Sinvergüenza

 

Georgia Popplewell

This is the fifth consecutive piece on tyranny inspired by the novel 'The Feast of the Goat'  (2000), by the Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa. 

Sinvergüenza is a Spanish noun, without an  equivalent noun in English, used of a person having the personality trait of being, in the literal translation “without shame”. It can have serious connotations, though it can be used affectionately or even as a badge of pride, which is where it also applies to the tyrant. In the same way the dictator Trujillo's nickname of the Goat changed its meaning depending on the context. 

Angelita, recall, was Trujillo's daughter. She named her son after her sadistic brother. Ramfis junior tried to run for president this year but was disqualified as he holds joint US - Dominican nationality. 

Did he want to make reparations for the horrors his family inflicted on the island for decades? Of course not! predicted a proudly sceptical Colombian I spoke with recently. The ultra nationalist party he created last year got 1% of the vote. It doesn't matter, said the Colombian, he's on his way. The sons of his grandfather’s murder, one of whom was himself imprisoned as a 14 year old in the reprisals, called the official recognition, last year, of that party (the Party of Democratic Hope) an outrage.

You will remember that Ramfis junior’s grandfather saw murder as a "remedy" for the problem of “undesirable” Haitians. A couple of days ago he wrote in Listín Diario how his country holds the solution to the “Haiti problem”, the problem being that Haitians, being poor and from a wartorn country, regularly try to migrate for a better life on the island in the much larger and richer Dominican side. 

It is worth mentioning that this newspaper was banned during the Trujillo years. It was left wing, supported Cuba but according to a 2020 research paper, prejudice against Haitians in the Dominican Republic seems to be standard.

Haitians still cross the Massacre River, site of atrocities during the Parsley Massacre ordered by Ramfis junior's grandfather and of earlier killings. Now, they cross from Ouanaminthe on the Haitian side to Dajabón on the Dominican side to sell used clothes and shoes and bric-a-brac at the market.

Ramfis says 12% of the country’s budget is spent on looking after Haitians, that there are 15-20% more Haitians in the Dominican Republic than in 2020 and that Haitians now make up 15-20% of the Dominican population. Clearly, integration does not appeal to him. 

The rest of the article is largely a complaint about how the Dominican Republic is not wealthy enough to support Haiti and how the international community have labeled the Dominican un-neighbourly yet refused to help solve the problem. What is distinctly unpleasant is not just the tone of the article but the language this grandson of one of Latin America’s cruellest and most rapacious dictators uses against Haiti.

The nouns are all heavily negative: Crisis, Conflicto, Invasión, "Violación" (violation), an asalto a nuestra soberanía (assault on our sovereignty)  

Haitians are described as transeúntes (transients), therefore other, not “us”, who commit embestidas delictivas (criminal attacks).

The article uses the verb azotar (to whip) to describe how the conflict has been whipping the Dominican Republic, as if it were they who had been massacred by the Haitians, not the thousands of Haitians the writer's grandfather ordered to be murdered. The article itself tries to whip up anger towards Haitians among Dominicans, claiming Haitians illegally diverted aquifers to their side of the border leading to the ill-advised deployment of the Dominican military, Irreparables pérdidas económicas (irreparable economic losses) and the Devastación a comerciantes dominicanos (devastation to Dominican merchants). All in all the migrants are a carga (burden).  This is very like the complaint on which, according to the president, Joaquín Balaguer in his Memorias de un cortesano de la "era de Trujillo (Memoir if a courtier in the era if Trujillo), el Chivo ordered the massacre:

 “a band of Haitian marauders had penetrated the national territory, stealing a large number of cattle and plundering, as usual, several farms in the border region.”

In the Listín Diario article the adjectives used in relation to Haitians are funesta (disastrous), and flagrante (flagrant). There are phrases like “un pavoroso ensanchamiento de la alarmante crisis peregrina” (a terrifying widening of the alarming migrant crisis), designed to instil fear and dread and create a sense of unknown but ominous future.  

Despite being the richer, more powerful nation and the most recent and murderous aggressor, the Dominicans are portrayed as victims.“Las desconsideraciones a los dominicanos, y el derroche exagerado de recursos” (the disregard for Dominicans, and the excessive waste of resources). Because of Haitians, Dominicans suffer “la pobreza” (poverty) and are subjected to “la subordinación obligatoria” (compulsory subordination).

He claims Dominicans are called “xenófobos, anti-haitianos, y racistas” (xenophones, anti-Haitians and racists) by the outside world. It is deny and deflect again.

It is all a strategy, piling fear upon fear of others, creating an image of “us” as victims, creating division, because that is what tyrants do. They strategise a manipulation of people, their emotions and their actions. It is transparent, but they know they can appeal to the indifference of their enemies or the sense of grievance of the self-interested. It is utterly shameless but they probably see themselves as cunning and to people of that ilk, that cunning is a virtue. 

Among tyrants, real or wannabe, there is no shame, no remorse, no empathy, only self-interest.

Ramfis’ party only got 1% of the vote. Even among the Tiktok generation, when few young or even youngish Latinos can tell you about more than one of two of the dictatorships that have plagued their continent in the last 150 years, or even the last 50, there seems to be a memory of where he is coming from and where that led.  Unquestionably, the island of Hispaniola suffers intransigent problems. But it is dispiriting that characters like Ramfis junior use this to foment division rather than unite people to explore a mutually convenient solution.  And it is alarming that a man, coming from the family he does, has a platform for this sort of diatribe.  It is not argument, it's incitement.