Haitian-Dominican Counterpoint

What would the island of Hispaniola look like if viewed as a loosely connected system? That is the question Haitian-Dominican Counterpointseeks to answer as it surveys the insular space shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic throughout their parallel histories. For beneath the familiar tale of hostilities, the systemic perspective reveals a lesser-known, "unitarian" narrative of interdependencies and reciprocal influences shaping each country'sidentity. In view of the sociocultural and economic linkages connecting the two countries, their relations would have to resemble not so much acockfight (the conventional metaphor) as a serial and polyrhythmic counterpoint.

"Matibag has spotted with renewed imagination an intense instance of border contact far larger in regional implications than the geographical space occupied by the fringe that binds and unbinds the related histories of Haiti and Republica Dominicana...recommended reading for any informed and discerning person interested in the region as a serious tourist or for business or academic purposes." - Eduardo Gonzalez, Johns Hopkins University

"...this book starts us thinking about the unthinkable. [Matibag] carries forward the discerning analysis of Dominican-Haitian relations begun in 1971." - James Morrell, Council for International Policy

Autorentext
Eugenio Matibag is associate professor of Spanish at Iowa State Univesity. He is the author of Afro-Cuban Religious Experience: Cultural Reflections in Narrative .

Inhalt
Introduction: Point Counterpoint Limits of colonialism, 1492-1750 The Great Opening, 1751-1801 Haiti and Santo Domingo, 1802-1844 Territorial imperatives, 1845-1929 Interdependent Dictatorships, 1930-1986 The edge of the earth: Haitians in Dominican literature * Bounds of modernity, 1986-2001