Papers by Lauren (Robin) Derby
preface xi period, yet simultaneously sought to purge the nation of many attributes of corruption... more preface xi period, yet simultaneously sought to purge the nation of many attributes of corruption and modernity associated with the dictatorship. Oral history was an important source for this project, and I collected more than sixty hours of interviews on a range of subjects to get a sense of how policy making, planning, and implementation operated under the regime, as well as how people experienced and understood everyday life over the course of 1992 and early 1993. These interviews were enriched by previous fieldwork funded by a collaborative iie Fulbright Grant with Richard Turits on the 1937 Haitian massacre, which had initially piqued my interest in the hegemony of the regime, yet most of those testimonies were collected in the frontier provinces. I interviewed architects and engineers who worked for the regime such as Margot Taule, Jose Ramón Baez López-Peña, and Ramón Vargas Mera, and contemporary architects such as William Reid Cabral, Amparo Chantada, Gustavo Moré, and Erwin Cott. I also spoke with individuals who received houses from the state in the popular barrios built by the Trujillo regime, including Ensanche Luperón, Ensanche Espaillat, Maria Auxiliadora, and Mejoramiento Social. In addition, I sought out life histories from people in other neighborhoods across the class spectrum-from the Zona Colonial and Gazcue to San Carlos, Villa Duarte, Capotillo, and La Cienaga in Santo Domingo, as well as in San Cristóbal since this was Trujillo's birthplace and residence. I also looked for those who could speak to how politics operated within the civil service, including Arístides Incháustegui, Francisco Elpidio Beras and his family, Julián Pérez, Virgilio Díaz Ordóñez, José Antinoe Fiallo, Max Uribe, Antonio Zaglul, and Jesús Torres Tejeda. My quest to understand Dominican religiosity launched me into another set of networks and social spaces altogether. For these issues, I interviewed priests such as Santiago Erujo, Fathers Vargas of Bayaguana, Antonio Camilo, and José Luis Saez, as well as scholars of popular religosity such as Fradique Lizardo, Dagoberto Tejeda, June Rosenberg, and Martha Ellen Davis. I visited healers in Santo Domingo and Baní, and followed four in Villa Duarte, Capotillo, La Cienaga, and La Feria. I also attended major national patron saint festivities for the Virgin of Altagracia at Higüey and the Virgin of Las Mercedes at La Vega, as well as regional events hosted by the hermandad for the miraculous Christ of Bayaguana and the cofradia del Espiritu Santo in San Juan de la Maguana and Las Matas de Farfán; ceremonies for Dios Olivorio Mateo at Maguana Arriba and Media Luna at the home of Don León Ventura Rodríguez with Lusitania Martínez; several xii preface celebrations for the misterios in Villa Mella with Martha Ellen Davis; and a feast for Gran Bwa in the bateyes of La Romana with Carlos Andújar. I collected some fifteen hours of interviews at these pilgrimages but talking was only part of the experience; these visits also involved staying up all night, and a lot of walking, watching, standing, drinking, feasting, sleeping in cars, and finally sipping very hot and sweet thumb-sized cupfuls of fragrant ginger tea at dawn. Most of the interviewing was done with Julio César Santana, and the popular religious visits were accompanied by Julio and Andrew Apter.
Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 I. European Encounters 9 II. Pirates, Governors, and Slaves 6... more Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 I. European Encounters 9 II. Pirates, Governors, and Slaves 61 III. Revolutions 91 IV. Caudillos and Empires 141 V. The Idea of the Nation: Order and Progress 191 VI. Dollars, Gunboats, and Bullets 233 VII. The Era of Trujillo 279 VIII. The Long Transition to Democracy 325 IX. Religious Practices 387 X. Popular Culture 417 XI. The Dominican Diaspora 467 Suggestions for Further Reading 507 Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources 515 Index 527
New West Indian Guide, 2024
This essay analyzes popular Haitian tales about sovereign theft by stealth which seek to expose m... more This essay analyzes popular Haitian tales about sovereign theft by stealth which seek to expose machinations of graft and usurpation by outsiders and politicians. The foundational act for this genre of popular narratives in Haiti I argue is the indemnity that the Haitian State was forced to pay France of 150 million francs in exchange for international recognition to compensate for losses in property incurred by the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) which Haitian statesman Frédéric Marcelin described as an "act of dispossession." But popular rumors of national theft kept returning. I argue that these stories linking sovereignty, debt, and theft represent truth claims on the part of those who have long been "hermeneutically marginalized" and should be seen as a call for testimonial justice that challenges the triumphalist story of Haitian independence through revealing and denouncing deceitful chicanery on the part of those in power.
Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 I. European Encounters 9 II. Pirates, Governors, and Slaves 6... more Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 I. European Encounters 9 II. Pirates, Governors, and Slaves 61 III. Revolutions 91 IV. Caudillos and Empires 141 V. The Idea of the Nation: Order and Progress 191 VI. Dollars, Gunboats, and Bullets 233 VII. The Era of Trujillo 279 VIII. The Long Transition to Democracy 325 IX. Religious Practices 387 X. Popular Culture 417 XI. The Dominican Diaspora 467 Suggestions for Further Reading 507 Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources 515 Index 527
African American Studies Center, 2016
Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 2014
ABSTRACT This essay argues for the utility of fugitive speech forms as primary sources for Caribb... more ABSTRACT This essay argues for the utility of fugitive speech forms as primary sources for Caribbean historical research. It seeks to shift the discussion from forms such as autobiography and the memoir to more ephemeral speech forms such as hearsay, rumor, and gossip on the grounds that peripheral genres enable a glimpse of subaltern agency that often evades public discourse. The essay argues that unsanctioned speech forms get us closer to everyday experience, offer a more processual understanding of the unfolding of events, and enable a glimpse at embedded affect that is often occluded from view. It thus follows James Scott’s call for research on “hidden transcripts,” including gossip, sorcery, and spirit possession as well as other anonymous speech genres that may reveal a critique of domination, an approach with particular salience for the Caribbean, a region deeply shaped by colonial biopower.
Istor Revista De Historia Internacional, 2012
History Compass, 2011
This essay argues that bringing animals into the study of Latin American and Caribbean environmen... more This essay argues that bringing animals into the study of Latin American and Caribbean environmental history could serve several purposes. It would forge a point of entry into the phenomenology of everyday life in rural societies, since animals stand at the nexus of the relationship between man and the land, hence nature and culture. It is through caring for beasts that one interacts with the environment in ways that get the historian one step closer to what Bourdieu termed the habitus of rural labor; beasts also shed light on women's domestic work as they are transformed from raw to cooked. In Latin America, the animal is also an important symbolic vehicle which is charged with meaning as evidenced in jokes and tall tales, and as the preponderance of narratives of demonic creatures across Latin America indicates, can also serve as a window into popular conceptions of evil.
Masacre de 1937. 80 años después, 2018
Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2020
This book is a literary and cultural history which brings to the fore a compelling but, so far, l... more This book is a literary and cultural history which brings to the fore a compelling but, so far, largely neglected body of work which has the politics of border-crossing as well as the poetics of borderland-dwelling on Hispaniola at its core. Over thirty fictional and non-fictional literary texts (novels, biographical narratives, memoirs, plays, poems, and travel writing), are given detailed attention alongside journalism, geo-political-historical accounts of the status quo on the island, and striking visual interventions (films, sculptures, paintings, photographs, videos and artistic performances), many of which are sustained and complemented by different forms of writing (newspaper cuttings, graffiti, captions, song lyrics, screenplay, tattoos). Dominican, Dominican-American, Haitian and Haitian-American writers and artists are put in dialogue with authors who were born in Europe, the rest of the Americas, Algeria, New Zealand, and Japan in order to illuminate some of the processes and histories that have woven and continue to weave the texture of the borderland and the complex web of border relations on the island. Particular attention is paid to the causes, unfolding, and immediate aftermath of the slave revolt of 1791, the massacre of Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans in the Dominican Northern borderland in 1937 as well as recent events and topical issues such as the earthquake of 2010, migration, and environmental degradation
History of Religions, 2015
A powerful sorcerer and clairvoyant who is said to have been the first person to clamor for Haiti... more A powerful sorcerer and clairvoyant who is said to have been the first person to clamor for Haiti’s independence, runaway slave François Makandal expressed his wrath against the horrors of Saint Domingue slavery by ravaging colonial society: assaulting people, refineries, and livestock and evading the law for years before his final capture in 1758. Makandal commenced the assault on French plantations through mass poisonings of the cattle and oxen of French colons, until he was said to have eluded French troops by metamorphizing into a bird or an insect. This act became a social fact when it was can-
Past & Present, 2008
... of Michigan, 2000), 132; and Sidney Mintz, Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History (N... more ... of Michigan, 2000), 132; and Sidney Mintz, Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History (New York, 1960). Judith Bettleheim makes this point in her essay, 'Espiritismo Altars in Puerto Rico and Cuba: The Indian and the Congo', in Andrew Apter and Lauren Derby, (eds ...
Hispanic American Historical Review, 2011
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1994
Sitting on the banks of the shallow riverine waters separating the northern border towns of Dajab... more Sitting on the banks of the shallow riverine waters separating the northern border towns of Dajabón of the Dominican Republic and Ouanaminthe of Haiti, one can see children wade, market women wash, and people pass from one nation to another. They are apparently impervious to the official meaning of this river as a national boundary that rigidly separates these two contiguous Caribbean island nations. Just as the water flows, so do people, goods, and merchandise between the two countries, even as the Dominican border guards stationed on a small mound above the river watch. The ironies of history lie here, as well as the poetics of its remembrance. This river is called El Masacre, a name which recalls the 1937 Haitian massacre, when the water is said to have run scarlet red from the blood of thousands of Haitians killed by machetes there by soldiers under the direction of the Dominican dictator, Rafael M. Trujillo (1930–61).
A Contracorriente: Revista de Historia Social y …, 2011
I wish to thank Pedro San Miguel for his thoughtful and close reading of my book The Dictator's S... more I wish to thank Pedro San Miguel for his thoughtful and close reading of my book The Dictator's Seduction, especially since he is one of the pioneers of Dominican agrarian history, as well as Caribbean historiography-one whose work has guided me in my own research for decades. Yet I want to take issue with the particular charges at hand: that my rendition of the Trujillato suffers from exoticism, as does much of the anthropological work I draw upon. Moreover, that my rendition of the regime is postmodernist, as per the title of his essay. First of all, I want to clarify that I don't believe that my treatment of the Trujillo regime diverts as stridently from the Subaltern Studies school of thought as San Miguel believes. Their signature move was to bring questions of power into the study of the history, society and culture of the popular classes via Antonio Gramsci's work on hegemony. And my argument that the state under Trujillo worked through the sinews of
The Americas, 2019
These two chapters have the potential to begin a much overdo conversation in the field of Costa R... more These two chapters have the potential to begin a much overdo conversation in the field of Costa Rican history over how the nation fit into the broader Cold War processes that are well documented in other parts of Latin America. Unfortunately, they do not begin that conversation. The chapters make only passing reference to the Paris protests of 1968 and the Cuban Revolution as events that likely shaped the Costa Rican state’s approach to the protest.
New West Indian Guide, 2013
This essay examines popular narratives that a spirit demon or bacá lurked in an export garment pl... more This essay examines popular narratives that a spirit demon or bacá lurked in an export garment plant in the Santiago trade zone of the Dominican Republic in the early 2000s. By interpreting thebacástory, and the transformation of the bacá itself from a rural context to an urban factory, we unpack the changing nature and meaning of employment under neoliberal capitalism, and tease apart complex geographies of status, exploitation, technology and debt.
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Papers by Lauren (Robin) Derby