The Dominican Republic is truly a country in transformation, thanks to the democratic patina of the current president, Leonel Fernandez. With a quick change to the Constitution and riding on the age-old tradition of bought votes, he is currently serving his third term - even waving away a pesky implication into a corruption case which only served to increase his popularity.
I saw him speak a few years ago at New York University as part of the "Voices of Latin American Leaders" series. When he was asked about the direction of the Dominican Republic, he curled his lips in a smile and said, "I want to turn the country into a little New York." Everyone laughed and applauded as apocalyptic visions of a merengue-driven Babylon flashed before my eyes. (A quick digression: I recently read that Israel and the Dominican Republic are seeking to improve business ties.)
All of these changes can be seen in the the production of salt. In the 1960s the Dominican government created an umbrella organization called Corporacion de Empresas Estatales, a cooperative of state-owned companies. A part of this was the Distribuidora de Sal, a monopoly in charge of salt distribution that guaranteed protection from outside competitors and stabilized prices.
A couple decades later the Dominican Republic begins to fully fling open it's doors to foreign investors and dismantles the CEE. The repercussions are still being felt in this food-deficit country - inflation continues to skyrocket while the market is being flooded with much cheaper rice, pastas, etc. from Venezuela, Chile, and Spain.
I decided to check out Las Salinas, one of the country's most important (and only unionized) salt producing centers. At about an hour and a half from Santo Domingo, it is home to a sleepy kite surfing village that is much too close to a naval base.
I saw him speak a few years ago at New York University as part of the "Voices of Latin American Leaders" series. When he was asked about the direction of the Dominican Republic, he curled his lips in a smile and said, "I want to turn the country into a little New York." Everyone laughed and applauded as apocalyptic visions of a merengue-driven Babylon flashed before my eyes. (A quick digression: I recently read that Israel and the Dominican Republic are seeking to improve business ties.)
All of these changes can be seen in the the production of salt. In the 1960s the Dominican government created an umbrella organization called Corporacion de Empresas Estatales, a cooperative of state-owned companies. A part of this was the Distribuidora de Sal, a monopoly in charge of salt distribution that guaranteed protection from outside competitors and stabilized prices.
A couple decades later the Dominican Republic begins to fully fling open it's doors to foreign investors and dismantles the CEE. The repercussions are still being felt in this food-deficit country - inflation continues to skyrocket while the market is being flooded with much cheaper rice, pastas, etc. from Venezuela, Chile, and Spain.
I decided to check out Las Salinas, one of the country's most important (and only unionized) salt producing centers. At about an hour and a half from Santo Domingo, it is home to a sleepy kite surfing village that is much too close to a naval base.
When I arrived, I was too amazed by the primitiveness of the whole operation to pay attention to the explanation of how salt is harvested (simply put - solar evaporation of sea water). Men pushing and pulling carts laden with salt up a rickety make-shift train track made me think of the opening scene of POWAQQATSI: Life in Transformation.
"POWAQQATSI is a celebration of the human-scale endeavor...that defines a particular culture. It's also a celebration of rareness -- the delicate beauty in the eyes of an Indian child, the richness of a tapestry woven in Kathmandu -- and yet an observation of how these societies move to a universal drumbeat." - Godfrey Reggio
And it is this drumbeat that made me forget, even if just for an hour, my constant beef with the Dominican government to take in the full meaning of what it means to be a culture in transition.
