Julian658 wrote:You have a knack for stating the obvious.
Is this a back handed insult to my intellegence?
Julian658 wrote:As a Latin American I have discussed the issue of colonialism with Spaniards. This is how they see it. They cannot understand why a Latin American that has a huge content of Spaniard DNA has the need to complain about colonization. They say you guys are complaining about your own ancestry and culture.
Short response:
I think it hinges on the identity people in Latin America choose to take on.
Long response:
Yea, it's interesting. It's a kind of propaganda war basically. It's about identity, and however gets to decide what the identity of a nation is, basically determines if you hate Spain or not. I'd imagine if you see yourself as indigenous, you will hate the Spanish. If you see yourself as the descendants of Spanish people, you won't hate them. Genetic legacy doesn't matter here. Perception is what wins out. Perception is king, I'm over 50% European and have significant Native DNA (I took a genetic test), but people (in the US) still consider me to be just black. Dominicans have a resistance to just being labeled as only black (because we're not only black), a lot of outsiders see this resistance as some sort of self-hating denial of blackness. Which is an over simplified, lazy, and ignorant way to view this in my opinion (in short it basically denies everything about the unique mixed cultural heritage and history of the people to just bucket them as the same as any one else with dark skin. Funny enough, it's leftist that do this more than anyone...). This is a totally wrong way to view it, but that's what outsiders (especially whites) see it as. It annoys me they are totally missing so much stuff by viewing this stuff from their American centric "one drop rule" point of view. These people completely ignore the complex history of the island. Anyway, that's for another thread.
Dominicans are typically raised/taught to hate Spain. I think that's changing a little (see note below), but that's where it is. The reason they're taught to hate Spain is that Spain abandoned the colony. "They left us to die." The reality is, this is the best way to gain independence. No fucking revolution to fight! It was also the best result for slaves, because after the abandonment, they were free! This is precisely the reason why Dominicans, unlike Cubans or Puerto Ricans are very mixed. Since there was little to no slavery due to the disbandment. There was no strong central government to enforce slavery and a caste system, thus, whites and black mixed way more than in other countries. Over 80% are at least bi-racial (African-Spanish), and some many tri-racial like me (Africa-Spanish-Native).
Note:
Funny enough, Spain is the DRs #1 trading partner, and much of the economic boom (fastest growing economy in Latin America over the last few decades) that has happened there over the last 20-30 years has come from Spanish investment (just as an example, many of those Punta Cana beach resorts were built by Spanish investment firms). The general attitude towards Spain is becoming more positive now.
I can think of 11780 reasons Trump shouldn't be president ever again.