Press Release!!!

Today, (23.01.2007), at 09:35 am, urban grassroots organisations in Santo Domingo had a press conference at Club Manoto Tavarez Justo, a local culture and sport club located just next to the Francisco del Rosario Sánchez Bridge on Ozoma River.

The place has consciously chosen, as the current extension project of the bridge poses a great risk of forced eviction to many houses and businesses. The construction of metro, also, is a great concern of Dominican social movements. Massive amount of resources are allocated for the 14 km long construction project, just before the coming elections. Rightly so, social organisations raise their concerns about various political, social and economic dimensions of the project.

One of the major fears is if the (new) president will continue to show political commitment to finish the project after the election. The corruption due to lack of transparency is another crucial concern. While poverty is widespread and lack of investment in health, education and housing sectors make the life of many poor people further difficult, the speed and amount of resources allocated for the construction of metro raises the suspicions.

Thus, social and community organisations working at various barrios and on different urban concerns such as education, health, housing, community development etc. had a press conference to raise these concerns and call the president to include their views and demands into the current projects in particular, and to follow more participatory and democratic urban planning and development in general.

The press conference, as it would be expected, was attended by only one TV channel, TeleSistema, and later, Michael Miguel, a famous TV presenter joined and had a meeting with community leaders.

Juan Dolio

I spend the last 5 days of 2006 in Juan Dolio, 25 kms long coast that holds numorous all-inclusive resorts, smaller hotels, summer houses etc. It is about an hour ride from Santo Domingo with a RD$50 (US$1.5) guagua. JD has a beautiful, archatypical Caribbean beach with all the palm trees and white sand. Yet, because of the dead coral under the sea, swimming is not as pleasant as in the other parts of the island. There are numorous cheap accomodation, food and entertainment options in JD, which make it an ideal place for extended weekends and backpackers. At the same time, it is much more peaceful than its neighbour and big brother Boca Chica.

At the Rough Guide, I read about a hotel, named “Fior di Loto”, which seemed very interesting with its India-themed rooms, free yoga classes, big gym and resonably priced rooms (US$10 a-nite). When I met with the owner of the hotel, an Italian woman, all the Indian theme, yoga classes, Indian music made sense, as she, under her Indian clothes, heavily involved with India, living half of the year over there working on her charity.

Mainly Italian and French tourist were staying in the hotel, as well as in Juan Dolio. Many of the businesses including hotels, restaurants, bars and supermarkets are owned by the expats. For instance, the only mini-market around where I was staying was onwed by a Japoness family, there were lots of Italian restaurants, an Austrian-owned bar and a Swedish-owned cafe.

I saw and met with many western tourists and expatriats in JD, some of whom I really disliked. Many of them have looked like as if they found their little paradise in the Dominican Republic, in JD, far far away from their cold-expensive western countries, enjoying slow, hot, hedonism-filled lifes, yet reminding other people how close can someone’s paradise be to another’s hell. Something looked wrong, smelled bad, and tasted disgusting, at least for me. Many of those people were male, over middle-age, “ugly” (with all its dimensions), white, lonely characters, bond to each other with one and only common denominator. Almost as if they were different to human-kind, another spicies. The substaintial part of their life in JD was composed of sleeping with different women for RD$500, about 15 US dollars. They were proud of this as their language was mainly around “fuck”.

First day, I met with an in/famous man from USA, around his 60s, with a long white hair and a big beard. He had a huge belly, and a huge comfort in the place. He, “bi-bi or vi-vi” as people called, was living in the hotel, being an old “stamp collector”, now he was enjoying his life in JD as serving to the western male community as a friendly pimp. After exchanging regards, and asking what am i doing in the DR, the first thing he told me was, “now I am fucking my life here, dominican women are beautiful, aren’t they?” I met with another person from the States at the hotel, much younger, ginger head man. Before I heard his story, just by my observations I thought, “oohh, he looks really wierd”. Then I learnt that he was a soldier in Iraq and kicked out of the military after “getting crazy”. I heard about a French tourist, who only came to JD for prostitution, so far he has been with 30 women in 2 weeks. I saw men not even saying hello to the woman whom they slept a night ago. Another Canadian man, a drug dealer doing business through Haiti, told me, whom I don’t even know his name, “I will go to get my German girlfriend, we will have some breakfast and later probably go to my place and fuck. She is, (showing with two fingers) that much taller than me..”

Overall, at the end of my experience, I thought I really do not want to live in a world where there are perverts like the ones I met. The quality of life, the beauty of living, the meaning of human relationship are extremely devalued by such people. And I do not have any sort of religious or moralistic dogmas, yet my intellect and ethics draws the line.

Just for a footnote, I also meet with very nice people, like Michel, who took me to the clinic on the new year eve when I got poisened, where I spend my new year and birthday. Of course, I enjoyed the beautiful beach, relaxed with a Yoga class and was amazed by the sun-set over the Caribbean sea.

From London to Punta Cana

4.12.2006

Mytravel Journey started with 45 minutes delay. Passengers were mainly white British package-holiday tourists. I got a feeling that most of the people were accoustomed to this sort of tours. At the plane, there were very few children. Mytravel, as it states, sells “flight seats”, which explains the range of services included into and excluded from the ticket. On board, apart from a cheap, really bad lunch and a slice-of-greasy-pizza dinner, everything is subject to purchase. For instance, to be able to use multimedia screen I had to buy headphones for ₤2.5. 300cc water was ₤1 and a small can beer was ₤3. Through out the journey, air-stewards constantly promoted consumption by cutting-off the audio-video services and promoting duty-free products and lottery tickets.

As soon as arriving to the Punta Cana Airport, Dominican girls with funny fruit basket hats, whom I thought to be working for Mytravel tours, welcomed tourists. At the arrival door, couples and families posed with the girls to a digital camera, which cheerfully and officially started their “holiday in the egzotic paradise island”. Being the only single passenger, I had to pose alone in the middle of two girls. One of the girls, with a sexy and over-exited tone, whispered to my ear “welcome to the Dominican Republic baby”, which I thought was a reference to the widespread sex tourism.

Tourism is one of the major economic sectors in the Dominican Republic. All-inclusive holiday resorts constitutes the bulk of this activity. Western tourists buy their holidays from their home-countries through a non-dominican tour operator, such as Thomas Cook, Mytravel etc. They take one of these charter flights, stay in one of the segregaded resorts for a week or two, which are mainly owned by transnational holiday companies. Usually without contributing to the local economy directly, they enjoy the beautiful sun-sea-beach trio and go back to their countries. Through out this cycle, they can survive without spending a peso. Thus, real benefit and added-value of tourism for a lower class Dominican (or anyone living in a tourism country) is very low. Construction of holiday resorts have detrimental environmental, social and cultural implications. To built resorts, many people are forced to evict their homes. These resorts consume excess amount of resources such as water and energy, the latter being extremely scarce in the country. They contribute to the de-forestation of native species such as mangroove forests. Service sector jobs, with being over-time and under-paid, have tremendously explotative working conditions. Sex tourism is an integral part of this business, both men and women from West come to the paradise in search of “love”, which I will share my own experiences soon.