Research on African influence
in the Dominican Republic
Hugo Tolentino Dipp and Rubén Silié
IntroductionThe Dominican Republic is perhaps one of the countries in which detailed
studies on the contribution made by African culture to its national formation
are most necessary, as a series of historical factors caused it very early on to
forget its direct link with the African continent.
This was because the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo very quickly
became a forgotten region of the Iberian metropolis, breaking off its con-
nection with the slave trade owing to the fact that the sixteenth-century type
of sugar-plantation economy requiring considerable slave manpower was not
established there. The subsequent development of a cattle-raising economy in
a situation of unlimited supply of land and with a very scattered white and black
population provided the basic conditions for a vigorous racial miscegenation.
When in a second phase, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the
French colony of Santo Domingo became one of the wealthiest on the continent
and its type of economy called for a massive influx of African slaves, the eastern
part of the island, which was still in Spanish hands and where the above-
mentioned type of economy prevailed, became a place of refuge for slaves
brought over from Africa and desperately seeking their freedom. Thus was
developed what we have described as a 'strong migratory current towards the
eastern part', composed of fugitive slaves.
These fugitive slaves were to increase the black population in that part
of the island. What interests us here is precisely the study of how those same
fugitive slaves, while forming the black population of the east, systematically
allowed the basic and original values of their mother country to fall into
oblivion; ideological propaganda on the part of the Spanish colonizers was,
of course, a contributory factor; for, unable to obtain the services of black
people in any other way, they openly abetted the movement in escaped slaves.
From then onwards, the escaped slave who managed to reach freedom
in the Spanish part of the island had a certain interest in forgetting his past and,
so as not to be confused with the French slaves, began to adopt the idea that
he hailed from the Spanish part, which meant identifying himself directly