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Redeeming Santo Domingo: North Atlantic Missionaries and the Racial Conversion of a Nation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2020

Christina Cecelia Davidson*
Affiliation:
Postdoctoral fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: christina_davidson@fas.harvard.edu

Abstract

This article examines North Atlantic views of Protestant missions and race in the Dominican Republic between 1905 and 1911, a brief period of political stability in the years leading up to the U.S. Occupation (1916–1924). Although Protestant missions during this period remained small in scale on the Catholic island, the views of British and American missionaries evidence how international perceptions of Dominicans transformed in the early twentieth century. Thus, this article makes two key interventions within the literature on Caribbean race and religion. First, it shows how outsiders’ ideas about the Dominican Republic's racial composition aimed to change the Dominican Republic from a “black” country into a racially ambiguous “Latin” one on the international stage. Second, in using North Atlantic missionaries’ perspectives to track this shift, it argues that black-led Protestant congregations represented a possible alternative future that both elite Dominicans and white North Atlantic missionaries rejected.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History, 2020

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Footnotes

This paper was awarded the Sidney E. Mead Prize for the best unpublished article stemming from dissertation research that contributes significantly to its field and to the history of Christianity more broadly.

References

1 Emerson Mears, “Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the Dominican Republic—West Indies,” 30 March 1905, Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, West Indies Correspondence (H-2707), microfiche 2062, Methodist Missionary Society Archives, London.

2 C. S. Smith, “A Trip to the West Indies,” Christian Recorder, 12 March 1896.

3 Mears, “Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the Dominican Republic.”

4 The literature on the mutual constitution of race and Christian theology and praxis is expansive. See, for example, Carter, J. Kameron, Race: A Theological Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jennings, Willie James, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Prentiss, Craig R., ed., Religion and the Creation of Race and Ethnicity: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Goldschmidt, Henry and McAlister, Elizabeth A., eds., Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lum, Kathryn Gin and Harvey, Paul, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Race in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.

5 Gerbner, Katharine, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 151, 154, 167168CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Sensbach, Jon F., Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity In the Atlantic World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

6 Catron, John W., Embracing Protestantism: Black Identities in the Atlantic World (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016), 195196Google Scholar; and Gerbner, Christian Slavery, 196.

7 For African American missions in Africa and Haiti, see Campbell, James T., Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Little, Lawrence S., Disciples of Liberty: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Age of Imperialism, 1884–1916 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Byrd, Brandon R., “Black Republicans, Black Republic: African-Americans, Haiti, and the Promise of Reconstruction,” Slavery & Abolition 36, no. 4 (October 2015): 545567CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Byrd, Brandon R., The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 4958Google Scholar.

8 Given on September 23, 2013, the Tribunal Constitucional's law, Sentencia 168-13, has denied birthright citizenship to children born to undocumented migrants and has revoked citizenship from Dominicans of Haitian descent who were previously registered as citizens.

9 For an assessment of international reaction, see: Martínez, Samuel, “A Postcolonial Indemnity? New Premises for International Solidarity with Haitian-Dominican Rights,” Iberamericana 44, no.1–2 (April 2014): 173193Google Scholar; and Carrón, Hayden, “Borrando la huella africana: La sentencia 168-13 del Tribunal Constitucional Dominicano y la identidad nacional,” Afro-Hispanic Review 32, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 2740Google Scholar.

10 This reality has enabled the policy's proponents to claim that the country is being attacked by “foreign” powers: Martínez, “A Postcolonial Indemnity?,” 174.

11 Nelson, William Javier, “U.S. Diplomatic Recognition of the Dominican Republic in the 19th Century: A Study in Racism,” Afro-Hispanic Review 10, no. 1 (January 1991): 10Google Scholar. For race relations during the Spanish Annexation and the War of Restoration, see Eller, Anne, We Dream Together: Dominican Independence, Haiti, and the Fight for Caribbean Freedom (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Guyatt, Nicholas, “America's Conservatory: Race, Reconstruction, and the Santo Domingo DebateJournal of American History 97, no. 4 (March 2011): 9761000CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 The literature on the Haitian Revolution, its racial politics, and its consequences is too vast to cite in full. For recent histories, I have turned to Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Daunt, Marlene L., Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015)Google Scholar; and Nessler, Graham T., An Islandwide Struggle for Freedom: Revolution, Emancipation, and Reenslavement in Hispaniola 1789–1806 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Ramírez, Dixa, Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Refusal in the Dominican Americas, from the 19th Century to the Present (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Only a year before Smith's visit, Isabel Miller of the Christian and Missionary Alliance reported: “Here the white blood predominates, though the inhabitants are of every shade of complexion.” Isabel Miller, “Santa Domingo,” Christian Alliance Foreign Missionary Weekly, 10 July 1895.

16 The vast literature on Dominican racial ideology has critiqued anti-Haitian sentiment and the tendency to disassociate the country from Africa. Key works include: Cassá, Roberto, “El Racismo en la ideología de la clase dominante dominicana,” Ciencia 3, no. 1 (January–March 1976): 6185Google Scholar; Pichardo, Franklin Franco, Santo Domingo: Cultura, política e ideologia (Santo Domingo: Editora Nacional, 1979)Google Scholar; Derby, Lauren, “Haitians, Magic, and Money: Raza and Society in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands, 1900 to 1937,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 3 (1994): 488526CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baud, Michiel, “‘Constitutionally White’: The Forging of a National Identity in the Dominican Republic,” in Ethnicity in the Caribbean: Essays in Honor of Harry Hoetink, ed. Oostindie, Gert (London: Macmillan Education, 1996), 121151Google Scholar; Pichardo, Franklin Franco, Sobre racismo y antihaitianismo (y otros ensayos) (Santo Domingo: Impresora Librería Vidal, 1997)Google Scholar; Torres-Saillant, Silvio, “The Tribulations of Blackness: Stages in Dominican Racial Identity,” Latin American Perspectives 25, no. 3 (May 1998): 126146CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sagás, Ernesto, Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000)Google Scholar; Howard, David, Coloring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic (Oxford: Signal, 2001)Google Scholar; Candelario, Ginetta E. B., Black Behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Torres-Saillant, Silvio, “Blackness and Meaning in Studying Hispaniola: A Review Essay,” Small Axe 10, no. 1 (2006): 180188CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 232; Torres-Saillant, Silvio, Introduction to Dominican Blackness (New York: CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, 2010)Google Scholar; Mayes, April J., The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; García-Peña, Lorgia, Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of Contradicion (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ricourt, Milagros, The Dominican Racial Imaginary: Surveying the Landscape of Race and Nation in Hispaniola (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ramírez, Colonial Phantoms.

17 Ramírez, Colonial Phantoms, 220.

18 Carrón, “Borrando la huella africana,” 29.

19 García-Peña, Borders of Dominicanidad, 10.

20 Candelario, Black Behind the Ears, 91.

21 For examples, see Candelario, Black Behind the Ears, 35–82. See also Vega, Bernardo, Los primeros turistas en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 1991)Google Scholar.

22 For social transformations in the late nineteenth century, see Hoetink, H., The Dominican People, 1850–1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

23 Baud, Michiel, Peasants and Tobacco in the Dominican Republic, 1870–1930 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995)Google Scholar; San Miguel, Pedro Luis, Los Campesinos del Cibao: Economía de mercado y transformación agraria en la República Dominicana, 1880–1960 (San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1997)Google Scholar; Bryan, Patrick, “The Transition to Plantation Agriculture in the Dominican Republic, 1870–84,” Journal of Caribbean History 10 (January 1978): 82105Google Scholar; Sharpe, Kenneth Evan, Peasant Politics: Struggle in a Dominican Village (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and Ferrán, Fernando I., Tobaco y sociedad: La organización del poder en el ecomercado de tabaco dominicano (Santo Domingo: Fondo para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales, 1976)Google Scholar.

24 Bryan, “Transition to Plantation Agriculture,” 83; and Castillo, José del, “The Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry: From Competition to Monopoly, from National Semiproletariat to Foreign Proletariat,” in Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Fraginals, Manuel Moreno, Pons, Frank Moya, and Engerman, Stanley L. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 215234Google Scholar.

25 Bryan, “Transition to Plantation Agriculture,” 85, 102.

26 Bryan, “Transition to Plantation Agriculture,” 83.

27 Bryan, “Transition to Plantation Agriculture,” 105; and José del Castillo, “Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry,” 229.

28 Lluberes, Antonio, “La Crisis Del Tabaco Cibaeño, 1879–1930,” in Tabaco, azúcar y minería, ed. Lluberes, Antonio, del Castillo, José, and Alburquerque, Ramón (Santo Domingo: Editora La Palabra, 1984), 1116Google Scholar.

29 José del Castillo, “Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry,” 228.

30 José del Castillo, “Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry,” 229.

31 Marshall, Dawn, “A History of West Indian Migrations: Overseas Opportunities and ‘Safety-Valve’ Policies,” in The Caribbean Exodus, ed. Levine, Barry B. (New York: Praeger, 1987), 20Google Scholar; and José del Castillo, “Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry,” 232.

32 José del Castillo, La inmigración de braceros azucareros en La República Dominicana, 1900–1930 (Santo Domingo: Centro Dominicano de Investigaciones Antropologicas, 1978); and Patrick E. Bryan, “Question of Labor in the Sugar Industry of the Dominican Republic in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Moreno Fraginals, Moya Pons, and Engerman, Between Slavery and Free Labor, 242–248.

33 Silvio Torres-Saillant and Ramona Hernández, The Dominican Americans (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1998), 22. The same practice was conducted in Haiti, where Frederick Douglass became U.S. minister in 1889.

34 Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 52; Dickson D. Bruce, Archibald Grimké: Portrait of a Black Independent (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 67–68; and Byrd, Black Republic, 37–43.

35 Frank Moya Pons, The Dominican Republic: A National History, 3rd ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 2010), 266–271.

36 Moya Pons, Dominican Republic, 267.

37 Moya Pons, Dominican Republic, 295.

38 Moya Pons, Dominican Republic, 281–282.

39 Moya Pons, Dominican Republic, 295; and Cyrus Veeser, A World Safe for Capitalism: Dollar Diplomacy and America's Rise to Global Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 4–7.

40 Moya Pons, Dominican Republic, 299.

41 Moya Pons, Dominican Republic, 299.

42 For a general history, see George A. Lockward, El protestantismo en Dominicana, 2nd ed. (Santo Domingo: Editora Educativa Dominicana, 1982).

43 Rayford Logan, Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776–1891 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), 216–217; James O'Dell Jackson, “The Origins of Pan-African Nationalism: Afro-American and Haytian Relations, 1800–1863” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1976); Chris Dixon, Africa America and Haiti: Emigration and Black Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000); H. Hoetink, “‘Americans’ in Samaná,” Caribbean Studies 2, no. 1 (April 1962): 3–22; Sara Fanning, Caribbean Crossing: African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2014); and Dennis Hidalgo, La primera inmigracion de negros libertos norteamericanos y su asentamiento en la Española (1824–1826) (Santo Domingo: Academia Dominicana de la Historia, 2016).

44 Daniel A. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Nashville: A. M. E. Sunday-School Union, 1891), 477.

45 Leslie Griffiths, History of Methodism in Haiti (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Méthodiste, 1991), 58-59.

46 George Gillanders Findlay and William West Holdsworth, The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (London: Epworth, 1921), 491–493.

47 Christina Cecelia Davidson, “Black Protestants in a Catholic Land: The AME Church in the Dominican Republic 1899–1916,” New West Indian Guide 89, no. 3–4 (2015): 268; Nehemiah Willmore, “Esbozo histórico de la llegada de inmigrantes afro-americanos a la isla de Santo Domingo y Haití,” Boletín del Archivo General de La Nación 36, no. 129 (2011): 260–261; and Lockward, El protestantismo en Dominicana, 292.

48 Emelio Betances, The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America: The Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 213; Philip E. Wheaton and William L. Wipfer, Triunfando sobre las tragedias: Historia centenaria de la Iglesia Episcopal Dominicana, 1897–1997 (Santo Domingo: Editora Educativa Dominicana, 1997), 19–40; and Lockward, El protestantismo en Dominicana, 292–302.

49 Fernando Pérez Memén, “Relaciones entre la iglesia y el estado en el período 1898–1934,” in El padre Castellanos, ed. Rafael Bello Peguero (Santo Domingo: Editora Amigo del Hogar, 1991), 15, 13–35; and H. E. Polanco Brito, “La iglesia católica y la primera constitución Dominicana,” Clío 38, no. 125 (January–August 1970): 8–12.

50 Luis Martínez-Fernández, “The Sword and the Crucifix: Church-State Relations and Nationality in the Nineteenth-Century Dominican Republic,” Latin American Research Review 30, no. 1 (1995): 71–72, 83.

51 Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo (Government Printing Office, 1871), 222; Lockward, El protestantismo en Dominicana, 71–83; Martínez-Fernández, “The Sword and the Crucifix,” 83; Anne Eller, We Dream Together: Dominican Independence, Haiti, and the Fight for Caribbean Freedom (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2016), 133–134; and Gerald Horne, Confronting Black Jacobins: The United States, the Haitian Revolution, and the Question of the Dominican Republic (New York: Monthly Review, 2015) 267–268.

52 Betances, Catholic Church and Power Politics, 28–30.

53 Mu-Kien A. Sang, Ulises Heureaux: Biografía de un dictador (Santo Domingo: Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, 1989), 105–113.

54 Martínez-Fernández, “Sword and the Crucifix,” 70.

55 Mears served first in Sánchez, where he arrived in 1892. He moved to Puerto Plata in 1903 and served in the Dominican Republic until his death in 1942. His wife, Margaret Mears, is well-known for her work in the medical field. A trained nurse, she opened a clinic and trained hundreds of Dominican women: Edward A. Odell, It Came to Pass (New York: Board of National Missions, Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 1952), 147.

56 Mears, “Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the Dominican Republic.”

57 Emerson Mears to [John] Milton Brown, 16 March 1907, Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, West Indies Correspondence (H-2707), microfiche 2064, Methodist Missionary Society Archives, London.

58 Mears to Brown, 16 March 1907.

59 Mears to Brown, 16 March 1907. Outside of Puerto Plata, British Wesleyan missionary stations in the Dominican Republic existed in northern provinces of Samaná and Sánchez. In each northern station, the state of the mission was more or less the same; the congregations had no Dominican members. In Puerto Plata, Turks Islanders made up the majority of the membership, “the American immigrants having been nearly absorbed in the Spanish speaking population.” In Samaná, the story differed slightly, for there was still a robust presence of American descendants. Mears explained that “the natural growth of the coloured American colony there has given us an increase which may mislead if only statistics be considered.” Sánchez was more like Puerto Plata with its foreign element. There the membership was “mostly composed of people from St. Thomas and Tortola.” These statistics worried Mears, for the north had traditionally been the focal point of the Wesleyan missions, and it was there that they had churches, schools, and missionary houses.

60 Outside of Puerto Plata, known regions are Samaná, Santo Domingo, Higuey, and Neiba. For Higuey, see Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo, 224. For Neiba, see José A. Robert, La Evolución Histórica de Barahona (Ciudad Trujillo: Editora del Caribe, 1953), 58–59. Thank you to Anne Eller for pointing me to Robert's text for this Neiba reference.

61 Orlando Inoa, Azúcar: Árabes, cocolos y haitianos (Santo Domingo: Editora Cole, 1999); and Hoetink, Dominican People, 19–36.

62 Mears to Brown, 16 March 1907.

63 Mears, “Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the Dominican Republic.”

64 Mears, “Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the Dominican Republic.”

65 Bryan, “Transition to Plantation Agriculture”; and José del Castillo, “Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry.”

66 Cassá, “El Racismo en la ideología de la clase dominante dominicana,” 65–66; del Castillo, La Inmigración de Braceros Azucareros, 42; Baud, “‘Constitutionally White,’” 125; and Howard, Coloring the Nation, 24.

67 Teresita Martínez-Verge, Nation and Citizen in the Dominican Republic, 1880–1916 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 87; and Mayes, Mulatto Republic, 88.

68 Mears, “Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the Dominican Republic.”

69 Mears to Brown, 16 March 1907.

70 Findlay and Holdsworth, History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, 462–464.

71 Findlay and Holdsworth, History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, 472–473.

72 Findlay and Holdsworth, History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, 472.

73 Mears, “Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the Dominican Republic.”

74 Mears, “Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the Dominican Republic.”

75 Mears, “Wesleyan Methodist Missions in the Dominican Republic.”

76 Charles E. Goodin to Emerson Mears, 12 March 1907, Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, West Indies Correspondence (H-2707), microfiche 2064, Methodist Missionary Society Archives, London.

77 Mears to Brown, 16 March 1907.

78 Wheaton and Wipfer, Triunfando sobre las tragedias, 31–32.

79 Wheaton and Wipfer, Triunfando sobre las tragedias, 27.

80 James Theodore Holly, “Haiti: Bishop Holly's Visit to San Pedro de Macoris, Dominica,” Spirit of Missions 63, no. 5 (May 1898): 224, quoted in Wheaton and Wipfer, Triunfando sobre las tragedias, 33.

81 Wheaton and Wipfer, Triunfando sobre las tragedias, 31.

82 Davidson, “Black Protestants in a Catholic Land,” 269–281.

83 J. P. James, “A Word from Santo Domingo,” Voice of Missions 13, no. 11 (November 1905): 19.

84 James, “A Word from Santo Domingo.”

85 Goodin to Mears, 12 March 1907.

86 J. P. James, “A.M.E. Church Work at Samana, Santo Domingo,” Voice of Missions 18, no. 2 (February 1910): 6–7.

87 Lockward, El protestantismo en Dominicana, 183–185.

88 J. P. James, “Santo Domingo City: August 23rd,” Christian Recorder, 20 September 1900.

89 James, “Santo Domingo City.”

90 There was previously an AME society of fifteen members and a local preacher in Monte Cristi. The congregation, however, could not support the preacher financially, and consequently, he abandoned the work. “This was very discouraging to the little mission, so much so that many of them have connected themselves with other churches,” James lamented. He suggested that the missionary to be appointed to Monte Cristi be a teacher who could support himself by charging tuition. James, “Santo Domingo City.”

91 J. P. James, “Quadrennial Report of Rev. J. P. James,” Voice of Missions 16, no. 7 (July 1908): 11–12. The minister who James left in charge when he went to Samaná had died in 1906: J. P. James, “The Missionary Work in Samana,” Voice of Missions 14, no. 5 (May 1906): 2.

92 J. P. James, “A.M.E. Church Work at Samana, Santo Domingo,” Voice of Missions 18, no. 2 (February 1910): 6–7.

93 James, “A.M.E. Church Work at Samana.”

94 J. P. James, “Samaná, Santo Domingo, August 31, 1911,” Voice of Missions 19, no. 10 (October 1911): 10. The Moravians arrived in 1907 and built an iron church in San Pedro de Macorís.

95 Philo W. Drury and Nathan H. Huffman, “Occupancy of Santo Domingo by Evangelical Missions,” Latin American General Records 1911–1974, box 7, folder 11, Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, N.Y.

96 Inman, Samuel Guy, Christian Cooperation in Latin America: Report of a Visit to Mexico, Cuba, and South America, March–October 1917 (New York: Committee on Cooperation in Latin America, 1917), 32Google Scholar.

97 Odell, It Came to Pass, 148. In 1911, the Presbyterian Church at Mayaguez, Puerto Rico donated $170 for Dominican missionary work.

98 Drury and Huffman, “Occupancy of Santo Domingo.”

99 Drury and Huffman, “Occupancy of Santo Domingo.”

100 Drury and Huffman, “Occupancy of Santo Domingo.”

101 Drury and Huffman, “Occupancy of Santo Domingo.”

102 Hoetink, Dominican People, 29–32.

103 Drury and Huffman, “Occupancy of Santo Domingo.”

104 Drury and Huffman, “Occupancy of Santo Domingo.”

105 Drury and Huffman, “Occupancy of Santo Domingo.”

106 Odell, It Came to Pass, 148.

107 All of these organizations and conferences were related. The Foreign Missionary Conference of North America was held in New York and led to another meeting, the Panama Conference, in 1916. The Puerto Rico regional conference developed from the Panama Conference and was also held in 1916. At this conference, the Evangelical Union of Puerto Rico, a body that consisted of nine denominations working in Puerto Rico at the time, was formally established. The Committee on Cooperation in Latin America was then established in 1917. See Inman, Christian Cooperation in Latin America, 32.

108 “Outline of Cooperative Work in Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo,” Records of the Foreign Missionary Society of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, folder 2279-5-6:07, General Commission on Archives and History, United Methodist Church, Madison, N.J.

109 Odell, It Came to Pass, 148. For “Latin race,” see Inman, Christian Cooperation in Latin America, 6.

110 Odell, It Came to Pass, 152.

111 For my use of contradictions, see García-Peña, Borders of Dominicanidad, 1–2.