Hispaniola examines the early years of the contact period in the Caribbean and in narrative form reconstructs the social and political organization of the Ta&iactue;no.

The island of Hispaniola is split by a border that divides the Dominican Republic and Haiti. This border has been historically contested and largely porous. Dividing Hispaniola is a study of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo's scheme, during the mid-twentieth century, to create and reinforce a buffer zone on this border through the establishment of state institutions and an ideological campaign against what was considered an encroaching black, inferior, and bellicose Haitian state. The success of this program relied on convincing Dominicans that regardless of their actual color, whiteness was synonymous with Dominican cultural identity. Paulino examines the campaign against Haiti as the construct of a fractured urban intellectual minority, bolstered by international politics and U.S. imperialism. This minority included a diverse set of individuals and institutions that employed anti-Haitian rhetoric for their own benefit (i.e., sugar manufacturers and border officials.) Yet, in reality, these same actors had no interest in establishing an impermeable border. Paulino further demonstrates that Dominican attitudes of admiration and solidarity toward Haitians as well as extensive intermixture around the border region were commonplace. In sum his study argues against the notion that anti-Haitianism was part of a persistent and innate Dominican ethos.

"The first book on the market that considers the experience of Haitians and Dominicans in the United States in one single effort of analysis and does so through the cultural venue of literary texts produced by writers from the two communities."--Silvio Torres-Saillant, Syracuse University "A new understanding of the island of Hispaniola. . . . [This] work brings to the fore a most neglected aspect of Caribbean history--the close links between two nations, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who are perceived as enemies but whose peoples have shared similar histories of violence and pain."--Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Vassar College The Tears of Hispaniola appraises the ways in which Haitian and Dominican diaspora writings serve as public record--documenting violence, terror, memory, and human rights violations on the island of Hispaniola, home to the two nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Lucía Suárez offers a thorough and delicately nuanced reading of central works by Jean-Robert Cadet, Junot Díaz, Loida Maritza Pérez, and Edwidge Danticat, to establish the function of this literature as a socio-literary catalyst, and to bring attention to the larger injustices still occurring on the island. Stories of a "torn country" continue to haunt the people of Hispaniola's diaspora. In their images of what they left behind and what exists today, these writers engage in a process Suárez contends can transform unspeakable truths into memoirs of survival, understanding, and resistance. She argues that as authors and intellectuals articulate traumatic memories of their homeland, and expose the intersections of new violations in their host country, their writing creates a venue to transcend violence and claim justice. Of particular importance is how Suárez interprets these texts as a platform from which to consider questions of ethnic identity and social reform for the large and growing U.S.-Caribbean community. The author suggests that citizens of the diaspora challenge prejudices and make a distinct impact on the cultural landscape of the United States. This is a pioneering book that offers a compassionate and constructive, comparative analysis of the literatures and societies that have emerged from Haitian and Dominican dispersion to the United States. It thus offers a critical and highly important lens toward the understanding of the links between literature, history, and memory. The Tears of Hispaniola boldly reframes Caribbean and diaspora literature in terms of a new pan-Caribbean diasporic canon in the Americas.. Lucía M. Suárez is associate professor of Spanish at Amherst College.

In a landmark study of history, power, and identity in the Caribbean, Pedro L. San Miguel examines the historiography of Hispaniola, the West Indian island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He argues that the national identities of (and often the tense relations between) citizens of these two nations are the result of imaginary contrasts between the two nations drawn by historians, intellectuals, and writers. Covering five centuries and key intellectual figures from each country, San Miguel bridges literature, history, and ethnography to locate the origins of racial, ethnic, and national identity on the island. He finds that Haiti was often portrayed by Dominicans as "the other--first as a utopian slave society, then as a barbaric state and enemy to the Dominican Republic. Although most of the Dominican population is mulatto and black, Dominican citizens tended to emphasize their Spanish (white) roots, essentially silencing the political voice of the Dominican majority, San Miguel argues. This pioneering work in Caribbean and Latin American historiography, originally published in Puerto Rico in 1997, is now available in English for the first time.

Like two roosters in a fighting arena, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are encircled by barriers of geography and poverty. They co-inhabit the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but their histories are as deeply divided as their cultures: one French-speaking and black, one Spanish-speaking and mulatto. Yet, despite their antagonism, the two countries share a national symbol in the rooster--and a fundamental activity and favorite sport in the cockfight. In this book, Michele Wucker asks: "If the symbols that dominate a culture accurately express a nation's character, what kind of a country draws so heavily on images of cockfighting and roosters, birds bred to be aggressive? What does it mean when not one but two countries that are neighbors choose these symbols? Why do the cocks fight, and why do humans watch and glorify them?" Wucker studies the cockfight ritual in considerable detail, focusing as much on the customs and histories of these two nations as on their contemporary lifestyles and politics. Her well-cited and comprehensive volume also explores the relations of each nation toward the United States, which twice invaded both Haiti (in 1915 and 1994) and the Dominican Republic (in 1916 and 1965) during the twentieth century. Just as the owners of gamecocks contrive battles between their birds as a way of playing out human conflicts, Wucker argues, Haitian and Dominican leaders often stir up nationalist disputes and exaggerate their cultural and racial differences as a way of deflecting other kinds of turmoil. Thus Why the Cocks Fight highlights the factors in Caribbean history that still affect Hispaniola today, including the often contradictory policies of the U.S.

Grand Narratives of colonization, especially ones related to the Spanish and Portuguese Americas, began circulating soon after 1492. The danger of these Grand Narratives is that they are often mistaken as reality and eclipse all other possible narrations pertaining to a particular place and/or time. As more Caribbean territories become independent, the questioning of Grand Narratives has permeated many disciplines in the region, and archaeology is no exception.This work attempts to examine the lifeways at the archaeological site of Concepción de la Vega during its occupation from 1494 through 1564, using a Decolonial approach. Situated in present-day Dominican Republic (Hispaniola island), this site was one of the earliest and most affluent in Caribbean colonial history.The Decolonial approach used here critically analyzes and reinterprets primary data about Concepción from the point of view of those colonized, particularly non-elite, Indigenous peoples, and those of African descent. This approach uses various sources of data to recreate early lifeways, and helps gain a better understanding of the process through which the Spanish-American cultural tradition was created, and later disseminated, to the rest of Latin America.

In addition to sharing the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a complicated and at times painful history. Yet Transnational Hispaniola shows that there is much more to the two nations’ relationship than their perceived antagonism. Rejecting dominant narratives that reinforce opposition between the two sides of the island, contributors to this volume highlight the connections and commonalities that extend across the border, mapping new directions in Haitianist and Dominicanist scholarship. Exploring a variety of topics including European colonialism, migration, citizenship, sex tourism, music, literature, political economy, and art, contributors demonstrate that alternate views of Haitian and Dominican history and identity have existed long before the present day. From a moving section on passport petitions that reveals the familial, friendship, and communal networks across Hispaniola in the nineteenth century to a discussion of the shared music traditions that unite the island today, this volume speaks of an island and people bound together in a myriad of ways. Complete with reflections and advice on teaching a transnational approach to Haitian and Dominican studies, this agenda-setting volume argues that the island of Hispaniola and its inhabitants should be studied in a way that contextualizes differences, historicizes borders, and recognizes cross-island links. Contributors: Paul Austerlitz | Nathalie Bragadir | Raj Chetty | Anne Eller | Kaiama L. Glover | Maja Horn | Regine Jean-Charles | Kiran C. Jayaram | Elizabeth Manley | April Mayes | Elizabeth Russ | Fidel J. Tavárez | Elena Valdez Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.