plus one about a girl who survived by pretending to be dead inside a church. When I first read the memoirs of Pichardo y Arredondo about the massacre in which he narrates with detail these childhood stories sent chills down my spine. These last two were often told by my great grandma who never attended school and would have never read Pichardo y Arrendondo's memoirs which btw were found in hidden in Cuba not too long ago.

 

[jenmar237]

Replying to NALs

Events such as what happened to Madame Chanlotte near Ouanaminthe, she was forced to watch her husband and children tortured to death, then she was forced to eat the raw flesh of her husband before they tore open her belly and ripped out the fetus and forced it down her throat.

Omg! Had never heard of this account NALs....but I believe it given what I've learned about the horrific things that were done by Dessalines, Christophe, etc...

Is there any source available that discusses this event regarding Madame Chanlotte?

 

[Juan Bosch]

I am fascinated on how someone goes and digs up a thread started in 2007.....

 

[AlterEgo]

I am fascinated on how someone goes and digs up a thread started in 2007.....

Easy to understand. NY is considering removing a statue of Duarte, and with that news someone searched the archives and found a relevant discussion.

 

[NALs]

Omg! Had never heard of this account NALs....but I believe it given what I've learned about the horrific things that were done by Dessalines, Christophe, etc...

Is there any source available that discusses this event regarding Madame Chanlotte?

 

[jenmar237]

Many thanks NALs!

 

[AlterEgo]

Many thanks NALs!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Facing-Raci...091077&hash=item5b27ac6bbd:g:SRUAAOSwRgJXiI0B

 

[mofongoloco]

I am fascinated on how someone goes and digs up a thread started in 2007.....

I google searched taína. As usual dr1 stuff comes up. I regret reviving it.