The Dominican/Jewish Atonement

The Dominican Republic, though a Spanish colony for most of its Eurocentric history, did not actually gain independence from Spain itself. The era of "España Boba" (Foolish Spain) from 1809-1821, saw Spain heavily taxed by a war on its imperial peninsula, as well as independence movements in wealthier colonies.

 

The Dominican Republic -- neglected by Spain -- became independent in 1821, but was quickly invaded by Haiti, its neighbor to the west. From 1822 until 1844, what is now the Dominican Republic was part of Haiti. Eventually, Spanish customs, lighter skin, and Catholicism clashed with French customs, darker skin, and voodoo. In 1844, the Eastern side of the island proclaimed independence, expelled their French/Creole-speaking neighbor, and established the Dominican Republic.

 

In elementary school, we were taught that out liberation from Haiti was cosmically righteous, that we were chosen by God to free ourselves from the forces of voodoo and Africanism. After independence there were several more invasions, and indeed we were taught to always be on the lookout for a potential Haitian invasion.

 

In 1937, the then-dictator of the Dominican Republic, Generalissimo Trujillo, decided that he needed to solidify his rule. Since nothing centralizes power more than war, he ordered a Shibboleth, for his forces to massacre all black individuals near the border who couldn't pronounce the word "perejil" (parsley) -- French speakers can't roll the R, and can't aspirate the strong Spanish "J."

 

Over 20,000 Haitians were hacked to death with machetes for failing to pronounce the word "parsley," without consideration for how long they had lived near the border, or how many generations their families had been there. The dictator failed to get the expected response -- war -- and was instead condemned by the international community, and forced to atone by paying $ 525,000. Each survivor only got a few cents due to corruption, but I digress.

 

Trujillo, whose rule can be seen as a totalitarian pigmentocracy, decided to not only import European whites, but also further atone for the Parsley Massacre. The next year, at the Evian Conference, when the fate of European Jewry was being decided, the Dominican Republic was the only country that offered visas to European Jews.

"100,000 visas and a city!" shouted Trujillo's brother while stealing the show at the Evian conference. The country at the time had less than 2 million people, so it was a very generous offer.

 

The city of Sosua was founded, and arriving Jews were greeted by a friendly, welcoming people who even gave each new refugee 80 acres of land, 10 cows, a mule, and a horse. To this day, Sosua maintains a synagogue and prominent Jewish families.

 

In elementary school, I never learned about the Parsley Massacre or the Evian Conference. Balaguer -- Trujillo's vice-president -- was in power and he knew how to stoke fear of a Haitian invasion, rallying the population behind him as protector of the country's Hispanic traditions. I grew up fearing Haitians. I was told that they kidnapped children and practiced voodoo, a satanic art which made them enemies of God.

 

One of my earliest memories was of my sitting in my town's main square and seeing two soldiers with shotguns jump off a cattle truck and grab a very black man who couldn't produce identification. He was forced to board the truck along with 30 or 35 other individuals. They were squeezed together and only processed after the truck finished its route, with them paraded for everyone to see as proof of a hard-working government that kept its population safe from evil.

 

I felt no sympathy when I looked into the teary eyes of those dark-skinned man on that cattle truck -- even though many would no longer be able to provide for their families. I was taught that it was right because they practiced evil and were the enemy. To me they were not human, and indeed I saw no problem with them being paraded in a cattle truck.

 

Dominican atonement at the Evian Conference was not enough; it did not wash the hate away. Today I am very familiar with that hate. I recognize very well the eyes of a man who does not see humanity in another man's eyes.

 

Leonel Fernandez, the Dominican president until last year, was criticized for saying, "Dominicans of darker-skin are discriminated against in school." He was brave and took political risk in publicly speaking the truth, but he was not up for re-election. Fernandez also spoke openly against attempts by a strong political movement to build a wall to keep out the Haitians. Fernandez didn't use the term "security barrier." He didn't sugarcoat reality.

 

However, when I hear Netanyahu speak, when I look into his eyes, I see a familiar face. I see a man who does not recognize the humanity of his neighbor. I see a man who sugarcoats and uses terms like "security barrier." I see a population that turns a blind eye to the parsley and the machete, to the Shibboleth.

 

Like the Jews, the Dominicans have too suffered greatly. During the Taino holocaust in the 16th century, Spanish occupying forces annihilated the island's entire native population. Today, no Tainos survive. Like the Jews, we were oppressed, and it is true that people who are oppressed also learn to oppress back. Nations are like individuals; a child who was abused and learned that it was right and good, will likely also do it to his children, to the weakest.

My Personal Gsus

I found myself somewhere in the center of Amsterdam. It was Friday at noon, and I was sober. I presumed the afternoon would be like other fashion outings with my girlfriend: we would go to a fashion show; meet a lot of loud, excited, beautiful people; see some nice threads; and interact with businessmen trying to get my girlfriend to buy their lines.

 

Naturally, I decided to stop for a drink at Warmoesstraat and let her go ahead. I wanted to at least be a bit relaxed for the whole ordeal. I wanted to show up mostly for the freebies. I needed a new t-shirt and wasn't in the mood for shelling out two euros and ninety nine cents. Don't judge, I'm weird when it comes to spending money on certain things.

 

So, the fashion show was not too far from Haarlemmerdijk -- Amsterdam's answer to SOHO -- meaning that I had to walk about half an hour from Warmoesstraat to the end of Haarlemmerdijk. I was to meet my girlfriend at some tent in a park by Haarlemmerdijk, but the beer got me better than I expected. I got lost, stumbled in the middle of a snowfield, and, after finding the tent for Amsterdam Fashion Week, tried entering through the back. After making it to the front entrance, I learned that the Gsus fashion show, for which my girlfriend had been invited, had already started.

 

My girlfriend waited for me until the very last minute, and it was my delaying her that changed her fate and mine. She was the last one to enter the fashion show stage, and her third-row seat was already occupied. A guy in an orange suit approached her and was not only kind enough to give her front-row seating, but also the goodie bag that came with that privilege.

 

The fashion show was merely 20 minutes, and afterwards I joined for the after-party. My girlfriend handed me two kickass t-shirts, exceeding my expectation. They were sophisticated, but inside held cutting lines in case you ever wanted to customize them with a pair of scissors. When the t-shirt fades, you turn it inside out, and customize it.

 

Gsus had my attention; they had prepared a product with consideration for its afterlife, for the potential of a t-shirtical revival. Bang! Cheapskate Jose now not only had 2 t-shirts with an afterlife as fancy wifebeaters, but also some wine tokens. Gsus had delivered wine, and the wine was good. I raised my glass -- my girlfriend did the same -- and I made a toast, ""to long life and good health," right as a 172 centimeter man approached from the shadows behind a mannequin.

 

He knew my girlfriend and introduced himself. Noticing that my wine glass was near-empty just after one toast, he said, "let one among you who is without wine, ask for more tokens." He handed me a handful of tokens, and I knew that my Friday afternoon wouldn't be as sober as I had predicted.

 

"You're a criminal," I said; "Wine is my enemy!"

I don't remember much of what happened after that, but I do remember he said, "love thy enemy."

America Declares Drone War Against North Africa

Now America can follow its former arch-foe -- the freedom fries-hating French -- into the fray created by NATO bombardment of Lybia. As soon as NATO started bombing Lybia, his mercenaries saw the writing on the wall and started fleeing south, to Mali, where they established the Azawad state.

 

The United States has recently announced that it is looking to build a base in Niger, and was also possibly looking at sites in Burkina Faso. One of these two poor African countries -- or likely both -- will soon find themselves in the same situation as Djibouti, which is used to launch drone attacks against Yemen and Somalia. Make no mistake about it, the construction of these bases means that the United States will soon start targeting Boko Haram in Nigeria, as well as the Islamist rebels in North Mali (Azawad.)

 

How long this new two drone wars will last, no one can tell. However, everyone is certain that there will be collateral damage, and we will have disgruntled civilians in both countries seeing us as enemies. Fortunately we have a black president who was selected by fate to drone the world.

The Iranian Empowerment

I knew who Osama Bin Laden was on 9/11. I was in Ms. Gross' 9th grade history class, and had just turned 14 three days earlier. We started discussing what was going on, and I said, "This is the work of Osama Bin Laden," much to the confusion of everyone else in class. I knew him because on a daily basis I saw a poster of the victims of the USS Cole -- attributed to Bin Laden -- in the first floor of my middle school. The poster read: "They died for your freedoms," and contained a portrait of the victims of the attack. 

What I did not know, however, was where exactly Afghanistan was located on the map. The next day, in Ms. Hammer's art class, we were asked to draw something describing how we felt about the whole situation involving the Twin Towers. I drew a crude map of the Old World and, not knowing exactly where Afghanistan was, I simply drew an American flag dripping blood and stretching all the way from Morocco to India. "Disturbing," Ms. Hammer concluded.

I felt like a lot of Americans that day; I wanted blood and revenge. But it was not lost on Ms. Gross that no one in class knew where our advanced bombs would soon be targeted, and she gave us a lot of maps to color on a daily basis. I spent more time coloring maps that year than I did studying for my weekend calculus class at City College.

I found the work of drawing rather tedious and more suitable for elementary school, not high school. Nonetheless, coloring maps on a daily basis is something that every American should be forced to do. Maps put the world in perspective. Maps help us understand the world in a similar way to how a military general looks at the world. If we were to look at a map of Iran, we would notice that the country is already surrounded by the follies of American military adventurism.

View American military bases near Iran in a larger map

Iran is completely surrounded by US bases, and it only serves to empower and legitimize the Iranian Islamic regime. People forget that Iran was a progressive country with a democratically-elected leader who wanted to nationalize the oil companies and distribute the wealth to his people. However, what Mossadeq failed to realize was that it is a serious crime to take food out of starving oil stockholders. 

The CIA waged a campaign against Mossadeq and installed the Shah of Iran, a vicious tyrant who terrorized and stole from his people. The Shah will serve as perpetual proof in the Iranian consciousness of how greed leads American subversive diplomacy. The Shah of Iran was overthrown, the Ayatollahs who led to his downfall thereafter established an Islamic Shiite state, and the fear of America is enough to give the Ayatollahs a massive base of support.

American support of Israel is also another element in the Iranian equation that serves to legitimize the Ayatollahs. The constant threat of sabotage, assassinations, and bombardment at the hands of Netanyahu, coupled with a map of Israel's expansionism, is more than enough to frighten the average Iranian.

As it stands, the Iranian Islamic regime is far more powerful today than it was on 9/11. The Shias and the Sunnis already had a tense history until the US decided to divide and conquer. In so doing, they encouraged Shiites everywhere, and particularly in Iraq and Syria, to swear allegiance to Iran instead of their own countrymen. 

Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, and likewise his government was Sunni-led. Today, the Sunnis in Iraq feel marginalized, and want to possibly break away from the Shiite-led government. Were Iraq to break along Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish sectarian lines, it would basically allow the Ayatollahs in Iran to gain a new, Shiite state right near their border. Even as it stands, Iran, simply by being Shiite-led, has today more influence in Iraq than it ever did under its archfoe: Saddam Hussein. Hussein had a bloody war with Iran in the 1980s, so in a way the US invasion of Iraq eliminated an enemy and gained them allies.

Iran will soon get a nuclear weapon; it is only a matter of time. They are unlikely to use it, but it is a sad state of affairs that being a nuclear power is the only thing that makes people around the world feel safe from America and its "coalition of the willing."

Fortunately, the Persians don't have a tribal culture where vengeance runs deep like their Yemeni counterparts. The truth is, we should worry more about Yemen. When they finally do rise, and their time is coming -- as it always does -- there will be no mercy for Americans. When they finally do rise, they will not only acknowledge collateral damage, they will celebrate it.

Portrait of an Artist "Respawned"

"I'm high as hell, and haven't eaten anything. I can't promise that I'm going to tell you the truth," the Artist told me. "Now I'm going to make toast in the kitchen."

He left for the kitchen, but immediately returned to remind me that he hadn't found the lighter. He has been looking for the lighter since we woke up at 4am. This is the 5th one in 10 days, and the "magical" disappearance of the lighter is something that greatly disturbs him. 

Eventually, at 8 or 9am, after tiring of him ranting on the subject and searching under every crevice, I conceded that I'd lost the lighter, but to no avail. "I'll get a new on for you; I have butane at home and can give you some too," I reminded him. 

In the kitchen I hear him making toast. I don't have to see him working in the kitchen, but I already know what's coming: bread warmed on a pan, with sugar sprinkled on top. It'll come with some Moroccan mint tea dipped in weed branches. 

"The branches are organic," he proudly proclaimed to me once. 

This will be our only meal for the day, but we're low on Euroshopper beer, so when we go to the supermarket, we might also consider getting some of that 50 eurocent popcorn. But we're low on cash so we may just settle for beer and art. Life is good; he's got weed and a loving Japanese dog. 

He returns from the kitchen and I turn out to be wrong about the tea; a cup of orange juice instead. I thanked him and proceeded to the task at hand: interviewing the artist.

"I like to become the character," I told him so he'd understand my questions better. He reached for the boombox and "Across 110th Street" came on the radio.

The song changed his facial expression. He was impressed with the memories the song brought him. His trip to New York in the 90s was life-altering. He learned graffiti techniques that still inspire his art. He met individuals much like me on his trip to the Bronx. Not many Dutch people have been to the Bronx, so he actually did seem to understand me better than most. 

The artist finished reminiscing about the song and produced vitamins from the bathroom. I thanked him, wondering how much we were actually concerned about our health and safety. "What does respawn mean to you?" I began asking.

"Hey, I don't want this story to elevate you, man. Normally I make myself a good breakfast and walk the dog," he noted.

"Well, I do it from time to time too, with me you are not misunderstood," I informed him before continuing. 

"So, respawn," I reminded him.

"It's about getting smacked down in life and then getting back on my feet. From being flat out on my face 5 years ago. And, more importantly, back on the track I know I belong, which I wasn't on before. I refound my creativity 3 years ago; it was lost 10 years ago, so I'm living happy as a child now. Now, I finally feel I am living the life I was supposed to be living. It all originated by fighting the system when I was young and rebelling, but I gave that struggle up and thought it would make life easier to adapt to the system and my surrounding. The day I made that decision, I gave away and sold my inner child. I went down immediately from there. Years of alcohol, drugs, and prescription drugs followed. For approximately a 7-year-period, until the man with the hammer arrived. Form there on, the curtains opened and a whole 'nother show started rolling: my path back to creativity, my revelation."

I read the story back to the Artist. "Good, you think there's a twist coming, but it's just a straightforward life," he decided.

"I'm too lazy to google who wrote it, but someone said that the difference between reality and fiction, is that fiction has to make sense," I told him..

Barely had I finished my quote, when he heard a ring and stood up proclaiming: "that's the water for the tea!"