I Am A Living Archive: Co-produced by The Ghost That Refuses To Stay Buried
Yelaine Rodriguez surrounded by cousins and aunt in Santo Domingo, Photo by Siriaca Rodriguez, c.1995-1996
Growing up in the South Bronx in the early 1990s as a DominicanYorker meant Mami in the kitchen cooking arroz, habichuela y carne (rice, beans & meat) while swaying her hips along to Antony Santos's guitar. It signified community block parties blasting Hip-Hop through enormous boombox speakers, colorful inflatable children's playhouses, and hotdogs with sweet pickle relish. It also meant figuring out where your Black, ambiguous, Spanish-speaking self fit in a world that was constantly asking, what are you? But what did it look like for Dominican diasporic children in the ‘90s to explore their parent's cultures? It looked like yearly summer trips to the island to get hands-on experience, including carrying buckets of water to the bathroom from la cisterna (water tank) to shower. It was sitting under the sun with half your hair blown out and the other half curly and puffy, porque se fue la luz (because the light went off). It meant your mother implementing a change of clothing because your punk-emo attire attracted too much unwanted attention. While in New York, your parent's heritage was fed through a specific lens via a television program called Santo Domingo Invita (Santo Domingo Invites) that had a clear plan. A plan to entice tourism by spotlighting the beautiful natural green landscapes and white sandy beaches of the island while simultaneously ignoring the majority of the population's lived realities. These experiences shaped my formative years, eventually resulting in my artistic practice and scholarly research, merging art and academia that explore these realities.
La Zona Colonial, Santo Domingo: A Very Small Place.
A View of La Zona Á la Jamaica Kincaid
Every Sunday morning in the 1990s, DominicanYork children could tune into Santo Domingo Invita to learn from this carefully curated program on Dominican culture. It educated numerous DominicanYork children about their cultural heritage through a touristic lens. Santo Domingo Invita cherry-picked the culture's best displaying a minute experience reserved for the wealthy. Everyone depicted was a caricature of Dominican people, often joyful and extraordinarily welcoming, a happy Caribbean paradise. Only the most beautiful parts of the island were employed to entice tourists. The Dominican Republic is a beautiful island in the Caribbean with white sandy beaches and fancy resorts; however, there is more than meets the eye. For example, here we find the oldest city in the “New World,” the colonial zone of Santo Domingo. As a tourist, you can bet it would be on top of your to-do-list. With your tour guide, you will explore the abundance of captivating colonial architecture this city offers. Due to their Spanish colonizer's Catholic influences, your tour guide will proudly point to the first cathedral in the Americas. He will direct your gaze to an early 19th century statue of Christopher Columbus conveniently situated in front of the cathedral inaugurated on February 27, 1887, 43 years to the day of the country's independence from Haiti. You may or may not notice Anacaona, an indigenous leader who fought against the crown. Yet, somehow the sculptor thought it appropriate to place her in the most demeaning position, at the bottom of Christopher Columbus' feet, writing "Illustrious and Enlightened Mr. Cristoval Columbus."
"Historia Oculta" Tour (Steps over the Original City Wall), Photo by Yelaine Rodriguez, 2022
However, if the desire is to get an unfiltered, non-whitewashed history of the island, the "Historia Oculta" (Hidden History) tour from AfrohistoriaRD (AfroHistoryDR) by Dominican anthropologist Ruth Pión is key. As a Dominicano Ausente (Absent Dominican), I was curious about this tour, and in January 2022 I called Pión to schedule a tour. Numerous signifiers allude to the enslaved past of the Dominican Republic via a surplus of colonial architecture and fragmented architectural ruins of old sugar cane mills around the coast. Walking around La Zona Colonial, one is confronted by the island's colonial legacy. El Palacio Virreinal Alcázar de Colón, where Christopher Columbus’ son Diego and his wife Maria Toledo resided, is a staple structure for tour guides. La Calle de las Damas (Ladies Streets), where Maria Toledo frequented with her ladies, is memorialized in a large plaque in her honor. And it is common for tourists to take pictures in El Parque Colón also known as La Plaza de la Palomas (The Pigeon Square), where Christopher Columbus's statue is situated, emerging in a sea of birds. However, the neighborhood of Santa Barbara and La Negreta is not on the radar of most tourists; in fact, the government has gone through high measures to suppress the ghosts from that part of the landscape.
Ceiba de Colon, Photo by Luis E. Mañón, 1920
The Not So Hidden History of the Dominican Republic
Between La Zona Colonial, the first city of the New World, and La Negreta, a street in the neighborhood of Santa Barbara named after a warehouse that once retained enslaved Africans, rest the remnants of La Ceiba de Colon. A silk-cotton tree named after Christopher Columbus. Legend states that Columbus moored his ship La Santa Maria onto this ceiba when he erroneously arrived in Quisqueya, modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic, on December 5, 1492. And since then, this ceiba was cemented to this particular moment in history. However, these trees are vital in the spiritual and ancestral world in the Caribbean and Latin American regions. Indigenous people have associated ceibas as connectors to the three worlds, the underworld, earth, and heaven, claiming that souls rise to the top of these trees on their way to the afterlife. Ceibas are also indications of fruitful living environments as they tend to be near healthy water sources. The erasure of la Ceiba de Colon history before 1492 is reminiscent of the enslaved African narrative. That is why it is essential to acknowledge the significance of this ceiba's life before colonization.
Mal de Ojo: Point B of The Door of No Return (Side A & B), Diptych Photography by Yelaine Rodriguez, 2022
Similar to La Ceiba de Colon, the Ozama River, now one of the most polluted rivers in the Caribbean, was once sacred to the indigenous people of Quisqueya. However, since the Ozama River’s depth provided a sound port,² by the early 16th century, Las Reales Atarazanas (The Royal Shipyards) was erected near this ceiba by the hands of enslaved labor. On top of indigenous sacred land, large blocks of limestone created structures of oppression that contained and controlled enslaved Africans and racialized and excluded them from the very city they built. In my piece Mal De Ojo: Point B of The Door of No Return (Side A & B), I look at La Puertas de Las Reales Atarazanas (The Royal Shipyard Doors) as a site of historical significance for both indigenous and African diasporic communities. Most African diasporic people are familiar with the Door of No Return in Ghana due to movies like Sankofa (1993), but what doors did the stolen ancestors of Afro-descendants walk through after the long treacherous journey across the Atlantic? What were some of the first structures they encountered? Furthermore, how did those structures dictate their movements?
The door doubled as the original city walls and naturally controlled the city's flow. Passing the doors to the left still stands El Palacio Virreinal Alcazar de Colon. This grand palace with over fifty rooms and luxurious gardens set the tone for that side of the city. However, to the right, we find the first Black neighborhood, Santa Barbara, where enslaved Africans lived in destitute conditions and labored by mining limestone for the New World. Also, to the right, newly enslaved Africans arriving from the Atlantic slave trade were processed and prepared before distribution at the Santa Barbara Church's market. They would go up the stairs built into the original city walls and walk down a narrow pathway that would lead them to la Negreta, the warehouse in Santa Barbara that kept them captive. Even though time obliterated the physical warehouse, the street where it was once located, was renamed after it. As a result, it solidified this history, creating a ghost from the past that refuses to stay buried.
The Past & The Present Converse
Santa Barbara, Dominican Republic, Photo by Yelaine Rodriguez, 2022
In the 21st century, the DNA of this neighborhood is indisputable. Tourists are warned from entering Santa Barbara, and tour guides are not permitted to take them there. Many of the buildings are shadows of what they once were. Furthermore, the original city walls on this side of the city are inadequately maintained and covered in graffiti. Today, Santa Barbara's residents are primarily Black marginalized people. Throughout the years, the ministry of culture has strategically prevented its development, a common practice worldwide in response to Black-centered neighborhoods. At one point, a wall went up at the government's request to separate it from the desirable part of the city. Ironically in the 20th century, the downtown area of la Zona Colonial underwent a reconstruction period to preserve most of its colonial structures, turning it into today's prominent tourist attraction. However, these stones harbor a harrowing certitude for descendants of enslaved Africans, a harsh truth from the past reflected in the present via architectural memory scattered in fragmented pieces that artistic scholars like myself working within these narratives are bound to put together via a Critical Fabulation approach—a term coined by writer Saidiya Hartman describing the creative semi-nonfictional attempts to bring forth the suppressed voices of the past.¹
Original City Wall in Santa Barbara, Dominican Republic, Photo by Yelaine Rodriguez, 2022
The Self As A Living Archive Co-Produced by The Ghost
Conceptualizing Art within Ancestral and Architectural Memory
This practice I operate from is the union between my artistic language and academic research. Sourcing inspiration within colonial archives and dispersed oral accounts to reimagine the past for a contemporary audience, fabricating imagery that speaks to the legacy of slavery and honors indigenous and African predecessors and their diaspora through wearables, film, and photography. The mask and wearables become a shield to digest the harsh realities of the backdrop, creating a space where imagination and history may coexist. For example, in my short film Ebbó, two AfroDominican dancers explore the ruins of Ingenio Boca de Nigua, an old sugar cane plantation where one of the first rebellions on the island took place. This artistic practice is a layered, complicated genealogical puzzle. It unites all these disjointed sources from my research, becoming an artistic representation of my DNA makeup. These traces of history embedded in nature and architectural ruins are also embedded in me; they are part of my ancestral memory. Everything imaginable was done to suppress Black voices and their experiences. Therefore Black artistic scholars must rely on what was preserved by the colonizers and actively read against the grain of the colonial archives to construct a narrative that is true to their ancestor's experiences.
Ebbó, Short Film Still, by Yelaine Rodriguez, 2021
Although the Dominican people tried to preserve la ceiba de Colón, ultimately, the tree perished. At one point, another ceiba emerged next to it. Sometimes referred to as the daughter tree, this ceiba appeared to be embracing her mother's corpse. Unfortunately, in 2019 the daughter tree fell as well. Currently, other tree species surround the remnants, engulfing what it's left and further obscuring its indigenous roots and colonial past. Now it is up to the people of these communities to extract and mine the archives whether they live on the island or en el exterior (in the exterior). To shed new light on these sites that provide alternative meaning and purpose. To acknowledge the pain while cultivating memories that give agency and become the living archive co-produced by the ghosts that refuse to stay buried.
Cueva de María de la Cruz, Loiza, Puerto Rico, Photo by Yelaine Rodriguez, 2021
Obatala: If God Was Black & From Loiza, Photography by Yelaine Rodriguez, 2021
My family is from the island of Quisqueya, but Afro-spirituality and Afro-traditions permeate wherever slavery took place; therefore, I feel at home in various Afro-centered communities I've visited. When I was in Loiza, Puerto Rico, working with Obatala, the orisha of the sky, I found myself in La Cueva de Maria de la Cruz, a cave that once housed indigenous peoples of Puerto Rico and where runaway Africans later found refuge. The project spoke to me on multiple levels. The limestone that the cave was made out of made me think of how sacred spaces are extracted to construct structures of oppression. The indigenous and African relationship to this cave and its association with refuge for these communities felt familiar. These sites become an extension of Afro and Indigenous peoples. They not only harbor memory, but they also can create new ones. As an Artistic Scholar, I stress this point; I approach my visual language and academic research as a union to make these suppressed narratives more accessible. I ask, how can we take our interests to accentuate our ancestors’ repressed voices? How can we secure that these vernacular cultures are acknowledged in the historical canon? And lastly, how can we use our attainable tools to strengthen our collective voice so that our stories are finally, adequately recorded into history?
Author’s note: This article is based on Rodriguez's TEDx talk "I Am A Living Archive," produced by TEDx AUCollege Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 2022.
Footnotes
Núñez Collado JR, Merwood-Salisbury J (2021). Stones and slaves: labour, race and spatial exclusion in colonial Santo Domingo. Urban History 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926821000456
Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe 12.2 (2008): 1-14. 11
Yelaine Rodriguez (b.1990) is an AfroDominicanYork artistic scholar, educator, independent curator, cultural organizer, and writer who merges her creative language and academic research within her practice. As a visual artist, Rodriguez conceptualizes wearable art, sculptures, and site-specific installations drawing connections between her research on Black cultures in the Caribbean and the United States. She received her BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design | The New School (2013) and her MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Museum Studies from New York University (2021). She is currently an Adjunct Instructor at The New School and NYU.
Rodriguez's curatorial projects include "Radical Elegance" at Longwood Art Gallery At Hostos (2021), "Afro Syncretic" at NYU (2019-2020), "Resistance, Roots, & Truth" at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (2018), and "(under)REPRESENT(ed)" at Parsons School of Design | The New School (2017). From (2015 - to 2018), Rodriguez founded La Lucha: Dominican Republic and Haiti, One Island, an art collective exploring Dominican-Haitian relations through exhibitions, artist panels, and interactive conferences. Residencies include the Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship from the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (2017), Wave Hill Van Lier Fellowship (2018), The Latinx Project Curatorial Fellowship at NYU (2019), and Bronx Museum AIM Program (2020).
Rodriguez has exhibited in various venues internationally, such as ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21, El Museo del Barrio's (NY) first national large-scale survey of Latinx contemporary art, Photoville, Mexic-Arte Museum, American Museum of Natural History, and Wave Hill in the United States, El Centro Cultural de España and Centro León Biennial XXVII in the Dominican Republic, SurGallery & Critical Distance Centre for Curators in Canada, Wereldmuseum in The Netherlands, and La Escocesa in Barcelona, Spain. Rodriguez's works feature in CNN, Artsy, EnFoco, Hyperallergic, Vogue, Aperture, and Elle Magazine. Her writing has appeared in ARTnews and academic journals like Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture.