The Politics of Livelihood

La República Dominicana es un país creado por Dios para el Turismo, me he atrevido a decir algunas veces, estimulado por la belleza de su potencial.

[The Dominican Republic is a country created by God for Tourism, I have dared to say sometimes, excited by the beauty of its potential.]

Don Angel Miolán, director of Dominican tourism, 1967–1974

I had been in Boca Chica for two weeks and still had not seen Minaya. I made it a daily practice to walk from one end of the beach to the other to cultivate relationships with people who, like Minaya, made their living selling goods and services to foreign tourists. I would begin at the fortresslike Coral Hamaca Beach Hotel and Casino at the eastern end of town and walk west, pausing along the way to speak with vendors, guides, and touts who worked at the bars and restaurants along the beach. Midway along the trek I would stop at an Italian-owned restaurant to visit my research assistant, Milquella Reyes, who worked there as a waitress. I would then continue to Hostal Zapata, a midsized hotel owned by Gabriel Zapata, a Dominican who had lived in Washington, D.C., for many years. I had stayed at Zapata's hotel often, and, sharing an interest in politics, we had become friends.

Next to Zapata's hotel was the Boca Chica Resort, the second of the town's all-inclusive resort hotels. Rumor had it that the site had once been occupied by the beach house of the mother of Dominican dictator Rafael Leónides Trujillo Molina (1930–1961). West of the Boca Chica Resort was a large parking lot used by Dominicans who visited the beach from the capital and elsewhere. Scattered throughout the lot were food stalls selling fried fish, yaniqueques (johnnycakes), and beverages. Beyond the parking lot the beach continued for another two kilometers until it reached the neighboring town of Andrés, signaled by the towering red-and-white-striped smokestack of Ingenio Boca Chica. With few exceptions, the western end of the beach was used by Dominican visitors, especially on weekends and holidays when busloads of people arrived from the capital.

My daily tour of the beach was also an effort to persuade people that I was not a tourist in an economy in which wealth differences between foreigners and most residents were enormous, indisputable, and endlessly reiterated by the symbolic and spatial order of things. To that end, I would often carry a clipboard with me and wear long pants and a dress shirt with two pens prominently displayed in the pocket. It was the only time in my career that I have tried to look like an anthropologist.

I had met Minaya two summers earlier and made it a point at the end of each trip to buy two or three shirts from the huge bundle of garments that he lugged back and forth along the beach in the afternoon heat. We had spoken often about his work and my own, and he had introduced me to many of his coworkers. Like the other vendors, Minaya was a good listener. To sell things to tourists, one had to be alert to subtle inflections in the voice that suggested some direction in their fickle desire to consume or a shift in the precarious balance between interest and irritation.

It was March 2001, and tourism was slow in the wake of the global recession. Many of the vendors, hair braiders, and others who worked the beach had gathered under the palm trees in front of the Boca Chica Resort. Within the walled compound one hundred or so tourists were stretched out on chaise longues. Every so often vendors would approach the low concrete wall, display their wares, and then retreat once more to the shade of the palms.

I found Minaya resting against a palm tree with his cousin, a cigar vendor. Minaya explained to me that he had just returned from San Juan de la Maguana, his birthplace, where he had attended a funeral. His brother-in-law had been electrocuted while trying to jerry-rig an electrical connection to his home from the power line that passed above it—a tragic, yet not uncommon, accident. Since business was slow, Minaya told me, he could leave work early, and he invited me to his home in Andrés for dinner. It was his daughter's fifth birthday, and his wife was making sancocho, a hearty soup often served on special occasions.

Minaya slung the motley bundle of garments over his shoulder, and we headed for the narrow alleyway next to the Hotel Don Juan, where the vendors gathered at the end of the day and stored their goods. It was also the meeting place of Boca Chica's Sindicato de Vendedores (Vendors' Union). Here the vendors gathered daily to discuss their trade, resolve disputes, and organize their activities so as to ensure that on any given day there would not be too many selling the same commodities in the same places. When business was slow, the síndico (union president) staggered the work schedules of members to ensure that everyone sold enough to make ends meet.

Vendors lined the shaded alley, some wearing the pale blue smocks issued to those who were licensed by the Policía Turística, or POLITUR, the specialized tourism police. Two Haitian women sold fried fish and sausages from a rough-hewn wooden stall. Neatly arranged stacks of clothing, cigar boxes, and wood carvings imported from Haiti were set up along the alley's walls. Manolo, the union president, was involved in a heated discussion with a jewelry vendor about the power plant that was being built across the Bay of Andrés by the AES Corporation, a U.S.-based global power company. From the alley we could see the plant's bulbous liquid gas tank and the delicate silhouette of the jetty where tankers would one day dock. The jewelry vendor was arguing that the new power plant would solve the problem of the apagones (blackouts) that were a daily occurrence in Boca Chica and across the nation.

"Ven acá" (Look here), Manolo snapped, glaring at the man. "Theblackouts are not the result of a lack of power," he insisted. "That's a lie. There is plenty of electricity in the country. What is happening is that the power companies, the foreigners, want to make more money. They make the blackouts to force the people to pay more. It's an abuse."

"Yesterday," a cigar vendor chimed in, "they killed two in Capotillo," referring to two men who had been shot dead by the National Police in a poor barrio of the capital during protests against the blackouts.

In fact, the recently privatized power distribution companies had been shutting down service to neighborhoods in the capital and elsewhere where bill collection rates were low. Intended to discipline a recalcitrant population and the Dominican government into paying newly inflated electric bills, the power outages had incited widespread, unrelenting protests throughout the country.

In Boca Chica the...