The Saints of Santo Domingo

Book excerpt: The Saints of Santo Domingo: Dominican Resistance in the Age of Neocolonialism tells the story of a generation of Dominican warriors, who surrendered their energies, and often their lives, in the struggle against devastating poverty, glaring social inequality and state violence. Daniel Shaw, a professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Eugenio María de Hostos College, recounts the lives of the persecuted leaders of the clandestine FALPO and MPD. Shaw -an internationalist and anti-imperialist leader in the United States- has lived alongside and organized with social movements in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Central America, Brazil and Western Africa. Guided by a profound sense of loss and duty, Shaw seeks to rescue from oblivion the example of Chu, Furi, Claridad and other larger than life Dominican fighters who were assassinated by the neocolonial Dominican state. Among the other themes explored in his timely book are Haitian-Dominican unity, forced migration and the everyday survival of the exiled Dominican community in New York City. The Saints of Santo Domingo is a must read for any student of Dominican history trying to bridge the gap between the murderous regimes of Trujillo and Balaguer, and the present day repression of the popular, anti-imperialist movement.