This book joins the growing literature on the mostly conflictive relationship between those closest of Caribbean neighbors, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The author joins the fray straight out of the gate. He is hardly dispassionate about the fundamental sources of, if not the origins at least the perpetuation of, that conflictive relationship. “Antihaitianismo ideology,” he states, “combines a legacy of racist Spanish colonial mentality, nineteenth-century racial theories, and twentieth-century cultural neo-racism into a web of anti-Haitian attitudes, racial stereotypes, and historical distortions” (p. ix). This “hegemonic ideology” not only oppresses Haitians in the Dominican Republic, it has also traditionally been employed as an ideological weapon “to subdue the black and mulatto Dominican lower classes and maintain their political acquiescence” (p. ix).
It is the author’s intention to examine and “demystify” this racist ideology, perpetuated by what he terms the “light-skinned elites.” Very similar light-skinned elites, he asserts, also monopolize...
