Recent data revealed that of the world's people, Dominicans are some
of the most willing to relocate to the United States. If tomorrow the
DR became part of the United States, more than ¼ of the adults would pack up and leave for Washington Heights. Most want to leave simply
for economic reasons. I don't think I've heard of one single
Dominican who moved to the US because of freedom or humanist reasons.
The Dominican dream for many is the blind embrace of the American
capitalist dream, often unfettered. So blinded are many by that
economic pursuit, that they are willing to risk their lives.
In the Bronx, I was well acquainted with an individual who risked his
life to fulfill his American dream. Unlike Cubans, Dominicans are not
immediately granted residence permits if they reach US soil. Not only
that, the voyage from Cuba to Florida is direct, whereas Dominicans
have to traverse shark-infested waters to reach Puerto Rico, merely a
layover destination for Nueva Yol, as many Dominicans refer to the
United States.
My friend in the Bronx – let's call him Juan – was only 17 years
old when he finally got fed up with school and decided to borrow
money from a local bookie so he could book a yola to Puerto
Rico. A yola is a
essentially a hand-constructed boat used by smugglers to ferry people
across the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico.
Juan paid 500 dollars, a bargain
since the person who ferried him was relatively new and inexperienced
in the game of crossing the Mona Passage; many experienced sailors
charge as much as 2,000 dollars. Those 500 dollars were the biggest
sum of money he'd ever seen, and he haggled with the yolero
to let him keep 20 of those 500
dollars.
Along with a rag-tag bunch of
strangers, the wooden, leaky boat took them across the strait for
what felt like days. As a kid, I remember people telling me stories
about yola trips and I
saw it almost in the same light that I saw a trip across the
Atlantic. And hell, the conquistadors who sailed on their way to
plunder the Dominican probably did so under safer conditions, and
with sturdier boats. A yola
is tiny and completely exposed to the elements. Menstruating women
have been rumored to get thrown overboard for fear that their blood
may attract a shark that tips over the boat and devours everyone.
But Juan wasn't afraid of storms, or
sharks, or getting stranded and resorting to cannibalism. He'd left
his parents asleep in his childhood home – a brightly-painted
wooden shack with a zinc roof. The house had been built 40 years
earlier by Juan's grandfather, and was the only thing the family had
inherited. He left the house in the middle of the night, and in a way
also said goodbye to the termites eating away at the wood, and to the
pieces of gum patching the leaky roof. If Juan was afraid of one
thing, it was the termites. He had nightmares every night where a
hurricane would come and wash away his life, but the termites eating
his body is what frightened him most. He preferred to be devoured by
sharks. There's no logic to fearing what happens to your body after
death, but to him a shark was much more noble and Christian than
termites after a hurricane.
“One gets used to seeing death and
complete loss at every turn,” he tells me. And it was perhaps with
that fatalist mentality that he saw that ride across the
shark-infested Mona strait as just another night under a leaky roof.
It's hard to predict how many have
died crossing the Mona strait, but sometimes it feels as if every
Dominican I've encountered knows of someone who has died. Dying in
the Mona Passage is in the Dominican consciousness almost a failed
entry exam, as if the American hand of destiny decided to turn you
back from her embrace.
“I didn't dream of dying crushed
in my house that night, instead I dreamt of waking up in Nueva Yol.
Nueva Yol was heaven, and Puerto Rico was purgatory,” he said.
Juan arrived in Puerto Rico with
those 20 dollars. Everyone landed on a deserted beach and made a
split in all directions. He had a dry change of clothes in a plastic
bag, and the 20 dollars took him to a part of San Juan he'd heard of
where there was a Dominican colony. The very next day, he'd already
met someone willing to spot him a gram of white.
“I didn't even want to buy food, I
just wanted to sell gram by gram, day by day so I could fly up to
Nueva Yol.”
He slept on a park bench the first
week, and then met a girl who enjoyed his product and didn't ask for
a rent deposit or ID. Through her, me met some guys who dabbled in
the identities of the dead, and soon Juan was reborn as a resurrected
Puerto Rican man. Puerto Rico is a US commonwealth, so back in the
1990s a library card could have probably gotten you on a plane to the
US. You could still be questioned by customs, and if you didn't sound
Puerto Rican or got nervous, that could be the end of your Dominican
dream. But Juan picked up the Puerto Rican slang and accent rather
quickly, and was even choking on his Rs like a true Boricua, as
Puerto Ricans charismatically call themselves.
So, there he was in NY, ready to
take over the city. He landed on his feet, already having made
connections back on the island. Pretty soon he was driving fly cars
and his moms had a house, but in less than a year he got busted by
the cops with 30k in his car and ended up serving 5 in the slammer.
He had nothing stashed away, and being a Puerto Rican, he can never
expect to get a passport that would secure his return to the
Dominican. To the US legal system he is but a Puerto Rican felon. He
can't leave and will probably never see his hometown or family again.
“I miss them everyday, but I can't
go back without getting into even bigger trouble.”
Today he works an honest job in a
supermarket and makes slightly above minimum wage.
