Constructing and promoting African Diaspora identity in the Dominican Republic: the emergence of Casa de laIdentidad de las Mujeres Afro

Abstract

Casa por la Identidad de las Mujeres Afro, locally known as Identidad (Identity), began as a Black women's movement in the Dominican Republic in 1989 and later became an organization that challenged prevalent ideas of race and racial identity. This article examines the process by which women in Identidad came to define themselves as Afro-Dominican, mulata, and/or negra in a society that has privileged racial and color categories, such as indio, without reference to an African past and being of African descent. Importantly, this article not only shows how Identidad recreated new individual and collective identities for themselves but also how they promoted this identity in Dominican society through workshops and publications while working to form a network and community of consciousness with other women in the African Diaspora.

Keywords:

• Afro-Dominicans
• Dominican Republic
• Hispanic Caribbean
• women's movement

Notes

1. This does not suggest that men were not involved in such organizing efforts because they were. The late poet Blas Jiménez founded a group known as Octubre Mulato (October Mulatto) several years ago as a way of bringing the African past conceptions of Dominican identity along with Spanish and Taíno ideals (Simmons 2009).

2. In recent years, the organization has ceased to operate due to a lack of funding, but many of the individual members continue the work.

3. Indio is the masculine form, and india is the feminine form. Used in this way, indio represents both masculine and feminine forms. This is also true for mulato and mulata.

4. In Casa por la Identidad de las Mujeres Afro ‘Memorias del Taller Sobre Estrategias y Metodologias para Combatir el Racismo’ (‘Memories of a Presentation about Strategies and Methodologies to Combat Racism’), Santo Domingo, 1998.

5. Conferencia Regional de las Américas sobre los Avances y Desafíos en el Plan de Acción contra el Racismo, la Discriminación Racial, la Xenofobia e Intolerancias relacionadas, 26 al 28 de Julio de 2006, Brasilia, Brazil.

6. The interview is from http://www.noticiascontracismoentrevistas.blogspot.com/. The interviewer was Yarman Elaine Jiménez on 25 July 2006.