Historia General del Pueblo Dominicano Tomo VI

748 Popular Music and Identity since the Nineteenth Century N ew A ttitudes about D ominican I dentity President Joaquín Balaguer’s repressive regime was sometimes called « Trujilloism without Trujillo», but the passive days of the Trujillo era were over: radicalized by the Revolution of 1965, the opposition made its voice heard. Like Trujillo, Balaguer propagated an anti-Haitian, racist sense of Dominican identity. Due to the ongoing influx of Haitian workers into the country, many residents of the Dominican Republic were of Haitian origin or descent. Balaguer used xenophobia and racist rhetoric to galvanize electoral support during the 1980s and 90s; in his book, La isla al revés: Haití y el destino dominicano , Balaguer argues that the Dominican Republic is threatened by imperialism. However, he refers not to U.S. imperialism, but to Haitian imperialism, which is « directed against the independence of Santo Domingo and against the Hispanic-American population» and began during the nineteenth-century Haitian occupations of Spanish Santo Domingo. Balaguer wrote that while the military peril has faded, « biological» factors, such as the « fecundity characteristic of the Negro», pose threats to Dominican destiny. 113 The mood of democratization and influx of external influences that followed Trujillo’s fall kindled new currents of Dominican humanistic and social scientific thought in the 1960s and 70s, and the ensuing reconsideration of conventional notions about national and racial identity was associated with the anti-Balaguer resistance. While Trujillo’s Eurocentrism prevented the development of Dominican negritude during his regime, his death in 1961 paved the way for a steady, although slow, trend toward greater valorization of Afro-Dominicanness. Put on by folklorist Fradique Lizardo, the first staged production of Afro-Dominican music and dance took place in 1963 during the presidency of Juan Bosch. In the years that followed, folkloric dance groups were founded by the State. Lizardo played a seminal role in advocating the renunciation of Hispanophilism and the celebration of the African influences on Dominican culture. Reminding his compatriots that merengue’s status as a national symbol had been mandated by Trujillo, Lizardo once declared that « to say merengue is the national dance of the Dominican Republic is false». He also suggested that palos drumming be adopted as a national music, noting that this genre is performed in virtually all regions of the country. 114 The Nueva Canción movement, which originated in Chile in the 1960s and spread throughout Latin America, used local musics in the struggle against rightist authoritarian regimes, economic inequity, and U.S. imperialism. A