Beyond the Plantations: The Race Issue and Collective Identities in Santo Domingo

Abstract

Following the decline of a prosperous sugar economy in 16th-century Santo Domingo, plantations became glaring by their absence and free people of African descent – mostly independent peasants – came to comprise the majority of society. This article explores how in this context the power of race as a collective social identity and symbol of social divisions declined, particularly in the countryside. This colonial trajectory also helps explain the seeming absence of imagined communities based on colour – paradoxically coupled with a preoccupation with colour gradations – up to the present in the Dominican Republic.

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