The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

MAPPING CONTESTED IDENTITIES IN DOMINICAN ART EDUCATION:

AN HISTORICAL INQUIRY

A Dissertation in

Art Education and Latin American Studies

Felix Rodriguez

@2019 Felix Rodriguez

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

August 2019

The dissertation of Felix Rodriguez was reviewed and approved* by the following:

Mary Ann Stankiewicz, Professor Emeritus of Art Education Chair of Committee & Dissertation Adviser

Graeme Sullivan, Professor of Art Education Director, Penn State School of Visual Arts (Retired)

B. Stephen Carpenter, II Professor of Art Education and African American Studies Interim Director, Penn State School of Visual Arts

Judith Sierra-Rivera, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latina/o Studies

Kimberly Powell, Associate Professor of Education, Art Education, and Asian Studies Coordinator of Graduate Programs for Art Education iii

ABSTRACT

This dissertation focuses on the development of art education in the Dominican Republic from the modernization of the school system introduced by Eugenio Maria de Hostos in the 1880s, to the educational reforms of the 1990s. This historical inquiry relies chiefly on primary sources accessed from archives in the Dominican Republic and New York City; and, to a lesser extent on interviews with art education supervisors. Drawing from the theoretical work of Paulo Freire and

Chela Sandoval, I examine how ideological, economic, and political conditions that created hierarchies on the basis of race, gender, geography and socioeconomic status influenced what functions art education served in general education. I examine the development of Dominican art education through four major themes: (1) the influence of positivism and republicanism brought about by Hostos to drawing education and manual training; (2) how reforms seeking to nationalize education between 1930 and 1960 impacted art education; (3) what role art education played in equipping a workforce demanded by industrialization and shifting economic structures throughout the 20th century; (4) the appropriation of neglected folklore to resist globalization after the 1980s. I argue that Dominican art education has been complicit with symbolic and material forms of oppression, including rendering the arts and culture of rural and popular groups as inferior to those of the elite; discriminating against Black Dominicans through national reforms, where the country’s African heritage was excluded; limiting women, the rural, and urban poor to inferior educational opportunities from those available to the urban elite; producing conciliatory versions of culturally inclusive curriculum that downplayed the problematic nature of Dominican racial history. I identify theoretical principles from Freire and

Sandoval’s work I contend can inform historical inquiry in art education. By addressing issues of globalization, race, nationalism, and social relations as components of discourses of identity iv activated in children’s art making, this research brings a new perspective to Dominican Studies.

This research expands the discourse of international histories of art education by making visible the story of a Latin American country. I argue this research can inform current educational reforms in the Dominican Republic.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... vii Acknowledgements ...... viii Dedication ...... x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Why Histories of Art Education ...... 2 Research Overview ...... 6 Definitions of Key Concepts ...... 9 The Dominican Republic: History, Politics, and Education in Context...... 10 Outline of Chapters ...... 31 CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ...... 33 Writing from the Margins ...... 34 Regional Histories of Art Education ...... 36 Dominican Art Education...... 41 Identity Narratives in Dominican Intellectual Histories ...... 42 CHAPTER 3: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY ...... 49 A History of the Oppressed ...... 50 Historical Inquiry ...... 59 CHAPTER 4: DRAWING PROGRESS: SCHOOL ART IN HOSTOS’S MODERN EDUCATION ...... 68 Hostos and the Struggles for Emancipation ...... 70 Drawing and Manual Training in Hostos’s Educational Philosophy ...... 76 Imagining Hostos’s Drawing and Manual Training ...... 78 To Attend is to Understand ...... 79 Learning is Progressive and Logical ...... 84 Decoding Nature’s Harmony ...... 86 Leaving Room for Artistic Liberty ...... 88 Whose Art and Culture? ...... 90 Conclusion ...... 95 CHAPTER 5: DRAWING A NATION: ART EDUCATION IN THE DOMINICAN NATIONAL SCHOOL ...... 99 Crafting of a Dominican School...... 101 vi

Sources of Identity ...... 106 National Art Education...... 111 Tactics of Exclusion ...... 120 Conclusion ...... 127 CHAPTER 6: CRAFTING DIFFERENCE THROUGH VOCATIONAL EDUCATION ...... 129 Redeeming the Poor through Vocational Education ...... 131 Vocational Education as a Moralizing Factor ...... 138 Vocational Education and Psychological Profiling ...... 141 Women’s Vocational Education...... 144 Improving Rural Life through Aesthetic Education ...... 148 Vocational Education after the 1960s ...... 154 Conclusion ...... 160 CHAPTER 7: RESISTING FOREIGN INFLUENCES THROUGH TRADITIONAL ARTS AND CRAFTS ...... 162 Globalization and the Defense of National Culture ...... 164 New Cultural Policies...... 169 New Cultural Policies and Education ...... 171 Folklorism in Art Education ...... 173 Foreign Influences: Collaboration or Imperialism? ...... 183 Conclusion ...... 190 CHAPTER 8: CONTESTED IDENTITIES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAY ...... 193 A Critical Historical Mapping ...... 198 Ghosts from the Past ...... 201 Art Education in Context ...... 203 Implications for Today’s Context ...... 208 Other Histories of Art Education ...... 213 Lessons Learned and Future Directions ...... 214 REFERENCES ...... 216

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Dominican dolls collection, Dominican Studies Institute Archives, at the City College of New York...... 6 Figure 2. Hostos and his students at the Normal School of Santo Domingo, 1880. In Hostos, E. M., & Blanco, D. A. (2010). Apuntes de un normalista, p.8. Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación ...... 72 Figure 3. Guidelines for drawing and manual training, In Revista de Educación. (1919), 3, pp. 343- 345 ...... 77 Figure 4. Education before and after Trujillo, from Alma Dominicana, 2, pp. 34-35, 1934 ...... 104 Figure 5. Campesino Dominicano 1941, oil painting by Yoryi Morel, in Museo de Arte Moderno (Museum of Modern Art), Santo Domingo. This painting is an iconographic representation of the traditional Dominican farmer ...... 106 Figure 6. Dominican Doll (Marisol), 1950s, as part of the Dominican Studies Institute Special Collection at the City University of New York (CUNY) ...... 114 Figure 7. Young Dominican students. Front page for an article dedicated to the Dominican Republic in the Mexican journal Auge, 50, p. 38, 1955 ...... 121 Figure 8. Exhibition of national crafts at the World Fair in 1955. From Album de oro de la Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre, V. II, p. 232, 1956, Santo Domingo, R.D...... 125 Figure 9. Peasant couple dancing the Merengue. The dolls were made post-1950. Part of the Collection Centro Leon in Santiago, Dominican Republic ...... 126 Figure 10. Modeling and sculpture class at the School of Manual Arts of Santo Domingo. From Revista de Educación, 28, p. 14, 1935...... 131 Figure 11. Students from Industrial School for Women of Santo Domingo. From Revista de Educacion, 28, p. 16, 1935...... 146 Figure 12. Rudimentary Rural School of “El Paso de Moca.” From Revista de Educación, 21, p.36, 1933 ...... 148 Figure 13. Carnival mask-making exercise found in an 8th grade textbook. In Simon Consuegra, J. M., & Martinez, J. C. (2001). Educacion Artistica 8, p. 14. Santo Domingo, D.N., República Dominicana: Susaeta ...... 177 Figure 14. Miss Dominican Republic 2006-2915, non-dated, accessed from Google images. November 2017 ...... 207

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Acknowledgments

I am humbled and grateful for the support of several institutions that funded different facets of this research project. This includes the 2018-2019 Inter-University Program for Latino

Research/Mellon Dissertation Fellowship (IUPLR/Mellon), at the University of Illinois at

Chicago; the 2017 City University of New York (CUNY) Dominican Studies Institute Archives and Library Research Award; the 2018-2019 Penn State Alumni Association Dissertation Award; the 2018 Penn State Humanities Institute Graduate Scholars in Residence Fellowship; the 2019

Penn State Global Programs Graduate Student Travel Grant; and the 2017 Dorothy Hughes

Young Endowed Scholarship in Art Education of the Penn State School of Visual Arts.

I am particularly humbled by the generosity of the IUPLR-Mellon Fellowship, which released me from other academic duties and allowed me to devote the entire 2018-2019 academic year to completing this dissertation project. This Fellowship would not have been possible without the support of Ramona Hernandez, Director of the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, who worked intensely to overcome many hurdles in making possible my nomination for this prestigious award. This is testimony to Ramona’s unconditional commitment to advancing the field of

Dominican Studies.

From the moment we first met to discuss why I wanted to write a history of art education in the Dominican Republic, my adviser, Mary Ann Stankiewicz, has gone above and beyond her duties to support my growth as a scholar. I have learned much from her insightful feedback, our many chats at Café Lemont, as a teaching assistant in two of her classes, and writing together. I particularly appreciate her compelling recommendation letters—which I too often asked under short notice—for the many grants and awards I have applied throughout these years. I am proud to be Mary Ann’s last advisee, and grateful that she accepted to embark on this journey with me, ix instead of resorting to the comfort of retirement. All members of my dissertation committee—

Graeme Sullivan, B. Stephen Carpenter and Judith Sierra-Rivera—were incredible. Each one of them provided a unique perspective that allowed me to see gaps in my analysis and envision new interpretative possibilities. I appreciate their availability, challenging questions, and words of encouragement.

Sarah Aponte at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute was helpful beyond measure during my two-week stay at their archives. Jeremy Fisher, Mary Beth Day, and Tracie Mehalick at the Penn State School of Visual Arts were patient and generous in responding to my many questions and concerns.

Dr. Kristilyn Friese volunteered to proof-read my papers for free while I was pursuing my

Master's, and continued doing that joyfully during my doctoral studies. I am very grateful for the many hours she devoted to helping me succeed in pursuing a graduate education in a second language. I am grateful also to Beth and Tom Dryer for providing the warmth and care of a home while I was away from mine. I am thankful to Walt, Sue, Bill and Barb at the International

Christian Fellowship for organizing many out-of-state trips, sports, game nights, and spiritual discussions. These events provided much-needed balance to the stress of graduate school.

I am thankful to my Dad and my siblings in the Dominican Republic for their encouragement and prayers in challenging moments.

Dedication

I dedicate this dissertation to my late mother, Rosa Elvira, who taught me by example how to love God and care for others. This principle has been a source of wisdom and encouragement in both my academic and personal life. Even though my mother was not able to complete middle school because of the harsh conditions of the countryside where she grew up, she instilled in my siblings and me intellectual curiosity, inspiring us to question traditions, and to always pursue excellence in our academic goals. While I am saddened by the fact that she will not join me in celebrating this accomplishment, I am comforted by the thought that she would be most proud of where the journey we started together years ago as mother and child has taken me.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

This research is a historical inquiry where, through critical lenses informed by the works of Freire (1970) and Sandoval (2000), I examined the development of art education in the

Dominican Republic from the 1880s to the 1990s. Relying on archival material collected in

Santo Domingo and New York City, and interviews, I analyzed how art education developed in that country in relation to narratives of identities, socioeconomic and political conditions, and foreign interests. Through four content chapters, I examine how ideological, economic, and political conditions that created hierarchies on the basis of race, gender, geography and socioeconomic status influenced what functions art education served in general education.

Why Histories of Art Education?

Mary Erickson (1979), concerned with the lack of research and objectivity in regard to the histories of art education in the United States, listed the following reasons for doing historical research: to initiate art education students into the field; to serve as a basis for formulating worthwhile questions about our present and our future; and to purge ourselves of ghosts from the past. To borrow Erickson’s metaphor, inequality and elitism are some of the ghosts from the past that need to be cast out of Dominican art education. As a student growing up in Santo Domingo,

I experienced the challenges the education system imposed on young people from working-class backgrounds who were interested in the arts. At my school, I received my first art lessons in the

7th grade. The person responsible for teaching art was the principal himself, who, once a week, taught us the little he knew about lettering. Because of the lack of a strong art program at my school, twice a week, I had to commute from my neighborhood to the center of the city for art classes. This was an economic burden for my working-class family of five children. In order to continue with my art classes, I had to work at a young age. My older brother, who was not interested in the arts, managed to gain admission to a school closer to the metropolitan area. That

3 school had strong art programs, including sculpture studios, painting, and crafts. Subsequently, as a young art teacher at a high school in that same city, I found that most of the supporting material available favored Western art. My students found little connection between the art showcased in textbooks, and their surroundings. As a student, I had experienced how opportunities to learn art were distributed along socioeconomic lines. Having to commute considerable distances to locations in the center of the city, where art learning opportunities concentrate and preparatory classes for admissions exams are available, severely limit working- class students’ access to education in the visual arts.

This need to break with the national government’s legacy of unequal access to education and cultural programs has been at the forefront of all major education reform in the last 30 years

(Brea Franco & Victoriano, 1998; Pacto Educativo, 2014; SEEBAC, 1995; World Bank, 2014).

Important strides have been made in cultural policies and educational reforms in terms of building more culturally inclusive content and more democratic art programs. What remains lacking is a critical analysis of how art education has been complicit with symbolic and material forms of oppression in Dominican society. Critical research is important to identify forms of inequality that are still pervasive today. In the last 20 years, groundbreaking work has been produced on how Dominican identity has been imagined and contested on the island and abroad

(Alvarez-Lopez, 2014; Candelario, 2007; García-Peña, 2016; Mateo, 1993; Mayes, 2015;

Ricourt, 2016; Torres-Saillant, 1998). However, Dominican Studies scholars have paid scant attention to how narratives of identity have been constructed from children’s artwork.

In the 1990s, the Dominican Republic underwent major curricular reforms focusing on expanding the coverage and improving the quality of K-12 education. As part of these reforms, art education became a mandatory subject at all levels, though local universities did not offer

4 undergraduate degrees in Art Education until after 2014. While these events constitute important landmarks in the history of Dominican Art Education, they have contributed to the perception that art education is a relatively new school subject and a newfangled field of inquiry. In the summer of 2017, I interviewed art education supervisors at the Department of Education to hear their perspectives on the development of art education in the last decades. As I explained the scope and purpose of my research, one supervisor reacted with surprise that I was interested in the history of K-12 art education in the Dominican Republic dating back approximately one hundred years. “School art education is barely 20 years old in our country,” she said. In her mind, art education on the island began only in 1997, when the Department of Education created, for the first time, a supervising unit called arts education. I explained that what I was interested in was not always termed art education. Perhaps at different times in the Dominican education system, it was known variously as drawing, manual training, crafts, or plastic arts.

In the Dominican Republic, there is evidence of drawing education as early as 1853 (“El

Progreso,” 1853). Drawing, coloring, and three-dimensional work were core components of general education in the late 19th century. Crafts, sculpture, and painting were taught in many schools in the first half of the 20th century. The anecdote above reveals a disconnect between the current art education community, and the legacy of practices upon which this community is supposed to build. If art education supervisors who have ready access to the archives of the field ignore the island’s history, it is safe to assume they do little to encourage historical reflection among school teachers.

For art education scholars, ‘doing’ histories of art education is not so much about the past

(Erickson, 1979). Histories of art education are important to become more critical of current practices (Stankiewicz, 2001), to make informed judgments about art-teaching choices (Szekely

& Bucknam, 2012), to understand the historical moment in which we live today and articulate what kind of art education responds to our current needs as a society (Aguirre Lora, 2009), to inform future policies and research questions (Chalmers, 1993), and to avoid a collage of activities that take place in the art classroom that are anachronistic, unconnected, and unreflective (Barbosa, 1984). Others, such as Smith (1996), believe histories of art education do not need to have an immediate usefulness; historical research can contribute to the accumulation of knowledge that will have practical implications in the long run. Since it gives coherence to a fragmented body of knowledge, histories of art education also played a fundamental role in the development of the professional identity of the field (Erickson, 1979; Smith, 1995).

Unfortunately, despite the existence of a long tradition of learning and teaching of art in

Dominican schools, there is not a thorough account of how art education has developed historically and what functions it has played within the Dominican education system.

My research seeks to respond to the context described above by addressing the following:

(1) examine the development of art education in the Dominican Republic in relation to social hierarchies, political agendas, and ideological constructs; (2) diversify international histories of art education by making visible the history of a Caribbean country; (3) contribute to Dominican

Studies scholarship by addressing issues of colonialism, globalization, race, nationalism, and social relations as constitutive of discourses of identity activated in children’s artmaking in school.

Research Overview

Figure 1. Dominican dolls collection, Dominican Studies Institute Archives, at the City College of New York.

The dolls shown in Figure 1 are part of the Dominican Studies Institute archives at the

City University of New York (CUNY). They were collected by Dominicans who had immigrated to the United States. These types of crafts were made by girls studying in vocational schools, where they were taught sewing and design techniques. With the development of tourism, these dolls were commodified as souvenirs for tourist consumption. Notable changes in how the physique of Dominican women was displayed for local and foreign consumption suggest a significant shift in the portrayal and perceptions of Dominican racial imaginary. Since these shifts were motivated by dominant understandings of Dominican identity at different times, they underscore the importance of examining how art education developed in relation to narratives of identity. Throughout Dominican history, the traditional ruling classes have used cultural sites such as schools and museums to construct discourses of identity that privileged Hispanic culture, a mythicized version of Tainos’ past, and the negation of artistic and cultural contributions from its African heritage (Candelario, 2007; Mejía-Ricart, 1981; Moquete, 1986; Suset, 2015). The

7 purpose of this research is twofold. On the one hand, I examine how Dominican art education has developed in relation to narratives of identity that were embedded within larger ideological, economic, and geopolitical processes. On the other hand, this research seeks to understand aspects of Dominican intellectual history through the lenses of children’s art in school.

In my dissertation, I seek to answer the following questions:

1. Why was art education part of the general school curriculum? What functions did it play

in society? How did it contribute in developing the kind of men and women Dominican’s

leaders sought?

2. Did narratives of identity developed by the Dominican elites influence school art

education theory and practice? If so, did it privilege the art, aesthetic and cultural value of

the elite, to the detriment of marginal groups? Did it lead to the distribution of

opportunities for making and learning about art along gender, racial, and socioeconomic

lines? Did marginalized groups produce counternarratives to the dominant constructs of

identity in art education?

3. How did economic, social and geopolitical events contribute to paradigm shifts in art

education practice? Did emerging rationales for art education generate tension between

different groups, or did it create new opportunities?

4. What are the implications of this critical approach to the history of art education in the

Dominican Republic today? How does it inform critical reflection regarding the

relationship of art education and society beyond the Dominican context? How does it

contribute to an understanding of the Dominican people?

This dissertation focuses on the development of art education in the Dominican Republic from the modernization of the school system introduced by Eugenio Maria de Hostos in the

1880s, to the educational reforms of the 1990s. It relies chiefly on primary sources accessed from archives in the Dominican Republic and New York City; and, albeit to a lesser extent, on interviews with art education supervisors. This historical inquiry is informed by the theoretical work of Paulo Freire and Chela Sandoval. Freire (1970) was interested in the circumstances that limit participation of certain groups to spaces where others, by virtue of the legacy of colonialism, exercise the role of authority, and where institutional structures both privilege and exclude particular readings, voices, aesthetics, and representations. Sandoval (2000) addressed forms of oppression created by global capitalism, forms of agency developed by marginalized groups, and the complex identities of the oppressed. From this theoretical footing, education and history, both in content and form, are never neutral. They either function to facilitate integration into the logic of oppressive systems, or contribute to the practice of freedom from it.

This dissertation is not a comprehensive account of the development of art education in the Dominican Republic. That would exceed the scope of this project, considering its chronological latitude. Instead, I identify and examine four major themes I consider fundamental in understanding the history of art education in the Dominican Republic through critical lenses informed by the work of Freire and Sandoval. These themes are: (1) the influence of positivism and liberalism in Hostos’s approach to drawing and manual training; (2) how reforms seeking to nationalize education between 1930 and 1960 impacted art education; (3) what role art education played in equipping a workforce demanded by industrialization and shifting economic structures throughout the 20th century; and (4) the appropriation of neglected folklore as a counterpoint in resisting globalization after the 1980s. Each of these themes correspond to a content chapter.

Definitions of Key Concepts

When doing international research, some terms posit challenges, because they might have a different meaning in other contexts. Such is the case with the term Art Education. Today, the word Art Education or Educación Artística in the Dominican Republic and many countries in

Latin America refers to the teaching and learning of visual arts, dance, music, and applied arts, mostly in the context of school. That would be the equivalent of arts education in the United

States and Canada (Taylor, 1998). In the United States, art education refers to visual arts education (Viadel, 2011). Some scholars use art education as a comprehensive concept that encompasses all kinds of pedagogical moments involving the visual arts (Efland, 1990; jagodzinski, 2017). Others draw a distinction between art education and artistic education; with art education referring to visual arts education for a general audience, and artistic education referring to the education of future artists (Simpson, 1987; Stankiewicz, 2001). In this dissertation, my interest in art education centers on visual arts education in the context of K-12 education, which includes drawing, painting, crafts, design, sculpture, and art appreciation through the study of artworks and popular imagery. However, my discussion in Chapter 7 touches on aspects of music and theater education, because of the integrated curriculum approach undertaken in the 1990s. I discuss out-of-school learning spaces whenever they are connected to school art education. When theorizing about art education for such an extended period of time, I keep in mind that what is understood today as art education existed under different terms and these terms have had fluid meanings, as certain practices were added or excluded over time. For example, in the late 19th century, drawing and manual training (trabajos manuals and later manualidades) were two separate classes. Drawing was not limited to pencil and monochromatic work. It also included color theory and watercolor. Manual training entailed the fabrication of

10 three-dimensional objects using paper, cardboard, metal sheets, wood, dry leaves, and fabric.

After the 1930s, manual training shifted to the creation of more finished art works and utilitarian objects, including sculptures and furniture.

The Dominican Republic: History, Politics, and Education in Context.

The Island of Hispaniola, today Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was the first

European settlement in the Americas. When Columbus arrived in 1492, the island was inhabited by native Tainos descendants of Arawak tribes who had immigrated from the area today occupied by Venezuela and the Guianas. Maltreatment, war, and illnesses brought by the

Spaniards soon decimated the native population. While slave and free Blacks had been brought sporadically to Hispaniola since 1492, the slave trade accelerated with the growth of the sugar industry in the colony. By 1520, most of the population of the colony were Blacks and mixed- race descendants, making Hispaniola the first majority Black colony (“First Blacks in the

Americas,” n.d.). Many Black slaves rebelled or ran away from their masters, in some cases with the help of indigenous rebels, hiding in the mountains away from Spanish settlements. As the

Spanish colonial project expanded to continental areas with more natural and human resources, and Cuba became a desirable port for Spanish fleets, the population of Spanish settlers in

Hispaniola shrank considerably. This combination of factors, coupled with exhaustion of gold naturally found in the island, led to the impoverishment of the colony which, in turn, facilitated racial miscegenation and generated less strict racial hierarchies compared with other Spanish colonies (Moya Pons, 2009).

In the early colonial period, as was the case in other Spanish colonies, religious orders educated the sons of native leaders in Latin and Christian theology. Colonial authorities believed that indigenous leaders, educated in Spanish knowledge and religion, would facilitate the

11 colonization and evangelization of the indigenous population. With the rapid decrease of the native population, basic reading classes offered by the priests to mixed raced and Black children enabled them to read the catechism. Some colonial families hired private tutors to prepare their male children to pursue liberal arts careers at the university, where instruction was dominated by a canonical religious curriculum. The girls received basic reading and writing instruction and preparation for domestic life. However, higher education received the most attention during the colonial era (Palacín, 1946). For the children of Spaniards born in the colony, higher education played a very strategic function. While the sons of Spanish couples born in the colonies were considered Spanish, they were viewed as inferior to those born in Spain and they were termed criollos or creoles. Having access to higher education allowed creole families a higher social status, placing them closer to the status of the Spanish born on the peninsula (Gonzalbo, 2008).

Because of that, creole families in Santo Domingo requested the creation of a university as early as 1538.

In the Spanish colonial model, strict rules for mercantile activities obliged colonialists to sell their goods exclusively to the crown at prices determined by Spanish authorities. By the early 1600s, a dynamic contraband trade in the northwestern part of Hispaniola allowed local producers to sell their sugar, tobacco, beef, and cowhides to French, English, and Dutch ventures at better prices. In 1606, aiming to put an end to the contraband threat, the Spaniards displaced the entire population of the northeastern border. This extreme move facilitated French control of the western part of the island by 1640. In 1777, through the treaty of Aranjuez, the Spanish crown officially recognized the French ownership of the western side of the island, then known as Saint Domingue. In 1791, African slaves rebelled against French colonists in Saint Domingue.

After various battles, in 1804, Blacks and mixed-race victors proclaimed Saint Domingue the

12 independent Republic of Haiti, the first Black republic in the world. After a French occupation

(1795-1808), return to Spanish colonial control (1808-1821), and brief independence (December

1821-February 1822), Santo Domingo—the eastern part of the island—was occupied by Haitian forces in 1822.

Even though Haitian occupation was resisted by White creole authorities, for many mixed-race and Blacks, who constituted the majority of the population, Haitian occupation represented opportunities for equal access to land and administrative roles (Franco, 1997).

Dominican historians either underscored the negative effects of the Haitian occupation in

Dominican higher education (Consuelo, 1952; de los Santos, 1978), or completely ignored the educational reforms introduced during the Haitian occupation (P. M. Hernandez, 2001; Moquete,

1986). Thus, details about education at the time are scarce. However, we know that the Haitian government was interested in reducing the authority of the church on matters of education, which upset the traditional elite who had exclusive access to the university (Campbell, 2001). We also know the Haitian government was interested in providing basic education to the mass population of former slaves, and mixed-race population. They had introduced the Lancaster model—where the teacher relied on the most advanced students to teach less advanced learners—prior to the occupation of Santo Domingo. The Lancaster model was an appealing response to the challenges of teaching a massive illiterate population, as it allowed administrators to maximize time and human resources (Weinberg, 1995).

Anti-Haitian prejudices have existed within the Dominican population for a long time

(Moya Pons, 1998). However, several laws contributed to a general discontent with Haitian authorities; this included farming and land property laws, restrictions on religious and spare-time activities, and taxes forcing the Dominican side to pay for the compensation imposed by France

13 to officially recognize the Republic of Haiti. By 1843, four separate groups pursued separation from Haiti. Three of the groups favored Spanish, British, and French protectorates. A fourth group, led by Juan Pablo Duarte, sought total independence from any foreign nation. Duarte managed to rally support from the other separatist groups. Taking advantage of internal political unrest in Haiti since 1843, this coalition of separatist forces led by Duarte and others proclaimed the independence of the country in 1844. After independence, disagreement between the different parties led to Duarte being exiled by the ruling conservative elite favoring European and North-

American protectorate. Under an economic crisis and fearing another Haitian invasion, in 1861 the Dominican government signed an annexation agreement with Spain. A broad resistance against the Spanish occupation started to build up following the annexation proclamation. In

1865, a coalition of nationalist groups forced out the Spanish government.

From the first constitution (in November 1844), Duarte and the separatists declared the right of all people to free access to all branches of primary education. This was reaffirmed in the first education law enacted in 1845, which ordered the creation of primary schools in the main centers of the provinces. However, this pursuit of free public education did not materialize as intended. By the late 19th century public education as such did not exist. Until the U.S. military occupation in 1916, schools were mainly funded by municipal governments. After independence, the income of the municipalities was very limited. Maintaining schools in rural areas was difficult. The few primary and secondary schools that existed were concentrated in Santo

Domingo and other cities with more dynamic economies, benefiting less than five percent of the population (Ventura, 2003). In the early 20th century, while less than 16% of the population lived in cities, more than half of the schools were located in urban centers, mostly in Santo Domingo.

In 1910, out of a total of 559 schools in the entire country, 316 were in the main cities (Mejia,

1912). Itinerant teachers from Europe created private primary and secondary schools for wealthier families. At times, the national government hired teachers to travel sporadically to smaller cities and rural areas. The distribution of educational opportunities privileging urban centers also had a direct impact along racial lines. According to Moya Pons (2009), in 1919, cities had six times more white people than rural areas.1

After regaining independence from Spain in 1865, Dominican conservatives and liberals embarked in a heated argument and political struggle over the destiny of the country.

Conservatives, represented by aristocrats who had inherited large portions of land from the colonial system, benefited from maintaining existing social relations that would guarantee access to cheap labor. They also favored a Catholic identity and, in some instances, sought the protection of a European nation or the United States. Liberals, coming from a middle class of capitalist entrepreneurs and intellectuals, favored the development of a democratic republic modeled after industrious European societies. They believed a democratic state would guarantee fair competition in a modernized mercantile system, which would create conditions necessary for industrial and social development. While keeping with the fundamental tenets of liberalism— centrality of private property, citizens as rights bearers, and the need to limit arbitrary authority—two types of liberalism developed in Latin America in the 19th century. The more conservative brand favored Catholicism as the religion of the state while supporting freedom of faith; the more radical stance promoted the establishment of a secular state (Pianto, 2015).

1In rural areas, 6% of the population was white, with 53% Black and the rest mixed race population. In addition to access to educational opportunities, other material conditions placed people of color in a position of disadvantage. According to the 1920 census, people of color had a 32% higher mortality rate than the white population (Moya Pons, 2009).

Constitutionalists led by Duarte aligned with the former. Progressive groups that emerged after

1865 aligned with the latter.2

In this context, public education as a responsibility of the state became an important subject of debate. The disagreements between liberals and conservatives on the functions of public education were echoed in newspapers of the time. An advocate of traditional education said the following:

the education our children receive today is completely pagan; a vulgar expression. Better

say, it is totally useless. It seems they have not been baptized, lacking of parents who

devote themselves to lead them toward the practice of Christian vocation. (“Educación

popular,” 1854, p. 2)

A defender of the separation of the state and the church stated that “the United States and

Europe are examples of setting apart two powers formerly attached, which time has demonstrated is more convenient to divide” (“Cultos,” 1873, p. 83). While conservatives complained the authorities were not doing enough to promote Christian fervor through public education, liberals struggled for the separation of education and religion.

Despite this ongoing debate, the colonial education system continued to dominate even after independence. Until the creation of the department of justice and public instruction in 1866, local priests served as authorities in the supervision of schools in cities and rural areas (de los

Santos, 1978). According to Federico Hernandez y Carvajal (1970), before the arrival of Eugenio

Maria de Hostos, education “consisted of little: reading, writing and counting, and raising the

2Felipe Alfau and Ramon Mella, in the newspaper Porvernir of 1854, listed the following priorities: “sustaining Dominican sovereignty at all cost, formation of a moderate republican government, use of diplomacy to keep the peace with Haiti, develop friendship with all nations, promote the acknowledgement of our republic among Hispano-American republics, elevating the intelligence and patriotism, perfect equality of all before the law, develop freedom of speech, always respecting religion, moral, and citizen’s private life… free popular education for all, for both sexes” (Alfau & Mella, 1854, p.1).

16 soul to God for mercy. Reading was done in one run without interruption, usually mechanically… Writing was done through dictation, or copying thick and convoluted folios"

(p.14). Hostos, whose ideas I discuss in Chapter 4, had already befriended progressive intellectuals and liberal politicians during his 1875 visit. He developed the educational philosophy that served as the counterpart of liberal reforms carried out in the late 19th century.

For liberal politicians such as Gregorio Luperón—leader of the restoration war against Spain and later president—Hostos’s educational project was necessary to fight the anarchy and the backwardness in the country, and to facilitate the republican citizenship needed to administer the democratic institutions in the young Republic (Mateo, 1993). For the liberal project, the progress of the nation could not be achieved without an educated population. They also believed that bridging the divide between “those who knew and those who did not know” through free public education would help avoid social tensions (Fiallo, 1912, p. 53).

Foreign demand for tobacco increased the need for transportation services from inland farms to seaports. While a strong industrial class did not emerge until the 1920s (Bosch, 1988), these economic changes contributed to the development of a modest middle class (Mateo, 1993), and urbanization in the capital and other commercial cities (Moya Pons, 2014). This small urban middle-class battled for political influence against a traditional elite whose economy depended on land ownership (Cassá, 2003). In the late 19th century, new roads and the increasingly popular electric telegraph system facilitated communication and mercantile exchange among the different regions. Liberal governments, under the ideology of progress, opened their doors to foreign capital, which contributed to a more dynamic and diversified economy. Foreign companies focused on the export of raw material, including sugar, tobacco, coffee, and cacao.

Taking advantage of the scarcity of local manufacturing industries, several foreign companies

17 selling manufactured products were established in the country. Now middle and working classes demanded more manufactured goods from industrialized countries. In the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century, the new bourgeois class was particularly interested in training local craftsmen to reduce the need for imported manufactured goods, although the professionalization of craftsmanship did not materialize until decades later.

In the late 19th century, the emerging middle class supported various educational and artistic initiatives they believed were fundamental to a sophisticated democratic and capitalist society. This was different from the colonial model where knowledge and the arts, grounded in a classical tradition, were the exclusive patrimony of the elite. Liberals created intellectual and artistic societies that funded public libraries, art exhibitions, publications, art academies, and evening schools for the working classes. These few academies, at times co-funded by the municipalities, played an important role in artistic education since the country did not have a national art academy until 1942. Teachers in these academies learned from itinerant artists, mostly from Europe, who stayed sporadically in the country. Later, a few local artists studied art in Europe and founded their own academies upon their return. These art schools followed the

European academic model, where students had to master drawing from cast models before moving on to live drawing. Most artists were middle- and upper-class individuals who balanced their creative work with other professions. Some taught drawing and other subjects in secondary and normal schools (Miller & Ugarte, 2001; Santos, 2005).

While these academies provided the first teachers for Hostos’s drawing and manual education, Hostos developed a different path for drawing and manual training in schools. There is evidence that linear drawing was taught in private schools for wealthy boys before Hostos, probably following French and American models. An advertisement in the newspaper Porvenir

18 of 1872 stated that Eastman Company had an agent in the country promoting the book the

Perfect Pendolist, which suggest that penmanship was a desirable skill at the time, especially for the commercial middle class. A newspaper article of 1892 encouraged the exposure of children to good art at home and at school to develop artistic sentiment and teach children to love beautiful forms (Puello, 1892). It is possible that children from wealthier families were taught aesthetics.

An article published in 1853 suggests that while linear drawing was in the curriculum in the early republic, it was considered an ornamental subject (“El Progreso,” 1853). It was only with the arrival of Hostos in 1879 that drawing and manual training became consistent subjects of study in primary and secondary education.

Resources invested in independent battles and civil conflicts contributed to weakening the Dominican financial system. Accumulated financial mismanagement throughout the late 19th century led to devaluation of the local currency, which ruined many local merchants. Corruption and loans taken to advance infrastructure projects, especially during the dictatorship of Ulises

Heureaux (1882-1884; 1887-1889), finally led to the bankruptcy of the government in 1898. In the early 20th century, the Dominican Republic was burdened with an intricate web of debts to

European and North-American companies, without sufficient income to pay the debts and keep the government running. To secure its investments, The Improvement Company, a financial group with strong ties to the U.S. government, took control of Dominican customs in 1893.

Faced with the threat of a European invasion, President Jimenez (1899-1902) made a request to the Improvement Company to set aside 40% of the customs revenues to pay the debts to

European investors. This measure upset lenders in the United States. To solve this problem, agreements were signed to redistribute the customs income, where the U.S. government served as an intermediary and warrantor to European and American lenders.

President Caceres (1906-1911) gave concessions to incentivize farming production, which increased the national revenues and produced relative political stability. In 1911, the assassination of Caceres started a period of political turmoil, where violent confrontation between different parties sank the country into an endless civil war. The United States had been overseeing Dominican political affairs for some time, threatening military occupation if the

Dominican government did not comply with U.S. financial demands. Taking advantage of the political unrest, the U.S. army occupied the country from 1916 to 1924.

The first two decades of the 20th century were central to U.S. expansionism in the

Americas. Under the Monroe doctrine, the United States stretched its military and political influence in the Americas and prevented further European colonization. After the Spanish-

American war (1898), the United States took control over Puerto Rico and Cuba. In 1914, the

United States had guaranteed interoceanic access through the Panama Canal and, in 1915, they occupied Haiti. In doing so, the United States acted under the conviction that only by managing the financial affairs of these countries could these countries achieve political and economic prosperity (Moya Pons, 1998). In addition, U.S. economic and industrial growth required to secure raw material produced by cheap labor in developing countries, and new markets in which to sell its manufactured products. Germany was the main commercial partner for tobacco producers in the Dominican Republic. U.S. military occupation was intended to prevent a

German economic and military presence within the context of World War I.

The occupation government started by conducting a national survey to determine the state of education in the country, and from there decide a course of action. According to this survey, in

1919, 90% of the population was illiterate (Blue book of Santo Domingo, 1920). Because of that, the occupation government focused its efforts on primary education. Some of the changes made

20 by the occupation government included the centralization of public education, making English a mandatory subject, introducing co-education, and making the licensure process for teachers more rigorous. The occupation government made much-needed improvements to infrastructure, including roads, railroads, and school buildings. While these measures were significant, the occupation government was not interested in replicating the American educational model in the

Dominican Republic. The military government relied on Dominican intellectuals who had been trained under Hostos’s normal school system, and the intellectual Julio Ortega Frier, a

Dominican doctor who had completed his medical degree at the Ohio State University. Hostos’s educational philosophy continued to be the philosophical foundation for education.

During the occupation, the country became more economically dependent on U.S. markets for the export of raw material and the import of manufactured goods, with sugar cane being the main export. This new economic development had a direct impact on education.

During World War I, the price of sugar boomed, since there was a shortage of sugar production in countries engaged in the war. This brief boom in sugar prices produced a significant increase in revenues in the country, which translated into more investment in public education. While the national investment in education was US$200,000 in 1914, in 1919 it was increased to US$1 million. This enabled the enrollment of a significantly larger number of students in primary school. In 1914, 18,000 students were served by the public education system, including university education and evening literacy programs. In 1919, this number rose to 100,000. With the boom in sugar prices, several towns acquired urban status. Unfortunately, this trend in sugar prices did not last. In 1921, sugar prices plummeted radically as beet sugar production recovered in Europe. In 1921, the budget for education was reduced from US$1.17 million, to

US$850,000—a reduction of 7.2%—. The budget was later reduced to just US$3,000 a month.

Public programs not considered essential were cut, including the music school and the visual art academy of Santo Domingo. Teachers’ salaries were reduced and, in some cases, teachers went without pay for months.

While Hostos’s approach to drawing and manual training continued to be the default methodology until the early 1930s, modifications were made to his principles, beginning in the

1920s. The drawing education curriculum was expanded to include manual and industrial drawing, in addition to drawing from nature. Students were taught how to develop ornaments for industrial design. Some educators had raised the issue of regionalism in education. In the 1920s, education leaders started to underscore the need for the curriculum to be more open to the particular needs and resources of different regions in the country. For example, in places rich in clay found naturally in the land, teachers needed to steer manual training toward the construction of artwork and objects using clay, or netting work in fishing communities (“Notas Editoriales,”

1927). A more pragmatic orientation was given to manual training classes. Teachers were to guide students in the fabrication of objects with immediate use in day-to-day needs.

In the 1920s, the postulates of progressive education, including striving for a stronger connection between the school and the community and attending to emotional, artistic and creative aspects of human development, started to be echoed by Dominican educators. New ideas from psychology, such as respecting children’s individuality and looking at their learning process as different from that of adults, were referenced in education journals. Teachers were encouraged to devote more time for children’s free play and self-initiated work in drawing and manual training classes. Children’s play was not to be seen as a trivial activity, but as a space for the exercise of mental and social dispositions, and opportunities for the development of imagination and inventiveness (“Dibujo: Objeto de la clases en el primer grado,” 1927). Teachers needed to

22 balance making drawing and manual training relevant to practical life while fostering students’ natural tendencies.

In the 1920s, there were 16 arts and crafts schools in the entire country; a secondary school specializing in music; and a visual arts academy. The art school provided different types of training, including artistic education for those interested in becoming artists, industrial and professional training for factory workers, and art education for normal school teachers, i.e., those who equipped future classroom teachers. Of the 187 students registered in the art school in 1920, more than half (97) were female (Secretaría de Interior y Policia, 1923). This number is significant because the arts were overwhelmingly dominated by males at the time. The inordinately large number of female students at the art school could likely be attributed to future normal school teachers who needed to transfer these skills to their students, which suggests that by 1920, teaching jobs were dominated by women.

After the decline in sugar prices, internal opposition to U.S. occupation became stronger.

Having secured large portions of land for American sugar companies and protection for the export of American products from the island, the United States organized the transition to a democratic national government. During the years of transition between the departure of U.S. military in 1924 and the beginning of Trujillo’s dictatorship in 1930, the country continued to be directly influenced and impacted politically and economically by the United States. By 1930, the country had changed considerably. There were numerous modern buildings and houses. Among the more affluent, motor vehicles had replaced horse carts. The telegraph communication network and new roads facilitated internal trade and political unity. The introduction of electricity and a slew of manufactured products and technological innovations from the United

States gave some of the urban centers a more sophisticated outlook.

Rafael L. Trujillo’s rise to power began in 1918, when he joined the national guard created by the occupation government. With his military connections and his friendship with

President Horacio Vasquez, Trujillo soon accumulated wealth and political influence. He was later appointed head of the national armed forces. Through violent intimidation and political maneuvers, Trujillo ascended to the presidency of the country in 1930, starting a 30-year period of brutal repression of public liberties. He controlled the military and, with the support of the

Catholic church, ruled the country using a complex network of repressive strategies that included censorship of the news media, commissioned spy squads, and assassination of political enemies.

Trujillo’s anti-communist rhetoric gained him the support of the United States for most of his time in power. During his regime, the glaring divide between the public education received by the masses and the multifarious education received by elite families in private schools was exacerbated (Moquete, 1986). During Trujillo’s era, a strong emphasis was placed on modernizing the school infrastructure.

On the one hand, Trujillo developed a strict supervisory structure to prevent dissidence in schools. On the other hand, he strived to present—nationally and internationally—an image of the Dominican Republic as a modern, democratic, and progressive country. Instead of rejecting progressive ideas that conflict with the power dynamics of the regime, intellectuals serving the dictator managed to domesticate these ideas to fit the needs of the dictatorship while keeping the label of progressiveness. For example, the Department of Education, in alignment with the principles of progressive education, highlighted the importance of understanding the child and giving children freedom of expression in the classroom. At the same time, teachers and students were asked to uncritically reverence authority. Trujillo was lauded in propaganda as the teacher of teachers. Unquestionable obedience to teachers early on in their school years set the path for

24 reproducing and propagating a docile attitude toward the state. The regime enforced its policing culture in schools strictly. Trujillo created a school police to prosecute parents who failed to send their children to school; teenagers who skipped class, and teachers who did not do their job properly. Education was conducted in a state of fear where students, teachers, and principals faced repercussions if they showed disaffection to the dictatorship.

In the 1930s, vocational education, new ideas from psychology, and progressive education steered art education further away from Hostos’s approach. In Trujillo’s educational agenda, vocational education acquired a new level of importance, especially for students in secondary school. The board of education shifted manual training toward a more pragmatic focus, where schools favored manual skills with more immediate application at work and at home. Hostos’s emphasis on democratic citizenship was seen as too intellectual, doing little to provide students with work skills needed in the new industries (R. E. Jimenez & Mejia, 1934).

The Institute for Psychopedagogical Research founded in 1946 was responsible for developing original research focusing on educational matters unique to the context of the Dominican people.

However, it focused mainly on the application of intelligence tests (Rodriguez Arias, 2009). Free and imaginative drawing became more relevant, since such drawings were seen as a means to capture how the children saw the world around them. In the case of free drawings, teachers were asked to not intervene in correcting children’s observations, which was consistent with Hostos’s approach. However, things that were understood as errors in his approach were now viewed as particularities in children’s comprehension of the world.

The branch of progressive education that seemed to have been most influential in the country at the time was Grupo Escolar Cervantes. This group of progressive Spanish educators led by Angel Llorca introduced pedagogical innovations in Spain in the 1920s, based on the

25 postulates of progressive education (Pozo Andres, 1987). Books and articles by Llorca and other intellectuals in this group circulated in the Dominican Republic. Compared with other progressive groups of their time, this group adopted a more comprehensive approach to art education in school. On one hand, they embraced the idea of creating opportunities for children’s spontaneous creation, respecting children’s personalities, and designing activities that fit children’s developmental stages. On the other hand, they believed drawing education should develop specific technical skills needed for the prosperity of society. This translated into an emphasis on free and spontaneous activities in the early years, and more technical and rigorous training for older children.3

During his tenure as director of the Department of Education (1931-1933), Pedro

Henriquez Ureña encouraged introducing children to work in color from a young age. He believed coloring work was less demanding than drawing and was therefore a better means to foster free imaginative work. Despite these changes, drawing continued to be the main focus of two-dimensional works in primary and secondary schools (Henriquez Ureña & Fargue, 1933).

After the 1930s, art education was a compromise between spontaneous art making and vocational education, fostering national sentiment, and developing the skills needed in the job market. In the following decades, the curriculum for art education, especially in urban secondary schools, expanded to include painting, sculpture, printmaking, bookmaking, leatherwork, and carpentry. Since two-dimensional work included painting and design, in 1950, the Department of

Education changed the subject name from drawing, to art education (educacion artistica).

Trujillo survived—and crushed—several attempts to decimate his authoritarian regime, but the Cuban revolution (in 1959) gave new hopes to opposition groups within the country and

3For more information about Grupo Escolar Cervantes visit: http://www.fundacionangelllorca.org/angel- llorca/grupo-escolar-cervantes/

26 abroad. The United States, fearing a socialist revolution similar to Cuba’s, supported some of the groups seeking to eliminate Trujillo (Despradel, 1992). The United States, through its Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA), made available a few rifles to the Dominicans insurgents, who eventually killed Trujillo in May of 1961. After the assassination, political institutions and unions emerged, taking advantage of the more democratic environment, several of which were led by returned exiles. These different political groups joined forces to demand the removal of Trujillo’s legacy within the government, and the creation of a provisional junta to organize a presidential election. In 1963, Juan Bosch, who had returned to the country after 25 years of exile, was democratically elected president. Bosch managed to gather a pluralistic body of followers, including the proletariat, elements of the left, and the civil bourgeoisie. The new government enacted a new constitution and advanced important reforms to democratize public institutions.

Because of his short tenure in power—just seven months—the liberal policies he undertook did not take root. Accused by the Catholic church and conservative groups of communist leanings, a military coup terminated Bosch’s government, and established a temporary civil government.

A civil war broke in 1965, when popular groups and a sector of the military fought the de facto government and sought the restoration of Bosch’s government. Fearing the conflict would produce a revolution similar to Cuba’s, the United States sent 42,000 troops to prevent the

Constitutionalists from taking over. The United States withdrew after securing victory for their favored candidate, Joaquin Balaguer, in the elections of 1966. Balaguer governed the country for

12 years (1966-1978), and then for a further ten years between 1986 and 1996. For the United

States, Balaguer represented a strong conservative stance against communism (Chester, 2001).

Balaguer had served as Secretary of Education, as puppet president for Trujillo, and was a key ideologue of Trujillo’s projects. Ricart (1995) described the transition from Trujillo to Balaguer

27 as a shift from military, to intellectual, warlordism. Although Balaguer reduced the power of the military, he used military and paramilitary repression to maintain a stable government. He favored the interests of the conservative elite, to the detriment of the popular groups (Mejıá-

Ricart, 1995; Moquete, 1986).

In 1978, Balaguer was forced by local opposition and the international community to hold fair elections, which were won by a social democratic party (PRD) led by Antonio Guzman.

According to Ricart (1995), PRD’s governments (Guzman 1978-1982 & Blanco 1982-1986) democratized government institutions and made strides in the protection of individual rights.

Blanco’s government renegotiated the foreign debt and fostered the development of duty-free zones and tourism. Economic instability caused by misguided financial policies, and divisions within centralist parties, allowed Balaguer to come back to power in 1986. He proved to be more moderate during this latter period of 10 years than in his prior 12 years. With the support of

Joaquin Balaguer, the young leader of Dominican Liberation Party, Leonel Fernandez, ascended to the presidency in 1996. Fernandez introduced major neo-liberal policies and modernized the public institutions. However, corruption and poverty continued to be major unresolved problems.

In the early 1970s, the country’s economy grew, in large due to government investment in infrastructure, expansion of the mining sector, increase in export prices, and U.S. economic aid.

The Dominican government provided substantial tax and non-tax incentives, which attracted foreign companies. Public investments in large infrastructure projects contributed to the growth and modernization of the main cities. However, between 1974 and 1979 the Dominican Republic experienced a dramatic economic decline, and fell into economic stagnation in the early 1980s.

The decrease in sugar prices and increase in petroleum costs and other imports led to an economic deficit that elevated unemployment rates and heightened the poverty index. This

28 situation drastically affected people working in the farming sector, who represented 48% of the productive force at the time. Starting in the 1980s, and accelerating in the 1990s, the Dominican

Republic moved toward a service economy (Moya Pons, 2010). The growth of tourism, the implementation of neoliberal policies, and expansion of a global market economy made more evident the deficiencies of the educational system in developing the human resources needed for social development and economic growth. The concentration of economic activities in the urban centers, along with increased demand for new educational services, contributed to further migration from rural areas to the main cities (Moquete, 1986). A spike in the poverty and inflation index accelerated Dominican migration abroad in the 1990s, mainly to the United

States, Venezuela, and Spain.

In the next three decades, the biggest challenges for the education authorities were the overflow in the student population, poor school infrastructure, inadequate teacher training, lack of didactic resources, and the elitist nature of cultural policies. Since economy was the main focus of subsequent governments, investment in education remained marginal. Traditionally, secondary and higher education had been a privilege of the urban middle and upper classes

(Moquete, 1986). Access to formal education increased between 1960 and 1985. Still, by 1985, only 19% of the population had completed secondary education, and 53% primary education; 3% had higher education; and 25% had no formal education at all (SEEBAC & PIDE, 1985).

When public secondary education was a privilege of the urban middle and upper classes, it enjoyed a certain level of stability and access to resources. With the overflow of rural migration to cities, the public-school system deteriorated. Gradually, private education became a more suitable option for more privileged families (Moquete, 1986). This further contributed to the reluctance of the ruling elite to attend to the problems of public education. In 1959, the

National University was allowed to provide bachelor’s degrees in education, which contributed to the professionalization of education. Nevertheless, most teacher training was undertaken in the various normal schools across the nation which granted secondary level education. By 1963, the government identified teacher training as the most urgent problem of education (Canario, 1963).

They concluded that, while several plans had been undertaken to improve teachers’ education, lack of funding curbed these attempts. Out of 11,737 employed teachers, only 23% had a university or normal education; 40% had only middle school credentials; and 17% did not complete primary education (Abreu, 1963).

Because Balaguer, one of the main ideologues of Trujillo, governed the country from

1966 to 1978, the ideological foundation of education did not change substantially from

Trujillo’s era. That said, Dominican exiles who returned in the 1960s, and other progressive minds, many of whom became professors at the public university, denounced the need to free the education system from the legacy of Trujillo (Fulcar Beriguette, 1964; Mejía-Ricart, 1981; Prats-

Ramirez, 1981). Students and teachers’ unions, such as the Dominican Teachers Association

(Asociacion Dominica de Profesores, ADP), played a key role in resisting official policies and fighting for their constituents’ rights. The confrontation between the government and popular groups created social tensions that impacted higher and pre-university education. After the 1965 civil war, the United States adopted a less violent approach to influence Dominican politics through educational cooperation programs and funding for educational projects (R. S.

Hernandez, 2004). This was accompanied by the presence of other international organizations who supported, through funding and technical collaboration, all major education reforms from that point forward. In the 1970s and 1980s, the government conducted several large educational

30 reform projects, mainly focused on improving vocational training (Dominguez, 1998; Secretaría de Educación, 1979).

To deal with the overwhelming growth of student population, the Department of

Education reduced the school day. On average, students spent 17.5 to 20 hours a week in school, which meant there was minimal room for subjects not considered essential. School infrastructure and lack of materials were also major issues. In 1985, 22% of school classrooms were in poor condition, and 23% were considered useless (SEEBAC & PIDE, 1985). Until secondary school, art was taught by a generalist teacher who was supposed to have received drawing and manual arts training. But with the poor teacher training situation, while art education was in the official curriculum, it was rarely taught, and when it was taught, it often failed to meet the expectations of the Department of Education (Dominguez, 1998; Fabian, De Jesus, Torres, Abreu, & Zapata,

2004; Lopez & Yessenia, 2014). The fact that the Department of Education did not have arts education supervisors until 1975 complicated the establishment of standards of practice. This was particularly the case in primary education, which was in general taken less seriously by the

Department of Education. This combination of factors became a formula for weakening art education in school. For the underpaid generalist teachers, drawing—which was most accessible—became a way to have a break between more rigorous subjects. In many cases, art education was limited to asking students to do freehand drawings on a sheet of paper, or to copy a drawing from the blackboard. In most schools, art education failed to prepare students to pursue vocational training at the secondary level, to pass admission exams at the fine arts school, or to develop artistic skills that could enrich and lead to other career paths (Dominguez, 1998;

Fabian, De Jesus, Torres, Abreu, & Zapata, 2004; Lopez & Yessenia, 2014).

In the 1970s, young musicians had the opportunity to study music education abroad returned with a new perspective about arts education in school. Because of their work and advocacy for music education, in 1975, the Department of Education created a supervising unit for Music Education (Departamento de Educacion Musica Integral, DEMI) which contributed to training school choir conductors. Adjacent to this department, Edmundo Antonio Morel was appointed as the first director of drawing education. The department had limited resources to produce the big changes needed, particularly in terms of teacher training (Taveras, 2017).

However, training workshops and drawing textbooks emerged from this initiative.

In this scenario, education became a subject of interest for businesses and industries, religious groups, the government, teacher unions, and non-profit organizations, and international organization operating in the country. This bricolage of social groups understood that there was no quick fix to the problems and demands of education and that it required continuity and collaboration. In 1992, with the participation of representatives from the industrial and business sectors, teachers’ unions, private school associations, NGOs, the Inter-American Development

Bank, churches, and student organizations, the government developed a ten-year educational law and policy to address the most pressing needs of education (Congreso Nacional de Educación,

1992). Because of the progressive footing of this plan, it became the initial platform resulting in art education in schools being lifted to a higher status by the late 1990s.

Outline of Chapters

Chapter 2 is a discussion of relevant literature in art education and Dominican Studies that serves to map the theoretical landscape to which this research responds. Because of the country’s historical connection with the Latin American region, I focus on how Latin American scholars have approached histories of art education. However, I also reference North-American

32 and Spanish authors whose works have impacted international histories of art education. In

Chapter 3, I discuss the methodology this research follows and examine how theoretical constructs from Paulo Freire and Chela Sandoval inform this historical inquiry. Chapter 4 is the first content chapter. Here, I analyze Eugenio Maria de Hostos’s contribution as the founder of

Dominican Republic’s modern education system in the late 19th century. I also discuss how republicanism and positivism shaped what functions drawing and manual training played in his educational philosophy. Chapter 5 addresses the role art education played in the dictator Rafael

Trujillo’s project to nationalize Dominican Education. I discuss how administrators in his regime used drawing, painting, and aesthetic education in schools to assert a homogeneous image of national identity. In Chapter 6, I examine how the visual arts, within vocational education reforms undertaken throughout the 20th century, were used to assert social difference on the basis of race, gender, geographic location, and socioeconomic status. In Chapter 7, I analyze how globalization and several international organizations became major forces in the development of a new paradigm in Dominican art education in the 1990s, which pursued the celebration of formerly negated aspects of national identity. Chapter 8 is a discussion of overall conclusions, implications, and recommendations for future studies.

CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Writing from the Margins

In recent decades, histories of art education have moved beyond the concern with objectivity to incorporate more sophisticated conceptual frameworks, such as applying an explanatory thesis drawn from cultural, social, and natural sciences to understand historical moments (Efland, 1990a; Marché, 2000; Stankiewicz, 2007); creating metaphors to explain histories of art education (Delacruz & Bales, 2010; Kan, 2011); using art-based inquiry to present historical findings (Carpenter & Tavin, 2010); and using speculation to fill in historical gaps (Bolin, 2009). In addition, interest in social justice issues has prompted revisionist histories aiming to acknowledge the neglected contribution of women, African-Americans, and other minorities in the history of art education (Bey, 2011; Grauer, Irwin, & Zimmerman, 2003; Holt,

2017), to identify how the art education curriculum has been complicit in racism and elitism

(Ashton, 2001; Chalmers, 1992; Chin, 2011), and to point out how art education intersects with colonial and imperialist projects of the West (Irbouh, 2013; Kantawala, 2012; Park, 2009; F.

Rodriguez & Stankiewicz, 2016). This research builds on these conversations, especially those dealing with the intersection of histories of art education and social justice. Recently, there has been an interest in international understandings of art education histories (Bresler, 2007; De

Couve, Pino, Calvo, Frega, & Souza, 1998; Freedman & Hernández y Hernández, 1998;

Kauppinen & Diket, 1995; Pantigoso, 2001; Stankiewicz, 2007, 2009). Globalization, migration, and new technologies have increased the need for international competencies among art educators in the last decades (Dewey, 2008). Some of these authors have identified patterns, based on the development of western art education, through which they have examined international art education histories (Freedman & Hernández y Hernández, 1998; Stankiewicz,

2007). These international histories have been foundational to a more diverse understanding of

35 the development of art education on a global level. Nonetheless, more research is needed to understand how art education has evolved in marginal locations, especially those not fitting the historical dynamics of central countries. One of the reasons it is important to encourage international histories from marginal locations is because, while postmodernity has favored more pluralistic scholarship, the exchange of knowledge and exercise of power in our globalized economy is not even. Sandoval (2000) contended that the cultural ideology of postmodern neoliberalism presents reality as a sheer heterogeneity and as a coexisting of a host of distinct forces, while keeping oppressive conditions.

Knowledge exchange in art education often echoes the larger global capitalist dynamic where powerful nations are the producers of material and intellectual goods that are to be consumed by developing countries. Publications on art education theory and practices are dominated by North American and European authors because of the research infrastructure afforded in their countries of origin. Evidence of this central-peripheral relation in art education has been the tendency among some western authors to speak on behalf of the entire field, when in fact their research focuses only on art education in North America and Europe (Efland, 1990b;

Eisner & Day, 2011; Macdonald, 2004). In their choice of title, these authors did not feel the need to indicate the geographic boundaries of their research. However, authors writing from and about peripheral countries need to specify their location in their title or introductions. Torres-

Saillant (2006) addressed this phenomenon through an examination of the epistemological politics of the Caribbean. He argued that scholars in marginal spaces are given authority to speak on behalf of their location, but not on behalf of humanity, which is an attribute reserved to western countries (Torres-Saillant, 2006a). Written histories from and about a marginal location,

36 such as the Dominican Republic, are important to demonstrate that there are art education histories outside mainstream accounts.

Regional Histories of Art Education

While Latin American countries are very different from one another, they have shared some trends throughout their art education history. From the early 16th century, the Spanish colonial system created colleges led by religious orders with the purpose of instructing the natives in various arts and crafts. These colleges served to indoctrinate the children of former

Indian chiefs in an effort to convert the native population to Christianity. They also served to train craftsmen whose skills were needed to produce religious art in high demand due to the construction of new churches in colonial territories. Friars, who became the first teachers, introduced materials and techniques unknown to natives and facilitated adapting pre-Hispanic arts to the demands of the colonizing project (Bustamante, Fernández-Salvador, & Stratton-

Pruitt, 2012). Since the second half of the 16th century, local artists organized themselves in guilds specializing in very particular crafts and processes. These guilds existed throughout the

Spanish colonies, but were stronger in Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador. In Mexico, laws were passed very early to regulate the different guilds. These artists not only exercised control over the production of local art; through a system of massive production of quality art and competitive prices, they dominated the art market in the region (Arte quiteno mas alla de Quito, 2010). In this system, the master, owner of an artisan workshop, taught a number of apprentices who might later become masters.

In the 17th century, European itinerant artists brought new aesthetic trends to the colonies.

As European artists introduced new aesthetic preferences, the guild system started to decline.

The guild model became associated with the past (Arte quiteno mas alla de Quito, 2010). In the

18th century, the Spanish enlightenment’s interest in education and the sciences led to the creation of art academies in the main colonial centers in the Americas. This was also motivated by the emergence of a bourgeois class that viewed the artist as an ally in its project to gain political relevance. The academy became the new center for artistic education. Unlike the guilds, the academy had different teachers in charge of teaching different subjects; the program was also structured into different levels. In Mexico, initially, access to the academy was limited to certain individuals on the basis of racial purity (Catelli, 2012). After independence, Latin American liberals adhered to the idea of public education for all, and introduced drawing education as a foundation for industrial progress and moralization. Sarmiento, who was director of education in

Chile before becoming president of Argentina, defended drawing education in the following way:

In America, the teaching of linear drawing, popularized by our primary schools, is called

to make a complete revolution in our customs, and to open the doors that are closed to

industry until today. The line drawing will be a corrective of the organic vice of our

Spanish Education. Like Spain, we lack not only the industrial knowledge that makes the

wealth and the happiness of other nations, but we have even come to believe that we lack

the skills and abilities for this kind of work. (Sarmiento, 1886, p. 311)4

Academies, modeled after similar European institutions, continued to be the centers for artistic education after independence. In the early 20th century, nationalist movements prompted introspection in various Latin American nations, which led to the appreciation of local history and culture. The Mexican government published art education books to teach young children to value the aesthetics of their pre-Hispanic cultures (Henriquez Ureña, 1989). In the first half of the 20th century, several scholars, influenced by progressive education, socialism and psychology

4 Domingo Faustino Sarmiento embraced a vision of civilization rooted in Western White identity, to the extent that he was responsible for the genocide of thousands of Indians and Blacks in Argentina (Antv, 2016).

38 theorized about the role of creative expression in general education (Cossettini & Cossettini,

2001; Reyes, 1943; Sosa, 1950). Sosa (1950) was interested in the alienation created by industrialization. He argued that traditional schools were created to model the child according to the interest of the elite. For him, creative expression was essential to help students find their lost personality. In the second half of the 20th century, the International Society for Education through

Art (InSEA) became a cohesive force that brought together scholars from several Latin American countries. After the 1984 InSEA congress, scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba,

Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay created the Latin American Council for Education through

Art (CLEA) (Pantigoso, 2001). Through CLEA, the influence of UNESCO and Herbert Read’s ideas on education through art spread to other Latin American countries.

One common thread among those who have written histories of art education in Latin

America is a preoccupation with the lack of indigenous models, and criticism of the tendency to blindly replicate foreign ones (Barbosa, 1990; Bolin, 2009; Errázuriz, 1995; Sanchez Ortega,

2013). Barbosa (1990) used dependency theory to argue that art education in Brazil has been shaped by external forces. Dependency theory holds that after World War II, imperialism took new forms driven by global market relations, where third world countries became economically dependent on first world economies, generating more subtle forms of cultural and political domination by first world economies. The idea is that dominant societies strive to create models similar to their own in dominated societies to increase the consumption of commodities they produce. Barbosa blamed this new form of capitalism for the lack of an authentic art education system in Brazil. She asserted that art education became a compulsory subject, which did not come about as an initiative of Brazilian art educators. For Barbosa, North American educators,

39 under a cooperation agreement (Acordo MEC-USAID, 1971), reformed Brazilian education to prepare workers for the labor demands of multinational corporations.

For Barriga Monroy (2013), the importation of foreign models in music education in

Colombia in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century contributed to the alienation of

Indian and African arts and culture from the school curriculum. She argued that discourses of nationalism were anchored in a dichotomy that contrasted the popular with the fine arts.

European art was seen as refined, genteel, and clean, while the art of those on the periphery was deemed as negative, dirty, immoral, and dangerous. Sanchez Ortega (2013) was also critical of the U.S support for the Batista dictatorship that was responsible for the poor state of education before the Cuban revolution. Sanchez Ortega argued that, because of its geographical and political situation, Cuban art education was influenced by ideas coming from Mexico and the

United States in the first half of the 20th century. The Mexican model of Escuelas Libres

(Alfresco Schools), was brought to Cuba by local artists who had lived in Mexico. This was an anti-academic movement tied to Mexican muralism that embraced free expression, nationalism, and improvised artmaking in open-air spaces. The Massachusetts model, with its emphasis on drawing education, was brought to Cuba through the work of María Capdevila.5

Errázuriz (1995), in his history of art education in Chile, pointed out that in the 19th century, Chile borrowed ideas from French, German, and Belgian art education models. The strategy of the Chilean government was to send young men to study in Europe, while also importing professors from those countries. The case of Chilean art education reflects a phenomenon that was common among other Latin American countries. As Spain fell behind in

5Sanchez Ortega refers to the art education model that emerged in Massachusetts normal art school (1870s) under the leadership of Walter Smith, in respond to the need of creative workers for by the thriving industrial sector. For more information see Stankiewicz, M. A. (2016). Developing visual arts education in the United States: Massachusetts Normal Art School and the normalization of creativity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

40 its political and industrial development in relation to other European countries, Latin Americans became disenchanted with the Spanish civilization. Spain was blamed for the lack of industrial and social progress in Latin America. Many Latin American countries revered other European countries and looked to them as models of civilization. Great Britain became the model for industrial development, and French culture became the standard for the fine arts and aesthetics.

However, this disenchantment with the Spanish civilization was not embraced by all Hispano-

American nations. Seventeen years after achieving its independence from Haiti, the Dominican political body signed an annexation agreement with Spain, recognizing Spanish rule over the territory. Although it regained independence a few years later, Spanish culture remained an inspiring model for various facets of life in the Dominican Republic (Candelario, 2008; Howard,

2001; Salmador, 1994).

Another common concern in histories of art education in Latin America has been the marginalization of art as a school subject, and the elitist nature of specialized art education.

Errazuriz’s (1995) thesis was that art education in Chile has been marginal from the very beginning due to the negligence of a political class that failed to see its true value. He advised the political class today not to make the same mistake. In the United States, Peter Smith (1996) followed a similar pessimistic note. Unlike Errazuriz, Smith believed that threats to art education in school are not only external, and suggested looking inward to better understand the field.

Fernandez (2009), after examining laws and cultural policies in relation to classroom practices in different contexts, concluded that arts education in Mexico is elitist, exclusivist, and incomplete.

She asserted that the vagueness of the language used in arts education policy and the lack of research on the artistic expression of certain groups creates a double standard where, on paper, diversity and inclusion seem to be acknowledged, but are not honored in practice. These histories

41 of art education provide an important precedent to critical perspective on histories of art education aiming to identify the legacy of colonialism and imperialism in art education.

However, they also implicitly confront a unified national culture against the foreign, which leaves unproblematized how national culture, identity, and values have been construed by the ruling classes.

Dominican Art education

While there is not a comprehensive analysis of the development of art education in the

Dominican Republic, several authors, in some cases indirectly, have touched upon ideas that are relevant to understanding the development of art education. A small number of undergraduate and graduate theses have discussed serious deficiencies in teacher training, and discrepancies between what is officially stated in the national curriculum and what is actually taught (Cruz,

2010; Fabian et al., 2004; Lopez & Yessenia, 2014). Interest in the current conditions of arts education was echoed by a surveyed conducted by Dominguez (1998). While Dominguez’s interest was primarily music education, she concluded that aesthetic education, including the visual arts, has been neglected in the country. Unfortunately, the pessimism through which these authors view art education led to the assumption that art education has always been neglected, and that it was only after 1997 when art became a relevant school subject (Cruz, 2010; Lopez &

Yessenia, 2014). Although these authors are correct in pointing out that art education was treated casually in schools in the decades prior to 1990s, drawing and other forms of art education had been mandatory curricular subjects in the past.

Several textbooks and teacher’s guides have been produced by Dominican authors since the 1970s, but none encompass the history of art education in the country (F. Abreu & Espinal,

2007; De la Rosa, 1996; Lara, 1982; Martinez, 1997; Perez, 2005; Sandoval-Lara, 1988). For

42 example, De la Rosa (1996), an art teacher of two decades from the Moca province, published a short booklet based on notes collected from seminars and conferences with other art educators.

Susana de la Rosa drew upon her personal experiences and observations, but did not provide a thorough analysis of the field. Art historians have mentioned the existence of learning centers for specialized art education to establish the genealogy and stylistic schools of famous artists

(Rodríguez Demorizi, 1972; Valldeperes, 1957), or to highlight altruistic initiatives of artists who created academies in their places of origin (De los Santos, 2004; Miller & Ugarte, 2001). For example, De los Santos (2004) connected the development of the visual arts in the country to cultural, social, and political events, including literary movements, and artistic movements in

Latin American and Europe. He noted that well-known artists created drawings manuals and were involved in teaching in normal and secondary schools, but how visual artists contributed to the development of school art education remains an undeveloped subject. For historians of education, art education has not been a relevant subject of study. While direct references to art education in schools are scarce, histories of education provide valuable context on the relationship between general education and larger social, political and economic contexts.

Moquete (1986) concluded that schooling, including higher education, has failed to effectively prepare people for productive life, and that there has been little relation between what students have learned in school, and the kind of work people do.

Identity Narratives in Dominican Intellectual Histories

This research is in debt to Dominican intellectual history, especially works dealing with how Dominican identity has been constructed historically. Prior to independence, most historians adhered to a conservative worldview, where the island was represented as a virgin land needing modernization by Europeans. In these narratives, history started with the Spanish conquest

(Garcia-Yepez & Rodriguez, 2006). The contribution of Spanish civilization to the colony of

Santo Domingo was underscored through extensive documentation of the first university of the new world. Historians after independence, such as Jose Gabriel Garcia, were influenced by positivism and liberalism. In their narratives of independence, they attributed the leadership role to the intellectual middle class. Their vision of progress, democracy, and nationalism did not acknowledge the contribution of popular groups and the working classes (Cassá, 1993).

Between 1930 and 1961, representation of Dominican identities in historical narratives followed the ideological project of Trujillo, which was grounded on Catholicism, Hispanicity, and anticommunism. The celebration of black identity as it happens in other countries in the

Caribbean was resisted by this system. While some writers and painters addressed the topic of blackness, they did it from a foreign perspective and not as self-identification (F. Franco, 1997;

Suset, 2015). Other revolutionary ideas such as Indigenismo, a movement seeking to uncover the heroic legacy of pre-Hispanic cultures in the Americas, were domesticated and reinterpreted to meet the needs of the dictatorship. During Trujillo’s era, intellectuals who stayed in the country were forced to a conservative position, including disciples of Hostos. The elaboration of a systematic philosophy of history was the most important component of the ideological system of the dictatorship (Cassá, 1993; Mateo, 1993). In the official historiography, the success of the nation depended on saving its Hispanic heritage from the alleged savage African influence of

Haiti. Institutions such as the National Archive, and the National Historical Institute were created and sponsored by the government to serve as custodians of these historical truths (Cassá, 1993).

For example, considerable financial support was given to research and conservation of colonial monuments because they functioned as tangible testaments of a Hispanic heritage that was interrupted by French and Haitian invasion.

The idea that a brilliant future began in 1930 with Trujillo, after a tragic past of constant foreign threat, was highlighted in Consuelo’s (1952) history of Dominican education. This was the official textbook for the history of education courses in normal schools for teachers.

Consuelo portrayed Trujillo as the savior of education and the main patron of the country’s intellectual production. Through amiable descriptions of the work of the religious orders during the colonial time, especially around the university, Consuelo endorsed the idea of a Catholic and

Hispanic identity. She downplayed the functions education played as a tool of cultural and economic domination during the colonial era (Consuelo, 1952). Similarly, in the visual arts,

Manuel Valldeperes—likely the most important art critic at the time—argued that there was no consciousness of national art before Trujillo. In Valldeperes’s work, the visual arts became another element of differentiation with Haiti. In his famous essay, The Art of Our Time (1957),

Valldeperes was concerned with the lack of an authentic tradition in the visual arts in the country.

In response, he pointed to native and colonial Spanish culture as sources for the construction of a national art that moves beyond a superficial tropicalism. Nonetheless, he failed to acknowledge

African culture as a source to draw upon in Dominican art (Valldeperes, 1957). Valldeperes’s argument implied that the lack of African cultural influence in Dominican art makes it different from Haiti’s. Demorizi (1972) made this same argument in his history of painting and sculpture in Santo Domingo. In addition, Demorizi echoed Trujillo’s narrative of Dominican intellectual progress being curbed by foreign invasion. He blamed Haitian occupation for the emigration of national artists between 1822 and 1844 (Rodriguez Demorizi, 1972). While Trujillo’s intellectuals manipulated aspects of popular culture, they favored the so-called fine arts and the culture that took place in exposition forums, conferences, and art galleries (Cucurullo, 1944;

Pacheco, 1940; Valldeperes, 1957).

Because of limited access to the archives during this time, Dominican intellectuals in exile focused on more recent histories, especially those criticizing the dictatorship (Cassá, 1993).

The spirit of liberty developed in the country after 1961; enthusiasm with Cuba’s socialist revolutions and anti-imperialist sentiment after the U.S. occupation in 1965 motivated the production of revisionist histories. Several scholars used historic materialism to question normalized accounts. They were interested in looking at history, not as a natural phenomenon, but as the outcome of social and economic relations, where questions of who exercised authority and who were oppressed were relevant (Bosch, 1988; Cassá, 1984; Mejıá-Ricart, 1995).

However, most historians in this trend emphasized economic conditions as the most relevant historical factor in understanding social change, particularly the impact of capitalism in reordering social relations; thus, racial and gender issues received little attention. That said,

Tallerias (1985) arrived at the issue of Dominican identity through a Marxist analysis of history.

He argued that, because of economic and political power, the elites have prevented progressive classes from developing a more authentic articulation of national culture (Tallerias, 1985).

Several historians of education, influenced by dialectic materialism, examined the history of Dominican education in terms of social class relations and economic models (P. M.

Hernandez, 2001; Mejía-Ricart, 1981; Moquete, 1986). They argued that Balaguer, with his long tenure in power, thanks to the support of the United States, maintained an elitism and ideological baggage inherited from Trujillo. They raised the issue of alienation of the masses, stemming from cultural practices designed for the enjoyment of the elites in exclusive spaces. For

Hernandez (2001), Dominican education developed teleologically, each stage corresponding to a period of social development, including primitive, colonial, republican, and capitalist, with socialism being the ultimate and desired stage. He examined how education during the capitalist

46 society developed by Trujillo was used to legitimize the authority of the political and commercial elite. Mejía-Ricart (1981), who returned from exile after Trujillo’s assassination, argued that everything in education needed to be redone from scratch, since the system of education was permeated by the ideology of the dictatorship. That included disrupting the elitist nature of education which benefited those in urban areas, especially in the capital. Mejía-Ricart believed that a radical reform was needed to democratize artistic and educational institutions, policies, and programs (Mejía-Ricart, 1981).

Franco (1969) rejected the narrative of a continuous Hispanic heritage by demonstrating the role that racial tensions played in the development of Dominican history and highlighting the

African heritage as a defining element of the originality of the Dominican people. For example, in traditional histories, the Dominican Republic was portrayed as a country where slavery and racial discrimination was not a problem. Franco (1969) argued that the Haitian occupation of

Santo Domingo (1822-1844) was shaped by racial factors where Brown and Black people of

Santo Domingo viewed the Haitian occupation as an opportunity to access political and administrative positions that had been denied to them under the colonial system. Franco has argued that in history manuals, students had access to historical accounts, manipulated by a minority, where there is an implicit racial prejudice (F. J. Franco, 1969, 1970, 1997). After

Franco, a few studies analyzed the pervasiveness of racial bias in Dominican representations in history textbooks (M. F. Gonzales & Silie, 1985; Wigginton, 2005). Prats-Ramirez (1981) pointed out the need to deconstruct ideological myths still at play in the educational law at the time which, she argued, still favored the narrative of a Hispanic heritage. Candelario (2007) examined the lack of representation of Dominican Black heritage in the National Museum as evidence of current institutional practices that maintain cultural and racial hierarchies.

Several art historians have addressed how Dominican identity has been historically constructed in the visual arts (Miller & Ugarte, 2001; Santos, 2005; Suset, 2015). De los Santos

(2005) provided a more apologetic analysis, where he sees elements of cultural inclusion throughout the history of Dominican art. Miller and Ugarte (2001) pointed out the slow recognition of the brown condition of the Dominican people in the visual arts. For Suset (2015),

Dominican self-recognition of its brown condition in the visual arts has been scarce until recently, when contemporary artists have produced political interpellation aiming to disrupt historical narratives of Dominicanness (Suset, 2015). Dominican studies scholars have contributed to new understandings of how Dominican identity has been constructed locally and by Dominicans abroad (Candelario, 2007; García-Peña, 2016; Mayes, 2015; Ricourt, 2016;

Torres-Saillant, 2006b). They have detailed the transnational dimension, including the influences of Haiti, the United States, and Spain, in the complex ways in which Dominicans have negotiated and resisted racial discourses.

The production of critical texts questioning hegemonic narratives in the last decades also extended to issues of gender discrimination. In 2004, the department of education and the program for women’s education (EDUC-MUJER) developed a series of guidelines for the inclusion of gender equity in the school curriculum. This initiative aimed to tackle the pervasiveness of Dominican patriarchy through the development of textbooks and classroom planning to disrupt the use of sexist language and the preference for male figures in historical narratives. Because of the lure of artistic productions to implicitly carry sexist assumptions of social development, they argued that art education played a fundamental role in reversing this trend, while instilling a more gender-inclusive conscience in the young (Fortuna, 2004). Several authors have addressed issues of socioeconomic, racial, geographic, and gender bias in related

48 fields, but the effects of these discriminatory practices in art education in school have not received much attention.

CHAPTER 3

THEORY AND METHODOLOGY

This chapter is structured in two sections. In the first section, I examine the theoretical foundation that informs my research questions and analysis, which focuses on Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and Chela Sandoval’s Methodology of the Oppressed (2000). While

Freire stands as my main theoretical source, I used ideas from Sandoval’s work to complement some of Freire’s concepts. After contextualizing the work of these two authors, I discuss how their theoretical contributions can serve as a foundation for identifying conceptual principles that can inform historical research pursuing social justice in art education. In the second section, I explain the specific strategies, process and methods used in the identification, collection, analysis, and interpretation of the different sources.

A History of the Oppressed

Paulo Freire’s ideas have served as inspiration for social justice art education (Staikidis,

2012); community-based art education initiatives with marginalized groups (Barndt, 2011;

Conrad & Sinner, 2015; Kraehe & Acuff, 2013); service learning projects that bring together art educators, students, and community (Taylor & Ballengee-Morris, 2004); and approaches to art making where students examine lived and popular imagery to contest forms of oppression

(Duncum, 2008; Jung, 2015; Levy, 2007; Tavin, 2003). In art education, most of Freire’s ideas have been appreciated in the context of pedagogical strategies aiming to empower marginalized groups. But Freire’s work lends itself to readings beyond pedagogical strategies. Freire produced a postcolonial and border text, since it concerns the circumstances that limit the participation of certain groups, first, to spaces where others, by virtue of the legacy of colonialism, exercise authority and human agency; and, second, to institutional structures that both privilege and exclude particular readings, voices, aesthetics, and representations (Giroux, 1992). Starting from the understanding that meaningful histories use theoretical frameworks to construct

51 interpretations of the past that can raise questions about the present (Stankiewicz, 2009), I argue that Freire’s work can also inform historical inquiry motivated by the pursue of more just social conditions.

Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) was written in response to his experiences in adult literacy programs in Brazil. He realized that there was a culture of silence among oppressed people, and that institutions, such as schools, contributed to that culture of silence by depriving the oppressed of the tools to be critical about their reality. He used the metaphor the Banking

Model of Education (1970, p.72) to explain how the learning process that becomes an act of depositing ready-made knowledge from teachers to students serves as an instrument of domination by the oppressor. For Freire, what is at stake is the humanization of the world, which is linked to our ability to enter into dialogue with each other. In the process of oppression, both the oppressed and the oppressor are deprived of their vocation of becoming fully human, and it is the oppressed who lead the struggle to liberate themselves and their oppressors. Central to the pedagogy of the oppressed is the concept of agency. Freire holds an optimistic view about the possibilities of constructing a better society as oppressed people arrive at the realization that they have the capacity to act upon their existing reality. In his view, people have an ontological vocation to be the subjects who act and transform their own worlds; and, in doing so, are able to move forward to, and act on, new possibilities. Men and woman are not possessors of consciousness that exists passively in the world, but they are re-creators of the world they live in.

This concept of humans as historical beings, as I discuss later in this chapter, is central to Freire’s liberation project, and to my theoretical framework. For Freire, acting upon the world requires a special kind of awareness (conscientização) about the self in relation to others. Conscientização is an “acquired disposition to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to take

52 action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Freire, 1970, p.17). Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed is about making oppression and its causes objects of reflection. This reflection has a practical dimension, since it generates an engagement with the cause for social transformation.

This balance between theory and practice is central to Freire’s pedagogy for liberation.

Sandoval, a postcolonial feminist and Chicana studies scholar, draws upon the experience of U.S. third-world feminism,6 and the theoretical contributions of scholars from colonized territories and Western philosophy—including Fredric Jameson, Roland Barthes, Franz Fanon,

Louis Althusser, Homi Bhabha, Michel Foucault, and Gloria Anzaldua—to develop what she calls a “methodology of differential consciousness” (Sandoval, 2008, p. 147). In bringing together authors from different intellectual traditions under the umbrella of postcolonial critique,

Sandoval aims to deconstruct the theoretical apartheid that impedes the development of a coalition of decolonizing movements. She argued that postmodern, globalized capitalism has created forms of oppression that demand different strategies of resistance; a different kind of oppositional consciousness. Unlike modernity, where the sources of oppression could be easily identified and rallied against, in postmodernity, the sources of power that maintain unquestioned social hierarchies are more devious. Sandoval argued that there is a democratization of oppression, as all subjects in first world capitalism are exposed to novel conditions of power that encourage hypersensitivity to the ongoing disintegration of the subject. This stance does not ignore the inequities of material resources and subordination by race, class, and geography, but acknowledges the existence of a new kind of psyche that respects no previous boundaries. As

6 To Sandoval, the term ‘third-world’ refers to third world conditions existing within first world societies; in that context, U.S. third-world feminism is a particular branch of feminism that emerged in the 1970s and championed by women of color.

53 challenging messages are absorbed by the everyday, modern forms of resistance have become obsolete.

For Sandoval, these tactics needed to counter postmodern oppression have been developed and practiced by oppressed groups under older forms of oppression, as in the case of women of color in the 1970s in the United States. Sandoval contended that race was never successfully integrated into feminist theory and practice, which generated protests from women of color to a movement that, while being oppositional, was exclusionary. She ventured that

“feminists of color identified common ground on which to make coalitions across their own profound cultural, racial, class, sex, gender and power differences” (2000, p. 52). Sandoval’s argument is that this oppositional group developed a common culture of difference, where several values were acknowledged as existing within a similar realm of marginality. This movement went beyond the appearance of mutual exclusivity of existing forms of oppositional practices, to appropriating one or more ideological positions in response to the ways in which reality presented itself as “natural,” while being permeated with the values of the dominant social order. She is interested in initiatives of resistance in the arts and social activism that carried a sensibility and loyalty to not just one form of oppression. In this new topography, where power seems to be shifting form and location, Sandoval believes the fight toward equality requires a kind of consciousness that is less bound by dominant ideological signification. Sandoval, like

Freire, claimed that the rhetoric of supremacy hurts both oppressor and oppressed, and that it is in the experiences of subjugated groups that the seed for the liberation of both resides.7

7Oppositional movement/consciousness is used as a general term that encompasses different trends of counterhegemonic initiative and advocacy groups. According to Sandoval, feminists of color, for reasons of survival, use their intersectional identities to temporarily adopt the fervid belief system and identity politics of other oppositional movements. She categorized these forms of opposition into five groups. She asserts that U.S. third- world feminism was a movement that traveled between and among "equal-rights," "revolutionary," "supremacist," and "separatist" ideologies, and that, in this process, it practiced a fifth oppositional consciousness which she termed "differential" (Sandoval, 2000, p.44).

Freire began his pedagogy of the oppressed from the statement that the world is not static.

Because the world is not a closed order, men and women are not supposed to accept a given reality. An objective social reality exists as the product of human action, and people know themselves to be unfinished. He posited that: “In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fails to acknowledge men and women as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the people’s historicity as their starting point” (Freire,

1970, p. 65). For Freire, the liberation project requires two things: first, a reinterpretation of history; and, second, a pedagogical project that points to the transformation of the world (Freire

& Macedo, 1995).

Freire was not only interested in the knowledge of the past, and how the past relates to the present, but also in our implicit philosophy of history. He criticized determinist, individualist, and positivist views of history as they do not lead to a critical engagement in changing social structures. Freire’s understanding of human agency in this concept of history is, to a certain extent, similar to the philosopher of history Ortega y Gasset (1941), for whom people’s essence is in their history, not in their nature. Ortega y Gasset stated that the same is true of society.

Society has no essence either; it has only history. Thus, in order to understand who we are collectively and individually, it is not enough to resort to physical-mathematical reasoning; life only becomes transparent before historical reason. From this standpoint, critical histories facilitate social and individual change by making explicit the unfinished condition of human actions and by connecting historical contexts to current contradictions.

Freire emphasized that critical thinkers do not become prisoners of the circle of certainty.

They carry a sense of doubt; a skepticism of a predetermined “well-behaved” present (Freire,

1970, p. 65). A history inspired by Freire’s thought entails the identification of limiting

55 situations, which are byproducts of human action that curb the advancement of certain groups while benefiting those in power. Freire stated that limiting situations, “once perceived by individuals as fetters, as obstacles to their liberation, these situations stand out in relief from the background, revealing their true nature as concrete historical dimensions of a given reality”

(Freire, 1970, p. 80). The task of histories inspired by these ideas is to present events as challenges that need to be grappled with to generate more equitable social orders. Freire believed that the focalization of issues is one of the strategies used to camouflage oppressive cultural actions. He stated that “when people lack a critical understanding of their reality, apprehending it in fragments which they do not perceive as interacting constituent elements of the whole, they cannot truly know that reality” (Freire, 2000, p. 85). Understanding particular and local issues as belonging to a larger fabric of power relation is central to the development of historical reflection. A history of the oppressed aims to situate cultural practices, and modes of governance within their wider historical, social, cultural, economic, and political contexts. It directs attention to questions of who has control over the condition knowledge production, skills, and values

(Giroux & Barroso, 2013).

In the banking model of education, Freire (1970) outlined how education is crafted to serve the interests of hegemonic structures by forming consciousness that assumes reality as it is.

This education system is deeply rooted in a construction of history that is presented as natural while privileging the narrative of the elites. He argued that the dominant order creates versions of the past, which he calls “myths” (1970, p. 46), to legitimize the present order. Freire’s notion of myth is similar to what Hayden White (1973) termed ideology, which is a form of representation that, using rhetorical tools, creates a particular version of the past to present reality as natural, and history as neutral. Freire did not give much detail on how oppressive versions of history are

56 created. Sandoval (2000), drawing from the work of Barthes, argued that these myths are constructed through a process of signification, where different forms of texts are arbitrarily assigned new meaning. In the case of Dominican history, as I discussed in Chapter 5, the term

Indian was removed from its original meaning as the native people of the Caribbean; instead, it was used to refer to darker skin people, to erase from the Dominican people the idea of an

African heritage. This narrative was normalized through the official imagery, textbooks, racial classification in the national identity card, and public art.

Freire’s interest in connecting theory and practice also comprises a historical dimension.

To understand history as a possibility, it is important to connect how art education practices have responded to particular ideologies and worldviews. Freire is concerned with how older myths created under conditions of oppression survive in a newer society and are enacted through different cultural practices. In the case of Dominican history, while the use of the word Indian in substitution was most pervasive during the dictatorship, it continued during seemingly democratic administrations. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that while material conditions have changed, some ideological structures might survive (Freire, 1970), which require an ongoing process of de-naturalizing ideological constructs (Sandoval, 2000). Based on

Sandoval and Freire’s ideas, looking at historical documents, whether educational laws or secondary sources, comprises a hermeneutic that strives to identify pervasive myths by linking the text to ideological motivations. It also entails that history should be approached with self- criticism, skepticism, and contestation considering for whom it was written and whose interests it serves (Freire, 2012).

One of Freire’s strengths is making visible the material conditions of those who suffer under unjust circumstances and highlighting the relationship between ideology and cultural

57 institutions. As a major figure in education, Freire has had both fervent critics and apologists.

Freire’s work, especially his earlier publications, has been critiqued for its lack of specificity in identifying who counts as the oppressed (Peter, 2000; Weiler, 2001); privileging western values

(Bowers, 2005); assumption of a linear connection between greater knowledge and social change

(Bartlett, 2009; Prins, 2008); lack of engagement with racial oppression and gender bias (Allen,

2004; Ladson-Billing, 1997; Weiler, 2001); and politicizing education (Peter, 2000). Scholars have also argued that, despite the existence of contradictions in Freire’s work, when his ideas are examined holistically, Freire provides the seed for critical work that engages different marginalized identities (Allen, 2004; hooks, 1994; Peter, 2000).8

Despite the unquestionable significance of Freire’s work, he resorts to using binaries, such oppressed vs. oppressor, to make sense of the contrasting realities of different social groups of people in Latin America. These binaries are tools of western modern thought that traditionally served to alienate non-western subjects (Said, 1979). Unfortunately, this use of totalizing categories leads to an oversimplification of the intersectional identities of oppressed and oppressors, the histories and internal relations of marginalized groups, the sophisticated forms of domination these groups exist under, and the diverse ways in which the oppressed exercise practical and political agency. While Freire (1970) maintained that people are in a state of becoming, he seems to suggest that only newborns—those who have gained a new consciousness through education for liberation—possess a consciousness to understand their condition as oppressed. His used of words such as “dispossessed” and “vanquished,” in reference to oppressed groups, corroborates this possibility. The problem with this view is that it overlooks how oppressed groups have managed to preserve cultural and aesthetic values from positions of

8 According to Giroux (1992), Freire’s later work pushes against the discourse of the unified subject, universal historical agents, and Enlightenment rationality.

58 marginality. While both Freire and Sandoval draw from the work of Black studies theorist Franz

Fanon (1925-1961), they arrived at different conclusions regarding oppressed people’s agency.

Fanon (1952) argued that, through education and mass media, the colonizer shaped the consciousness of Blacks to desire to be like the colonizer. Fanon used the metaphor white masks to point out that Black folks, motivated by an induced sense of inferiority, have to hide their true identity to fit the mold created by the White man (Fanon, 2008, p. 155).

For Freire, like Fanon, the collective conscience of oppressed groups is not natural, but imposed on them by those in position of power. Freire contended that oppressed people behave with inauthenticity because they are imposed a culture that is strange to them; “they begin to respond to the values, the standards, and the goals of the invaders” (Freire, 1970, p. 134).

Institutions, such as schools, are structured to reproduce those same patterns. For Freire, this internalized consciousness is the reason why individuals are afraid of freedom and resort to the comfort of the given reality. When opportunities for social mobility appear, the oppressed becomes oppressor, because his model of humanity is the oppressor. Because Freire’s pedagogy is a revolutionary theory of the present, it is concerned with oppressive conditions critical pedagogy resist, and not as much with forms of agency that could have existed regardless of those conditions.

Sandoval approached the relationship of oppressed and oppressor differently. For her, since third-world feminists were excluded from mainstream feminism, they were thrown into an in-between—silent—space that allowed them to exist outside the binary in which mainstream feminism was located. For Sandoval, the oppressed exists in a cultural space that allows fluidity to take place. She reinterprets Fanon’s masks metaphor to suggest the possibility of agency in the oppressed where Fanon-–and Freire—only see hegemonic domination. Sandoval argued that the

59 marginalized control when, and how, to put on the mask. This interstitial third space allows the oppressed to speak from the dominant point viewpoint as well as their own. Sandoval’s understanding of agency, where “the limits of insanity and possibilities of emancipation are born out of the same horrors of subjugation” (Sandoval, 2008, p. 84), invites historical perspectives that consider both how art education was shaped by the interest of the dominant order and forms of resistance and counternarratives that survived on the periphery.

Historical Inquiry

This dissertation follows a historical research methodology which Mcdowell (2013) defined as a “systematic inquiry into the past and an attempt to separate truth from fictionalized accounts of historical events, based upon the examination of a wide range of relevant source material” (Mcdowell, 2013, p. 5). While the main focus of this research is documentary history, I integrated oral histories to gain additional insights on more contemporary issues. Because each archive is different, with different resources, access, and constraints, historians tend to be open ended about their approach to data collection and analysis (Gaillet, 2012; Eplattenier, 2009). For historians, “methodology means the theorization of the goal of the research, the selection of subjects in a particular period (the research topic and focus), and the categories for evaluation of historical evidence” (Wu, 2002, p. 84). I described the problem and questions this research aims to respond to in the Introduction, Chapter 1, to give readers an overview of this project.

This flexibility on how to approach historical inquiry has been echoed by art educators.

Bolin (1995) claimed that historians make choices at every juncture in their investigation.

Because of that, there is no single correct way of doing histories (Bolin, 1995). For Efland

(1995), historical research should start with a problem which can take many forms. From there, data gathering from primary and secondary sources follow (Efland, 1995). For Bolin (1995),

60 historical research must start with a question based on the needs of the field; then, historians select an investigative approach that best fits their questions. Both a problem and a research question served as starting point and guiding axis for this research. That said, I found that designing my research strategy, at least initially, around a problem allowed for more flexibility.

While my sense of problem stayed more or less consistent throughout the completion of this project, my research questions evolved as I encountered new information. This, in part, had to do with the lack of precedent for my research topic and the unpredictability of the sources found in the archives.

After having identified my guiding problem, I began by exploring secondary sources on the history of art education in the Dominican Republic to gain a sense of what questions had been relevant to other scholars regarding this issue. I found that secondary sources on Dominican art education are scarce. In that country, art education is a fairly new subject of study as a separate discipline. Therefore, I relied on secondary sources on the history of education, art history, and intellectual history. These earlier readings facilitated finding authoritative texts on the subject. Secondary sources led to identifying various educational laws I later examined directly, but did not provide valuable references to primary sources specific to Dominican art education. I relied on printed indexes and digital search tools to identify relevant primary sources in the archives I visited. I did most of my data collection at the National Archive of Santo

Domingo (Archivo Nacional de la Nacion, AGN), which I consulted for two months in the summer of 2017. During this time, I spent approximately four hours, five days a week, at the archive. I also spent two weeks at the Dominican Studies Special Collections of the Dominican

Studies Institute at the City University of New York (DSI, CUNY). At CUNY, I found fruitful

61 insights from talking to the expert librarian and Dominican Studies scholars. From these conversations, I was able to identify resources I did not foresee originally.

In Santo Domingo, I interviewed two art education supervisors and had personal communications through email with the director of an art education program at a university in

Santo Domingo. Having received IRB approval, I phoned to request face-to-face interviews.

After completing the consent form, the interviews followed a semi-structure format, where I had an initial set of questions, but once the conversation started, new questions and topics emerged.

The centralization of historical archives in Santo Domingo facilitated finding most of the needed information in one place. Several newspapers and public institutions have transferred their archives to the AGN. That said, I also consulted a small library at the department of art education at the national department of education, where I found examples of teacher training materials and symposium proceedings. Since both DSI and AGN have several digital search tools to explore their collections, I used keywords and subject terms to research relevant information from a broad range of material. I did initial quick readings of the material to determine the usefulness of the sources and to identify new leads.

This research benefited from a large volume of already digitized data in AGN which permitted keywords search within the content of the text. Throughout this process, I kept in mind that some terms have fallen out of currency over time. Thus, I used synonyms and earlier terminology that might have been in use in the past. An example is trabajos manuales (manual training), which was subsequently referred to as manualidades (handiwork). I was also attentive to the particularities of Spanish language in the use of certain terms. For example, in Spanish, the words education, pedagogy, and teaching (educación, pedagogía & enseñanza), are often used indistinctively as synonyms. I was attentive to what fluctuations in the availability of data might

62 reveal about social change. For instance, the main education journal stopped circulating between

1921 and 1927, because of budget cuts arising from the sugar price crisis. Since the expansion of higher education in the 20th century lowered the status of primary and secondary education, that same journal shifted to prioritize articles discussing issues in higher education.

To approach the daunting task of identifying relevant information from an overwhelming pool of data, to organize this information into themes or categories, and to construct a coherent narrative based on evidence-grounded argument, I used several digital and analogue tools. I engaged in a critical analysis of newspapers, journals, textbooks, educational laws and ordinances, reports, surveys, monographs, photographs, and information gathered from oral interviews. I took extensive notes as I read these sources, which I stored and catalogued on onedrive.com. This allowed me to have remote access of all the information at any time. I photographed and scanned visual and material objects found in the archives and accompanied these digital images with descriptions and observations on the physical qualities of these artifacts. I used MS Excel spreadsheets to create a catalogue of primary and secondary sources, which allowed me to keep track of what I had read and what needed to be read. I built do-to lists and calendars in MS Outlook to keep track of deadlines and workload distribution.

For those of us who enjoy doing historical research, there is excitement in finding new information and making new connections between past events and people (Smith, 1995). Senior historians have also warned young scholars regarding the seductive nature of archival work, which could lead to the endless search for new information (Bolin, 1995; Korzenik, 1995).

Regarding this issue, I adhered to the principle of saturation my advisor, Mary Ann Stankiewicz, had mentioned during one of our meetings. Once the same information started to repeat in the sources, it was an indication there was enough material regarding a topic from which to build an

63 argument. Since I wanted to cite the most authoritative sources, I developed a hierarchical approach where I reviewed what I judged to be the most relevant primary sources first. As suggested by Bolin (1995), I found the historical research process to be non-linear. While developing a research plan helped break down the work, it was an interactive process where new questions emerged from the contact with the material, and after new questions and arguments were formed, I had to revisit primary and secondary sources for answers.

For historians, the essence of the research process are not the interviews, note taking, and examining texts; but building a plausible historical inquiry based on the fashioning of well supported arguments (Bolin, 1995). Stankiewicz (1997) described this process as the “shaping of facts into a coherent, meaningful, and significant narrative through questioning” (p. 67). In this process, historians frame, connect, and contextualize events to create thick descriptions

(Chalmers, 1993; Gaillet, 2012). In this research, at a more conceptual level, I used mapping as a metaphor to capture this process of assemblage of fragmented information, the development of thematic landmarks, and identification of connecting pathways within events and ideas in the history of art education in the Dominican Republic. Metaphors are more than rhetorical resources for poetic language. They are central to providing an adequate account of reality and processes of thought that reveal new associations and make visible new meaning (Feinstein, 1982; Lakoff and

Johnson, 1980; Greene, 1995; Stankiewicz, 1996). On a more formal level, I created matrices, virtual timelines, chronograms, and conceptual maps based on the content collected in my notes.

Some of the tools used include Docear, Coggle, tiki-toki and Zotero. This mapping and remapping facilitated looking at connections between different layers of discourse—e.g. art education, education, and social history—and identifying major themes around which discussions and arguments emerged.

As an extension of the mapping metaphor, I assumed this research could serve as a partial roadmap for those in need of orienting their current practices within a tradition of art education in the Dominican Republic; and as a rough sketch that can serve as a starting point for others interested in doing histories of art education in that country. Mapping, as theorized by postmodern scholars, entails the use and examination of physical and epistemological territories as inconclusive, flexible and arbitrary (Mitchell, 2008; Pascale, 2011; Watson, 2009). Hayden

White (1973), who explored the intersection between history and literary criticism, argued that writing history is a poetic act, meaning that formal and stylistic structures of historical narratives are shaped by the researcher’s moral values and preferences. By arranging events in a certain order and deciding what questions to answer and which events to include and highlight, historians not only find history; they also make history. In art education, researchers have pointed out the need for transparency in how events are described is always mediated by the researcher

(Butler, 2006). As a mapping of art education in the Dominican Republic, this historical inquiry does not pretend to exhaust all interpretative possibilities or reference all relevant subjects and events. Understanding that many histories can be written about one single subject (Chalmers,

2004), and that histories of education can be organized in a variety of ways (Stankiewicz, 2007), this research engages in the discussion of four major themes which I consider relevant plateaus in a critical history of art education in the Dominican Republic. As explained in the introduction, each of these themes corresponds to a content chapter.

A postcolonial use of mapping also entails a critic to modern epistemologies, where knowledge was represented as a territory that could be unproblematically mapped and conquered

(Pascale, 2011). From this point of view, it is important to ask who made the map, and for whom, along with what is not being mapped. A theoretical lens informed by Freire and Sandoval helped

65 address those questions. Although a critical historical mapping informed by the work of Freire and Sandoval does not entail a prescriptive set of guidelines, it pursues the following: (1) acknowledging and deconstructing myths, or versions of the past, that served to normalize certain social relations; (2) identifying who count as historical beings at various times, and whose voices are negated, including whose aesthetics and art traditions were worth knowing; (3) identifying events in history as challenges that need to be grappled with today so as to generate more just conditions; (4) situating historical events within a larger fabric of social relations to identify who has control over the conditions of knowledge production; and (5) acknowledging strategies, agency, and forms of resistance developed by marginal groups that allowed the preservation of cultural practices and values outside norms established by the dominant order.

Historical research informed by Freire and Sandoval entails producing knowledge that is politically situated and that is useful to the transformation of society; and identifying what groups and individuals are advantaged and what groups and individuals are disadvantaged by particular histories and educational structures (Freire, 1970; Tobin & Joe, 2015).

One of the ways I applied the guiding principles above was by identifying contradictions and silences in my narrative. Identifying contradictions entailed casting doubt on how things have been characterized in official accounts and how that differed from reality. These contradictions make explicit the intent of those with editorial power to naturalize certain social relations through written and visual discourse. For example, in the history of Dominican art education, the elite used progressive vocabulary to project nationally and internationally an image of a modern country, while in praxis negating the very progressive principles they claimed to adhere to. Intellectuals during Trujillo’s era (1930-1961) claimed that the country followed the postulates of progressive education by encouraging individual freedom and discovery.

Nonetheless, teachers and students were prevented, through various policing strategies, from performing their freedom of consciousness in the classroom.

As a history informed by Freire and Sandoval, I do not assume that archives are neutral institutional spaces, but rather, as the product of social and political conjunctures; and, therefore, subject to criticism (Pohlandt-McCormick et al., 2006). Accessibilities and representation in archival practices have a direct effect on whose stories are told and silenced (Bolin, Blandy, &

Congdon, 2000; Burton, 2006; Holt, 2017). I am attentive to what those silences and gaps in the archives reveal about power relations. For example, while children’s art was displayed for political propaganda in different venues, the works were not preserved in national archives. They had a disposable value as historical artifacts. Art education has been relegated to a marginal space in Dominican archives. Finding images of students’ artwork was one of the challenges in this research, especially children’s work made during the first half of the 20th century. While I reconstructed what the children’s experiences might have been, based on available data, there is often asynchrony between the guidelines stated in educational laws and textbooks, and what teachers and students did in the classroom.

An initial challenge to finding primary sources in the archives was the lack of specific publications on art education. For most of the time, the people who taught art in school did not enjoy a separate professional identity as subject specialists. Most of them were generalist teachers. The Dominican Republic has not had an art education association which could have contributed to the circulation of periodicals, especially capturing the perspective of teachers on several issues concerning art education. Most information on art education was found in education journals. Being fluent in Spanish and familiar with the Dominican education system

67 was an advantage accessing the archives and communicating with people with access to important information.

CHAPTER 4

DRAWING PROGRESS: SCHOOL ART IN HOSTOS’S MODERN EDUCATION

No one has been more influential to the development of modern education in the

Dominican Republic than Eugenio Maria de Hostos (1839-1903). A Puerto Rican intellectual,

Hostos is known for his work in philosophy, sociology, law, journalism, and education. One of his main contributions was replacing the traditional focus on the memorization of authoritative texts with the development of reason as the central goal of education. Hostos’s philosophy resonated with other post-independence educators in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as

Simon Rodriguez, Manuel Belgrano, Andres Bello, and Jose Marti, who envisioned education as a driving engine for social change, democratic progress, and economic development (Rubilar

Solis, 2009). Hostos’s intellectual work has been relevant to the Latin American community as a whole. However, his most significant contribution to education took place in the Dominican

Republic, where he founded the first normal school, taught at a professional institute, and led the

Department of Public Instruction. Hostos’s belief in educating the totality of the child’s personality led him to introduce new school subjects in primary and secondary education, including drawing, manual training, music, moral and civic education, and gymnastics.

Although Antonio Pedreira (1932) described Hostos as someone well-known, but whose work few had read, Hostos’s work has received broad attention from different disciplines and perspectives. Among the most relevant publications about Hostos are studies of his life and political work (Bosch, 1976; Hostos, 1953; Pedreira, 1932; Rodríguez Demorizi, 1939), his philosophical writing (González, 1941), his work on sociology and politics (Henriquez Ureña,

1939; Maldonado-Denis, 1992; Tejada, 1949), literary analysis of his writings (Rosa, 2003), and his educational philosophy (Henríquez Ureña, 1994; Rojas Osorio, 2012; Santos Vargas, 1974;

Ventura, 2003). While scholars have studied important facets of Hostos’ work, his ideas of why, and how, art should be a part of general education have been ignored.

Using a curriculum for drawing and manual training classes, designed in 1919 by followers of Hostos, I examined why Hostos’s educational project focused on acquiring drawing and handiwork skills; how the guiding principles for these classes relate to his philosophical and social thought; and how the influences of 19th-century western philosophy and scientific rationalism led Hostos and his disciples to the disregard of the arts, culture, and aesthetics of rural and working-class Dominicans. Here, I do not attempt to undertake a comprehensive analysis of Hostos’s ideas, nor dissect all of his statements on aesthetics and the arts. Rather, by looking at Hostos’s pedagogical thought as a paradigm in the development of art education in the

Dominican Republic, I analyze why drawing education and manual training played a fundamental role in the development of a democratic consciousness he believed was the key for the success of the emerging Republic. This chapter not only throws light on why drawing and manual training were taught in school; it also contributes to expanding our understanding of

Hostos’s educational project and philosophy.

Hostos and the Struggles for Emancipation

Hostos was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, in 1839. After completing his primary education in Puerto Rico, his parents sent him to Spain for secondary education. In 1858, he began his studies in law, literature, and philosophy at Universidad Central de Madrid, but never completed his degree. Most scholars consider Hostos as a self-taught intellectual (Henríquez

Ureña, 1994; Pedreira, 1932). In Spain, Hostos was politically active, supporting young Spanish liberals who fought for the establishment of a republican government in Spain, which was still ruled by a monarchy. As a member of the Spanish Manumission Society, he campaigned for the liberation of African slaves who continued to be smuggled into Cuba and Puerto Rico, the last

Spanish colonies in the Americas. The triumph of the liberal revolution of 1868 in Spain did not

71 bring about the changes in Cuba and Puerto Rico that Hostos had expected. In that same year, there were failed attempts to proclaim the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico.9

Disappointed with the Spanish liberals, in 1869, Hostos started a journey throughout the

Americas to rally support for the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Hostos first arrived in

New York, where he collaborated with exiled Cubans and Puerto Ricans as a writer in pro- independence newspapers. Traveling throughout Colombia, Panama, Peru, Chile, Venezuela,

Argentina, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic to rally support for the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico, his concern for social justice issues expanded. He published a book defending the scientific education of women, based on presentations he gave in Chile in1873. He opposed ancestral stereotypes of women’s intellectual inferiority, arguing that women should also be emancipated through education (Rojas Osorio, 2012). In Peru, he founded a newspaper and several cooperation societies. There, he also denounced the oppression of Chinese workers who had been hired to build the Oroya railroad.

In 1875, Hostos joined a military envoy leaving from New York aiming to liberate Cuba, but was shipwrecked before arriving to Cuba. This failed mission, wedded with lack of resources and disagreement among independence fighters, led Hostos to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

There he met Gregorio Luperón and other Dominican liberals. In 1879, Luperón, then President, invited Hostos to reform the education system in the Dominican Republic. Hostos served as a university professor, director of the normal school, and general superintendent of the department of public instruction. He also spearheaded a national literacy program and led the drafting of two educational laws (1879 & 1889). Hostos returned to the United States in 1875, and again in

9 In September of 1868, Ramon Emeterio Bentances led an unsuccessful revolution against the Spanish rule in Puerto Rico known as Grito de Lares (Lares Uprising). In October of that same in year, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes led a similar revolution in Cuba (Grito de Yara), which marked the beginning of ten years of revolutionary wars against the Spanish government.

1898, where he was designated to represent Cuban and Puerto Rican exiles at a meeting to voice their concerns regarding the U.S. occupation of Cuba and Puerto Rico. In January of 1899, he met with U.S. president William McKinley. During the meeting with McKinley, Hostos argued that people in the newly acquired U.S. possession should be given the right to determine their futures.

Figure 2. Hostos and his students at the Normal School of Santo Domingo, 1880. In Hostos, E. M., & Blanco, D. A. (2010). Apuntes de un normalista, p.8. Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación.

Hostos’s journey across the Americas helped define his emancipatory project, and he later devoted most of his time to education. Initially, Hostos supported the idea of a federation that would grant Cuba and Puerto Rico judicial independence while remaining attached to Spain.

After he left Spain and connected with independence groups in the Americas, he shifted position, advocating total independence for Cuba and Puerto Rico. He later championed the idea of a

Caribbean federation united under a common government and free from all foreign influence.

Hostos’s initial political platforms included journalism and speaking at various forums. While on various occasions Hostos was eager to take the fight to the ground and join revolutionary forces in Cuba and Puerto Rico, he understood that intellectual production was the realm within which he could best contribute to the liberation project in the Americas (Bosch, 1976). Forced by

73 economic circumstances while in Venezuela in 1876, Hostos taught at a local college and directed a school. Disappointed with the political class at the time and the apathy of the common men to fight for their freedom, Hostos envisioned education as the platform through which to produce the new consciousness needed for the success of Latin American republics. This is why

Hostos later argued that providing an antidogmatic education was the most decisive factor for progress and most important responsibility of the state (Pedreira, 1932).

Hostos’s ideas for education were influenced by his preoccupation with imperialism as represented by Spain’s intentions to keep control over Cuba and Puerto Rico, and U.S. interest in the Caribbean. For Hostos, there were two enemies to the kind of consciousness needed for social progress: the annexationist mentality of the Latin American elite, and the dogmatic education led by the Catholic Church. For him, this corrupted mentality was a consequence of the Spanish heritage, which he thought did not constitute the best model for progress. In his critique of an exhibition of arts and crafts while in Chile, he stated that “Chile is worth more and it is better the further away it steers from Spain” (Hostos, 1939, p. 54). For Hostos, the old education system, controlled by the Catholic Church, served the objectives of the colonial system. Young American republics needed a new educational approach that fit the logic of democratic life. Like the Cuban poet and independence leader, José Marti, Hostos believed free mandatory education led by the state should develop in students a sense of patriotism that transcended national borders based on the shared history of the Greater Antilles.

Hostos was also influenced by the political project of liberalism, and scientific and philosophical principles of positivism. Nineteenth-century liberalism held the individual rights of people to self-determination based on their natural condition as humans and the protection of this liberty through a fair system of law (Gaus, Courtland, & Schmidtz, 2018). In Latin America,

19th-century liberalism was anchored on three pillars: intellectualism, moralism, and industrialism. It meant advocating for the right to individual representation, civil equality, division of powers, and freedom of thought and of the press (Rivera, 2016). Hostos aligned with the liberal project of the modernization of social institutions, free public education, and the separation of church and state. While Hostos advocated for industrial development, he privileged moral and intellectual development.

Positivism was a 19th-century philosophical movement—influenced by the enlightenment and Darwinism—affirming that all knowledge should be based on positive data verified through empirical evidence. Comte, considered both the father of sociology and positivism, stated that the social sciences should follow the same epistemological structure as the natural sciences, and proposed a way of examining society based on empirical observation, where the goal of the social analyst was the identification of universal laws (Hasan, 2016). Spencer, a disciple of

Comte, applied the principles of evolutionary theory to understand society and ethics. He argued nature alone should teach children, just as it taught other creatures how to survive. For him, education should be about children’s self-motivated observation and experimentation within nature (Straley, 2007). Like Comte and Spencer, Hostos equated evolution to progress, and looked at the natural sciences as a model for social and educational inquiry. Hostos drew upon the work of Spencer to argue that education should act upon different aspects of human personality to contribute to the preservation of society and the individual.

The writings of the Christian philosopher Karl Krause were in vogue in Spain during the time Hostos lived there. Krause sought to reconcile the idea of God known by faith, with empirical knowledge acquired through our senses (Burns, 2019). Spanish Krausists wedded a liberal commitment to individual freedom with a theist scientific rationalism. Similar to Karl

Krause, Hostos regarded human beings as the most intimate and harmonious outcome of nature.

He avoided the metaphysical undertone of Krause and focused on nature as a deterministic force of its own for the development of human civilization. Hostos replaced Krause’s pursuit of unity with God as the historical duty of human beings, with unity within the laws of nature. Hostos was influenced by European educators, including Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. Rousseau emphasized the intrinsic goodness of children, learning from nature, and creative freedom.

Pestalozzi, and Froebel developed educational systems that viewed childhood as a differentiated period of life with its own needs and qualities. These principles were central to Hostos’s work as

I discuss in later sections. Scholars have also noted that, because Hostos drew from a broad pool of influences—including Spencer, Comte, Krause, Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Rousseau—his philosophy and educational theory cannot be boxed within a single trend of thought (Blanco-

Fombona, 1972; Henríquez Ureña, 1994; Pedreira, 1932).

Hostos was a prolific writer. He authored over 50 published and unpublished books, and numerous essays in journals and newspapers. He wrote on a broad range of issues, including sociology, law, politics, ethics, geography, literature, art criticism, and education. For scholars, the main challenge has been fragmentation of Hostos’s ideas. For instance, except for his history of pedagogy, most of his ideas on education are dispersed in different publications, including notes taken by his students at the normal school of Santo Domingo. Hostos never wrote a comprehensive, polished version of his pedagogy. Some scholars attributed the inconsistencies found in some of Hostos’s writing, including aspects of his educational thought, to his preference for contemporaneous oral discourse over writing when articulating his ideas (Henriquez Ureña,

1939; Rosa, 2003).

Drawing and Manual Training in Hostos’ Educational Philosophy

Hostos’s approach did several things that revolutionized education in the Dominican

Republic. First, it lifted pedagogy to the status of a science, where the responsibility to educate required a properly trained prsofessional, thoughtful prior planning to identify relevant content, an adequate methodology, and assessment. Students had to take exams for most subjects to show evidence of their learning process. In the case of drawing and manual training, the department of public instruction encouraged teachers to develop the habit of collecting from four to five examples of the best students’ work every class to show regional supervisors as evidence of what students had learned in their classes (“Plan de estudios de la escuela primaria elemental,” 1928).

Second, it contributed to a different understanding of childhood as a separate period of life with its own needs and demands. This was an important shift at a time when children were incorporated into adult work very early in their lives. Children needed to be studied and understood.

Hostos died in 1903, but his ideas remained the dominant paradigm in education until the

1930s. Hostos’s essays and notes taken by his students were often published in the journals

Revista Escolar and Revista de Educación. His photograph was on the front page of the main education journal (Revista Escolar) between 1910 and 1911. During the U.S. military occupation of 1916-1924, Hostos’s disciples were appointed to key positions in the department of public instruction. Some viewed the U.S. occupation as an opportunity to put into practice Hostos’s ideas, which had not been fully implemented because of bureaucratic burdens and political instability (Castillo, 1976).

Figure 3. Guidelines for drawing and manual training, In Revista de Educación. (1919), 3, pp. 343-345.

The curriculum guidelines shown in Figure 3 (above) provide a sense of the functions drawing and manual training played in Hostos’s modern education and how they were supposed to be taught. Drawing and manual work were often taught by the same teacher. Some instructions in this curriculum were very specific, such as not allowing students to copy from printed images that circulated at the time. This unit plan for drawing and manual training was published in the

April-May issue of the 1919 Journal Revista de Educación. These instructions were not written by Hostos himself, but they captured the essence of his educational philosophy. In what follows,

I narrate a hypothetical scenario of how I imagined drawing might have been taught, based on the guidelines described in the curriculum unit on Figure 3. Then I identify and examine four principles foundational to Dominican modern education in the early 20th century in relation to

Hostos’ philosophy.

Imagining Hostos’ Drawing and Manual Training

In the spring of 1887 Master Juan Perez prepared to start his drawing class for boys at

Salvador secondary school in Santo Domingo. Perez arrived at the classroom half an hour before his well-dressed students walked through the front door. Perez, who also taught math, had graduated from Higher Normal School of Santo Domingo, which enabled him to teach in primary and secondary schools. Four years earlier, he had attended the workshop Economic

Course in Drawing and Painting taught by artist Juan F. Corredor at the preparatory school of

Santo Domingo. Since the workshop was sponsored by Education Allies Society—a non-profit group—his only expense was for art supplies. Perez got ready for class by opening all the windows to make sure students would have sufficient natural light, which is very important to perceive the real colors of the objects in the composition. After that, Perez removed a few notebooks and other objects he had left on his desk the day before to arrange the day’s composition on a clean surface. He placed a white cloth on his desk before strategically placing a single Cayenne flower next to a large orange he had picked earlier from his own garden. The flower was attached to a large stem, from which four leaves sprawled asymmetrically.

At the door, Perez greeted each student warmly as they arrived. After taking attendance,

Perez instructed the students to retrieve, in an orderly fashion, a wooden board from the back of the room. Use thumb tacks to fix the paper to the boards. Remember, you should not move the paper while you draw. You should habituate your hand to move your pencil in all directions,

Perez asserted. After ensuring that the students had sharpened their pencil and affixed their papers, Perez asked them to sit up straight and make sure they are well placed in relation to the composition. Perez continued: I want you to look at the composition attentively for a few minutes. Don’t let anything distract you. Now, with your right-hand index finger, outline in the

79 air all the contours you see while keeping your back straight. Now, retaining this mental image of the composition, and using very thin lines, I want you to start sketching on your paper. Feel free to look at the composition as much as you need, but try memorize the image as much as possible. Once you are sure you have captured the forms correctly, you can use stronger lines and color. Some students raised their hands to let him know they had completed the task. He approached each student individually, and asked them to keep looking attentively to see if they had missed any details. Perez also asked them specific questions about shape, form, and proportion to help them see any details they might have missed.

The above narrative gives an idea of the technical and practical habits drawing and manual training teachers were supposed to develop. These habits were to be grounded on at least four pedagogical principles and pursuits, including developing attention, progressive ordering of content, encouraging self-motivated apprehension nature’s laws, and fostering self- determination. I discuss each of these principles in the following subsections.

To Attend is to Understand

For Hostos and his disciples, drawing and manual work had several functions, including: to complement their learning in other school subjects; develop a graphic language and means of expression; intelligently educating the senses; develop promptness and accuracy; awaken in them the love of nature; and introduce the children to aesthetic principles (“Enseñanza del Dibujo,”

1920). Within the context of school, the end goal of art education was not to develop art skills.

Hostos recognized, however, that artistic outcomes might be an additional benefit, since drawing and manual training enabled students to discover their artistic vocation early in life (“Sección official,” 1911, p. 2). While drawing and manual training served more than one function, the primary goal was the development of analytical and hand skills. The department of public

80 instruction stated that the motto of the normal school founded on the principles of rational education was “to attend is to understand; to understand is to know… and with it we indicate the capital importance of drawing education” (“Dibujo,” 1919, p. 375). Dominican modern educators influenced by Hostos believed drawing and manual training contributed to the development of attention which was a considered a foundational disposition to acquiring knowledge.

Hostos’s connection between drawing and manual work with development of attention as a foundation for the acquisition of positive knowledge was anchored on two pillars of his philosophy. First, he believed the world can be objectively known through our senses. Second, he argued the principles regulating all aspects of human life—including social, economic, political, and intellectual aspects—do not need to be invented. They have already been created by nature itself. We just need the tools to discover them. Moral, social, and intellectual progress is possible when we align ourselves with those perfect principles. In Hostos’s deterministic views, the exact knowledge of nature and social laws allows us to determine how much good we have accomplished and how much needs to be done to achieve the refinement of humanity (Ureña,

1939). As humans, we can access these principles embedded in nature because we are the most refined outcome of nature’s evolution. Our brains have been wired by nature to decode those principles. Through the proper training of our intellectual faculties we can learn to access those principles on our own.10

For Hostos, reasoning is the most fundamental skill in the acquisition of knowledge and therefore the main focus of education. Reasoning involves the activation of various faculties each

10 Hostos was a philosophical realist in the sense that he believed reality could be known, regardless of our conceptual scheme. Rojas Osorio (2012) also placed Hostos within the tradition of empiricism, because of Hostos’s reliance on experience through the senses as the first source of knowledge.

81 responsible for perceiving and processing different aspects of reality, including perception, graphic memory, attention, association, and imagination. Since content (knowledge) can be easily forgotten, Hostos was more concerned with developing our capacity for self-learning rather than memorizing content. He emphasized the development of physical, moral, and intellectual habits (“Dibujo,” 1919). This was a radical departure from the prevailing scholastic model that emphasized memorization and unquestioned veneration of authorities.

For Hostos, one of the ways in which drawing and manual training contribute to the development of reason is by training the mind to pay close attention to detail. Hostos considered attention to be a fundamental, often disdained, mental faculty. He was convinced that we fail to apprehend moral and social principles embedded in nature because our senses have not been properly trained. We look, but we don’t see:

It is not enough to look at it in one glance to oppose the reason in operation so that it

knows the shape of that object; it will be necessary that the organ of perception that in

this case is the sight is fixed again and again on the object, so that the faculties of reason

are operating until they result in the analysis of the object and its exact representation.

(Hostos, 1919, p. 68)

In this context, drawing and manual training play a disciplinary function in training our senses through intense and continuous observation. Teachers were supposed to guide students to pay close attention to the distinctiveness, relationships, and details of things by drawing both entire compositions, and each object separately. Students started exercising these operations on a two-dimensional plane in drawing classes, and then performed the same operations in three- dimension through manual training. Teachers were responsible for keeping students engaged for as long as possible. When students thought they were finished, the teacher was to encourage

82 them, through Socratic questions, to find the details they had missed and to continue working on those details until their work achieved an acceptable level of accuracy. For Hostos, seeing, which is foundational for understanding, requires discipline. Drawing and manual training exercises contributed to our disposition to see by developing our concentration, endurance, and capacity to pay attention to details. For instance, in Hostos’s modern education, by learning sewing and embroidery in female crafts, students could also understand scientific principles such as how net insects build their webs (Henríquez Ureña, 1994).

It is possible that for Hostos, drawing and manual training provided a venue for the development of contemplative and analytical dispositions that other school subjects did not. This likely has to do with the fact that representations of reality in these subjects were less abstract than in other classes. Hostos stated that “as artists translate the internal by the external, they express and learn to communicate accurately the relationships between the man that is seen outside and the man who lives inside” (Hostos, 1906, p. 105). He believed drawing and manual training help visualize and advance this exercise of apprehension of nature’s principles. In the case of drawing, for instance, the curriculum on Figure 3 noted that teachers should not be concerned with the different marks students leave in their drawings as they correct their first sketches. These marks are a testimony of students’ learning, because they show how perception was corrected as the students looked—again and again—at the object. Drawing lent itself to this

“try and fail” process. Drawing and manual training made possible the materialization of mental processes and brought them closer to further examination. The idea of bringing processes to a material state where they could be dissected by observation would have made sense for a positivist social scientist such as Hostos. Because of that, drawing and manual training classes were as important as other school subjects at the time.

Hostos believed skills developed through drawing and manual training provide the backbone for higher mental processes. Training our senses to effectively perceive an objective reality leads to the discovery of truth and the increase of knowledge. When education is done correctly, it enables all individuals, regardless of race, social class or gender, to perceive universal truths through the exercise of their own mental faculties. This, in turn, would lead to the improvement of society, since development of thinking skills [reasoning] and sensibilities

[moral sense] would allow individuals to make the best decisions for their own good [morality], and the good of others [ethics]. In Hostos’s framework, drawing education in school is a methodological instrument, a means by which to acquire objective knowledge about the world that contributes to the improvement of society.

Hostos assumed that acute observation, imagination, and attention to details developed in drawing and manual training would transfer into the students’ ability to judge social, moral, economic, and political situations. In regard to drawing classes, the department of public instruction stated that “the continuity of actions and duties imposed by acute attention, should be strategically used by the teacher so that students could later exercise it in their thoughts”

(“Dibujo,” 1919, p. 375). For Hostos, sensation is the most immediate response to an object or idea, and authentic knowledge requires a perfect union between the initial sensation and our memory of the properties of the object being observed. He believed drawing and manual training contributed to building a more objective reservoir of the properties of the objects on our memories, therefore facilitating a more successful association of ideas. Thus, skills acquired in these classes would facilitate making new associations, better analyses, creativity, and more

84 contemplative citizens so needed in the new republic. Hostos’s rationale was that to perceive we need to attend, and to judge, we need to perceive.11

Learning is Progressive and Logical

For Hostos, the logic embedded in the natural world not only provides the basis for principles that should guide moral and social laws; nature’s logic also provides the methodology for the sciences, including pedagogy. He believed the scientific method was not artificial, but a process of orderly and logical thinking embedded in the way nature itself evolved. Education, including drawing and manual training, must follow nature’s principles. This why he called his pedagogical approach the Natural Method, Objective Method, or Scientific Pedagogy. The principle of progression, which Hostos adapted from Spencer and Comte, holds that nature reveals to us that things develop in a logical order, from simple to complex, including human intelligence, history, and society. Similarly, human intelligence develops its faculties in a logical order that correspond to different biological stages: intuition (child), induction (adolescent), deduction (young adults), and systematization (adults). Every human being’s infancy should be seen in parallel with humankind’s infancy, and the playfulness of childhood as the seed of the creative capacities of the grown men (“Trabajos manuales,” 1919).

Teachers were expected to adapt their pedagogy and subject matter to match children’s biological and intellectual development stages. Hostos’s natural method stressed that we learn from the perception of an object to the conception of an idea; from the object to the interpretation, from the concrete to the abstract, from the undefined to the defined. Hostos developed very technical categories that included how various types of knowledge were

11Hostos stated: "The principle of all knowledge acquisition is in the perfect union or relationship that the memory of the properties of the object establishes with the sensation is the initial form of the idea, as its point of departure is the sensation” (Hostos & Blanco Díaz, 2010, p. 46).

85 perceived by subsequent mental faculties. For example, physical reality was perceived by the senses, moral nature by conscience, and intellectual realities by reason itself. Teachers needed to guide students to perceive the different aspects of reality with the right faculty. For example, perceiving moral reality with the wrong faculty could lead to wrong outcomes.

In drawing and manual training, students were to move from simple forms to more complex ones. For instance, starting from drawing a single petaled-flower using one or two colors, students advanced to drawing a multi-colored flower with two petals. More complexity was added as students showed mastery of the prior exercises. The final goal was to render detailed objects from memory. The same was true for manual training where all content was to be scaffolded in a progressive and logical manner. In manual training for girls, one of the instructions for the design of doll’s clothing was that teachers were to start with those pieces that required less difficulty, such as handkerchiefs, mantillas, triangles, waistbands, and simple bibs.

Hostos also created a hierarchy for pedagogical strategies based on the immediacy toward the subject being studied. He argued that students needed to be exposed to the real object whenever possible. Thus, students were brought to natural settings, or real objects were brought to the classroom. Hostos termed this the corporeal method. In the absence of a real object, priority was given to the graphic method, which consisted of a visual or three-dimensional modeling of real objects. Two more methods followed in this hierarchy: the explicative and the synthetic methods. Explicative referred to explanations given orally by teachers; while synthetic referred to exercises where students abbreviated certain knowledge. According to one of his students, Hostos stated that the graphic method is often preferred over the corporeal because, through drawing and manual training, the operation of understanding is subordinated to the hand.

The graphic method entailed a process of reflection generated in the interplay of doing and thinking in the representation of reality in drawing and manual training exercises (Hostos, 1919).

The department of public instruction following Hostos’s guidelines, cautioned teachers to be careful when judging the work made by children. Adults needed to consider that children had not yet developed the imitative ability to render certain objects with accuracy. With young children, the teacher also needed to avoid abstract and theoretical concepts, as the young were deemed to be more disposed toward intuitive experiences. First and foremost, young children were to be given opportunities to touch and make (Hostos, 1910).12

Decoding Nature’s Harmony

Students were to keep in mind that beyond capturing details, it was also important to represent things in a harmonious order. The department of public instruction asked teachers to

“ensure that the intelligence of the child not only has the time necessary for the appropriation of the details of the object it represents, but also of the unity these details concur to build”

(“Dibujo,” 1919, p. 375). This emphasis on perceiving harmonious principles from nature in drawing and manual training seems to be connected to Hostos’s moral philosophy. Hostos argued that the physical order was geometrically harmonious and perfect, and that our sense of duty comes from the contemplation and spontaneous deduction of the many relations that link us to the world (Hostos, 1906). Since drawing and manual training enable us to attend to these relations, they were seen as conducive to the translation of universal mathematical and geometrical harmonic principles of nature into moral and social norms. Here, Hostos seemed to

12There were exercises that were to be done by both boys and girls, but after a certain age, girls and boys had different exercises. Female handiwork was oriented toward domestic work. For boys, manual training was oriented toward vocational and farming tasks. I further discuss this distinction in Chapter 6.

87 insert himself into the tradition of 18th-century philosophers who believed in a correlation between goodness and beauty.

Hostos viewed society as an organism, which, similar to those in the natural world, suffered from illnesses caused by excesses or lack of attention to natural laws. These illnesses can be cured once we diagnose the problem. Hostos sees the problem of evil in society as a matter of asynchrony with nature’s laws. For example, despotism is a distortion of a universal social law. The problem of the world is a problem of knowledge, since synchronizing with nature’s laws depends upon our knowledge of those principles. Hostos is not a revolutionary in a strict sense. He understood that society has already developed institutions and systems that are good, and only need the occasional tune-up to work effectively. Therefore, an increase of positivist knowledge and science will eventually lead to the betterment of society.

For Hostos, the problem of evil is one of human limitation, which he associates with will.

An evil person is someone who has unleashed his/her will. Once dominated by reason, will can work for the good of the individual and society, since it can become a force towards goodness.

This is the cause of the many vices with which individuals and societies struggle. Hostos likely assumed that acute observation of harmonic principles in nature, through drawing and manual training, will lead to the apprehension of universal social and moral principles such as tolerance, liberty, progress, conservation, industriousness, and selflessness. As students exercise themselves in the imitation of the beautiful forms of nature, they learn harmonious principles thought to be applicable in social life. That eventually was to be translated into real actions.

Hostos and Dominican liberals in the 19th century assumed Spencer’s concept of social evolution, where our capacity to adapt to new circumstances, was dependent upon our ability of association. From this, they derived their argument of educating the individual to not only do

88 what they judge to be good for themselves, but also for humankind. The idea of incremental positivist knowledge and our associative capacity as a condition for progress led to the creation of numerous intellectual societies, libraries, and publications. Teachers were to incentivize in students the spirit of incorporation, by supporting the creation of students’ clubs. Then, the school would become a magnet for the community to foster the same associative spirit. Hostos saw the work of artists in general as moralizing, and important for the ideal of the republic.

While Hostos rejected religious institutions, he admired the use of art in religious discourse to instruct people into certain ideals. Similarly, he believed that the arts, in a secular republic, should serve to lead people toward the ideals of the republic. For Hostos, the arts should not be about self-discovery, but an active element of civilization, moralization, and humanity (Hostos,

1906).

Leaving Room for Artistic Liberty

For Hostos, learning to live in harmony and artistic liberty were not mutually exclusive.

In fact, he saw reasoning, which is responsible for social cohesiveness, and freedom as interdependent. The department of public instruction asked teachers to privilege drawing from natural models, wanting not to suffocate students’ spontaneity. In the case of manual training, teachers were supposed to avoid repetitive exercises that could make the class monotonous

(“Trabajos manuales,” 1919). Artistic liberty in this context did not mean that students were encouraged to experiment in an open-ended way, as we might think of artistic liberty today. In

Hostos’s model, examples of artistic liberty were compositions of objects initiated by students in the classroom, and sketches of objects selected by students done as homework. To him, artistic liberty could be best understood in political terms as something that exists between anarchy and dictatorship, which is consistent with his overall social project. Hostos detested the disciplinary

89 system of the colonial school, but did not favor total anarchy in the classroom. Instead of imposing a set of rules by authority, teachers were to convince their students that behaving in certain way was for their own good. Because of this, Hostos strongly opposed all forms of copying. He did not consider textbooks to be necessary for drawing and manual training classes, since nature was the best model.

Within his determinism, Hostos acknowledged elements of individuality. History serves as the foundation for his theory of social development. We inherited a level of development passed down by the prior generation. Since knowledge is not revealed to us all at once, but progressively, we cannot make radical jumps in the historical evolution of society. However, he believed individuals have a historic duty to lift the level of civilization they encountered. Hostos sees education as the most important agent to act upon society. Individuality, which needed to be protected in drawing and manual training classes, was about enabling the democratic citizen to not remain passive to their moral and historical duty to advance our civilization. Hostos stated:

The child will be a man, the man will be a citizen, the citizen will have someday in his

hand, in his vote, in his word, in his reason, in his strength of conscience, the destiny of

the country… He needs to be a good child or a good teenager before becoming a good

man… It is, therefore, indispensable that he learns the true order in school. (Hostos,

1912, p. 53)

Here, Hostos draws a difference between the subject who is a man, and the one who is a citizen. The citizen has been equipped, through the right education, to have the will and conscience to act upon society. For Hostos, the lack of initiative was the reason why the Puerto

Rican people did not join the independence struggles advanced by enlightened figures such as

Ramon E. Betances. Colonial powers and religious institutions had benefited from an education

90 that fostered following uncritically the command of the authorities. Social progress requires both discipline and initiative (Fiallo, 1911). While it was important to behave according to the law,

Hostos wanted the republican citizen to react when authorities violated social and moral principles.

Whose Art and Culture?

Hostos and other 19th-century liberals believed all citizens were entitled to an education regardless of gender, skin color, or socioeconomic condition. They genuinely believed in democratizing access to education and the arts, which, up to that moment, had been the domain of the upper classes. However, that did not mean that all cultures and traditions were worth learning about. For Hostos and his disciples, the arts and education played a civilizing and disciplinary function. The liberal ideal of civilization, inspired by European nations and the

United States, held that giving the working classes access to the so-called high culture would contribute to the reduction of many of the vices affecting the working classes. Poverty was seen as a problem of morality and the individual’s attitude towards life, not a problem of wealth distribution, and access to concrete opportunities for economic development. Bringing the arts of the elite and former colonial powers down to the working classes to make the working classes more sophisticated and enlightened presupposed a disregard for rural and popular arts and culture, where African heritage was most alive.

Late 19th-century liberals saw themselves siding with the working class against an oppressive aristocracy benefitting from inherited colonial structures. Liberals viewed primary school education as a means of introducing the poor to the intellectual and moral pleasure they ignored because they were completely devoid of education and culture. An article published in a newspaper owned by the intellectual society Sociedad Literaria Amigos del País put it this way:

One of the most important issues to be addressed in our country, because it is a cause for

the betterment of customs and an indispensable requirement of civilization, is without

any dispute, the instruction of the people. What means do we use, what dispositions we

give, what acts we execute and what thoughts do we put into practice to illustrate the

masses… deprived of the light and the direct resources to achieve it? (“El Estudio,” 1879,

p. 10)

These intellectuals saw themselves as the sacrificial heroes imbuing the holy grail of elite culture to the less fortunate.

It is important to be cautious about accusing Hostos of attempting to replicate European models in the Caribbean. Hostos admired the industrial development and judicial system of the

United States and various European nations. However, for him, the condition of civilization was an ideal no nation had yet achieved, and the Americas had much to contribute to. Hostos also recognized the contributions of non-western nations to this ideal of civilization (Hostos, 1906).

Hostos believed that nations with considerable evidence of industrial and intellectual progress, regardless of their skin color, had elements of barbarism in them. For Hostos, the persecution of the Jews and abuses of Chinese workers were examples of uncivilized acts carried out by industrialized nations. These were cases of incongruities between industrial development and moral progress. In addition, many of Hostos’s ideas were based on a counter-discourse to

European colonial narratives arguing that Caribbean nations were not capable of self-governing.

Most scholars agreed that Hostos actively opposed slavery, racism, and favored women’s education (Henríquez Ureña, 1994; Pedreira, 1932; Rojas Osorio, 2012), and that adopting a more conservative strand of positivism allowed him to distance himself from racist discourses

(Maldonado-Denis, 1992). Some scholars have characterized Hostos as having an ambivalent

92 view on racial issues (Mayes, 2015; Torres-Saillant, 1998). Peña Batlle, who was the strongest opponent of Hostos’s ideas, critiqued Hostos for having a favorable view toward Haiti.

According to Batlle, Hostos stated that while Haitian occupation was damaging in certain areas, thanks to that it was possible “to create a government of equals for whites, Blacks and mestizos; without Whites contesting the Mestizos or Blacks their political and social elevation; without

Mestizos and Blacks being displeased to obey White men as chiefs (Rodríguez Demorizi, 1939, p. 216).

In regard to Hostos, there is a rejection of the popular and rural culture that comes through his methodological speculations. By privileging objective, rational knowledge, Hostos excludes the knowledge of groups with little formal education, who lacked the sophistication to articulate their traditions in scientifically convincing ways. In his critique of vocational art exhibitions while living in Santiago de Chile, Hostos argued that there are two kinds of judgements made about a work of art. One is the vulgar critic, which is an incomplete reasoning exercise. The other is the scientific critic, which is rooted in reason; when applied using the most scrupulous method, it results in an exact judgement. While the use of the word vulgar in

Hostos’s writing does not refer exclusively to knowledge coming from the lower classes, it certainly includes it.

Hostos believed that art fosters imaginative thinking, and that imagination, within limits, contributes to the discovery of truth. However, he was suspicious about imagination, intuitive knowledge, and the sentiments (Bosch, 1976; Rosa, 2003). His interest in art in the context of school centered on developing a scientific observation of reality. The intuitive, expressive, and emotional facets that we typically associate with art-making in school today were treated with distrust by Hostos. He used the concept of will (voluntad) as something close to intuitive

93 knowledge, which he placed against rational knowledge. Hostos argued that reason should dominate over imagination; over the faith of the coalman; and science (Pedreira, 1932). He used the image of the coalman to create a duality between the ignorant worker and the educated scientist. It assumes that knowledge produces good, and ignorance produces vices. For Hostos, the triumph of reason is what leads us to a virtuous life. We overcome our vices when we learn to police will by reason. The development of reason only happens through scientific education, which the countrymen and the urban poor lacked. This stance is rooted in modern scientific reasoning that understood the disembodied, verifiable through empirical means, as the only trustworthy knowledge. By this token, works of the imagination conflict with reason.

Imagination becomes a disposition associated with superstition and idolatry, which needs to be opposed.

Since oral traditions, music, dances, and crafts produced by popular and rural groups— where most people of African heritage concentrated—were seen as superstitious, and the outcomes of unfiltered works of the imagination, they were likely considered evidence of vices that needed to be eradicated. One instance that gives us an idea of Hostos’s posture on this matter is a description by one of his sons, Adolfo de Hostos, about a family visit to rural Puerto Rico. In this description, a typical countryman, wearing traditional clothes, carries several homemade musical instruments which he uses to make folk music. According to Adolfo, his father responded by saying that this music was characteristic of a country deprived of liberty. Hostos rejected the farmer’s music and way of life, arguing that the peasant’s music is a subjective creation that is stimulating, but not contemplative (Hostos y Bonilla, 1966). It is likely that

Hostos dispensed the same gesture to the arts and crafts produced by peasants.

For most of Hostos’s lifetime, there was still optimism about the potential of education to effect change in society. Starting from the assumption that the early American republics failed because citizens lacked a republican conscience, 19th-century liberals believed education would produce the solution to many social problems in no time. This ideal was well stated in an article published in El Nuevo Regimen in 1901:

The modern school is the workshop where modern men are prepared… it is secular and

scientific… there is nothing greater than a public school system that lifts a whole

generation from the slavery of ignorance… the new school will produce, in just a few

years, a radical change in the way of being of Dominican society… it will become a

nation where work and knowledge will worth more than futility and ignorance… and the

government of the people by the people will be a constitutional reality. (Castillo, 1901, p.

139)

After Hostos died in 1903, his disciples had to deal with the disappointment of not seeing the social and economic achievements he had foretold. Political instability, economic pressure, and the failures of the education system to integrate most of the population contributed to the emergence of pessimistic discourse from Dominican intellectuals. Intellectuals appropriated discriminatory colonial and semi-scientific narratives to blame the lack of progress on the intrinsic conditions of the Dominican people. This situation was not unique to the Dominican

Republic. Trigo (2000) argued that in the late 19th century, scholars in Latin America appropriated scientific paradigms and popular imagery to normalize a state of crisis, and to present the continent as sick and situate themselves as authorities. Felix Evaristo Mejia, who was superintendent of education and director of the normal school in Santo Domingo, stated the following:

Our society is not only economically poor, but it is also, unfortunately, intellectually,

morally and disciplinarily; and of ideals; in the teaching staff of technical and

pedagogical competence. And it is rich in prejudices of all kinds, like all backward

people. From here new obstacles. (Mejia, 1910, p. 52)

Mejia blamed the lack of progress in education on the nature of the Dominican people.

He argued that the education system was sick because of the laziness of teachers and lack of parental interest in the education of their own children. For Mejia, this had a ripple effect, because the lack of success in education was the cause of disorganization and lack of discipline that made the country ungovernable (Mejia, 1912). To deal with this issue, Mejia proposed bringing in teachers from Germany for special subjects such as drawing and manual training.

Germans were stereotypically believed to have a high work ethic and discipline. This initiative was part of a trend in Latin American countries where policies were made to encourage white migration from European countries.

After Hostos, some intellectuals argued that the ineptitude of the Dominican people was rooted in its racial condition. Americo Lugo, for example, argued that the Dominican people could not achieve progress because they comprised fragments of three inferior races—Spanish,

Tainos, and Africans (Lugo & Peña-Batlle, 1952, p. 226). Lugo blamed the illiterate working class for the barbarism in which the country was immersed, while praising a small privileged class of intellectuals who represented the salvation for a failed country.

Conclusion

Hostos, with the support of late 19th century Dominican liberals, spearheaded the transition from scholastic education—led by the Catholic church—to an education grounded on scientific principles and liberal ideals. Drawing and manual training in the Dominican modern

96 school inspired by Hostos were not complementary activities to more rigorous subjects or random imitation of classes taught in western countries. These were well-thought-out classes believed to significantly contribute to a republican consciousness by facilitating the apprehension of universal principles embedded in the natural world. Through the identification of four underlying pedagogical principles, this chapter demonstrates that drawing and manual training in early-20th-century Dominican education were deeply connected to Hostos’s philosophy and social project. At the same time, drawing and manual training offer a different angle from which to understand Hostos’s social and political project for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Hostos has been characterized as an independent intellectual who was capable of adapting ideas from European thinkers that helped refine his philosophy while, at the same time, rejecting many of the assumptions he disagreed with from those same authors (Blanco-Fombona,

1972; Henríquez Ureña, 1994; Pedreira, 1932). This chapter reveals that a case for Hostos’s originality can also be argued in relation to his approach to drawing and manual training. Hostos cited Pestalozzi and Froebel several times in his writings; however, he does not follow their approach to drawing education. Hostos incorporated some of Pestalozzi’s line exercises in geometry classes, but, in drawing and manual training, avoided Pestalozzi’s rigid focus on line- precision work. While there are some similarities between Hostos and the role of drawing in awaking perception and drawing from memory in Froebel’s approach, Hostos distanced himself from Froebel’s emphasis on the study of geometric form. Hostos also had a different take on the role of imagination in drawing and manual training. Since the Renaissance, drawing was used by upper-class families to introduce their children to good taste in art. Magazine articles of the time have suggested that this rationale for drawing education was known in the Dominican Republic

97 in the second half of the 19th century. This approach would have been too impractical to produce the social change Hostos envisioned.

With the industrial revolution in the 19th century, drawing education became a skill associated with the development of precision, neatness, and industriousness needed in manufacturing jobs. In 1870, the state of Massachusetts passed a law to provide drawing education to all public-school students. This law was backed by a thriving industrial class interested in a workforce that could produce more competitively manufactured goods. Hostos was in Boston in 1876 and visited other industrial cities in the Northeast of the United States on several occasions. For somebody with the intellectual and political curiosity of Hostos, he would have familiarized himself with the industrial drawing initiatives taking place in the United States in the 1870s. Hostos admired the U.S. approach in providing the young with the necessary skills to enable them to be effective in the workforce (Hostos, 1911). However, to Hostos, intellectual and moral development were more important than industrial development. He defined a “proper social being” as one that “needed to be a complete workman, a proper inquirer, and a punctual accomplisher of the virtues of reason” (Henríquez Ureña, 1994, p. 67). Though thoroughly familiar with these different rationales for drawing and manual training, he developed an original and sophisticated approach to drawing and manual training based on pseudo-scientific principles and 19th-century philosophy, along with his reflection of the political reality and socioeconomic demographics in Latin America and the Caribbean.

While Hostos escaped some of the biases of western thinkers from whom he drew inspiration, his epistemological approach led him to reject the art and culture of marginalized groups as authentic knowledge that needed to be protected and celebrated. Despite the disparity between vocabulary of the 19th-century liberal and 20th-century revolutionary, there is significant

98 overlap between Hostos and Freire in that both envisioned education as a means of developing a consciousness needed for a more just individual and social life. There is another significant difference: Hostos began with the assumption that the world follows a natural order; this same assumption led western scientists and philosophers to categorize non-western ‘others’ as being of a lower status (Painter, 2011). Even though Hostos viewed racism and gender discrimination as a deviance from the natural order of the world, embracing a deterministic understanding of history limited his capacity to recognize the arbitrary nature of social institutions, including schools and the law. Downplaying the role of human action in the system of laws and values that creates inequality within education systems—as argued by Freire—led Hostos and his followers to see themselves as carriers of a higher order of values.

Hostos’s legacy was cut short with the arrival of the dictatorship in 1930. Since then, in

Dominican education, Hostos has existed as a ghost that is summoned at times, but without a clear statement as to what kind of shadow his figure casts on the present. A law enacted in 2014 desginated Hostos’s death anniversary, January 11, the national education day. There are also several monuments and schools named after him. But, as claimed by Rojas Osorio (2012), while

Hostos has become a celebrated historical figure, his ideas have remained largely ignored. At the very least, this chapter contributes to more informed debates about Hostos’s legacy in Dominican education generally, and his impact on art education in particular. Hostos’s influenced declined amidst the spectre of conservatism during Trujillo’s dictatorship (1930-1961), especially in the context of education. Early 20th-century nationalism replaced Hostos’s postulates of modern education based on universal principles. The influence of Dominican Nationalism in art education is the focus of the next chapter.

CHAPTER 5

DRAWING A NATION: ART EDUCATION IN THE DOMINICAN NATIONAL SCHOOL

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In Chapter 4, I indicated that liberal intellectuals and politicians under the influence of

Eugenio Maria de Hostos led educational reforms that regarded drawing and manual training as important subjects in primary and secondary schools. They viewed education and the arts as instrumental in civilizing the working classes. Cultural practices coming from popular and rural citizens were seen as vices curbing the industrial, moral, and political progress of the country. By the 1920s, a new generation of intellectuals began to denounce how the universalizing rhetoric of

19th-century intellectuals privileged European culture to the detriment of local cultures. Starting in the 1910s, but gaining the form of a systematic strategy between 1930-1961, Dominican leaders embarked on a project to nationalize education, so that young Dominicans would learn to love their homeland and local traditions. For these intellectuals, many of the problems the country faced had to do with the lack of a national consciousness. During this time, the rural person became the symbol of uncorrupted Dominican identity.

Trujillo (1930-1961) enacted laws to nationalize various facets of the Dominican economy, society, and education. Trujillo stated the following:

I have firmly determined upon the reconstruction of the Dominican people and this

reconstruction must have its best basis in a school system which, …may accomplish the

ideal of forming Dominicans who understand the fundamental problems of this country

and who may be capable of solving them. (Trujillo, 1934, p. 8)

This quote well summarizes the change of direction from a heavy reliance on foreign models of

19th-century intellectuals, to an inward exploration of what constituted Dominicanness. For

Trujillo and his intellectuals, the most fundamental goal of education was to develop Dominicans who were interested in, and capable of, dealing with the problems that were particular to the

Dominican Republic.

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Historians of education have pointed out that educational reforms were fundamental to

Trujillo’s ideological project to unify the country under the concept of a national identity premised on a Catholic, Hispanic, anti-Haitian, and anticommunist posture (Hernandez, 2004;

Mejía-Ricart, 1981; Prats-Ramirez, 1981). However, how the rhetoric of nationalization influenced educational reforms has remained undertheorized. In this chapter, I argue that producing a school that fostered national sentiment was the driving element in art education during this period. Teachers were encouraged to instill in their students a love for the nation through the celebration of a romanticized vision of the countryside. Similar to Trujillo’s appropriation of popular music (Alvarez-Lopez, 2014), I argue that this manufactured use of rural imagery served to advance the elite’s narrative of a white Dominican identity, and to normalize a racial imaginary that negated the country’s African heritage. I argue that, because of children’s art and play conjure images of innocence, it was utilized under this nationalistic approach to frame the elite’s racial discourse as “natural.”

Crafting of a Dominican School

Young nationalists leading the independence movement in 1844 valued the role of education in the development of a Dominican consciousness, which was key to the separation struggles. The idea of cultural, religious, and linguistic differences, as articulated by these nationalists, played a fundamental role in the drafting of the constitution, but had a limited impact on formal education. Public education was limited at the time and remained under the colonial model. Hostos, who modernized public education in the 1880s, held in high regard the independence heroes as an example of moral commitment to the democratic republic. Hostos also defended the idea of regional patriotism based on the shared history and cultural values of the Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean. However, he addressed nationalism with a

102 universalizing undertone. He focused on developing a universal consciousness that could build on the level of civilization inherited by our collective humanity, which he believed was key to the success of the new republic (Blanco-Fombona, 1972; Henríquez Ureña, 1994). Evidence of the lack of strong nationalism is the fact that throughout the late 19th century, several groups still sought the annexation of the country to Spain, France, or the United States. It was during

Trujillo’s era, that the question of what it means to be Dominican, became a substantial, and a systematic, driving force in education reform.

In the early 20th century, various events contributed to the consolidation of a Dominican consciousness. For most of the 19th century, the country had developed into three distinct regions, shaped by particular economic activities, as if they were different countries (Moya Pons,

1995). The construction of new roads and the telegraphs in the early 20th century facilitated internal commerce and brought regional cultures closer to each other. By the 1920s, there was already a large body of literature, visual art, and social science work with national character.

Previously, educators had to rely on books produced by European authors addressing issues that were not particular to the Dominican experience. U.S. occupation from 1916-1924 contributed to questioning what it meant to “be Dominican.” As the Dominican elite made the case that their country was capable of self-governing, they contended for a legitimacy that was grounded in the unique history and cultural identity of the country. By the early 20th century, positivism was in decline. A new generation of intellectuals critiqued the biased underpinning of positivism as an excuse to impose European culture. The Mexican Revolution (1910s), Indigenismo (1920s), and

Blackness movement in the Caribbean (1930s) brought new perspectives to indigenous and

African heritage as cultural patrimonies to be celebrated. This combination of factors contributed

103 to ensuring that the question of Dominican identity would become more relevant to society and to education reformers.

Since the 1910s, scholars have been concerned with the failure of schools to encourage national sentiment and patriotism. They argued that the modern system inherited from Hostos was not sufficiently rigorous in teaching students national history, which they considered foundational and instrumental in fostering social cohesiveness. Fabio Fiallo (1912), in a series of conferences on education published in Revista Escolar, pointed to the lack of studies in

Dominican history, geography, and literature in school, and recommended the use of colonial monuments to teach students about their history (Fiallo, 1911). For Fiallo, young urbanites lacked discipline and patriotism, because schools failed to instill civic and moral values based on the example of national heroes and national values. In 1915, Americo Lugo stated that “to form

Dominicans and not the hybrid species that are forming our schools, with lack of orientation and ideal, we need precisely the opposite of particularism: the nationalization of teaching” (Lugo &

Julia, 1977, pp. 189–190). As Lugo noted, a national education project would contribute to emphasizing the principles and values shared by all Dominicans, as opposed to favoring regional identities. For Lugo, U.S. occupation represented a threat to national traditions which needed to be protected through general education. Lugo suggested the creation of a national curriculum based on the country’s history, tradition, maritime, and agricultural situation (Lugo & Julia,

1977).

While the nationalization of education had been part of the public conversation since the

1910s, during Trujillo’s dictatorship, these ideas were galvanized and converted into a national project. In 1931, the director of education, Max Henriquez Ureña, in response to earlier concerns about the lack of textbooks produced by Dominican authors, proposed to Trujillo a plan to slowly

104 replace foreign books. That same year, the government passed a law to incentivize the production of national textbooks (Henriquez Ureña, 1931). In 1933, Jose Antonio Bonilla Atiles, dean of the law school at the university of Santo Domingo, stated that the main priorities of education were to nationalize education and teacher training. For him, nationalizing education was crucial in producing social cohesiveness and civility. Aurelio Cucurullo, normal school professor and a strong supporter of the regime’s cultural policies, stated that “the school, in all its levels, aided by other institutions, from the household, aided by the press, books, and the tribune, is the one called to awaken more and more the nationalist sentiments” (Cucurullo, 1944, p. 25). The school was to avoid the denationalization that starts with the loss of a nation’s folklore.

Figure 4. Education before and after Trujillo, from Alma Dominicana, 2, pp. 34-35, 1934.

Trujillo not only attributed to himself the creation of a true Dominican school, but also the building of the country from scratch. Intellectuals loyal to Trujillo credited him as being the

‘Father of the country’ through various means, pointing to the radical modernization of the country, border security, and liberation from foreign debt under his rule. The images above show the striking contrast between schools before and after Trujillo, as advertised during his dictatorship. The old school was disorganized. The image on the left was drawn by an American

105 illustrator during the U.S. occupation from 1916 to 1924 to parody the state of Dominican schools at the time. It shows some students sleeping, and others attending to their chickens. This school lacked authority, order, and direction. The new school is the opposite. The infrastructure is modern and beautiful. School uniforms were introduced, symbolizing discipline and cohesiveness. The physical appearance and the performance of the new school were intended to mirror Trujillo’s government as a whole. State propaganda called Trujillo the educator and reformer of the Dominican people. For Lugo, it was only post-Trujillo that the Dominican

Republic was conceived as its own nation based on a common history, with its own language, territory, religion, patriotic symbols and ethnic foundations (Alvarez-Lopez, 2014). However, this common history, as I discuss later, was not inclusive. The educational laws, textbooks, out- of-school programs, and teacher training were intentionally designed to favor the elite’s narrative of a European heritage.

The regime deployed various strategies to normalize several myths, including the negation of an Afro-Dominican heritage, and the idealization of Trujillo’s image. Trujillo’s absolute control of the country did not depend on the political use of the military, nor on his personal wealth accumulated over many years, nor on the fact that the dominant class was subordinated economically and politically to him, but on the systemic use of myths and lies as instruments of ideological domination (Derby, 2009; Mateo, 1993). These myths inhabit all forms of cultural practices, including education and the arts. Intellectual societies, archives, folklore, radio and TV were used to rewrite history (Alvarez-Lopez, 2014). The crafting of a national school system was a cornerstone for the larger ideological project of the dictatorship.

The commitment to a Hispanic and Catholic identity was reaffirmed in the educational law of

1952 (Ley-2909), which stated the following:

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The content of education given by Dominican schools will be based on the principles of

Christian civilization and Hispanic tradition that are fundamental in the formation of our

historical physiognomy and will be guided, within the democratic spirit of our

institutions, to awaken in the students the Pan-Americanist feeling and the one of

international understanding and solidarity. (Art.1).

A concordat with the Catholic Church signed in 1954 strengthened the Hispanic-Catholic identity by giving the church larger participation in decision-making within educational policy and administration.

Sources of Identity

Figure 5. Campesino Dominicano 1941, oil painting by Yoryi Morel, in Museo de Arte Moderno (Museum of Modern Art), Santo Domingo. This painting is an iconographic representation of the traditional Dominican farmer.

Figure 5 (above) portrays a painting by Yoryi Morel (1906-1979), who is today known as the national artist of the Dominican Republic. His representation of life in the Dominican

107 countryside is emblematic of the creole identity celebrated during Trujillo’s era. Different from urban centers, the countryside was probably assumed to have remained more impermeable to foreign interventions and distortion of the original traditions of the Dominican people. Rural migration to urban centers incentivized by industrialization in the 1940s likely contributed to an image of the countryside as sites for nostalgia. Morel’s painting embodies the new orientation— celebrating a romanticized image of the countryside—as a pure representation of Dominican identity. This celebration of the peasant’s lifestyle contended with prior colonialist and imperialist discourses. In the Spanish colonial system, the contours of the city served to draw imaginary and physical boundaries between civilization and barbarism. The urban center, where the Spaniards lived, existed in contrast with the uncivilized rural areas, where Indians dueled.

Post-independence, liberals regarded European urban centers as models for progress and regarded rural tradition as backward and unsophisticated. During the U.S. occupation (1916-24), cockfights were forbidden, and other local traditions were frowned upon. In Morel’s painting, the traditional attire of the country person, the humble houses roofed with palm leaves, and the rural landscape—images and traditions formerly associated with poverty—have been reframed. The way of speaking of the rural man which, in the past, was despised, was now viewed as evidence of the colorful quality of old Spanish (Santiaguero, 1943). The countryside was then depicted as a source of national pride.

The appropriation of the countryside as a source of national identity posited internal contradictions to the narrative of a White Dominican identity, considering the fact that the colored population was more predominant in rural areas (Moya Pons, 2009). For modernists under Hostos’s influence, the White urbanites, who benefited most from the educational opportunities, represented the model of citizenship that the “backward” countryside needed to

108 follow. To deal with this contradiction, Trujillo’s intellectuals privileged in their imagery. farmers from the northern part of the country, where the White population was greater (Alvarez-Lopez,

2014). The Department of Education stated that not all forms of rural culture were to be celebrated, but only “those wholesome forms of our folklore that give the creole the guidelines and profile suiting their personality” (Revista de Educacion, 1933, p. 14). The selection of only those ‘wholesome’ traditions of the country likely entailed avoiding the cultural practices and crafts that resembled African traditions that could be associated with Haiti.

This celebration of rural folklore was not intended to pull Dominicans away from the narrative of a Hispanic heritage, but was an instrument to reaffirm this very narrative. Alvarez-

Lopez (2014), analyzing the appropriation of Dominican popular music, argued that Trujillo’s intellectuals had distorted the history of merengue—officialized by Trujillo as the Dominican national genre—to negate the obvious African contribution to this popular rhythm. For the same reasons, they chose to market the brand of merengue produced in the northern part of the country, which was also the place of origin of the national oligarchy and the white farmers.

Morel offered a representation of rural life that fit the narrative of a country comprising Spanish settlers who had been tanned by the tropical sun and who adapted Taino traditions to survive in the new climate.

This narrative was built on a new interpretation of Dominican history best articulated in the work of Manuel A. Pena Batlle (Lugo & Peña-Batlle, 1952; Peña Batlle & Balcácer, 1989).

Batlle is widely regarded as the most important ideologue of the Trujillo dictatorship (Mateo,

1993). Batlle aggressively opposed Hostos’s secularism and defended the Catholic and Hispanic foundations of the country. Batlle argued that when Spain created the colony of Santo Domingo, it was the most advanced European nation, and that Dominicans were faithful recipients and

109 guardians of the Spanish and Latin civilization in the Americas. For him, the misfortune of the country did not reside in an intrinsic incapacity of the Dominican People, as liberals believed.

Instead, he attributed the country’s problems to its historical misfortunes and foreign invasions.

This included a few bad decisions made by the Spanish crown but, most importantly, the legacy of French, Haitian, and U.S. invasions.

For Batlle, the worst of all foreign invasions was the Haitian occupation (Peña Batlle &

Balcácer, 1989). He argued that Dominican independence entailed a process of introspection; a going back to our past so as not to lose our Spanish identity, which was threatened by an imminent Haitian invasion. The anti-Haitian sentiment fueled a narrative of identity that highlighted cultural and phenotypical differences with Haiti. Since the African presence was stronger in Haiti, the legacy of African heritage was downplayed in the Dominican Republic.

This rhetoric incited discrimination against Haitians and dark-skinned Dominicans. Anti-Haitian sentiment led to the genocide of 18,000 Haitians in 1937 (Moya Pons, 1995).

Since the official narrative of Dominican identity was constructed on the idea of resisting

“Hatianization” by protecting its Spanish roots, the content and form of education was oriented to serve that purpose. Because of that, schools became an important part of border politics even before Trujillo. In the 1920s, several reports by education supervisors raised the issue of growing

Haitian populations in areas bordering the Dominican Republic. They proposed creating more schools to keep the Dominican population from moving out of those areas and to attract white immigrants (Cucurullo, 1919; Ortega, 1922). Drawing upon earlier projects to incentivize white migration, in the 1930s and 1940s, Trujillo facilitated the arrival of Spanish, Jewish, and

Japanese migrants, races he held in high esteem. He believed these immigrants would enhance the Dominican race and serve as a human wall in the border areas. Trujillo created several

110 vocational schools along the border to make the Dominican frontier with Haiti more attractive to the white population.13

This premise—of drawing a difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic based on the lack of Blackness among Dominicans— was echoed by education supervisor Augusto

Ortega in 1922. The supervisor started his report on the state of education in the northwestern part of the country by describing how different the Dominican physiognomy is from the Haitian, designating the Dominicans as mostly mestizo. He said there were few purely Black Dominicans in those areas. He warned the government of the threat to the Dominican population—and the likelihood the population would become darker-skinned—if nothing was done to stem the

Haitian population (Ortega, 1922, as cited in Rodriguez Demorizi, 1975). With the nationalization of education, anti-Haitian sentiment as a defining component of Dominican identity was institutionalized. An internal report created by the U.S. diplomatic delegation on the issue of education and national defense highlighted the emphasis on teaching about the Haitian invasion and the cultural differences between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The U.S. delegation concluded that this mode of teaching national history instilled in young Dominicans deep hatred towards their neighbors (U.S. Office of Cultural Affairs, 1943).

The creation of the national history archive and research center, a national visual arts school, and a national museum facilitated the centralization of cultural and intellectual discourse and the elaboration of a systematic philosophy of history (Cassá, 1993; Mateo, 1993). Rafael

Diaz Niese, a doctor who interacted with artists in France and returned to his home country due to World War II, convinced Trujillo about the importance of having cultural policies and art

13In 1937, Trujillo welcomed Spaniards who wanted to escape the Spanish civil war. During World War II, Trujillo opened the door to Jews and, later, to a group of Japanese families. Several Spanish immigrants who were artists became the first generation of professors at the National Art School created in 1942.

111 centers sponsored by the state. Exhibitions and public art sponsored by the government facilitated the normalization of the government’s narrative of Dominican identity. While these strategies were most evident during Trujillo’s dictatorship, they are not exclusive to this time period, and continued during the conservative government of Balaguer (1966-1978; 1986-1996).

Balaguer had served as secretary of education and puppet president for Trujillo. For Felix Garcia

Carrasco (1983), both Trujillo and Balaguer suppressed the African legacy in the Dominican culture which he considered to be the true nature of our cultural makeup. Garcia-Pena (2016) argued that during the Trujillo and Balaguer (1966-76) governments, the required literature in

Spanish classes was carefully selected to indoctrinate the children in a process of national de- identification with Blackness. Art education books produced by Dominican authors in the 1980s echoed the nationalistic drive of the earlier times (Lara, 1982; Sandoval-Lara, 1988). Figure drawing in these books focused on capturing details of country life, colonial ruins, and learning about Dominican artists and the legacy of the National Art School. Some suggestions for teachers included taking students to art exhibitions and interviewing artists working with indigenous art.

National Art Education

Love for the beauty of rural imagery and traditions as a vehicle to instill patriotism and pride in the nation’s autonomous values became a driving principle of art education reform during Trujillo’s era. Ramon Emilio Jimenez (1934), general superintendent of education, said the following: “This crusade of practical and fruitful nationalism extends to the schools in order to remove from the Dominican people the renunciation of their own native characteristics and to give them a national and indigenous personality” (Jimenez, 1934, p. 22). By terming the nationalistic educational reform a crusade, Jimenez gave his statement a sense of urgency. This

112 resonates with Batlle’s argument that Dominican identity needed to be protected because it had been through continuous foreign invasions, and the latent threat—Haiti—across the border.

For music education in school, an important effort was to produce a songbook based on national and popular songs. Musicians had joined the initiative of nationalism through the celebration of rural folklore by collecting and notating traditional songs. In home economics classes, female students were required to learn to cook Dominican cuisine. Plays celebrating traditional culture were also performed at different venues (A. Jimenez, 1947). Government- sponsored radio hosted popular musicians and poets. Popular Merengue bands accompanied the president at official parties and events. The government’s efforts to nationalize school textbooks in all subjects seemed not to have been successful, where art education was concerned. Different from music education, textbooks from Spanish and American authors continued to be used in drawing and manual training. It is probable that the Department of Education did not receive a strong textbook proposal from Dominican authors for art education. It is possible that, as a way to compensate for the lack of national art education textbooks, the programmatic use of themed exhibitions and art contests served to encourage national themes.

Ordinance 35’41 of the Department of Public Education made explicit the interest of the government in nationalizing art education in schools. It stated the following:

Henceforth, the teaching of drawing in all primary school courses must be translated into

the personal interpretation of students’ natural environment, which is necessary for the

national sentiment this class must emphasize… It is important to completely replace

drawing from copies with natural and purely national matters. (Garrido, 1941, p. 66)

For Garrido, director of public education, drawing served to emphasize patriotism by directing students’ attention to the natural beauty of their tropical environment. The main focus

113 of art education in school was no longer to help develop mental skills; that formed the base of

Hostos’s democratic consciousness approach. Now art education was to instill love for local traditions, landscape, and pride in the use of traditional materials. In this new paradigm, cultivating emotions, sentiments, and feelings—both at a personal and at a social level—was the focal point of art education. Art in school, in addition to helping students express their individuality and vocational attitudes, was useful to help steer student’s attention to the things that make the Dominican people unique and special. One of the ways this was done was by reading a piece of poetry from a Dominican author that described the beauty of the country and rural landscape. Next, students were asked to draw or illustrate the poem based on how they imagined the setting (Leal, 1941). The repertoire of nationalistic art in school was not limited to the representation of the countryside; it also included beach landscapes, colonial ruins and monuments, indigenous motifs, and patriotic symbols. Patriotic symbols included portraits of the father of the country, Juan Pablo Duarte; drawings of the flag, coats of arms, and patron saints.

Representations of Duarte, a white man and devoted defender of the country’s catholic identity, reinforced the idea of a white Dominican identity.

In 1955, Trujillo organized a World Fair to celebrate 25 years of his government. This grandiose event was intended to show the world the industrial, agricultural, material, and artistic progress achieved under his administration. By 1955, Trujillo was the subject of serious criticism by the international community in regards to human rights violations. With the World Fair,

Trujillo sought to defuse this criticism by showing the world an image of a peaceful, progressive, and modern country. The fair lasted a year, but it was publicized extensively before, and after for political propaganda. Crafts made by boys and girls at vocational schools were displayed in the exhibition salon assigned to the Department of Public Education and Cultural Affairs. Two ideas

114 were highlighted in children’s craft exhibits. First, the progress achieved through the network of vocational secondary school for boys and girls. The Department of Education highlighted the connection between the arts and crafts learned in school, and their direct impact on the economy.

The narrative was that vocational education improved the quality of products made in national factories, private artisan shops, and domestic arts and crafts.

Figure 6. Dominican Doll (Marisol), 1950s, as part of the Dominican Studies Institute Special Collection at the City University of New York (CUNY).

Second, the exhibition was intended to underscore how the designs and materials used reflected the nature and authenticity of the Dominican people. The doll in Figure 6 is similar to those exhibited at Trujillo’s World Fair in 1955. While these dolls were originally created as a learning tool to teach girls needlework and design techniques, they later became souvenirs coveted by tourists at the airport and gift shops. For purposes of this analysis, I have named the doll “Marisol,” a common female name in the Dominican Republic. Marisol is a prime example

115 of the arts and crafts created by girls studying at vocational schools in the Dominican Republic.

Marisol was acquired during the Trujillo era by a Dominican who had emigrated to the United

States; the doll was subsequently donated to the Dominican Studies Special Collection at CUNY.

In primary school, manual training was the same for both boys and girls. It focused on general modeling and building techniques that served as a foundation for more specialized work at the secondary level. Vocational schools were, in theory, secondary education centers. They provided different training for boys and girls who followed the vocational education track after primary education. Students who went into a normal secondary school, i.e., teacher training, also received manual training and drawing education. They needed this training so as to teach drawing and manual training in primary schools. In vocational schools, girls were taught different sewing and embroidery techniques. Drawing and coloring classes were included in the curriculum to help young girls develop their own designs and patterns. They learn to make stuffed animals, doll clothing, children’s toys, and other decorative objects that would prepare them for domestic life. Art education in school aimed to help future mothers develop skills in different domestic crafts and good taste in the design of patterns based on national motifs.

This kind of training in domestic arts and crafts was not new to Trujillo’s educational reform. Liberal educators prior to Trujillo’s era had included domestic arts and crafts in the curriculum. What was new, however, was the emphasis on local materials and techniques, and national imagery. Half of Marisol’s dress is made of natural fiber extracted from the leaves of the cabuya plant, which was also commonly used in other tropical countries within Latin America.

In the Dominican Republic, this fiber has been used in the fabrication of ropes and bags, and in traditional arts and crafts, especially in rural areas. Attached to Marisol’s dress is a traditional bag, used in the countryside to carry vegetables, fruits, and tobacco. Both the bag and the base of

116 the feathered hat were made of a fiber extracted from a palm tree known as guano. Guano is used in the construction of a wide variety of traditional artifacts, including furniture and house roofing. These natural materials in Marisol’s clothing evoke the humble life of the Dominican countryside. The colorful clothing patterns and red ribbon around the waist resemble the dress styles of typical country girls. The Department of Education, through this kind of doll dressing work taught in vocational school, sought to instill in young girls a nationalist sentiment based on a romanticized image of the countryside.14

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, intellectual societies sponsored various exhibitions of children’s art in gathering places for the middle-class. Trujillo’s predilection in showing off his achievements took the exhibition of children’s arts and crafts to an entirely new level, by making such exhibition in schools compulsory at the end of each school year. Teachers were encouraged to keep one or two samples of students’ work at the end of every lesson. From that pool of children’s art, teachers were tasked with curating the mandatory end-of-the-year exhibition. The Department of Education then selected the best artwork from among the different schools to be displayed in national and international exhibitions. Winners of national and international contests were showcased in newspapers and magazines. It was also standard practice to bring students to historic monuments, churches, murals, public sculptures, and art exhibitions in the 1950s.

For the World’s Fair of 1955, the Department of Education developed a plan to bring all public students to the fair during the course of the school year. Exhibitions and children’s art contests sponsored by the government were part of a well-thought out strategy to advance the thematic and aesthetic preferences of the ruling elite. Since it was assumed that these events

14For information about guano fiber work still practiced today visit https://www.diariolibre.com/economia/una- historia-tejida-en-guano-AG1338064

117 displayed the best work made by students, they served as an inspiration for other students seeking to gain recognition in the coming year’s exhibition. Moreover, the exhibition of children’s art during Trujillo’s era was not motivated by an appreciation of children’s art work.

Showing the art made by Dominican children nationally and internationally served Trujillo by displaying a civilized, modern, and refined nation that he claimed to have built from scratch.

Evidence of this was the fact that the children’s drawings were worth displaying, but not worth preserving. These drawings were not preserved in the national archives or in the Department of

Education. They were disposable instruments of political propaganda.

As school arts and crafts became part of a propaganda campaign for displaying progress, they invited national and international audiences to imagine Dominican identity in very particular ways. Discourses are articulated through all sorts of textual modalities, including images and artifacts consumed and produced by children (Rose, 2012). The rendering of the world through the different technologies of visual representation is never neutral. While viewers have agency in reading the meaning of imagery, images are created to invite particular ways of seeing (Berger, 2008). Dolls made by girls in vocational schools, along with stuffed animals, likely became a part of the repertoire of toys children played with at home. For low-income families, these could have been the only toys children had access to. Scholars have problematized children’s material culture as historically located cultural objects that often serve to suffuse racial projects in very subtle ways (Bernstein, 2012; Schwarz, 2005). Dolls similar to

Marisol invited Dominican young girls to imagine and aspire to an ideal of beauty based on western canons.

A serious analysis of Marisol as an object that was part of the ideological project of the elite during Trujillo’s era must consider both implicit racial and gender assumptions. Sandoval

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(2000) highlighted the importance in recognizing the coexistence of multiple realms of marginality when problematizing forms of oppression. Mayes (2014) argued that the U.S. occupation of Santo Domingo (1916-1924) produced a crisis in Dominican manhood that forced men to redefine their masculinity. The political castration produced by the dominance of a stronger adversary generated a form of anti-imperial patriotism anchored in strong masculinity.

The patriotic man was envisioned as someone who, first and foremost, had his house in order.

Manly resistance needed to start in the house. North-American occupants brought their own prejudices against both the elite and working-class Dominican whom they did not see as “white.”

Upper-class Dominican men resorted to the discourse of a regionally shared Hispanic identity which had racist undertones. For Mayes, since the 1920s, as feminist groups assumed anti- imperialist language grounded in Hispanic heritage, they also succumbed to racist views. Trujillo tapped into this masculinity, while also being able to affect the organized feminist movement for his own gain. Organized feminist groups that had been active since the early 20th century gave in to the traditional definition of womanhood in exchange for voting rights and access to higher education.

In Trujillo’s era, the home became a metaphor for a country where women had an active role in keeping order, but which was ultimately to be led by the father of fathers, Trujillo himself.

In this scenario, proper womanhood was defined as the modest, white, Catholic woman. Women of color were situated outside the normal boundaries of proper womanhood. Women had a greater burden than men in Dominican anti-Black nationalism. Because of the ambivalence towards skin color as a racial marker, for women, straightening out the natural curls in their hair became an instrumental physical referent for non-Black self-identification. Hair became a foundational marker for Dominican women’s racial association and display of identity

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(Candelaria, 2007). As suggested by Marisol’s blond appearance, to the local and foreign eye, women were more civilized, the whiter and the more constrained by patriarchy they were. The celebration of the modestly-dressed, lighter skinned, and straight-haired ideal woman promoted social stereotypes and self-discontent in those young girls who lacked white biological features.

One possible counterargument regarding my interpretation of Marisol could be that only white plastic dolls were commercially available at the time and, because of that, the Department of Education did not have viable alternatives. This is unlikely. After the 1950s, plastic Black dolls were commercially available in the United States, from where they were likely purchased.

There were also alternatives to using plastic dolls, such as using dolls made from traditional materials, which fit better with the narratives of celebrating traditional arts and craft. This suggests, though, the need to look at racial politics and art education in the Dominican Republic within a larger scope. Scholars have pointed out the importance of a triangular model that considers not only the Dominican Republic and Haitian relationship in the development of racial politics, but also the role of imperial centers, including the United States. They have argued that, from the beginning, anti-Haitian and anti-Black nationalism in the DR was linked to the imperial project of rejecting the Haitian revolution (Candelario, 2007; Mayes, 2015; Ricourt, 2016;

Torres-Saillant, 1998). Since Haitian independence could inspire other slaves to revolt, it posed a threat to imperial powers, whose economies depended on a slave workforce. Even after slavery was abolished, the success of the Black republic represented a challenge to the western discourse of white superiority. Torres-Saillant (1998) argued that Dominican racial identification was influenced by how the country was perceived by powerful nations to whom they were linked politically and economically.

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Since whiteness was linked to civilization, it was instrumental to emphasize the racial difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in tandem with the differences in social and economic development. Illustrations and texts in a book published in 1946 in the United

States to teach American children about the Dominican Republic show that there was a transnational dimension to the perceived need to imagine the Dominican Republic as lighter and more civilized than Haiti (Henry & Wiese, 1946). A more recent example is the Dominican dolls created by Madame Alexander in the early 1980s. Similar to Marisol, these dolls are only different from other western dolls by their handkerchief and dress. This is very contradictory when one considers the large number of Dominican women who worked in Madame Alexander’s

Manhattan factory at the time. These dolls quite definitely did not mirror the identity of most of the Dominican immigrants who worked in that very factory (Peña-Gratereaux, Vargas, &

Cayena, 2010). The pervasive use of children’s material culture that disincentivized the recognition of Blackness in the Dominican Republic targeted both Dominican and North

American children.

Tactics of Exclusion

In the early 20th century, the famous Ecuadorian photographer Jose Domingo Laso created a series of photographs to promote the tourist potential of the historic city of Quito. Laso went through the painstaking process of scraping off any sign of Indians from the photography printing plates whom he had inadvertently captured in his photos. Laso, like many of his contemporaries, believed that certain bodies ruined the aesthetic of a city; these bodies held back the nation from resembling a European country (Mena, 2015). Laso’s physical act—scraping racialized bodies from photographic plates—serves as a metaphor for understanding the tactics of exclusion deployed against Black Dominicans during Trujillo’s era. While widespread

121 negative stereotypes about Black Dominicans circulated in major publications, the elite’s strategy focused on the exclusion of Blackness from public imagery and advertising. In public discourse and other facets of education, this exclusion of Blackness was clearly visible in intentionally celebrating only Hispanic and Native Taino identities. Celebration of national identity based on tropicalism, colonial monuments, and the display of a western aesthetic by those with editorial power were also strategies used to render African heritage invisible.

Africanness was something to be associated with its poorer and darker neighbor, Haiti.

Figure 7. Young Dominican students. Front page for an article dedicated to the Dominican Republic in the Mexican journal Auge, 50, p. 38, 1955.

When the organizers of the 1955 World Fair carefully selected what items to display to illustrate Dominican civilization, they did so under the assumption that civilization was equated with Whiteness. Evidence of the relevance of whiteness to the display of civility was further emphasized in the Mexican magazine Auge to describe Dominicans in cliqued terms “as Spanish as castanets” being notable examples of the civilized world (“La República Dominicana ejemplo del mundo civilizado,” 1955, p. 31). As shown in Figure 7, national and international

122 publications represented the typical urban Dominicans as white. Except for dark-skinned baseball players, dark-skinned Dominicans were mostly excluded from official imagery or represented as poor—and criminal. Various companies capitalized on indigenous words and imagery to market products produced nationally. Trujillo also undertook national mural and public art projects where the Dominican people were represented as the outcome of a complicated but, ultimately, happy marriage between the Spanish and Tainos. When objects are represented as works of art, they denote learned assumptions, including ideals of beauty, truth, status, and civilization (Berger, 2008). Commissioning public sculptures and murals gave

Trujillo’s nationalist discourse an aura of sophistication and sustained genealogy. In advertisements, glamor and success were associated with whiteness.

Since Africans who arrived as slaves did not have much material legacy, the reaffirmation of national identity based on material vestiges and written language used by the scientific community downplayed the country’s African heritage. Cultural policies and government funding focused on the preservation of colonial monuments and the display of indigenous archeology. In addition, the contribution of African culture in celebrated popular traditions was downplayed. In 1933, the government created a national agency responsible for the preservation of colonial national monuments. The Journal of Education regularly published lists of Taino words that were part of the Dominican vocabulary at the time. Following the visit of American folklorists R. S. Boggs, Lloyd Kasten, and H. B. Richardson in 1947, the government created the

National Institute of Folklore. Various festivals were organized in which folkloric dance and clothing were featured. These activities were celebrated without any acknowledgment of African culture. The discovery of the alleged remains of Christopher Columbus in 1877 in the cathedral of Santo Domingo gave the celebration of Hispanic heritage a thrust that lasted more than a

123 century. This earlier awakening was galvanized by Trujillo through a project involving the building of lighthouses to celebrate Western civilization in the Americas. In 1931, the government passed a law that mandated the celebration of Columbus Day—October 12—in schools (Baez Soler, 1931).15

In a country with a population that has been overwhelmingly Black and mixed-race, claiming a Hispanic identity generated contradiction that needed to be dealt with. Trujillo’s intellectuals argued that the brownness of the Dominican people and many traditions of African origin were the legacy of native Tainos, or that African blood had been diluted through many generations of interracial marriages. Trujillo took advantage of the long preference for intermediate racial categories of the Dominican people to delete from public discourse the idea of an African heritage (Candelario, 2007; García-Peña, 2016; Torres-Saillant, 1998). After the decline of the plantation economy in colonial times, cooperative free Blacks and those of mixed race—the majority of the population—became decolorized in the eyes of the ruling white elite.

Mixed-race people were deracialized as the sphere of Blackness became associated exclusively with slavery. This prevented mixed-race people from forming alliances with Black Dominicans

(Torres-Saillant, 1998). Trujillo’s intellectuals drew from these prior tendencies to substitute the word Indian for other signifiers that had more explicit Black connotations. This attitude was institutionalized to the extent that many Black Dominicans used the term Indian to describe their skin color on their national identification card. The fact that the indigenous population was exterminated during the Spanish colonization facilitated the appropriation of their past. During

15 Even Hostos, who held negative opinions about the Spanish civilization, viewed Columbus as someone motivated by scientific curiosity. This project was conceived as a symbol of fellowship of American nations, where all nations in the Americas would contribute their consent and financial support. Even though the idea was celebrated by most countries, the monument did not materialize until 1992, under the government of Joaquin Balaguer. While the lighthouse was not built till 1992, the project of building a lighthouse to store Columbus’ remains became an opportunity to assert the country’s Hispanic heritage in schools.

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Spanish annexation, some writers turned toward the country’s native themes to imagine themselves as the heirs of a heroic native past resisting Spanish occupation. Trujillo’s intellectuals also took advantage of the popularity of indigenous movements in other Latin

American countries in the early 20th century. While, in Latin America, Indigenismo was a more revolutionary movement, in the Dominican Republic it was driven by the oligarchy that was interested in producing a conciliatory representation of indigenous history.

In 1957, when Manuel Valldeperes wrote about the lack of fine arts that capture the spirit of the Dominican people, he was referring to Spanish and indigenous culture as sources of

Dominican identity. His diagnosis:

Santo Domingo lacks a visual arts tradition. Neither the few vestiges of Taino art nor the

slight memories that we have left of the colonial period have influenced the formation of

new art in the Dominican Republic, which is characterized today, mainly, by a deep

abstract and universal expression. (1957, p. 139)

Valldeperes was worried about the influence of abstractionism and its effect in deterring artists from focusing on national matters. He was building on the work of the first generation of

Dominican artists who had drawn upon colonial architecture, Catholic spirituality, the country’s political fathers, and national symbols to foster patriotism in the late 19th century and early 20th century. These various icons pointed to a collection of cultural practices that made the country different from Haiti, the former French colony. Standing colonial monuments and ruins were represented as dormant witnesses of the vicissitudes experienced by the Dominican Republic through the various foreign invasions, and as symbols of a surviving Hispanic substance.

This exclusion of African heritage in the visual arts likely had a ripple effect on art education in school. In Utopia de America, Pedro Henriquez Ureña (1925), who served as

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Director of Public Instruction between 1931 and 1933, highlighted several drawing education initiatives in Mexico that taught children to make Aztec and Maya patterns as a way to keep alive the pre-Hispanic aesthetic. In this text, he defends the blending of pre-Hispanic and Spanish aesthetics as the foundation for authentic art education in Latin America. Clearly, Henriquez

Ureña failed to recognize the importance of the African aesthetic and culture, especially in the

Caribbean (P. Henriquez Ureña, 1989).

Figure 8, Exhibition of national crafts at the World Fair in 1955. From Album de oro de la Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre, V. II, p. 232, 1956, Santo Domingo, R.D.

At the 1955 World Fair, examples of national craftsmanship, including metal work inspired by indigenous motifs, were displayed. These artifacts resembled religious figures made by the indigenous population. This exhibit invited school students to immerse themselves in an

“authentic” display of creole culture, based on a unified and motionless understanding of

Dominican culture where African Blackness was absent. The celebration of national craft not only focused on the use of traditional natural fibers, but also countryside-like accessories. The pavilion of the Department of Education and Fine Arts exhibited dresses and skirts with national designs. In art classes, students were asked to find inspiration from the natural landscape and

126 imagery to develop designs that celebrated Dominican identity. Some of the design patterns at the fair showed silhouettes of beach landscapes, coconut trees, and plantain leaves. The imagery of a tropical paradise evoked the virginity of the land before the arrival of European civilization.

The use of guano, cabuya fibers, and clothing materials in Marisol (Figure 6) were a reference to the natural wealth of the island and an abundance of Taino arts and crafts. This enabled young people to imagine an uninterrupted connection with the indigenous past through practices learned by Spanish settlers. The blond appearance of the manufactured plastic doll could be read as a representation of European body that, while originally alien to the land, was capable of learning to use local material from the natives. In this representation, the creole is a tropicalized European body. Ricourt (2016) refuted this notion of Taino tradition being gently passed down to Spanish colonizers. Slaves who escaped to the mountains were aided by rebel

Indians. She argued that Taino traditions survived through their alliances with African slaves.

Figure 9. Peasant couple dancing the Merengue. The dolls were made post-1950. Part of the Collection Centro Leon in Santiago, Dominican Republic.

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For Sandoval (2000), oppressed groups have developed strategies to survive and to speak to power from their position of marginality. The warning to pay attention to other ways in which race and identity have been imagined outside the elite’s narrative has been echoed by Dominican

Studies scholars who have argued that, since colonial times, there is evidence of a counter- narrative (García-Peña, 2016; Mayes, 2015; Ricourt, 2016; Torres-Saillant, 2006). As shown in

Figure 9, parallel narratives have existed in Dominican arts and craft. The creator of these dolls relied mostly on fabric which permitted a more faithful representation of Dominican brownness.

These dolls evoke the joy of merengue and the traditional clothing while, at the same time, legitimizing identities other than White. However, this kind of craft was marginalized and kept out of official archives. The dolls in Figure 9 belonged to a private collector, Rosa Tavares de

Cabral until recently, when she donated them to the Leon Art Center. Garcia Pena (2016) termed

Archives of Dominicanidad “historical documents, literary texts, monuments, and cultural representations sustaining national ideology” (p. 12). While alternative imaginings of racial identity already existed, through repetition of the elite’s discourse and the silencing of counternarratives, these other narratives were excluded from the Archives of Dominicanidad

(García-Peña, 2016). Imagery and aesthetic canons celebrated in art classes were instrumental in repeating and normalizing a White Dominican identity.

Conclusion

The emphasis Trujillo’s government gave to the public display of children’s art suggests that exhibiting children’s interpretation of Dominican identity was central to Trujillo’s educational and ideological projects. Toys, clothing, and accessories crafted in art classes and used as playthings at home discouraged students from accepting and celebrating their African heritage in subtle ways. Displaying the official racial narrative as an innocent and self-inspired

128 creation of children contributed to making the narrative seem natural. Wilson (2004) also questioned the idea of children’s creativity as an inner disposition detached from adults’ discourse. He argued that, in their art, children draw upon their environment, including visual culture, older students, and adults. During Trujillo’s era, children were bombarded with images, toys, public art, and language that favored western standards of beauty. The fact that the clothing on these dolls was handmade added an emotional layer to the culture of sharing and preserving these artifacts. It is safe to assume that dolls similar to Marisol were passed down from mothers and grandmothers to their daughters and granddaughters. These artifacts likely became symbols of emotional connection for the mothers and young girls, which allowed these artifacts to appear innocent and non-political, while concealing racial and gendered bias.

Instilling nationalism based on an idealized image of rural life and other Dominican traditions was a defining element in school art education between 1930 and 1961. This nationalism was connected to the larger ideological structure of the regime. The ruling elites deployed different strategies to manipulate patriotism and love for the nation in order to disdain the country’s Black heritage. Dominican elite not only produced racial hierarchies that benefited

White identity. The dominant narrative also had repercussions along gender, socioeconomic, and geographical lines. In the following chapter I discuss how vocational education was used to assert social difference beyond racial lines.

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CHAPTER 6

CRAFTING DIFFERENCE THROUGH VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

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Art education, as a component of equipping the workforce for emerging industries and modernizing existing ones, has been a central concern throughout the history of art education in the Dominican Republic. In this chapter, I discuss how vocational education developed in relation to the economic aspirations of the ruling classes, and in creating new working conditions generated by urbanization and modernization in the country. I argue that vocational education has been instrumental in reproducing social differences on the basis of class, race, gender, and location. Vocational education was seen both as a tool for social and individual progress, as well as a moralizing instrument to free the poor from the bad habits considered the cause of their low economic status. The examination of the functions vocational education played in Dominican schools reveals that, according to the ruling classes, individuals deserved different educational opportunities by virtue of their gender, rural or urban location, and socioeconomic status. I argue that vocational education served to diffuse growing interest of the urban poor, peasants, and women in higher education and to guarantee an affordable workforce needed by manufacturing industries in the urban centers.

I discuss why racial categories were not explicitly summoned in discourses promoting vocational training, even though racist viewpoints were at the forefront of advocacy discourses promoting this kind of education in the early 20th century. I identify strategies used to substitute racial categories, while privileging the traditional urban white elite. Unlike Chapters 4 and 5,

Chapter 6 stretches over a larger timeline: from the 1910s, to the 1980s. I start by examining early-20th-century arguments made by advocates of vocational education. Then, I outline several factors that allowed vocational education projects to succeed during Trujillo’s era (1930-1961). I then analyze how the same logic of distributing different educational opportunities through advocacy for vocational education continued decades after Trujillo. Lastly, I examine how taking

131 vocational education outside of schools affected art education in schools in the 1980s and produced an art education model that further deepened the divide between wealthier and working-class families.

Redeeming the Poor through Vocational Education

Figure 10, Modeling and sculpture class at the School of Manual Arts of Santo Domingo. From Revista de Educación, 28, p. 14, 1935.

Late 19th-century liberals and 20th-century conservatives were both fervently interested in vocational education. Both groups voiced their concern in newspapers about the lack of vocational education. In addition to fostering democratic citizenship, liberals were interested in developing an industrial craftsmanship that could gradually replace the demand for manufactured products from the United States and Europe (Fiallo, 1911). They sponsored several vocational schools in strategic cities and enacted laws to encourage vocational training. In 1906, the

Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Adolfo A. Nouel, denounced being scammed by a fake priest from the Netherlands who had fled with a large sum of money donated for the purpose of building an arts and crafts school (Meriño, Sáez, & Ortiz, 2007). Educational reformers, such as

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Fabio Fiallo (1911b), drew inspiration from industrial and vocational education in the United

States and in European countries. Fiallo argued that the lack of formality and sophistication in the national arts and crafts production was an outcome of the failure of the public education system to prepare people for these occupations. Fiallo stated that local craftsmen lost out to foreign artisans because of these flaws in education (Fiallo, 1911b). According to Bosch (1988), in the 1920s, a number of Dominican craftsmen lacked basic literacy and conducted business informally, sometimes by bartering. Bosch (1988) described them as follows: “[T]he artisans were numerous and could be seen going door to door offering their products. In some cases, although it was not normal, they agreed to exchange those products for eggs, chickens or clothing” (Bosch, 1988, p. 377). Vocational education advocates were interested to replace this kind of informality in the manufacturing of home goods.

Various vocational schools were founded at the beginning of the 20th century with the support of different cities. In 1923, there were 16 arts and crafts schools in the entire country, four of which were located in Santo Domingo. Some arts and crafts schools operated at primary school facilities during the evening, so people working during the day could attend. By 1923,

1,283 students had benefited from this kind of education. While this effort may have contributed to improving the finances of some individuals, it was not successful in professionalizing and industrializing arts and crafts production. Different from how vocational education developed in the United States, in the Dominican Republic, vocational education was not advocated, at least initially, by an already established industrial class but, instead, by intellectuals. Liberals, including Fiallo, believed vocational education would be the driving force for industrial and economic development and not the other way around, where an established industrial class required a workforce with a new set of skills. In the United States, vocational education focused

133 on the development of skills needed in factory work, such as punctuality, passiveness, and docility (Stankiewicz, 2002). For early 20th-century liberals in the Dominican Republic, vocational education would allow an already existing craftsman class to evolve into business owners and entrepreneurs. However, it was not until an industrial infrastructure was established—during Trujillo’s era (1930-1961)—that vocational education succeeded as a national project. In addition, liberals before Trujillo had unrealistic expectations about a possible correlation between industrial development and social mobility. They believed factories and other industries would produce a working middle class and not an exploited and underpaid proletariat.

During the late 19th and early 20th century, the Dominican Republic, like other Latin

American countries, relied on the export of raw materials—mainly sugar—to the United States and Europe. At the same time, it imported from those nations most of its requisite manufactured goods. While the country’s economy continued to rely heavily on the export of sugar cane,

Trujillo made significant efforts to reduce demand for foreign manufactured products. The scarcity of imports caused by the Great Depression in the 1930s motivated the establishment of new industrial plants in the country, including shoe, starch, beer, vegetable oil, tobacco, and pasta factories. World War II limited the capacity of industrialized nations to transport and trade their products. Trujillo took advantage of this situation to create a number of new factories, mostly in the city of Santo Domingo, including textiles, paint, glass, plastic, and clothing factories, and marble processing plants. Through a series of executive orders, Trujillo managed to reduce the hold of foreign investors on the export of raw materials. These measures increased his personal wealth, since he was the main investor in these ventures. The economic growth experienced by the retention of capital nationally, in turn, contributed to a higher demand for manufactured

134 goods. That, wedded with the accelerated growth of the population, generated a real demand for workers with advanced skills in manual training and various arts and craft trades. This context contributed to the expansion of vocational education in the 1940s. In 1950, nearly 10% of the population was employed as artisans in manufacturing and production processes, and manual work-related jobs (Dirección General de Estadística, 1950).

One of the important features of educational reform during Trujillo’s era was the centralization of vocational education, which was previously under the support and supervision of local municipalities. In 1932, the government created the first national arts and crafts school offering classes in woodworking, carpentry, blacksmithing, shoe making, pottery, leatherwork, tailoring, typography, and training for electricians. In the 1940s, a new educational policy was passed to foster vocational education in rural and urban areas. Vocational schools created by

Trujillo were, for the most part, envisioned as secondary education centers attended by students after completing primary education, or by students who did not complete primary education but who were classified as secondary school-going age. Vocational schools provided a third track in secondary education which, up to that point, focused on normal education for teachers, and preparatory education for those planning to pursue university degrees. Vocational education options—which included farming, commerce, home economics, manual trainings, and arts and crafts—were distributed according to the geographic location and gender of the students. Girls learned sewing, tailoring, and making ornaments that could be used in the confection of various household goods. Boys learned to extract natural fibers such as cabuya and guano; carpentry, and bricklaying. Home economics, manual training, and arts and crafts required several art and design courses, including drawing, Chinese ink, watercolor, and color theory. In preparation for

135 vocational secondary schools, industrial and line drawing exercises, letter-cutting, and box- building exercises were introduced in primary schools to all students.

Despite the existence of a level of agreement between liberals and conservative regarding vocational education, it is important to avoid assuming that there was a unifying discourse around the role of vocational education in Dominican society. Since Hostos’s approach, which emphasized developing democratic consciousness, was still relevant in the 1920s, debates emerged regarding the best way to integrate vocational training in schools, while retaining the core principles of Hostos’s educational philosophy. One of the points of debate was whether it would overload the secondary school curriculum. Realistically, there was a limit to the number of courses students were able to take in schools, and Hostos’s educational plan was already saturated. In addition, there was the problem of reciprocity between students who wanted to transfer from normal schools to the preparatory or vocational tracks. Some intellectuals proposed a comprehensive curriculum where students would be exposed to a wide range of experiences.

They wanted the following:

to offer to all a public education that is so holistic and complete, that when students

finish their general public education have the sufficient preparation needed to live; so that

whoever want to be a tailor, carpenter, farmer, commerce, musician, teacher, or just want

to have a general education, does not have to do much. (“Notes editorials,” 1919, p. 271).

For advocates of holistic education, all children had intellectual potential, and exposure to a wide range of subjects early in school would help students identify their vocations early in life.

It was believed that this would produce happier individuals and a more prosperous society

(“Notas editoriales,” 1919; “Oposicion a la ensenanza integra y fundamento de esta ensenanza,”

1911). It is important to highlight that, at this point, secondary education was available only to a

136 small segment of the population in urban areas, and industrial jobs were envisioned as middle- class occupations. Thus, this approach likely entailed giving a small number of urban, poor and middle-class students who were able to complete primary education the same opportunities as children of the elite. But students in rural areas, where most of the population lived, would have been excluded.

This ideal of the common school as a place where all students are provided with equal opportunities to pursue their natural vocation did not materialize. Secondary education served as a passage to higher education for the elite who aspired to administrative roles in the country, and for urban middle-class students to become normal teachers (Mejía-Ricart, 1981). During

Trujillo’s dictatorship, the establishment of vocational education along social class and gender lines was further exacerbated. Educational reformers in Trujillo’s era criticized the impracticality of an overloaded curriculum that merged liberal, normal, and vocational education. Despite high dropout rates in primary schools, the number of students pursuing secondary education increased during Trujillo’s era. Trujillo’s intellectuals argued that too many people were trying to pursue university degrees, including people who did not have the conditions for the intellectually challenging work the university entailed (Consuelo, 1952; Jimenez, 1934). During Trujillo’s era, admission requirements for vocational schools were kept low, which made vocational school suitable for poor families who were more likely to drop out of primary school. The 1934 law that regulated vocational education only required that students were taught basic math and writing courses, in addition to various vocational subjects. Many students lacked basic literacy on admission to arts and crafts schools (Jimenez & Mejia, 1934).

Vocational education grew exponentially after the 1940s to meet the demand for workers in the new industries and to provide non-university alternatives for working-class youth. In 1943,

137 out of 66 secondary schools in the country, 55 were vocational schools. The remaining 11 were preparatory and normal schools. Municipalities and private institutions, including religious orders, also created new arts and crafts schools in different cities. Some of these educational centers took the form of boarding schools, while others provided evening classes for day workers. In all cases, these schools were supervised by the Department of Education and required to follow the official curriculum. It is important to note that what was understood and prioritized as vocational education changed considerably over time as new technologies developed. Initially, the main focus of vocational education was arts and crafts. Later on, more technical areas gained prominence. In 1940, only twelve—non-vocational—secondary schools existed, representing less than 0.2% of the K-12 student population at the time. In only three years, the number of secondary schools increased by 33% (Lamarche, 1943). With accelerated population growth in the 1950s, more citizens competed for jobs in expanding industries.

Company owners took advantage of the situation to pay low salaries to their workforce (Moya

Pons, 2014), which contributed to the lower status of manufacturing jobs.16

After the 1930s, the government’s intention to simplify and depoliticize the curriculum was instrumental to its justification to limit the curriculum to practical training in arts and crafts schools. As Freire (1970) has argued, displaying schools as neutral spaces has been instrumental for the oppressor to limit the oppressed’s capacity to act upon their reality. Under the logic of only teaching students what was necessary for work, the critical citizenship envisioned by Hostos was now viewed as unnecessary intellectualism that taught students a little bit of everything, but not enough of what really mattered. Teaching skills without facilitating the development of tools to critically examine the political dimension of the individual’s access to available resources was

16In the 1950s, Trujillo’s government received funding and support from the United States to improve the quality of vocational education programs. I elaborate on this in Chapter 7.

138 strategic in producing more submissive workers and citizens during the military dictatorship. It also downplayed the political dimensions of educational opportunities available to working-class people, peasants, and women.

Vocational Education as a Moralizing Factor

In 1911, advocates of vocational education published in Revista Escolar an article by a well-known educator, Emilio Guarini, and professor of electricity and mechanics in Peru.

Guarini was almost contracted by the government of Ramón Cáceres (1906-1911) to start a school of arts and crafts in Santo Domingo (Revista Escolar, 1912). In his article, Guarini argued that Latin American aristocracy (land owners who benefited from the exploitation of the masses) had highjacked industrial development in the region by resisting vocational and industrial education. Drawing upon educational experiences in the United States and Switzerland, Guarini stated that public education should prepare people for practical life. His advocacy for vocational education carried biased assumptions about who would benefit the most from this kind of education. Guarini, who was an Italian migrant living in Peru, argued that “manual training is a redemptive form of teaching for the backward races in general, and above all, for the indigenous people of the mountains” (1911, p. 61). The idea of improving certain races and cultural groups was at the center of the promotion of vocational education in Latin America from the start. For

Latin American liberals, indigenous people lived in poverty because of moral flaws that could be corrected by developing industrious habits through vocational training.

Guarini drew from educational projects that camouflaged western racist views under the label of advocacy for the advancement of Blacks and Indians. Guarini referenced progress made in France and the United States in correcting the vices of Blacks and Indians through vocational education. Early 20th-century educational reformers Fabio Fiallo and Felix E. Mejia had visited

139 the United States to observe several industrial schools so as to adapt some of their ideas to the

Dominican context (Fiallo, 1911a). Mejia, with a delegation of Dominican educators, visited several vocational schools for minorities in the United States, including Baron de Hirsch trade school in New York. In his report, Mejia underscored the fact that these schools targeted poor

Jews who, according to the administrators of the schools, did not have the intelligence for occupations that were more mentally demanding. Referring to the Armstrong vocational school for Blacks, he noted that this school allowed Blacks to “redeem themselves from the vilest vices which almost every person [of color] in the Union possess" (Mejia, 1910, p. 33). Both Fiallo and

Mejia proposed the creation of vocational schools in the main provinces of the Dominican

Republic and modeled after industrial schools in the United States.

While racist discourses were an underlying component of advocacy arguments for vocational education in the early 20th century, in the Dominican context, intellectuals focused on social categories that did not explicitly rely on racial markers, but implied the biological superiority of lighter-skinned Dominicans. For example, Pellerano Alfau (1928), used the word

“pauperism” in reference to poor citizens who needed to be ‘corrected’ through vocational education (p. 3). Discourses of racial democracy in the Dominican Republic produced ambiguous racial signifiers. That complicated the translation of racist discourses originating in contexts dominated by well-defined racial categories. As I discussed in Chapter 5, in the

Dominican Republic, various factors contribute to the use of intermediate racial signifiers

(Candelario, 2007; García-Peña, 2016; Torres-Saillant, 1998). Under Trujillo’s anti-Haitian and anti-Black policies, many Dominicans chose to avoid identifying themselves as Black.

According to the 1950 census, in 1935, 13% of the population identified themselves as white,

19% as Black, and 68% as mestizo. In 1950, these numbers changed considerably. Then, 28% of

140 the population identified themselves as white, 11% as Black, and 60% as mestizo. The small number of white migrants does not account for this significant shift in racial identification in the population. Trujillo’s policies had a significant effect on how race and ethnicity were negotiated and documented.

In addition, the negation of African heritage in Dominican arts and culture during

Trujillo’s era was based on tactics of exclusion, where Blackness was erased from written and visual discourses. Explicitly assuming the duality of Whiteness vis-à-vis Blackness, as was the case in the United States, entailed the undesired recognition of the country’s African heritage.

That said, racist bias borrowed from western colonial logic did not disappear from the argument advocating vocational education in the Dominican Republic. Racism was hidden and wedded to other social categories that enabled the traditional elite to continue exercising political and economic control. Examining the development of the city of San Pedro in the early 20th century,

Mayes (2015) stated that while policing was not conceived in racial terms, the distribution of the city into “moral geographies” facilitated the designation of a lower social status to Black citizens

(Mayes, 2015, p. 81). For Mayes, as modernity was equated with Whiteness, and deviance to

Blackness in the official discourse, urbanizing practices located Black bodies outside the realm of modernity. Similarly, in education, signifiers such as poor, working-class, peasants, and farmers had ethno-racial implications, since these terms were often used in contrast with the ruling white urban elite. I argue that psychological testing was one of the tools used to reaffirm hierarchies that allowed the ruling White elite to justify distributing different educational opportunities in the visual arts to different social groups.

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Vocational Education and Psychological Profiling

Theories about human learning from psychology became an influential force in educational reform during Trujillo’s era, especially after the creation of the Center for Psycho-

Pedagogical Research (Instituto de Investigaciones Psicopedagógicas) in 1946. On one hand, psychological research stressed the importance of knowing children scientifically in order to design educational experiences based on their intellectual capacities and developmental stages.

On the other hand, it provided a scientific footing for the elite to limit access to educational opportunities for women, peasants, and the urban poor, based on the idea that certain individuals were naturally gifted with different intellectual skills. Education reformers encouraged parents not to waste their money on secondary and higher education for students with IQs lower than 90.

From this standpoint, the task of the educator was to diagnose, early on in their schooling years, what kind of vocation for which particular children were naturally gifted. Trujillo’s intellectuals argued that distributing students into their natural vocation categories early on entailed a more efficient use of school resources. Influential educators at the time argued that intelligence tests were a national necessity to enable teachers to classify students based on intelligence levels and to better understand behavioral problems. They recommended making intelligence tests accessible to every teacher (Gomez Oliver, 1934; Larrazabal Blanco, 1937).

Starting from the premise that intelligence was not transferable, educational reformers argued that mental skills and mechanical dexterity existed in separate domains. Thus, abilities in manual areas did not correlate with mental intelligence level. Students could be good at drawing, music, and manual training, but still have a low IQ. Larrazabal Blanco (1937) referenced the term talent to refer to the natural dexterity that certain students seem to have for manual training, which he defined as an ability to be skillful with handiwork. Even though he used the word

142 talento (talent), which could be understood as an appraisal, he stated that talent had nothing to do with intelligence. He placed intellectual work—or the study of traditional humanistic subjects— in a higher order of mental faculties. This argument placed secondary vocational education at a lower status in relation to teacher training in secondary normal schools, and liberal secondary education. Since this rhetoric reaffirmed negative stigmas about manual jobs, it likely contributed to deepening the divide between those who had access to liberal and normal education by virtue of their intelligence score, and those whose path was vocational training.

This rationale became a justification for the expansion of arts and crafts schools, which became the default option for students completing primary school who were deemed not adequately equipped for intellectual work (Gomez Oliver, 1934).

Psychological theories brought about positive changes to education, such as not considering children as blank slates, and tailoring education towards children’s individual needs.

Nonetheless, education reformers assumed intelligence tests were objective and valid instruments by which to measure students’ capacity to succeed in school, without accounting for how social factors affected students’ readiness for academic work. The accumulation of cultural and educational capital among families with prior formal education and more financial resources allowed them to give their children better opportunities to succeed in formal education. Symbolic violence was exercised through the imposition of categories of thoughts that lead dominated social agents to assume arbitrary social orders as just and natural (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990).

Similarly, IQ test scores that did not account for environmental influences allowed the elite to normalize limiting the access of marginalized groups to higher education. G.B. Palacín, who wrote several essays between 1941 and 1943 on the intersection of psychology and education, argued that we possess natural dispositions, including the capacity for attention and perception,

143 that are more decisive than external factors. He used the metaphor of the child being like a fabric which can be decorated on top, but whose intimate nature cannot be changed (Palacín, 1943).

These arguments enabled the ruling elite to market vocational education as an empowering tool for urban poor, working-class women, and peasants, while limiting their access to educational opportunities that could disrupt the status quo.

In the early 20th century, the application of intelligence tests in the educational context was tainted with racial biases. In his article on intelligence differences among students published in Revista de Investigaciones Psicopedagogicas (the Journal of Psycho-Pedagogical Research) in 1947, E. Claparede referenced Galtonian eugenics in his arguments. While Claparede did not suggest the use of eugenics in the school context, he encouraged teachers to follow closely the work of eugenic scientists, who, like Dalton, recommended eliminating the weak element within the races. Claparede situated intellectual and moral limitations as concomitant; thus, those who have lower IQs, or who devote themselves to less intellectual jobs, were seen as more inclined to moral degeneration. He argued that education should prepare people for the kinds of work for which they have the most aptitude. He postulated that an individual who was likely to work at a shoe factory needed to develop attention, dexterity, and honesty (Claparéde, 1947). Four books by Claparede were available for teachers and researchers at the library of the Institute of Pycho-

Pedagogical Research (Claparède, 1938, 1951, 1961, 1967). He was broadly cited by Dominican educators even before the Institute was founded (Lamarche, 1940; Palacin, 1941). Although it was complicated to enforce these views on racial categories in the Dominican context, considering the underlying racist rhetoric of psychological testing, it is possible that students’ skin tones played a factor in deciding how test results were interpreted. Claparede’s arguments likely echoed the sentiment of the ruling elite at the time, who understood the problem of poverty

144 as a problem of race and moral deviance. Empowered by psychological research, the ruling elite viewed themselves as a moral, political and intellectual authority over the morally deviant working classes.

Women’s Vocational Education

As early as 1919, Santo Domingo, Santiago, and Puerto Plata had professional schools for young women, where they learned tailoring, clothing design, embroidery, hat making, and home economics. Teachers in these schools were to awaken girls’ affection for these female labors by highlighting their utility to domestic economy (May, 1919). Drawing was included in the curriculum as a foundation for learning to create designs and motifs for clothing decoration.

Doll dressing was one of the methods used to teach basic construction techniques before working on life size patterns. Vocational schools for women were developed earlier than those for men.

Advocates for men’s vocational education drew upon the success of arts and crafts schools for women as an example of the kind of training young men needed. By the time Trujillo took power in 1930, there were 14 manual arts schools for women throughout the country. Under Trujillo’s centralizing strategy, in 1935, these schools were reduced to two, one in Santo Domingo, and another in Santiago. While boys needed to be 14 or older, girls were admitted at age 12. At the end of the training, young women gained the title of manual arts teachers and they could then become teachers in other vocational schools (Consejo Nacional de Educacion, 1933).

Young women received training in various trades, but near the end of their study, they had to choose an area of specialization. Similar to boys’ arts and crafts schools, manual arts schools for women only required basic math and Spanish grammar outside of the different manual courses. Under Hostos’s educational reform, normal education allowed many women to become primary and secondary teachers. By 1920 most primary teachers were women

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(Secretaría de Estado de lo Interior y Policía, 1975). Female teachers were paid the same as men, as long as they had the same qualifications (“Fondos adicionales para la educación publica,”

1919). Since co-education did not exist until the U.S. occupation in 1916, several women became school principals in schools for girls. Well-known examples are Salome Urena and Ercilia Pepin.

This opportunity was empowering, socially and economically, for women who traditionally were relegated to the role of family caretakers. Many poor women gained social mobility by becoming teachers. That said, career opportunities remained limited for women. Feminist groups had been advocating for women’s access to higher education since the early 20th century (Mayes, 2015). In

1942, as organized feminists supported the dictatorship, women were granted voting rights and access to higher education.

Different from the case of vocational education for boys, vocational training for women was available to both poor and wealthy students. It is possible that, as women in the elite struggled for access to higher education and more political visibility, vocational education was thought of as a means of providing women from wealthy families with a productive occupation, while keeping them within the constraints of expected social roles. The idea that there were class-based assumptions about the function of secondary vocational schools was most evident in the stated expectations for both working-class women and women from privileged families. This double purpose of manual schools for girls was well articulated in President Trujillo’s command to the director of education, Pedro Henriquez Ureña, regarding the need to prioritize vocational education. He said:

To inform the superintendency of its observations on the effectiveness of the industrial

schools for ladies and their results, to better the economic situation of the women of the

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poor classes; and to improve the technical capacity of women of the upper-classes,

making them first-class dressmakers. (Trujillo, 1933, p. 41)

While students shared some of the same courses, their expectations were different. Poor girls were not expected to become high-end tailors or to achieve national success as fashion designers. Working-class women were expected to make cheap clothing, or do tailoring for family and neighbors within their community.

Figure 11. Students from Industrial School for Women of Santo Domingo. From Revista de Educacion, 28, p. 16, 1935.

Trujillo created two different kinds of vocational education centers for women: home economics, and industrial schools. Home economics included accounting, basic health training, and elements of domestic arts and crafts. Industrial schools focused mainly on manual arts and crafts. Officially, these schools were not segregated along class and racial lines. However, the accessibility their geographic locations afforded likely contributed to a de facto socioeconomic segregation. Women of wealthier backgrounds were economically stable, since they depended

147 financially on their husbands or fathers. They were expected to administer the complicated expenses and logistics of a wealthy household, including knowing how to direct household servants and how to provide basic medical care for their children. Home economics education catered to wealthier girls to prevent them from going into “marriage without the useful knowledge for their mission of housewives and mothers of the house” (Jimenez, 1934, p. 40).

Middle-class women, who constituted most of the school teaching staff, had to attend home economics lessons once a week, since arts and crafts training, along with domestic management knowledge, was part of their job specifications as primary and secondary school teachers.

Even though vocational school contributed to the reaffirmation of social expectations that affected women from all social strata, working-class women had the biggest burden. For wealthier women, home economics helped to distinguish them as a higher social class by encouraging good taste and a more sophisticated arrangement of home spaces. Despite the gains made by feminist groups in terms of legal access to higher education in the 1940s, out of 1,300 people with university degrees in 1960, only 7% were women (Dirección General de Estadística,

1960). Women from low-income backgrounds were expected to access working opportunities that allowed them to contribute to the finances of their families without challenging the broader socioeconomic structures. Industrial schools that catered to working-class women and included housemaid courses, which did not exist in the home economics curriculum for wealthier women

(Consejo Nacional de Educacion, 1934). In 1935, out of 610 women registered in industrial schools, about half received special training for housemaid duties. Arts and crafts training for working-class women in industrial secondary schools aimed to afford opportunities for economic betterment within socially acceptable limits (Lamarche, 1935).17

17In 1960, people with higher education degrees represented 0.05% of the total population who had access to formal education (2,487,340), and 0.04% of the total population (3,047,070).

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In addition to the top-down assumption of limited entrepreneurial success for working- class women, vocational education was intended to fulfil a moralizing function. Trujillo’s educators argued that “girls from poor backgrounds yield to the degrading solicitation of vice to earn a living because they don’t have other means of earning a living honestly” (Consejo

Nacional de Educacion, 1933, p. 18). Camouflaged within an aura of progressive reforms, industrial schools for girls carried an underlying paternalistic rationale. Education reformers argued that poor women often lacked the protective arm of a man. Because of that, women were more economically and sexually vulnerable. In both cases, vocational education was promoted as a means to empower women, by making poor women more economically independent, and by giving rich women the tools to successfully administer their household.

Improving Rural Life through Aesthetic Education

Figure 12, Rudimentary Rural School of “El Paso de Moca.” From Revista de Educación, 21, p.36, 1933.

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Figure 12 shows a typical rural school of the 1930s. Female students are lined up in the front, and boys in the back. All students wear the standard school uniforms, with subtle differences between boys’ and girls’ uniforms. Seated at center is the director of the school, who, like all instructors, was required to observe a rigid and formal dress code. The organized display of students sitting in rows and the clean appearance of the school building were to evoke the discipline and progress achieved in rural education at the time. Text in the publication noted the beautiful garden out front, adorning the school. At the time, there were two types of primary schools: rudimentary and graded schools. Rudimentary schools, as shown in Figure 12, were typically one-room buildings where students of different ages and learning levels studied together under the supervision of one or more instructors, and were more commonly found in rural areas. In graded schools, students were distributed into different grades based on their educational level. Each level was attended by a designated teacher.

For liberals before Trujillo, de-ruralization of the country was a fundamental step towards civilization. The countryside was seen as backward, and diametrically opposed to urban modernity. Intellectuals such as Jose Ramon López (1866-1922) had argued that a poorly fed rural population was incapable of producing the mental rigor necessary for progress, and that they were closer to an animal-like condition than to a human state (López, 1991). In Chapter 5, I discussed how a romanticized image of the countryside became a resource for authentic

Dominican identity during Trujillo’s era. However, this ideological construct was based on carefully selected elements of rural life. In essence, the countryside remained a productive cultural space that needed to be fixed.

President Caceres and, later, Trujillo, were convinced that the Dominican Republic would always be a farming country. Both leaders enacted initiatives to encourage farming industries. In

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1920, the rural population represented 83% of the entire country. In 1960, the rural population ratio had reduced to 70%; still, most of the population lived in rural areas (Dirección General de

Estadística, 1960; Secretaría de Estado de lo Interior y Policía, 1975). In the 1940s, the government passed several laws to encourage families to have more children, under the assumption that the small population was a major cause for the lack of progress. During

Trujillo’s era, the concentration of land in the hands of a few national and foreign producers, the modernization of farming processes, the accelerated growth of the population, the concentration of working opportunities in urban centers, the availability of better educational opportunities and a higher standard of living in cities incentivized the exodus of the rural population.

Rural migration became a threat to the balance of urban spaces. Trujillo enacted laws to make it more difficult for the poor to permanently move from rural to urban areas (Moya Pons,

2014). In the decades following Trujillo’s assassination, rural migration grew exponentially, producing several marginalized sectors on the outskirts of cities. Rural migration became a central problem for education as well. Urban centers, where the ruling elite concentrated, kept most of the educational opportunities, especially for secondary and higher education (Cassá,

2003; Moya Pons, 2014; Secretaría de Educación, 1979). While liberals influenced by Hostos were interested in educating the entire country, and U.S. occupation authorities (1916-1924) were interested in providing a basic education to the largest number of people possible, rural education remained a factor of little relevance to urbanites, since it did not directly impact their lives. The quality of education was substantially different between rural and urban schools, including the qualifications required of teachers. Teachers who grew up in cities were reluctant to leave the comfort of their communities to teach in rural areas. Cities also attracted more candidates because it was easier to find a second job in the evenings.

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The accelerated growth of the population wedded with inherited weakness of the public education system contributed to the increase of the illiterate population, especially in rural areas.

A delegation from the Dominican Republic attended the 8th International Conference of New

Education in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1941, where experts concluded that the main problem of education in Latin America was its high illiteracy index. Immediately after the conference,

Trujillo announced the creation of 5,000 emergency schools to eradicate illiteracy (Lamarche,

1941a, 1941b). In the long run, this expedited approach produced more problems than solutions.

Trujillo did not consider the logistical challenges of producing enough teachers for the new schools. To address the urgent demand for teachers, his administration lowered the standard for hiring educators, especially in rural areas. In order to serve a greater population, principals accommodated students into two or three sessions which, in effect, reduced the number of hours students spent in school. Because of the tight schedule and the limited knowledge of many people hired to teach in emergency schools, in many cases, the curriculum was reduced to reading and basic math skills. This factor further deepened the divide between rural and urban education. This measure generated weaknesses that haunted the education system until fairly recently, including the lower standards expected of teaching personnel, and the disregard for school subjects that were not considered essential, such as art education (Secretaría de

Educación, 1979).

With the growth of rural migration into urban spaces, urbanites worried that this situation would disrupt urban public schools. Intellectuals proposed reforming rural education to improve the living conditions of peasants, reducing their need to migrate to cities. They started by blaming the precarious living conditions of farmers on the current state of rural education.

Ramon E. Jimenez (1933) stated that, as public schools did not fulfill their role in rural areas,

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“every day we find children from the countryside who, after finishing their studies, go to the city with the concern of becoming doctors, lawyers, or pharmacists” (p. 61). For the ruling elite, people from rural areas were not supposed to move out of their assigned roles as farmers, nor pursue intellectual careers traditionally reserved for urban elites.

Urban elites operated under the assumption that there was something natural about the human conditions of those living in rural areas. Therefore, rural students were thought of differently as educational subjects. While this idea was steeped in the colonial legacy of boundary formation between the civilized urban colonizers and savage Indians, it was solidified using psychological theories and progressive education postulates, suggesting the need to design education based on the social context and individual needs of students. A critique to this arbitrary assumption was introduced by Andres Fulcar (1964) soon after Trujillo’s dictatorship ended. He questioned the purpose of distributing citizens into rural and urban categories and argued that an education philosophy that pursues preservation of the linkage between rural children and the economic reality of the countryside was antidemocratic (Fulcar Beriguette, 1964).18

Educational reformers during Trujillo’s era passed several regulations to develop rural education, including incorporating school gardens. The salaries of rural teachers was improved to attract better qualified teachers, and a law was passed, requiring normal teachers to serve in rural settings for a period of time. Dr. Carlos Gonzales (1940), inspector of public education, proposed a different educational approach to contain rural migration. Gonzalez stated that the reason rural men and women emigrate to the city is because of the discomfort, monotony, and harsh

18 Beriguette’s studies in education in Venezuela was sponsored by the Organization of American States (OEA) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In the article, which was a summary of his culminating thesis, he pointed out that while Trujillo was eliminated, the education system had stayed the same. He specifically criticized the government’s approach of intentionally providing different educational opportunities to children in rural areas compared to those in cities.

153 conditions of life in the countryside. He identified a lack of cleanliness and beauty as the two main issues that made rural life harsh. He held that people in rural areas had different hygiene standards and their houses were ugly, which contributed to the overall lack of comfort. Critiquing the state of education during Trujillo’s era was a dangerous thing to do, since it meant critiquing

Trujillo himself. Gonzales did not blame the government for the precarious situation in the countryside, but, instead it was the country person whom, he argued, had stayed indifferent to the civilizing strides made by Trujillo (C. Gonzales, 1940).

Gonzales (1940) pointed out the lack of sophistication and poor aesthetics present in the socializing habits of the farmer, including rooster fights and ways of dressing. This posits a contradiction, since the government had appropriated this very same image of the peasant to instill nationalism. This corroborates the idea that the celebration of rural life during Trujillo’s era was not a genuine approximation to rural culture, but a disingenuous framing of rural features that fitted the elite’s narrative of a tropicalized Western identity. For Gonzales, peasants were subjects whose culture and aesthetic needed to be policed by urban intellectuals (Gonzales,

1940). Gonzales recommended the creation of a new kind of rural school he termed the “Manual

Arts and Rural Progress School” (Escuela de Artes Manuales y Progreso Rural, 1940). The new curriculum for rural schools would have the following activities: fence and house building, using local materials to build domestic utensils, and leatherwork applied to shoemaking. In addition,

Gonzales proposed adding complementary courses, including basic math, geometry, linear drawing, home hygiene, moral and civic education, commercial principles applied to regional markets, and notions of history to learn about the forefathers of the country.

Up to this point, rural education was structured to provide the basic knowledge boys and girls needed for farming. The restricted curriculum of rural schools neutralized students’ capacity

154 to integrate into the modes of production of the city, limiting students’ ability to succeed outside rural spaces. Proposing a radical new approach to rural education, Gonzales argued that rural areas also needed blacksmiths, construction workers, and furniture makers. Aesthetic principles learned in school would help peasants to decorate their homes in more refined ways, reducing the need to envy the glamour of the city. While not all of Gonzales’ recommendations materialized, some of his ideas were incorporated—at least in theory—in the reform of agricultural and industrial schools in rural areas during the 1940s (“Actividades del servicio tecnico pedagogico,”

1940; “Planes de estudio para una escuela,” 1941). This reform contemplated the creation of several vocational secondary schools in the countryside, where young boys learned fence building, carpentry, furniture making, leatherwork, rope-netting, clay work, and hygiene. These schools taught young women rural home economy, hygiene, and domestic crafts. Boys and girls received drawing lessons to prepare them to develop original designs that could be applied to various crafts. Even though these schools focused on training young people in agricultural processes, the element of aesthetic education was present.

Vocational Education after the 1960s

So far, I have discussed how vocational education, a popular option for secondary school in Trullijo’s era, was conceived to elevate the economic prospects and aesthetic tastes of women, peasants, and the urban poor, while limiting their access to leadership roles reserved for the elites. Similar educational projects aimed at improving rural life by including elements of vocational and aesthetic education were developed in the 1960s to 1980s. While the projects developed in the late 1970s and 1980s had a more progressive vocabulary and greater respect for, and appreciation of, rural traditions, the underlying rationale continued to be the same. A report conducted in the 1960s, to survey the situation at the northern border with Haiti, pointed out the

155 precariousness of vocational education in this area due to policies focusing on developing urban centers. The report underscored the importance of this kind of school as a means to prevent rural migration to the city and to create a human wall to resist Haitian immigration (Gonzalez Nunez,

1964). Improving the aesthetic of rural life through arts and crafts continued to serve the political interests of the ruling urban elite who envisioned rural areas as spaces of containment.

In the 1970s, progressive education was in decline in various countries, due to a growing emphasis on vocationalism and accountability propelled by neoliberal policies (Harvey, 2005;

Kirkwood & Kirkwood, 2011). The decline of the agricultural sector, and the expansion of both tourism and Duty-Free Business Parks, added urgency to the need to improve vocational education in the Dominican Republic beginning in the late 1970s. In 1979, a new law converted the office in charge of overseeing the tourist industry into a new department in the national government (Congreso Nacional, 1979). In the 1980s, various laws were passed to incentivize and regulate the tourism sector (Lladó, 2002). These measures contributed to the gradual expansion of tourist industries in the 1990s. After creating the first industrial duty-free zone in

1969, foreign manufacturing companies created several industrial parks in the 1980s, motivated by special duty agreements (Reyes Castro & Dominguez, 1993). Considering that migration was generating new employment patterns, the government predicted a decrease in the farming industries, and an increase in the service and manufacturing sectors (SEEBAC, 1992).

These industries required employees with vocational training and secondary-level education—not university graduates. In addition, because of the economic stagnation of the

1980s, many people with university degrees were forced to take on jobs for which they were overqualified (Lladó, 2002; Moya Pons, 2014). Considering this combination of factors, the

Department of Education stated that their priority was to strengthen technical-vocational

156 education, as opposed to university education (SEEBAC & PIDE, 1985). In the 1970s, the

Department of Education launched a new educational plan for secondary schools called Plan

Reforma (Reform Plan), which focused on better preparing students for the job market immediately after finishing primary education. By the early 1970s, students spent an average of

17.5 to 20 hours a week in school. The Plan Reforma added five more hours to a number of secondary schools functioning under this pilot program.

In Plan Reforma, students had a common core of classes for the first four years of secondary education (7th-10th grades). In the last two years, students were supposed to receive commercial, technical, normal, or academic education. In Plan Reforma (1970), students received an additional credit hour of art and music per week. Students following the manual- technical track in secondary school were taught various arts and crafts. As more technical skills gained prominence, traditional arts and crafts were displaced to a lower status. Art education textbooks in use at the time suggested that drawing was the focus of art education in school, especially linear and industrial drawing (Lara, 1982; Sandoval-Lara, 1988). Art as a means to promote democratic participation, to celebrate national values, and to facilitate self-expression became less relevant in a context where there was a sense that schools were failing to prepare a capable workforce. Reformers were interested in familiarizing children with measurement, proportion, and geometric forms, skills they considered critical in different practical tasks. A report published in 1979 revealed that much of the vocational education reform, especially in rural areas, did not materialize. It concluded that Plan Reforma had failed in preparing students for the real demands of the job market, only functioning in 20 schools out of 160 originally intended (Secretaría de Educación, 1979).

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While Plan Reforma focused on secondary education, in the early 1980s, with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Dominican government developed a pilot program to advance vocational education in primary schools in rural areas. This project was called PIDE (Proyecto Integral de Desarrollo Educativo). PIDE was a pilot program introduced in a number of rural schools aiming to draw a stronger connection between what was learned in school, and practical life. The PIDE project sought to improve the infrastructure and curriculum of rural schools, provide teacher training, and make didactic resources more accessible (SEEBAC & PIDE, 1985).

Since a large number of rural students did not continue on into secondary schools, PIDE intended to provide enough vocational training in primary schools to enable students to access jobs available in rural areas with only a primary education level. This argument was made by scholars in the early 1980s, not only in regard to rural schools, but primary schools in general

(Castillo & Henriquez Diaz, 1981). The leaders of PIDE echoed earlier arguments stating that this was an agricultural country, and that farming education in rural schools was fundamental to teaching children to love rural life (“Para que los huertos escolares,” 1984). Proponents of psychological testing in the 1980s continued to assume that innate intelligence was the main factor that separated those who could finish high school from those who could not (Castillo &

Henriquez Diaz, 1981). This strategy downplayed the role of structural inequalities in providing the right conditions to succeed in formal education. Proponents of a vocational orientation in primary school viewed many of the social and economic issues the country faced, not as a problem of wealth distribution or lack of resources, but as a matter of enabling individuals to make the best use of their natural attitudes. Castillo and Henriquez Dias (1981) stated it this way:

“The problem of man does not lie in the lack of things, it is a deeper and existential problem of

158 human coexistence. Therefore, any contribution to improve the behavior of man will be to the benefit of himself” (p. 172). (A. Castillo & Henriquez Diaz, 1981, p. 172).

In the 1980s the government took a different approach to strengthen vocational training, which consisted in separating it from the public-school system. While the Department of

Education continued to expand vocational secondary education, in 1980, the government created the Institute of Professional-Technical Training, INFOTEP (Instituto de Formacion Tecnico-

Professional), which assumed the main responsibility for technical and vocational education in the country. INFOTEP was modeled after similar training institutes in Colombia and Peru (I.

Perez, 2011). As vocational education began to be pushed out of the schools in the 1980s, a threefold model for visual arts education emerged. It included artistic education led by the

National Art School (Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales); vocational education provided by

INFOTEP and craftsman unions; and school art education. I argue that while these different options for visual arts education were sponsored by the government—and therefore free for everyone—they catered to different social classes.

In 1942, Trujillo created the first National Fine Arts School and National Conservatory of

Music, and in 1956, he inaugurated the National Fine Arts Palace. These so-called temples of culture became sites of cultural production and gathering places for the elite, but were virtually inaccessible to the common people (Núñez, 2001). During the governments of Joaquin Balaguer

(1966-1978; 1986-1996), cultural policies favored the traditional white elite’s celebration of western aesthetics (J. del Castillo & Murphy, 1987). According to a 1985 report, heads of poor families spent most of their working hours producing only enough for basic needs, which left little room for them to participate in mainstream artistic and cultural events, including taking their children to art programs available in the cities (SEEBAC & PIDE, 1985). This segregated

159 access to leisure activities. Going to museums, symphonic concerts, and art exhibitions constituted a luxury and birthright of the upper classes.

Fine arts schools were located in exclusive areas of the capital and required admission exams. Since public schools did not prepare students with talent in the arts to pass these admission exams, families who could afford music and visual arts classes gave their children advantages to pass the admission exams. A few artists, as was the case for Nidia Serra, created art academies for young people who lived outside the capital city. Different from other artists’ academies, Serra worked with young children (B. Rodriguez, 1973; Serra & Centro del Arte San

Pedro, 1982). While academies such as Serra’s provided some scholarships for talented children from working-class families, they mostly served families that had a traditional connection with cultural clubs and intellectual societies. In response to the difficulties of poor women to access art learning centers in the city, the municipality of Santo Domingo, under the administration of

Pena Gomez (1982-1986), created a network of public libraries and manual schools in marginalized neighborhoods in Santo Domingo. By 1986, the municipality had opened 53 popular libraries and 25 manual arts schools. They claimed to have trained 25,000 women in marginalized areas of the city by 1986 (“Escuelas Laborales Instalada por ADN,” 1986). In addition, arts clubs existed around leftist parties that attracted university students and youth from the outskirts of the city. These clubs emerged during the 1965 civil revolution and continued as a tool for political activism by opposition parties (Santos, 2005). Although the city of Santo

Domingo and opposition parties provided alternatives for young people in marginalized sectors, geographical locations, admission exams, knowledge of their existence, made national fine arts learning centers a privilege of the elite.

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Since the Department of Education did not require principals to hire an art education specialist for their schools, and there were presumably various options outside school for those interested in the arts, school principals assumed a relaxed attitude towards art education in school, where it was reduced to drawing and a vague notion of arts appreciation in some cases.

In some schools, art education was totally absent (Cruz, 2010; Dominguez, 1998). INFOTEP required less prior formal education and their educational centers were located in places that were more accessible to urban working classes (Perez, 2005). Vocational education continued to be the most natural path for the urban poor seeking to gain social mobility in a society requiring new technical skills.

Conclusion

While what was taught in vocational education in Dominican school changed over the course of time, drawing and various crafts remained important components of vocational education. Vocational education was the responsibility of public secondary education until the creation of INFOTEP in the 1980s, when this responsibility was shared. Vocational education has run parallel to other educational tenets in art education, including Hostos’s republican education, and Trujillo’s nationalism. Despite the changes vocational education has experienced over time, it has consistently been a tool to draw social difference. Stereotypes around the value of manual work and liberal professions further contributed to deepen the divide between rich and poor.

Likely, the most pervasive element of advocacy rhetoric for vocational education has been the fact that it has been argued as a generous initiative from the elite to help advance—socially, economically, and morally—the less fortunate. At the same time, it has served to discourage women, urban poor, and peasants from pursuing a liberal education that could challenge the power structures in society. In this sense, vocational education provided non-threatening

161 opportunities for limited social mobility. Through it, poor people would be able to improve their economy, while guaranteeing the elite political and administrative control.

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CHAPTER 7

RESISTING FOREIGN INFLUENCES THROUGH TRADITIONAL ARTS AND CRAFTS

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Although vocational education was still the focus of education in the late 1980s and

1990s, making and celebrating folk and popular arts became important components of the art curriculum in primary and secondary schools. Journal articles and textbooks encouraged art teachers to lead students in crafting instruments used to play traditional music, performing folkloric games, and collecting oral traditions (Cruz, 1999; Lahit, 2000; Molinaza, 1995; PIDE,

1983; Simon Consuegra & Martinez, 2001). This represents a significant shift from the 1970s, where, within the list of textbooks recommended by the department of education for primary school, five out of nine were Walt Disney’s coloring books (Matos Berrido, 1977). These coloring books were published in Spanish by Susaeta, a Spanish editorial firm. The other four drawing books were produced by Spanish and Central-American publishers.

The trend to celebrate national folklore in art education was the outcome of cultural policies and educational reforms aimed at strengthening the country’s identity vis-a-vis new cultural values brought about by globalization. While Trujillo’s celebration of national culture had undermined the contributions of the country’s African past, this new nationalism drew from the country’s popular traditions, especially those rooted in its Black heritage, as resources to resist the threat of foreign influence. Different from its earlier version, it was global culture and not Haiti that posited a threat to national culture. In this chapter, I argue that, while this impetus towards the celebration of popular and folkloric expressions, where the country’s African heritage was recognized, was an outcome of the work of revisionist intellectuals and cultural activists since the 1960s, a new symbolic and social order imposed by globalization gave it a sense of urgency.

I contend that, because of the fear that national values could disappear under the overwhelming influence of global powers, intellectuals saw in formerly neglected arts and crafts

164 the foundation of a true Dominican identity. While I recognize the advances made by this new curricular approach in terms of inclusion, I critique the monadic understandings of cultural policies assumed by many activists. I argue that, when moving away from a dogmatic attempt to advance one single legitimate identity, the integration of traditional crafts in art education creates spaces for democratic dialogue about multiple ways of being Dominican. In addition, I discuss how this phenomenon motivated regional alliances that led to the standardization of a multidisciplinary model, where a single teacher was responsible for the teaching of visual arts, music, applied arts, and theater. A comprehensive discussion of foreign agendas in the development of Dominican art education is beyond the scope of this research project. Instead of examining the full impact of foreign influences, I focus on how this late nationalism in

Dominican art education magnifies tensions between central and marginalized cultures that take place under the power dynamics of global capitalism.

Globalization and the Defense of National Culture

Since the creation of the republic, art education was tied to foreign agendas, at times more elusively than at others. Dominican politicians, artists, and intellectuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries drew from ideas developed in European centers, where they pursued their higher education. In the 20th century, peripheral countries, such as Dominican Republic, remained within the scope of influence of the more powerful nations, either by cultural connection or geopolitical proximity; Spain and the United States being the major players. That said, initially the United States was not interested in reproducing its educational and democratic systems in the Dominican Republic. In 1917, the governor of the Monte Cristi province wrote a letter to the military occupation government, explaining the benefits of an arts and crafts school for the economic development of that city, especially the working classes. The U.S. military

165 government rejected the request, arguing that the government’s priority was to reduce illiteracy

(R. Rodriguez, 1917). This situation changed after World War II, when programs such as Point

IV and Alliance for Progress were developed to encourage other nations to follow U.S.-style democracy (Darnton C, 2012; Dunne M, 2013; Library of Congress, 1949; US Department of

State, 1951). The rationale was that if the United States were to share its technological and cultural advances, it would prevent other nations from turning to communism to deal with issues of poverty and underdevelopment (Rodriguez & Stankiewicz, 2016). In the 1950s and 1960s, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Dominicans received various loans and technical support to improve vocational education (SEEBAC, 1964; U.S. Department of State, 1951).

Until recently, most art textbooks used in the Dominican Republic were produced in

Spain and the United States. International education congresses, many of which were attended by

Dominican delegates, defined global agendas that privileged the educational paradigms of the most powerful nations (Fuchs, 2004). Spanish immigration in 1930s brought artists, journalists, and art historians who had a significant impact on education and the arts. On various occasions, in developing local initiatives, Dominicans have looked at what was going on in other countries in the region. For instance, in 1937, Chilean experts were invited by Dominican Republic’s

Department of Education to advise on vocational education reform (Moquete, 1986). In 1980, the

Institute of Professional-Technical Training, INFOTEP (Instituto de Formacion Tecnico-

Professional) was created to mimic similar projects in Colombia and Peru. In the late 1990s, arts schools were opened in low-income areas following a model developed in Colombia (Consejo

Nacional de Cultura, 2000). On at least two occasions, the Dominican Republic received technical assistance from Germany for vocational training (Duckwitz & Taveras Guzman, 1993).

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The Cuban Revolution inspired Dominican artists and cultural activists who fought for the democratization of cultural institutions (Núñez, 2001; Santos, 2005).

Through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO) and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and the

United Nations Development Programme (PNUD), the United Nations became a significant driving force in education and cultural reform in the Dominican Republic after the 1970s. In

1986, UNICEF, in conjunction with the Department of Education, developed instructional material for elementary and primary teachers. UNICEF was interested in supporting early education by improving teacher training. This publication encouraged elementary teachers to build art stations using found materials. It provided several ideas on how to integrate artmaking in elementary education (UNICEF & SEEBAC, 1986). The Organization of Ibero-American

States (OEI) became a major influence in the 1990s, as the country pursued strengthening regional alliances. In the 1990s, UNESCO became a major advocate for art education in the country. Despite the long trajectory of foreign influences in art education—some of which have been mentioned in earlier chapters—the 1980s and 1990s constitute a particularly revealing case study, because foreign influence became a factor, both as a reaction against, and in the formation of alliances with, international agents.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many countries moved toward privatizing public assets, reversing nationalization policies, and opening natural resources for exploitation, foreign investment, and free trade (Harvey, 2005). The decline in sugar exports and the expansion of the service and manufacturing industries changed the Dominican economy considerably after the late 1980s. Development of resorts and other tourist attractions changed the landscape of various rural areas. The expansion of the service industry contributed to the modernization and growth of

167 the main cities. In Chapter 6, I discussed how these changes encouraged various projects aiming at improving vocational education. While some praised the economic benefits of these emerging industries, especially for the working classes (A. Castillo & Henriquez Diaz, 1981; Girault,

1998; Lladó, 2002; Reyes Castro & Dominguez, 1993), others pointed out what they viewed as detrimental social and environmental outcomes of the new economic paradigm (Abreu, 1999;

Ariza, 2004; Dunn, 1998; French, 1992; Sivanandan, 1989). Scholars have argued that, as the fragmentation of production encouraged competition among developing countries to provide cheap labor, global capitalism would not produce the claimed economic benefits (Dunn, 1998).

They stated that the new order established a hierarchy of production. First-world countries kept new technology industries and relegated unskilled work to developing countries (Sivanandan,

1989). Contemporary scholars have expanded on these earlier critiques to argue that global capitalism created oppressive conditions that affected citizens in third-world countries. Through the appearance of constant but superficial change, global capitalism has produced a new kind of psychic penetration that respects no previous boundaries (Sandoval, 2008). Others argued that tourism and free-zone factories should be analyzed beyond their economic merits to consider its social impact (Safa, 2003).

The United States was the major player in the new Dominican economy. It led investment in the free-zone industries, and generated most of the visitors in the touristic industries. Because of that, this new economic model caused a resounding fear of Americanization. Despite the bitter experience of the 1965 U.S. occupation, Dominicans managed to maintain good political relations with the United States in the following decades. Due to the 1970s’ economic crisis, large numbers of Dominicans migrated to the United States and sent remittances to their relatives in the country. The Dominican Republic continued to depend on American money to develop its

168 local industries. While Dominicans favored friendly economic relations with the United States, they maintained a critical attitude towards North America’s globalizing culture. Kryzanek and

Wiarda (1988) summarized the Dominican attitude towards external influence at the time as having a dual identity: one formed by external influences (foreign investment, Dominican migration abroad, Haitian migration, and tourism); and another formed by Dominicans themselves. They argued that, while the Dominican Republic has existed under asymmetrical relations with global powers, it has striven to retain its own identity. Being skeptical and critical of American economic and cultural projects did not mean Dominicans were interested in breaking economic and political ties with the United States.

Dominicans were not only concerned with the economic repercussions of becoming a servant to the imperialist demands of the United States. They also worried that the unfair exchange with American material and symbolic goods would alter the integrity of Dominican culture. Global capitalism was not only viewed as an economic project, but also as a cultural one

(Muñoz Ramirez, 2002). Scholars have argued that global capitalism utilizes culture (food, TV, music, art) to normalize corporate American culture in other places to foster consumption

(Sivanandan, 1989). In the 1970s, the United States dominated Latin American television to the extent that over 80% of the programing was imported from the United States (Vujnovic, 2008).

This situation varied slightly after the 1980s, with the growth of TV shows from Mexico and

Venezuela. However, the United States continued to dominate television and cinema in Latin

America. In the 1990s, American films represented about 80-90% of all movies viewed in the region (García Canclini, 2008). Saved by the Bell, Bay Watch, and MacGyver, to mention a few, were staple TV shows in the Dominican Republic during the 1990s. The frequent showcasing of

Anglo-American culture through mass media gave the sense that the country was vulnerable to

169 adopting American values. In the 1990s, the growth of Venezuelan telenovelas and Mexican movies, while still foreign, gave a sense of more balanced content.

Dominicans who emigrated to the United States and returned or visited the country displayed a hybrid identity between Dominican and U.S. urban culture which was evident in their taste in music, food, and clothing. That was frowned upon by Dominicans on the island, who considered these new habits an affront to the authentic Dominican culture (Guarnizo, 1994).

This situation, coupled with the opening of American fast food chains in the main cities, added to the feeling that the integrity of Dominican culture was at risk due to the overwhelming presence of American values. Victor Victor (1999), then president of the Presidential Council for Cultural

Affairs, captured this sentiment well when he stated: “we will eat at McDonald’s or Pizza Hut, we will use Wrangler jeans, we will believe they are ours” (Victor, 1999, p. 6). Victor Victor referred to these new cultural patterns as a false image imposed from abroad and permitted by lethargic cultural actions of the government. From his perspective, we have a vast repertoire of cultural values whose essence has resisted the charges of time, which can overpower the flashiness of new food, entertainment habits, and fashion brought by globalization.

New Cultural Policies

After the 1960s, scholars influenced by socialist ideas scrutinized biased histories that negated Black Dominican heritage, especially the heritage embedded in surviving popular practices (Franco, 1997; Garcia Carrasco, 1983; Tolentino, 1974; Veloz Maggiolo, 1977). After the 1965 revolution, leftist groups created artistic clubs as recruiting tools centered on folklore and popular culture. The Dominican Revolutionary Party and the Dominican Liberation Party, from the opposition, advocated a more progressive agenda for cultural policies during the conservative government of Joaquin Balaguer. When these parties came to power in the 1980s

170 and 1990s, they assumed a more proactive role in the protection of the country’s oral traditions and popular knowledge. These earlier intellectual foundations became relevant to education reform and cultural policy, and artistic clubs were incorporated into mainstream policies.

Through the advocacy of cultural activist and international organization, the government created the Presidential Council for Cultural Affairs (PCCA) in 1997. Lifted from the category of supervising unit to a department of the federal government in 2000, the PCCA received a larger budget and greater legal faculties. That allowed it to play an important role in the coordination, organization, and implementation of various cultural programs, including the National Archive, public libraries, the National Crafts Center, fine arts schools, and public museums.

From the point of view of cultural activists at the PCCA, without a strong cultural policy, the nation “would end up being assimilated by the strong; it would stumble without identity, without proper forms, perhaps richer in quality of life but with a very poor personality” (Victor,

1997, p. 7). Paying attention to cultural affairs from the executive branch became a matter of survival under the aggressive processes of globalization (L. Brea Franco, 1999). The PCCA had two priorities. First, it wanted to assess the state of the cultural sector, develop a comprehensive cultural agenda, and reduce the fragmentation of cultural activities caused by various government agencies and institutions. Second, the council wanted to define culture and cultural activism in a more democratic way, compared with prior conservative governments. As part of the democratic approach to building a national cultural agenda, the council gathered experts and researchers from different artistic and scientific areas to define lines of action for the protection of Dominican identity. These experts started by defining culture in broader terms than in past administrations. They were particularly interested in what they called “dormant cultures” that

171 were ignored under state policies that privileged painting, music and literature, and the celebration of historic monuments (Victor, 1997).

The new motto, “Culture we are all” (Victor, 1997, p. 6), encapsulated a new cultural philosophy focusing on giving marginalized social groups access to artistic experiences previously reserved for the elite, and granting cultural status and aesthetic value to cultural activities produced by popular groups. The attention given to the spiritual heritage was instrumental to the recognition of the African roots of Dominican folklore. Conservative policies of Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961) and Joaquin Balaguer (1966-1978) tactically supported research and programming focused on the material heritage of the country, which, because of the legacy of colonial architecture, favored the Hispanic identity narrative. For Dagoberto Tejeda (1997), past racism prevented Dominican anthropologists and art critics from valuing, collecting, teaching, and promoting the country’s popular culture. The Presidential Council for Cultural

Affairs was interested in mobilizing popular creativity, including supporting art programs outside traditional elite centers in the capital, and listening to the demands of cultural activists in the provinces and rural areas. The council sponsored numerous cultural fairs in the provinces, and opened arts schools and libraries that were easier for low-income families to access.

New Cultural Policies and Education

In the early 1980s, several scholars pointed to the failure of the school system in instilling appreciation for the country’s own traditions. Marcio Veloz Maggiolo (1977) stated that cultural education must start at an early age in school, to avoid the loss of local values due to the penetration of foreign ones. For Veloz Maggiolo, the education system at the time lacked a cultural strategy. This argument was similar to the one made by intellectuals in the early 20th century regarding the failure of schools to instill nationalism. This time, globalization with its

172 consumer culture spread through mass media was the latent threat to local traditions, not Haiti.

Andres Núñez (1983) used the concept of cultural crisis to refer to the failure of one generation to reproduce the fullness of its cultural legacy to the next. Núñez used the word ‘fullness’ to make the case that, not only those practices that have been traditionally celebrated in wealthy salons deserved to be preserved, but, also, that surviving oral traditions in rural areas should be protected. Núñez argued that K-12 education had been given the responsibility of cultural education, as it was the most effective means for the transmission of cultural values and beliefs.

Even though the agenda developed and supported by the Council for Cultural Affairs focused on out-of-school programs for older children and adults, scholars linked to this cultural awakening were also interested in cultural education within the general school system. This was a subject of concern at the meeting of experts and cultural activist sponsored by UNESCO and

PNUD in 1996. At that meeting, Dagoberto Tejeda, pointed out potential negative effects of the proliferation of bilingual schools that followed the U.S. curriculum. He feared the celebration of

Halloween would replace the Dominican Carnival among young people (UNESCO, PNUD, &

Paiewonsky, 1997). Conversations about integrating cultural education in schools to protect the country’s identity shaped school curriculum reform in the 1990s. Scholars active in this cultural movement, such as Tejeda, were invited as external experts in the design of art education textbooks by the department of education (SEEBAC, 1994b). The 10-year educational plan of

1992 highlighted the importance of understanding the history and psychology of the Dominican people as central tenets of the curricular transformation (Aquino, Artiles Gil, Aybar, & Dore

Cabral, 1998). The 1995 curricular reform, which aimed to redefine the goals of the entire education system, stated that it was a priority to increase schools’ participation in the cultural development of the country. At least in theory, the new curriculum sought to reduce the

173 hierarchical relation between scientific and popular knowledge. Cultural education through the celebration of Dominican folklore was described as a way to acknowledge the value of popular knowledge students and the community brought to the table (SEEBAC, 1992, 1994b; SEEBAC

& PNUD, 1994).

Folklorism in Art Education

Because many cultural practices identified in these reforms were considered artistic expressions, a big share of the responsibility for the preservation of national culture fell on art education classes. Jose Molinaza (1995), head of the art education program during the 10-year plan, stated that the goal of art education was not to form artists, but subjects who are able to recognize themselves in their culture and value the qualities that make them different from other social groups. He argued that art education should be understood as a fundamental subject in general education, because it is critical to forming active and creative Dominicans who are aware of their identity, roles, and fantasies (Molinaza, 1995). Cultural education in art classes included learning about traditional music, oral traditions, folkloric plays, and crafts. Musical anthologies and folkloric collections provided a repertoire of traditional songs for primary schools (J. del

Castillo & García, 1992; Gonzalez Canahuate, 1988; Lizardo, 1975; Veloz Maggiolo, 1977).

Costume and mask-making, and performances related to carnivals, became must-do activities during the month of February. Folklorists such as Nereyda Rodriguez organized school carnivals in various neighborhoods in Santo Domingo, which facilitated exchanges between schools, and brought schools and communities closer together around the theme of carnival (Consejo

Nacional de Cultura, 2000; Morales, 2013).

According to De la Cruz and Duran Núñez (2012), after the 1980s, a new understanding emerged where traditional crafts were no longer considered a private matter; rather, they were

174 purveyors of national identity. For Jose del Castillo and Manuel A. Garcia Arevalo (1989), in addition to the thrust caused by tourism, crafts experienced a rebirth in the 1980s, due to the fact that Dominicans had made significant steps to come to terms with the roots of their identity (J. del Castillo & García Arévalo, 1989). For these authors, the materiality of traditional crafts carried symbolic elements of the particular vision of the world of the Dominican peasant. It is not surprising that learning and making traditional crafts became central subjects in art lessons.

They represented a reencounter with Dominican roots at a time when mass manufactured goods were readily available.

I mentioned in Chapter 6 that vocationalism had reduced art education to learning skills useful to prepare the workforce needed in the new industrial and service economy. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, several art education textbooks transitioned from vocationalism to folklorism, or balanced both vocational and cultural education. While vocational education also included training in traditional arts and crafts, especially for the growing tourist market, this orientation toward folklorism was intended for all students, not only those pursuing the vocational track. The 1980s project for vocational education in rural areas (Proyecto Integral de

Desarrollo Educativo, PIDE), which I mentioned in Chapter 6, aimed at developing vocational skills in rural areas through hands-on activities and the use of local resources. PIDE also envisioned that rural schools would become a nucleus for folkloric events and other activities in the community. The coordinators of PIDE recommended the creation of school museums where students would participate in the collection of physical and intangible material of cultural value for the community. Students were asked to function as cultural anthropologists by collecting oral traditions through interviews with elders in their communities. This fieldwork could then translate into creative projects, such as anthologies of different oral traditions or dictionaries of

175 words particular to the community. These art projects would then be preserved in school museums (PIDE, 1983). Unfortunately, documentation is lacking on how these curricular ideas were implemented and their effectiveness. Nonetheless, they reveal a trend in art education toward cultural education through folklore since the mid-1980s.

One of the priorities of the 1992 ten-year plan was the modernization of education by encouraging the production of textbooks more in line with the educational reality of the time.

The 1995 curricular reform corroborated the priority of producing new textbooks and provided specific guidelines for authors’ publishing houses (Consejo Nacional de Educacion, 1995).

Textbooks also fulfilled a compensatory function. Educational reformers believed strong textbooks, accessible for free to teachers and students in the public sector, could fill in the gaps when teachers lacked proper training (Aquino et al., 1998; SEEBAC & PNUD, 1994). In the new curriculum, the celebration of Dominican folklore, both as a product and as a process, was conceived as an important content axis in art education (Molinaza & SEEBAC, 1994; SEEBAC,

1994a; SEEC, 2000). In the new curricular reform of 1995, arts education was viewed as a means to apprehend our reality creatively, including those qualities that distinguish the

Dominican people from other social groups. The reform stated: “an education that strengthens the awareness of our identity will make possible the full use of the richness and fertility that mestizaje brings to our culture” (SEEBAC, 1995, p. 235). Miscegenation was viewed as an asset, not a setback. For the authors spearheading the educational reform of 1990s, embracing the fullness of the Dominican culture, including its negated African heritage, was key to resisting the universalizing discourse of globalization.

Despite the progressive outlook for these educational reforms, the first art education textbooks published following the 1992 ten-year plan recommendations remained conservative

176 in their approach to content and process. Textbooks for music education caught up sooner with the nationalization of content than the visual arts by including lessons around traditional dances, rhythms, songs and musical instruments. The art education textbook for 6th grade, published by the Department of Education in 1997, followed the format of earlier books used in vocational training, where drawing was the main focus. This book emphasized technical and formalist aspects of art making, such as capturing proper proportions, perspective, and color theory

(Martinez, 1997a).

The art education textbook produced by Santillana for the 8th grade in 1998 followed a chronological art history format whose main emphasis was the appreciation of the artistic legacy of Western culture (Garcia de Escobar, 1998). This book failed to cater to students in the

Dominican Republic, since the authors did not include a single artwork by a Dominican artist. It is likely that this asynchrony between what was stated in the national curriculum guidelines and school textbooks had to do with the background of arts education experts who authored these books. Art education did not exist as a professional area at any higher education institution at the time. Art education experts were artists and art historians, likely trained in the academism of the

National School of Fine Arts, and not fully committed to breaking with the conventionalism under which they were educated. Because the experts developing material for the different artistic areas worked separately within their domains of expertise, there was little porosity between music and visual arts.

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Figure 13. Carnival mask-making exercise found in an 8th grade textbook. In Simon Consuegra, J. M., & Martinez, J. C. (2001). Educacion Artistica 8, p. 14. Santo Domingo, D.N., República Dominicana: Susaeta.

Art education textbooks published in the early 2000s more effectively captured the spirit of 1990s curriculum reforms. Figure 13 describes an activity for 8th graders in the first unit of an art education book published by Editorial Susaeta in 2001. This exercise gives students instructions on how to make a carnival mask, step by step. Different from the earlier textbook, this one had a greater proportion of hands-on activities, and direct references to Dominican folklore, especially the carnival. While the book had lessons based on Western artistic heritage and Latin American art, Dominican identity was its main focus. This is consistent with the fact that Dominican history and literature was the focus of the 8th grade curriculum. Since art education was conceived in a multidisciplinary fashion where one teacher taught visual arts, music, scenic arts, and applied arts, this textbook included activities for all these artistic disciplines. The book not only explored Dominican identity from the standpoint of long-standing

178 folkloric traditions, it also showcased contemporary Dominican productions in cinema, theatre and music (Simon Consuegra & Martinez, 2001).

Three things distinguish this book from earlier publications. First, it exposes students to a wider range of experiences where the hierarchy between fine and popular arts seems to dissolve.

For example, students were asked to listen, without making a hierarchical distinction, to classical music and popular genres in music appreciation lessons. The authors inform students that, in the past, some people used to associate classical music with good taste and popular music with ignorance. They conclude that this way of thinking was mistaken and that a refined person was one who could find artistic value in many different musical forms. Second, this book acknowledges the influence of Black Dominican culture in many of the traditions that are part of the country’s identity. This recognition is made evident in dances, characters, and customs referenced in the carnival festivities. Third, the book is less prescriptive and authoritative in its interpretation of art than earlier textbooks. Here, the authors’ explanations are shorter, and the number of guiding questions and practices to encourage students to do their own research are more abundant.

This new curricular orientation was also implemented in art classes in adult education programs. The Universidad Acción Pro-Educación y Cultura (Universidad APEC), a private university, created a distant learning program for adults after the 1970s (CENAPEC). Working from a self-learning approach, CENAPEC developed textbooks for various subjects that students took home to work on their own and later discussed in class once or twice a week with the instructors. The module for 9th grade art education, by Nereida Lahit, was entirely about

Dominican folklore. The purpose of this module was to teach students to recognize and value

Dominican folkloric traditions, including traditional crafts, music, dance, cuisine, play, religious

179 practices, and orals traditions (e.g., tales, myths, and superstitions). The author highlighted the particularities of our traditions and celebrated unapologetically the influence of African culture on several folkloric traditions that survived at the time. For example, the national music

(Merengue) was framed as evidence of a syncretism that ought to be celebrated. Lahit (2000) stated that some anthropologists in the past were hostile to many folkloric traditions because of the African foundations in those practices. She contrasted traditional forms of children’s leisure, such as kite-making and group play, against newer forms of entertainment coming from abroad, such as video gaming (Lahit, 2000).

For Lahit, the traditions that needed to be preserved and celebrated were most alive in the

Barrios (poor neighborhoods in the outskirts of the city) where working-class people lived.

Wealthier families had the resources to buy from abroad the newer trends in child entertainment.

Because of the accelerated nature of adult education programs like CENAPEC, the curriculum focused on appreciation. The art instructor was to develop an expertise in a broad range of artistic and cultural expressions. Students were taught vocabulary associated with these traditions, their origins, what they were about, and given a list of Dominican authors who made important contributions to the study of folklore. These students were low income, some still young people, who could not finish their school education because they had to work to support their families. They would have played most of the folkloric games listed in the book and participated in many of the folkloric traditions listed in the text. This was a type of knowledge they could relate to, but most importantly, a knowledge they could also think of themselves as experts in. This approach to curriculum was democratizing in a Freirean sense. It created possibilities for students to think of themselves not as empty vessels, but as owners of experiences that had aesthetic and cultural significant at a national level (Freire, 1970).

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While these textbooks constituted significant progress in building art education experiences where a more democratic image of Dominican identity and values was embraced, they still carried elements of conservative cultural policies. The authors of these textbooks drew from the work of folklorists and cultural activists writing in the 1980s and 1990s, including

Marcio Veloz Maggiolo and Fredique Lizardo (Lizardo, 1975; Veloz Maggiolo, 1977). Veloz

Maggiolo (1977) argued that children should be incorporated into the national cultural cosmos.

In doing so, he seemed to suggest that children exist outside the realm of culture. Veloz

Maggiolo critiqued the old ways, where national cultural policies were used to assert the power and superiority of the upper-classes. However, when he wrote that a “man without culture is on the path to slavery” (Veloz Maggiolo, 1977, p. 111), he implied that some people are devoid of culture. Since the initiative was to democratize access to artistic and cultural events, those lacking culture were the working classes traditionally excluded from artistic events sponsored by the state. He believed cultural education—a profound understanding of Dominican identity— would create a system of values that would make young people more responsible. This is what

Garcia Canclini (2008) calls the compensatory function of folklore, where it is construed as a means to deal with the problem of modernity by keeping alive images of a better past. Maggiolo held a conservative stand in his seemingly progressive argument by linking participation in artistic events to morality.

In some of the new policy documents, culture was defined as ongoing and dynamic

(Morrison, 2000; SEEBAC, 1994a). However, the celebration of popular knowledge embodied in rural and suburban traditions was framed as finished and uncontested. Victor Victor (1999) described the Dominican folkloric legacy as a mirror to which Dominicans could reference for self-identification. This metaphor captures well the disruption that globalizing processes caused

181 to postmodern subjects who felt lost in the frenzy of codes from new consumption patterns

(Sandoval, 2008). For Victor Victor, the mirror, a broadly accepted collection of traditions of undefined origin (Garrido, 2006), provides a sense of home and belonging. The problem with this metaphor is that when culture is framed as a gift from the past, it becomes a script we should follow today (García Canclini, 2008). What this meant in art classes is that, in many cases, students were presented with a universe of objects and practices that had already been catalogued for them and whose value was not open for debate. They downplayed the fact that what is displayed as cultural patrimony is always selective (García Canclini, 2008). Freire (2000) argued that one of the ways oppression operates is by giving oppressed people the illusion that reality is a closed order, not open for questioning. The spiritualization of the cultural patrimony through romanticized histories gave these celebrated traditions a deterministic function. It prioritized product over process.

The process of selecting what is counted and what is left out of national culture was naturalized in the cultural advocates’ narratives and art education textbooks. Examining the process of formation of these objects and practices and the different ways in which people today appropriate the historical patrimony creates more opportunities to examine the violent histories underlying these practices, as well as surviving forms of oppressions. As traditional practices and objects are presented detached from historical complexities, students can learn that people of

African heritage contributed significantly to many of the traditions we celebrate today, but stay oblivious to the oppressive conditions under which they produced these practices. In the case of the art education textbooks listed above, the authors recognized the contribution of excluded social groups to the cultural wealth of the Dominican people, but the process of cultural production was romanticized. For example, in the Susaeta art education book for 8th graders,

182 carnival was described as a tradition brought about by Spaniards in the 16th century, and enriched by African groups along the way. The description of the history of carnival gives the illusion of a harmonious encounter of these two cultures. This lack of historicity is worsened by the celebratory tone and national pride in which folkloric traditions are framed in these textbooks.

Cultural reform advocates were motivated by fear of foreign cultural invasion. Folklore became a means by which to advance a notion of Domincan culture as self-contained and radically different from global culture. This stance downplayed the fact that hybridity has always been present in the formation of national and regional cultures (García Canclini, 2008). Victor argued that it was “urgent to record the universe of forms and activities that allow us to live in community and make us different from other societies” (Victor, 1999, p. 6). National culture through folklore was represented as being at odds with the modernizing processes of globalization (Veloz Maggiolo, 1977). These intellectuals were interested in cataloguing efforts that would bring unity and cohesiveness to cultural programming. Fragmentation of the cultural sector was a main concern in the reunion of cultural experts organized by the Organization of

Ibero-American States in 1996, and a chief motivator in the creation of the Presidential Council for Cultural affairs in 1997 (Brea Franco, Victoriano, & Ramón, 1998). The desire for impermeability and unity in cultural policies had a neutralizing effect on artistic innovation and experimentation. The preference for conservation of cultural patrimony discouraged looking at how Dominican identity is reinvented in the intersection of urban culture, new technologies, and global cultures. Taking carnival as an example, every year carnival designers create new costumes, some of which draw from mass-media imagery. These processes of hybridization were excluded from this narrative of national culture.

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Some of the books and textbooks praising popular arts and crafts retained modern categorization of artistic production, which placed traditional arts and crafts lower in a hierarchy compared to fine arts (J. del Castillo & García Arévalo, 1989; Lahit, 2000; Martinez, 1997b). A more current publication by traditional crafts advocates gives us an idea of why this distinction has remained. Duran Núñez and De la Cruz (2012) described the wealth of craftsmanship in the country, and how crafts workers capture the essence of the country’s popular knowledge. At the same time, they stated that these traditional crafts should not be placed in the same category as the fine arts. They listed the volume of reproductions, the practical functions of these objects, and the less rigorous learning associated with crafts as reasons why they should be categorized differently. This approach to celebrating popular culture still contributed to reproduce social difference by assigning the culture of popular groups to a lower level than the elite’s culture. The cultural movement that served as a foundation for the curriculum reforms of the 1990s represented a milestone in the recognition of marginalized artistic practices and aesthetic preference in Dominican art education. However, at least in some cases, it was not as anti-elitist as it appeared. The culture of subaltern groups had a place, but a place that was subordinated.

Foreign Influences: Collaboration or Imperialism?

So far, I have argued that reforms focused on the celebration of folklore and popular culture in art education were motivated by fear of globalization. Ironically, foreign support was critical to all major educational reforms undertaken in the 1990s. In this section, I examine why the country relied on foreign aid for nationalistic educational projects and whether international organizations’ agendas neutralized or empowered local agents. Since the 1960s, the country has relied on foreign funding and expertise to support major educational innovations (Hernandez,

2004; Moquete, 1986). Elvira Taveras (2017), an arts education supervisor with decades of

184 service in the department of education, stated that for small countries, such as the Dominican

Republic, making art education a mandatory subject in the curricular reforms of the 1990s would not have taken place without the support of international organizations. All major publications associated with the curricular reform of the 1990s, including textbooks produced by the department of education, were co-sponsored by one or more international organization, including

UNESCO, PNUD, The Interamerican Development Bank, OEI, the Spanish Agency of

International Cooperation, and the Organization of American States. The influence of these organizations was spread through educational summits, publications, and professionalization programs. The Dominican commission of UNESCO and OEI organized several panels with national and foreign experts that became foundational to cultural and educational reforms in the

1990s (Taule, 1999).

Regional alliances, some of which took place through the Organization of American

States and the Organization of Ibero-American States, provided an alternative to U.S. cultural influence. For Dominicans, it has been important to maintain good economic and cultural relations with the United States. Nonetheless, in the 1980s, the Dominican Republic strived to develop commercial and cultural alliances with Latin American countries to reduce commercial and cultural dependency on the United States (Kryzanek & Wiarda, 1988). This trend continued into the 1990s (Fraerman, 2002). This was not a new phenomenon; regional alliances in the name of a shared historical and linguistic legacy had been summoned historically in times of the rise of

North-American political and cultural influence (Dominguez Hernandez, 1953; Lamarche,

1943). The rise of globalization in the 1990s incentivized the consideration of regional alliance on economic, political and cultural matters. While the idea of a shared identity was considered an element of cohesion among nations in the Ibero-American region, diversity was both adhesive

185 and kryptonite to resisting a hegemonizing global culture (Fraerman, 2002; Veloz Maggiolo,

2002). In this sense, forming regional alliances was not viewed as a compromise to the integrity of national culture, but as an affirmation of it. The idea of a global citizenship based on shared concerns for sustainability, diversity, and global peace, as advanced by UNESCO and OEI, did not conflict with nationalistic projects.

Dominicans continued to welcome funding and support from the United States. However, they relied more on the technical support of experts from the Ibero-American region for educational reforms and cultural policies. An example of that is the case of Costa Rican educator and international policy expert, Dr. Lorenzo Guadamuz, who spearheaded the 10-year plan of

1992 and served as chief advisor to the Department of Education during the administration of

Jacqueline Malagón. Dr. Juan Humberto Cevo, also from Costa Rica, was a key advisor in the curricular reform of 1995, and has been invited to national art education forums on other occasions (Taveras, 2017). International organizations chose experts from the same region to lead commissions and assisting the country in cultural and educational reforms (Ducoudray,

2000). This preference, in part, might have to do with linguistic affinities, and the fact that experts from the same regions have developed programs in a context similar to the Dominican

Republic. It was also possible that regional cooperation of this kind was motivated by a sense of shared regional identity. Relying on the support of more developed regional allies through the

OAS and OEI might not have felt like a foreign invasion but, rather, as strategic regional alliances to resist Anglo-American influences.

Even though the UN, OEI, and the OAS have been criticized for serving Western interests (Wells, 1987), some of their programs had taken a progressive stance toward diversity and inclusion. Thus, they have been interpreted as siding with the best interests of many

186 developing nations (Davidson, 1975; Dorn & Ghodsee, 2012; Kirkendall, 2014). For example, in

1971, the OAS founded the Inter-American Institute of Ethnomusicology and Folklore, with its headquarters in Caracas. This institution contributed to the awareness and celebration of the cultural diversity across the Americas through recording, publication, and training programs for member nations. Through these and other programs, OAS continued to support the protection of cultural minorities in the Americas. Concerned with the lack of investment in the cultural sectors of many nations, in 1974 UNESCO created the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture.

The 1978 UNESCO conference in Colombia culminated with a regional agreement called

Declaration of Bogota, which proposed a redefinition of what constituted national culture, and encouraged countries to develop national cultural policies. UNESCO and PNUD sponsored several forums on matters of cultural policies in the Dominican Republic in the 1990s and publication of the proceedings of a November 1996 seminar.

An important factor in this discussion is the issue of regional and national agency.

Professional development programs, publications, and conferences developed by these organizations provided an alternative to Anglo-American influence, but did not constitute an even distribution of power. Countries with stronger research infrastructure, such as Spain,

Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, had a larger pool of experts who could contribute to drafting regional guidelines followed by other nations. Spanish publishing houses still dominated editorial industries in Latin America in the 1990s (García Canclini, 2008). However, the issue of who benefited from these reforms is more complex than it seems. I contend that, despite this uneven distribution of power, the intervention of foreign organizations in the curricular reform of the 1990s was not an imposition of regional interest under the pressure of global capitalism, but was a strategic alliance that benefited both local and foreign agendas. There are two reasons for

187 this conclusion: first, the congruence between the interests of education reform advocates and the agenda of foreign organization such as UNESCO and OIE; second, the leverage these organizations have in the political system of developing countries like the Dominican Republic.

While developing countries like the Dominican Republic welcomed reports from multiple international institutions, not all of them had the same weight. Analyzing the influences of

UNESCO and the World Bank in higher education reform in Mexico, Diaz Barriga (1996) identified political discrepancies between these institutions. He states that while the World

Bank’s emphasis on human capital supports privatization of higher education, UNESCO supported the idea of social inclusion through greater government investment in education (Diaz

Barriga, 1996). UNESCO, OEA, PNUD, and OEI were viewed as organizations interested in the educational development and the preservation of the cultural patrimony of the country (Jorge,

2000; Morrison, 2000). Educational reformers in the Dominican Republic built alliances with programs that represented their interests.

While not legally binding, agreements signed at international summits and reports created by these organizations have been taken seriously by Dominican governments. The failure to meet progress goals in the context of international organization evaluations gave these institutions political leverage within the Dominican political system that cultural policy and education reformers did not have. This is what Taveras (2017) was referring to when she said that a small country like the Dominican Republic would not have made art education a mandatory subject in schools by its own effort. This does not mean there were not local actors pushing for the same agenda. Let’s take, for example, the case of the educational law of 1997. This law was significant in terms of making art education a mandatory subject in school, providing more democratic

188 education, and fostering a more inclusive image of national identity. This law, like its antecedent ten-year plan, was supported by OEI, UNESCO, and OAS (Taule, 1999).

The 1996 seminar on inclusive cultural policies sponsored by UNESCO and PNUD, gathered both local and international experts invested in this area of concern. Progressive intellectuals gathered at this meeting agreed it was the national government’s responsibility to articulate cultural policies that guarantee people access to cultural activities. Some pointed out the importance of confronting ghosts from the past, referring specifically to racism and anti-

Haitianism, and admitting the negation of a multi-ethnic, diverse identity impedes development of a true Dominican identity. Both foreign and local agents believed cultural affairs were intrinsically connected with the consolidation of democratic life and the modernization of the state (L. O. Brea Franco et al., 1998). This meeting was foundational to more inclusive cultural policies and educational reforms (Morrison, 2000). While the support of international organizations was instrumental to the 1997 education law, most Dominican educators had asked for decades in conferences and symposiums that the educational law be changed. Teachers had been arguing that the former law ignored other identities and traditions, and favored a colonialist mentality (Prats-Ramirez, 1981). The contribution of international organizations was instrumental to give visibility to art education in educational discourse, but this was not a new idea. Arts education supervisors had been advocating for more government attention to this area since the early 1980s (Perez, 1983). These international organizations provided venues that increased the political leverage of local advocates.

International organizations provided a vocabulary and research that was used by local agents. After World War II, UNESCO, with the theoretical work of Herbert Read, led the discourse of education for global peace. In this framework, art education was viewed as integral

189 to a liberal education that was instrumental to oppose an understanding of progress driven by technological and industrial development alone. Two world wars had taught the world that industrial and scientific development alone would not lead to the betterment of society. Read

(1974) argued that art should be the basis of education because, all school subjects could be learned creatively. Read developed a theoretical framework for what he called aesthetic education, which encompassed the visual arts, drama, dance, and literature. These ideas spread across Latin America through the regional division of InSEA and InSEA’s chapters in some countries (Pantigoso, 2001). In 1983, Andres Núñez uses a similar line of thought in Revista

Pedagogica to advocate for humanistic education in Dominican schools. He wrote: “the culture of today should be more than the simple technological and scientific development that has given rise to industrialization, commercialization, and consumer society” (Núñez, 1983, p. 36). Núñez seems to draw from the paradigm of peace education to address, not only the superficiality of industrial and technological development, but also globalization. He situates traditional popular culture as a necessary ingredient of education for global citizenship. Núñez’s case shows how local advocates might not have seen the work of international organization as being at odds with their nationalistic project, but as a resource on which to build.

Art education supervisors led by Jose Molinaza drew from the interdisciplinary curriculum movement in Latin America to draft their proposal for art education in the country.

This proposal was created in 1994 and served as a foundation for the curricular reform of 1995 and educational law of 1997 (Molinaza & SEEBAC, 1994). In this proposal, art education was comprised of visual arts, music, scenic arts and applied arts. These classes, taught by one teacher, were supposed to integrate new technologies and use resources available in the community

(Carabias Galindo, 2016). The multidisciplinary model drew on Herbert Read’s ideas on

190 aesthetic education and the arts as a venue for the learning of other subjects. In Brazil, as early as

1971, art education was structured as a combination of four disciplines: music, drama, visual arts and dance (Barbosa, 1990). In the mid-1990s, several Latin American countries made art education an official school subject, or implemented some kind of reform to their art education system (Dias et al., 2017). All these countries followed the interdisciplinary model (Giraldez &

Palacios, 2014). The integrated model, while open to critique for its unreasonable demands on a single teacher (Barbosa, 1984), was politically effective for art education advocates. The holistic approach to the discipline facilitated professionals from different fields to join forces in a country where the art education community was small. In addition, the offer of a four-in-one subject was appealing to bureaucrats from the standpoint of funding. This model represented an economy of human resources for governments resistant to increase their investment in education. Local agents found in the support given by international organizations the political leverage they had unsuccessfully struggled for to provoke change.19

Conclusion

I have argued that globalization gave a sense of urgency to the celebration of traditionally undermined popular traditions. This shift represented a new paradigm in cultural policies and education since it entailed recognition of the country’s African heritage and popular crafts and music. Art education had a significant share of responsibility in preserving the country’s identity because of the artistic nature of the identified cultural practices. Overall, Dominican identity was construed in a more democratic manner in art education textbooks published after the 1990s

19 In the Dominican Republic under the integrated model, some textbooks for art education were divided into four sections, often color coded, corresponding to each of the arts emphasized in the curriculum. Teachers have some level of freedom on how to distribute their content. Teachers can design monthly units focusing on a different art discipline. They can also divide the school year into four blocks for each of the corresponding arts. This approach, rather than generating integrated arts projects as originally intended, became the teaching of four disciplines.

191 reforms compared with earlier books. This shift is in debt to the contributions of historians and folklorists such as Franklin Franco, Fredique Lizardo, Dagoberto Tejeda, Edis Sanchez, and

Nereyda Rodriguez, and Jose Molinaza (Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 2000; F. Franco, 1997;

Lizardo, 1975; Molinaza, 1995; Molinaza & SEEBAC, 1994; Tallaj, 2011). I have argued that in addition to the contributions of these revisionist intellectuals and a more moderate political climate, fear of Americanization created a sense of urgency that led to inclusion of cultural education in art classes. The focus on preservation and protection of the cultural patrimony led to a somewhat more democratic, but still fossilized, image of Dominican identity. The desire for unity and cohesiveness from many education reformers curbed the celebration of Dominicanness beyond one legitimate identity, and the multiple ways in which different social groups interpret their cultural patrimony. This approach was detrimental to more experimental creative interventions of identity. Objects and practices with historical value were already catalogued and not opened to scrutiny. For example, the work of contemporary artists who were experimenting with new media and examining social issues embedded in Dominican society did not fit this folklore narrative. Contemporary artists provided a wealth of resources on creative ways to reimagine Dominican identity and confront ghosts from the past.

Fear of cultural contamination led to a disregard for the creative potential of hybrid productions in Dominican urban youth culture. Music jamming, video collaging, and other art expressions tied to new technologies remained marginal in the school curriculum. This chapter suggests that art education in a developing country like the Dominican Republic needs to be understood in relation to globalizing interests led by powerful nations, regional alliances and national projects. Moreover, looking at the relationship between Dominican advocates and foreign forces as one of dependency is not enough to map the strategic alliances developed by

192 local reformers in the context of oppressive global conditions. Lastly, it is important to underscore this project is focused on intended outcomes from decisions made at the administrative and supervising level. Available resources, teacher training, students’ interests, and school contexts might have led to a different take on the guidelines given in the national curriculum and textbooks. We should not assume that Dominican identity was examined as intended in these official documents. Nonetheless, the documents analyzed are evidence of a paradigm shift in art education in Dominican schools.

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CHAPTER 8

CONTESTED IDENTITIES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TODAY

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Throughout Dominican history, a traditional urban elite used educational domains such as schools and museums to construct discourses of identity that privileged Hispanic culture, mythologized the indigenous past, and negated artistic and cultural contributions from its African heritage. In this historical research, I examined how this ideological baggage—along with its attendant economic and political conditions—created hierarchies on the basis of race, gender, geography and socioeconomic status, resulting in a direct effect on the functions art education has served in Dominican education.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, drawing from the political principles of liberalism, Hostos and his disciples argued that drawing and manual training were important for the general education of citizens, to teach them how to exercise their rights and duties in a democratic republic. Drawing from the scientific tenets of positivism, Hostos viewed pedagogy as a scientific process that must be grounded in principles proven by methodical observation.

These universal principles were deemed embedded in nature, and just needed to be apprehended by acute attention. Hostos believed drawing and manual training could contribute to equipping our senses to perceive those principles. Since progress was equated with knowledge, greater knowledge of the mechanics of the physical and social world would translate into social, political, and moral progress. While Hostos and his disciples recognized that education should be made available to all citizens in the new republic, biased assumptions regarding what knowledge deserved to be legitimized caused them to disdain popular traditions and crafts produced by marginalized groups. Intellectuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries described Latin

America and the Caribbean as a sick and deficient region, held back by the presence of inferior indigenous and black races (Trigo, 2000). These white men viewed themselves as the sacrificial heroes serving the inert masses, who needed to be integrated into the civilized world. While

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Hostos rejected some of the racism and gender discrimination of his time, his preference for narrowly defined scientific knowledge and mainstream art privileged western epistemologies.

By the 1930s, political, economic, and social factors had contributed to the development of a national consciousness. Intellectuals and educators identified the development of patriotism as a central element of social cohesion. Between 1930 and 1961, Trujillo passed several educational reforms to nationalize education. The celebration of formerly neglected rural culture was framed as a source of uncorrupted Dominican identity. In art classes, students reproduced romanticized images of the countryside and the tropical landscape of the country. This was not an inclusive celebration of rural culture, but a selective appropriation of features of the rural way of life that facilitated the reaffirmation of the elite’s narrative of a tropicalized European heritage.

As students were encouraged to use local materials and to develop designs inspired by local imagery, they were invited to imagine themselves as the outcome of a problematic but fortunate encounter between Spaniards and native Tainos. Because of the innocence children’s art invokes, school art contributed to normalizing Trujllo’s narrative of a Dominican identity where its

African heritage was absent (Lugo & Peña-Batlle, 1952). As has been argued by other scholars, between 1930-1961, various facets of cultural life were fashioned to downplay the country’s

African heritage as a way to set the country apart from its neighbor, Haiti (Alvarez-Lopez, 2014;

Derby, 2009; Mateo, 1993). This narrative was present in the functions school played in border politics. This Dominican construction of nationalism resonated with the prevalent nationalistic rhetoric in Latin America and Europe in the early 20th century, where a strong state was needed to unify the country, based on ethnic tenets, to overcome the legacy of political chaos (Laughlìn,

1986; Mateo, 1993). Similar to Trujillo’s Nationalism, in Latin America, neocolonial nationalistic projects appropriated indigenous cultural and aesthetic values that did not translate

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into a social and cultural revindication of these marginalized groups (Madrid, 2010).

Vocational education, which had been debated in liberal and conservative forums since the late 19th century, has been a defining factor in the development of art education in the

Dominican Republic. For the most part, drawing, design, color theory, and training in different crafts had been a part of the curriculum in vocational education. Vocational education was regarded as a responsibility of the public education system, until 1980, when the Professional

Training Institute (INFOTEP) was created. Vocational education experienced thriving moments caused by economic and industrial conjunctures that imposed the need for workers with requisite skills to serve the different factories and service industries. Beyond its dependency on industrial economic developments, vocational education served historically to assert social differences. The intellectual and political elite used scientific tools such as IQ tests and moral hierarchies to frame vocational education as a natural path for the urban poor, peasants, and women. Vocational education provided a non-threatening venue to help these groups improve their economic situation, while keeping liberal education as a privilege for white males from elite families. This chapter resonates with current debates. The politics of vocational vis-à-vis liberal education has received some attention by scholars, especially in the context of labor conditions imposed by neoliberal economies (Hanna, 1994; Pratt, 2007; Stankiewicz, 1996; Zimmerman, 1997).

Critiquing the neoliberal rhetoric of work-education efficiency, Freire (2012) argued that education should be more than developing dexterity for a particular task, but the right of people to dream differently.

In the 1980s and 1990s, globalization brought new consumption patterns that were viewed by Dominican intellectuals and education reformers as threatening to Dominican culture.

A new nationalism emerged, focusing on the celebration of the formerly neglected African

197 heritage and popular culture. In this version of nationalism, the threat came from Anglo-

American globalizing culture, not neighboring Haiti. Textbooks and curricular guidelines favored the celebration of Dominican folklore, rural crafts, and popular traditions. While this trend produced more culturally inclusive content in art education, its totalizing and monadic rhetoric disregarded the dynamic and hybrid nature of cultural production, and the creative resources that contemporary art can provide in questioning normalizing narratives. Reaction to foreign influences in Dominican art education pushed against neoliberal globalizing culture, and in favor of regional alliances based on shared values. The influence of international organizations, such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the

Organization of Ibero-American States (OIE), gave Dominican art educators more political leverage and theoretical tools to advance the field within the political climate of the 1990s. As pointed out by other scholars, this research corroborates the need to look at the construction of identity narratives in the Dominican Republic in a triangular model that not only considers its relationship to Haiti, but also the influence of the United States (Candelario, 2007; Mayes, 2015;

Ricourt, 2016; Torres-Saillant, 1998).

Art education in the Dominican Republic is an emerging field. Recent developments, such as the creation of an art education supervisory unit at the Department of Education (1997), and the development of teacher training programs at graduate and undergraduate levels (2014), have contributed to the assumption that art education is a new area of inquiry and practice. This mapping has demonstrated that Dominican art education has a genealogy that can be traced back to the late 19th century. This research questions the disconnect between the current state of the field, and the legacy of practices upon which the Dominican art education community claims to build. Moreover, the entanglements between political agendas and art education theory and

198 practice this research reveals suggest the need for a more critical analysis of how current practices remain complicit with the elites’ ideological and economic interests.

In the Dominican Republic, art was taught in schools for various reasons: enabling students to develop intellectual and moral potential for a better social life, preserving and protecting national values, developing good taste, and acquiring skills needed in industrial jobs.

This research shows that more than one rationale for art education have been advanced at the same time. For example, the idea of preparing people for work through vocational education coexisted with Hostos’s education for democratic citizenship, and with Trujillo’s nationalism.

While I have identified the main functions of art education at different times in this mapping, I do not imply that there was one single justification for art education at any given time. Likewise, content for art education has varied. Drawing has been the most consistent and fundamental skill pursued in art classes. But art education has also included color theory, principles of design, painting, three-dimensional work, notions of art history based on Dominican and Western art, and various crafts.

A Critical Historical Mapping

Research questions informed by the work of Freire and Sandoval directed the identification of methods for the collection, analysis, and presentation of data. Instead of following a chronological format, or theorizing about all relevant events I identified in the literature, I mapped and examined four mayor themes I argue are fundamental to understanding art education history in the Dominican Republic. This thematic approach, while attentive to important historical referents, permitted a greater focus on the substance of the problem and research questions that centered on issues of power, privilege, exclusion, and resilience.

It allowed me to connect small and seemingly unrelated events around patterns that explain why

199 certain decisions were made, and who benefited from those decisions. As discussed in Chapter

3, this critical historical mapping entailed a threading of various theoretical, conceptual, and technical tools. The process of integrating theoretical construct from art education, cultural studies, and third world feminism; the use of digital and analog visualization tools, most commonly in art practices; critical analysis of text and images; and the construction of fictional narratives all speak of a mapping approach that is both fluid, and interdisciplinary. This methodology resonates with Sandoval’s (2000) argument on the need to develop an oppositional consciousness that transgresses disciplinary fields, where the quest for social justice supersedes the loyalty to theoretical domains.

Mapping as a process of building a narrative around major themes from a large pool of data entailed a conscious—and likely unconscious—process of discernment of which sources were trustworthy, which events were most relevant, and how histories should be narrated (Bolin,

1995). The mapping, as a postmodern construct, assumed a humbler stand, compared to the modern totalizing mapping quests. Today, mapping is understood as partial, and politically motivated (Mitchell, 2008; Pascale 2011; Watson, 2009). At the same time, acknowledging the researcher’s positionality and underlying assumptions does not constitute an excuse for unsound and feebly supported arguments. Because of the nature of the stories that have been privileged in the archives, I recognized that most documents I engaged with were produced, or at least supervised, by those with political power. This posited the risk of reproducing the elite’s narrative. Two principles were fundamental in my critical readings of primary sources. First, I carried a sense of skepticism about the ‘pretend’ neutrality assumed in the way events were documented in the archives. At an art education research seminar in the spring of 2015 at Penn

State, Graeme Sullivan mentioned the need to look for evidence that denied our original thesis,

200 since it is easier for the researcher to find evidence that corroborate their original claims.

Following Sullivan’s suggestion, I not only sought evidence in favor of, but also against, my original assumptions.

Second, I was attentive to what silences and contradictions revealed about the nature of the sources. In the process of conducting this research, I realized that absences constituted as much valuable data as what was documented. In some cases, these negative spaces generated important critical questions. For example, why were children’s drawings worth exhibiting, but not preserving? In addition, because the distortions of history led by ruling classes takes place through a process of resignification of historical and current events (mythification), it produces a surplus of meaning that generates contradictions. In her analysis of Barthes’ Mythologies,

Sandoval (2000) argued that, while dominant orders create myths by arbitrarily assigning new meaning to texts, both the arbitrary and the historical meaning coexist in the text. She contended that this coexistence of meaning can be deconstructed, especially by those whom poverty, racism, and other forms of subordination have kept away from the comfort of the dominant ideology. For example, during Trujillo’s era, the rural was framed as a source of pure Dominican identity. Because this appropriation was artificial and manufactured, the countryside was reimagined as a place where white Dominicans lived. Since most people living in rural eras were darker-skinned, this generated an unavoidable contradiction. Because of that, a double discourse coexisted. On the one hand, the country is a site of tropicalized Spanish heritage. On the other, it constitutes a space that needs to be policed by the white urban elite.

Writing history is an interactive process, where the researcher has to revisit initial assumptions (Bolin, 1995). In his history of art education in Chile, Errázuriz (1995) found that art education in that country has always been a marginalized subject within general education.

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Similar to Errázuriz, I expected to find that art education in the Dominican Republic has always been a neglected subject in school. I found that Dominican art education has historically struggled with the professionalization of art teachers. However, the Department of Education addressed this challenge differently at different times, from considering importing art teachers from Germany, to developing teacher-proof textbooks. That said, art education in the Dominican

Republic has not always been a marginal subject, as Errazuriz suggested was the case in Chile.

Under Hostos’s influence, drawing education and manual training enjoyed a similar level of importance as other school subjects. Under Trujillo, art education enjoyed a level of relevance as a propaganda instrument for the dictatorship. Unfortunately, with the expansion of primary and secondary education to the masses, the quality of governmental support plummeted, especially after the 1960s. This left art education with limited material and human resources. At the same time, in private schools, students from well-to-do families enjoyed a world-class education

(Mejía-Ricart, 1981; Moquete, 1986).

Ghosts from the Past

Today we understand that pedagogical practices do not take place in an ideological vacuum. They are permeated by the political agendas and the tensions of the time. I have argued that art education has been complicit with symbolic and material forms of oppression within

Dominican society. That includes the following: considering the arts and culture of rural and popular groups as inferior to those of the elite; discriminating against Black Dominicans through national reforms, where the country’s African heritage was excluded; limiting women, the rural, and urban poor to inferior educational opportunities than those available to the urban elite; producing conciliatory versions of culturally inclusive curriculum that downplayed the problematic nature of Dominican racial history. These forms of discursive and material violence

202 routinely occurred through the construction of myths grounded on semi-scientific arguments, and distortions of history created by those with editorial power.

As Freire (1970) has argued, interpretations of reality aiming to justify certain social relations and structures can be naturalized through educational and historical practices, IQ testing, legitimizing academic knowledge over oral traditions, instilling patriotism based on a white identity, preparing people for the real demands of jobs, and celebrating the physical remains of indigenous culture and colonial architecture, were strategies used to normalize these hegemonic narratives. One key tactic to concealing these myths was to frame the elite’s education projects as altruistic actions in favor of the less fortunate. Hostos and modern

Dominican educators viewed themselves as sacrificial heroes rescuing the poor from the oppression of ignorance. Vocational education was advertised as a tool for socioeconomic mobility and the development of industrious habits, while contributing to maintaining the superiority of the intellectual class and socioeconomic relations that benefited the traditional political and economic elites.

I was also interested in identifying other ways in which Dominican identities might have been imagined through art education. On page 127, I discussed an example of counternarratives that existed in peripheral spaces, where rag dolls representing a couple doing a traditional dance, displayed the Dominican body as brown. Unfortunately, the dispersed and fragmented preservation of these stories has made them less accessible. This underscores the need to continuously examine how official archives have privileged dominant narratives. Because of the absence of other stories in official archives, I focused on pointing out gaps and absences that reveal tactics of exclusion used by those with control over official histories. More research is needed, especially oral histories, to recover other narratives that might exist unacknowledged. In

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Chapter 3, I used the metaphor of the disposable function of children’s art to question why the art made by children has been considered sufficiently important to exhibit in large venues, but not important enough to be preserved in archives or museums in the Dominican Republic.

Dominican archival practices have privileged presidential and social history. Historians of education have focused on big histories, particularly around the National University and elite colleges, which echoes the larger tendency in considering the higher level of schooling more important than lower ones. This research suggests the conspicuous need for small histories that consider more seriously, artifacts made by children as a means to expand the understanding of the historical development of the Dominican people.

Art Education in Context

Several factors influenced the development of art education in the Dominican Republic, including a shift from rural to industrial and service economy, migration, scientific ideas developed in western contexts, globalization and the economic interests of the United States, a military dictatorship (1930-1961) and, later, transition to democracy. The boom, and subsequent decline, in sugar prices during the U.S. occupation (1916-1924) is a clear example of how external economic factors have shaped art education. Dominican sugar producers had no agency in determining sugar prices, and the Dominican economy depended heavily on the export of this commodity. Funding for art supplies and hiring art and music teachers was contingent upon the fluctuation in sugar prices. Rural migration to cities, Haitian migration to the Dominican

Republic, and Dominican migration abroad were determining factors in educational policies.

Vocational training and aesthetic education, as a component of rural educational reforms, were part of policies that viewed schooling as a space of containment, both to prevent rural migration to the cities, and to make rural bordering areas more attractive to the White population. The

204 revival of nationalism in the 1980s in schools aimed to protect Dominican identity from

American globalizing culture and from hybrid cultural habits brought by Dominicans who had returned to the country. Trujillo’s intellectuals used art education as another tool to normalize the narrative of a Hispanic and Catholic identity. The hegemonic control of historical, editorial, and artistic institutions allowed the dictatorship to officialize the elite’s narrative and moved other ways of imagining Dominican identity to the fringes. After 1961, more democratic conditions and the Cuban revolution inspired pluralistic debates about the functions of education and cultural policies. Industrialization after the 1940s, and globalization in the 1980s, provoked significant changes in art education. In the 1940s, art education was instrumental in equipping urban workers for jobs in the factories. In the 1980s, it facilitated young people’s encounters with the totality of Dominican cultural legacy.

I anticipated finding strong connections between artistic education and school art education. However, for the most part, there was not much porosity between these two practices.

During Hostos’s era, some artists taught drawing in secondary schools. At that time, becoming a secondary school teacher had greater status than in later decades. It is possible that over time, with the expansion of the economy, professional artists became more successful and did not need to rely of a secondary education position for a stable income. School art was taught by generalist teachers. Teacher education happened in normal schools, and artists' education in the national school for the fine arts. It seems there was not much exchange between general teachers and artists. Because of that, the experimentation with modernist trends, led by some Dominican artists and the antiacademic movement championed in the 1960s, did not have a significant effect on art education in school. Since the 1990s, professional artists from different disciplines, who, in most cases, lacked real classroom experience, have served as area experts in the development

205 of content and guidelines for the different artistic disciplines (Molinaza & SEEBAC, 1994;

SEEC, 2000). This lack of understanding of the classroom realities, wedded with deficiencies in teacher training, has led to superficial connections between the worlds of professional artists and school art. Recently developed artist-in-residence school programs and specialized teacher training programs in higher education may contribute to changing this situation in the near future

(Diario Libre, 2016; INAFOCAN, 2013).

The lack of connections between school art in the Dominican Republic and what happens outside of school is not limited to the world of professional artists. The fossilized incorporation of traditional crafts and native folklore in art education in the 1990s led, in many cases, to decontextualized art lessons that had little connection with current realities and concerns students face. Despite changes experienced in the 1990s, Dominican art education has remained traditional in its use of materials and themes. A similar concern was raised in Efland’s The

School Art Style (1976) article, where he argued that art education in the United States had a style of its own, with little connection to the art beyond school. He contends that school art education served the interest of the institution of school, by carrying implicit ideological values.

He concluded that ritualistic art activities, camouflaged under an aura of humanistic and creative practices, serve to conceal the disciplinary function school serves in society. Other scholars have addressed the issue of moving away from aesthetic formalism, toward artistic practices that integrate contemporary social issues relevant to students (Darts 2006; Desai & Darts, 2016;

Sandlin & Milam, 2008). This research resonates with these prior findings, by suggesting the need to think more critically about the lack of connection between school art education and what happens beyond the school, and what it reveals about the school’s complicity with ideological pursues.

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This historical inquiry shows that Dominican art education has not developed in a linear or progressive manner. Different interests and tensions between social groups have defined the functions art education has been allowed to play in schools. In the late 19th century, liberals and conservatives battled over what public education should focus on. During Trujillo’s (1930-1961) and Balaguer’s era (1966-1978; 1986-1996), a conservative elite set the priorities for the educational philosophy of the country. In the 1990s, the national government integrated different social groups in determining the priorities for the education system. The reverse of my earlier statement is also true: How art education has developed makes visible the power structures and social struggles that have occurred in Dominican history. For example, the contrast between private and public schools after the 1960s reveals the elitism embedded in Dominican society.

There is an important observation to point out when suggesting a correlation between art education and its social, economic, political, and ideological contexts. Moquete (1986) argued that, while there has been a relationship between educational processes and larger socioeconomic and political contexts in the Dominican Republic, it has not always been a causal relationship.

Unfortunately, Moquete did not elaborate on this idea and focused, instead, on providing a rather descriptive account of the history of Dominican education. Nonetheless, his suggestion—of the existence of internal dynamics—posits an important warning. When looking at how the institution of the school has responded to outside political forces and social and cultural changes, it is easy to disregard how bureaucracy, indifference, group interests, and the lack of supervision and resources, have created a disjunction between the officially intended, and the actual, outcomes. This is what Weinberg (1995) termed asynchrony. Weinberg argued that there have been instances in the history of education in Latin America where, by the time an educational system was implemented, a new reality—and new demands—had already emerged. Weinberg

207 believed educational trends have existed within the affordances of socioeconomic development models, which are the outcome of a coalition of forces that imposes its interests and objectives until it is exhausted by external contradictions. He believed that, while educational initiatives are influenced by corresponding social models, there is not a mechanical correspondence between the two.

An example of this kind of asynchrony is the case of art education textbooks produced in the late 1990s. While educational laws mandated the celebration of national art and folklore, it took nearly a decade for publishing houses to catch up with the new guidelines. Another example is the fact that, while educational laws in the curricular reforms of the 1990s evoked a progressive ethos, in practice, the teaching of art in school has remained conservative. Art education in these new laws emphasized respect for individual differences, justice, solidarity, dignity, awareness of the natural environment, and cultural identity. It stated that young people are meant to discover that they are able to transform their surroundings through art-making, and to envision different possibilities for themselves and for their communities. Interestingly, these principles resonate with Freire’s (1970) pedagogical project. Unfortunately, despite the progressive outlook of these laws, classroom practices have failed to meet these expectations. In

2004, the Inter-American Bank conducted a study to examine the relationship between the 1990s curricular reforms and the effective implementation of these policies in the schools. The report concluded that the new curricula mirrored the most progressive and successful practices in the world, but that the knowledge, skills, and competencies of the school graduates did not reflect the expected outcomes (Alvarez, 2004).

While I subscribe to Moquete’s (1986) and Weinberg’s (1995) cautiousness in avoiding an oversimplification of historical moments as straight byproducts of development models, I

208 believe moments of disjuncture in the history of education are not always random, or politically neutral. It is important to look at these moments of asynchrony as the outcome of human agency.

What could be understood as indifference, or failure to implement educational policies at a given time, could actually be bureaucratic hindrances that allow things to remain in place from previous social models; thus, generating practices that are ideologically tainted from older eras, while maintaining the appearance of being forward thinking (Freire, 1970). Mejía-Ricart (1981) pointed out that the educational system crafted under the antidemocratic norms of Trujillo continued for decades after his death, camouflaged under the apparent democracy of later governments. For example, the pro-Hispanic educational law passed by Trullijo in 1951 was not abrogated until 1997. By looking at these contradictions and moments of asynchrony as the outcome of human action, it is easier to understand our historical reality as one that is open to reinvention (Freire, 1970).

Implications for Today’s Context

At the second Penn State conference on the history of art education in 1989, Elliot Eisner encouraged art education historians to make their work useful by writing histories that contribute to understanding and addressing present problems (Eisner, 1992). This historical inquiry not only seeks to build on our collective understanding of how art education has been taught in the past, but also to provide contexts that can inform current issues. Recent developments in the

Dominican education system have added a sense of urgency to the need of critically examining what functions art education has played in that society. In 1997, a new educational law was passed by Congress (Ley 66-97), which introduced changes to the role of the government regulating education, funding, curriculum, teachers’ retirement plans, and other areas. This law required the national government to invest 4% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in pre-

209 university education. While compared to countries in the region, this does not seem a significant increase, considering that from 1990 to 1995, the GDP investment for pre-university education ranged from 0.56 to 1.97, 4% of the GDP was more than double the average amount invested prior to 1997. However, for the next five years, the government evaded fulfilling the law, pledging that doing so comprised reallocating resources that would damage the functioning of other fundamental social programs.

In 2010, education advocates joined together in an initiative called Coalicion por una

Educacion Digna (Coalition for a Dignified Education). This conglomerate of social groups, including television celebrities, organized an aggressive campaign to demand the investment of

4% of the GDP in education, as stated in the law. The campaign was effective, and in 2012, all candidates running for the presidency publicly signed an agreement where they committed to fulfilling the 4% for education. In 2013, the new national government authorized an increase from 2.5%, to 4%, of the GDP for pre-university education, which represented an increase from

US$1,465 million, to US$2,395 million. The funding provided by the 4% brought new initiatives and optimism to the prospects of improving education. Starting in 2014, the government launched a pilot program where a selected group of schools operated on extended hours. Under this system, students have eight sessions of 45 minutes per day, plus optional workshop activities

(IDEC, 2016). In this extended-hours system, students stay in school from about 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, different from the traditional half-day format. The all-day approach has been considered a success. Today, about 70% of all public schools function under this format.20

The extended-hours program has also led to unanticipated challenges that have become

20Compared to investment in education in other countries in the region, this does not seem a significant increase, considering that in 2004, the GDP investment for pre-university education was 1.66%; nevertheless, in the local context, it represented a consequential increment.

210 spaces for the reconsideration of school subjects that were formerly marginal, such as the arts, and sports. In the traditional half-day school, many students joined baseball clubs and after- school art programs in the afternoons and evenings. Since the extended hours complicate students’ access to those programs, the Department of Education has been confronted with the need to rethink what function art education should play in schools. The Department of Education started to explore ways to bring specialized art education to the schools, including artists-in- school programs, retraining current art teachers, and developing new didactic materials (Diario

Libre, 2016; INAFOCAN, 2013). Despite these measures, it is not very clear what art education should focus on, and what its new function under the new policy might be. While this wave of educational reform has made school art education an important subject of discussion, solutions being discussed are not grounded in research and critical reflection of the past experience of the field, which poses the risk of repeating mistakes from the past.

Figure 14. Miss Dominican Republic 2006-2915, non-dated, accessed from Google images. November 2017.

For Freire, the liberation project required a reinterpretation of history and pedagogical

211 initiatives that points to the transformation of the world (Freire & Macedo, 1995). Since this research examines how art education has been complicit with the elite’s ideological pursues, it suggests the need for curricular approaches that examine critically and creatively aesthetic dimensions of persisting myths from the past. Figure 14 is an example of normalized pervasive aesthetic patterns that can be deconstructed through visual culture projects in art classes. Every year, in a nationally televised contest, Dominicans choose a young woman to represent the country at the Miss Universe international event. The selection of Miss Dominican beauties from

2006 to 2015 shows the persistent trend in favoring western features in idealized Dominican identities. In recent years, baseball Hall of Famer Sammy Sosa went through a procedure to lighten the color of his skin (Mayes, 2015). The fact that a successful former baseball player and entrepreneur felt unhappy with the color of his skin generated controversy about persisting racial stereotypes in Dominican Society. Sandoval (2000) pointed out that the elusive ways of oppression today require evolving modes of resistance; a shifting of resources, and languages to speak to power. This experimental use of materials and discourse tools is being modeled by contemporary Dominican artists who have started to amend the historical absence of Dominican

Black heritage and gender bias in institutionalized narratives (Suset, 2015).

As a research informed by Freire and Sandoval, my research has sought to identify whose histories have been worth documenting, situating events within the larger fabric of social relations, identifying myths created by those in position of power, acknowledging strategies of resistance developed by oppressed groups, and connecting histories to current events that need to be addressed today. While I do not assume the connections between ideological pursuits and art education in the Dominican Republic can be generalized to other contexts, this project encourages other histories that examine how tactics of exclusion and normalization of narratives

212 have been activated in other places. Beyond its historical implications, art education discourse could benefit from more inquiry on how art education could be complicit with symbolic and material forms of oppression. Whose art and culture is privileged or excluded, how opportunities for learning and making in the arts are distributed, and what art education reveals about political and ideological models, are relevant questions that can inform current social justice pursuits in art education in multiple contexts.

I also propose a more serious consideration of the work of Paulo Freire as one lens that, alongside the work of Chela Sandoval, can inform critical analysis in histories of art education.

Scholars have pointed out how theoretical lenses can contribute to a more sophisticated framing of historical events (Stankiewicz, 2009). This research adds to the array of theoretical resources at the disposal of those interested in identifying how particular histories and educational structures privilege or exclude certain groups, and producing knowledge that is politically situated and useful to the transformation of society (Freire, 1970; Tobin & Joe, 2015). The conceptual principles I identified in Chapter 3 are not a prescriptive or exhaustive list of how these theorists can inform historical research in art education, but a starting point to reconsider

Paulo Freire’s work beyond socially-engaged art education.

This research expands the discourse of international histories of art education by examining how internal and external factors produced different pedagogical models for art education in the Dominican Republic. This mapping builds on other histories that have pointed out the relation of art education and imperialism. By critically examining what kind of exclusionary practice has been camouflaged under the umbrella of national culture, I suggest the need to look beyond the oversimplified duality of national interest versus imperialistic pursuits in international histories. While there are similarities and connections between Dominican art

213 education and art education in the United States and Europe, art education in the Dominican

Republic did not develop as a replication of western models. Manual and industrial drawing followed a path similar to the United States, but took place in a different chronological frame.

Industrialization in the United States made manual and industrial drawing relevant to public schools in the late 19th century. Since industrialization did not take off in the Dominican

Republic until the 1940s, industrial drawing gained relevance more than half a century later.

Changes such as vocational education in school responded more heavily to internal socioeconomic and political conditions than foreign influence. Some see connections between the DBAE in the United States and the disciplinary movement in Latin America (Barbosa, 1984).

U.S. movements, such as picture study and creative self-expression, did not cause a significant impact on Dominican art education. Like this, more histories are needed that provide nonconventional lenses and frameworks to understand how art education has developed in other locations. By addressing issues of colonialism, globalization, race, nationalism, and social relations as constitutive of discourses of identity activated in children’s artmaking in school, this research brings a new perspective to matters of identity in Dominican Studies.

Other Histories of Art Education

As I stated in the introduction, I did not attempt to comprehensively describe the development of art education in the Dominican Republic. I acknowledge there are other important histories of art education in the Dominican Republic that wait to be written. One such is a people’s history that highlights the contribution of individuals who have been key players in the development of art education in that country. In addition to Eugenio Maria de Hostos, a people’s history of art education in the Dominican Republic should consider the contributions of

Rafael Diaz Niese, Salome Ureña, Ercilia Pepin, Delia Mercedes Weber Perez, Nidia Sierra, and

214

Jose Molinaza. While I was interested in how trends in the Dominican art education were connected to external factors, this was not a comparative history. Other possible histories might include a comparative analysis of art education in the Dominican Republic in relation to art education in Latin America or the United States. Oral histories capturing the work and contributions of more current actors could provide a compelling continuation to this research.

While other histories could have stemmed from the same data, this mapping: provides a conceptual foundation that can facilitate further historical inquiry in the Dominican context; points out how art education can be complicit with material and symbolic forms of oppression; reframes the work of Freire and Sandoval as theoretical lenses that can inform historical inquiry; looks at issues of Dominicannes through the work of children; and expands on the discourse of international histories of art education.

Lessons Learned and Future Directions

When I met with my adviser, Mary Ann Stankiewicz, at the beginning of my doctoral studies at Penn State, I told her I wanted to write a history of art education in the Dominican

Republic for my dissertation project. This dissertation is the outcome of several years of critically thinking about, and reflecting on, the relevance and significance of this topic. While some initial questions have remained throughout these five years, my understanding of the subject has changed considerably. One change has been becoming more aware of my own biases.

I had to unpack how concepts I took for granted were operating in my work. Initially, I felt overwhelmed by the unpredictability of the information available in the archives, and how to make sense of a daunting amount of information that resulted from the data collection stage. One of the chief lessons I learned in this process came from this very challenge. I understand now that when one has spent enough time mapping and thinking about the information at hand, ideas and

215 concepts begin to emerge. I also gained a better sense of how to balance between relying on the contribution made by other scholars, and being more assertive in advancing my own conclusions.

A version of one of the chapters of my dissertation, where I discuss how folk crafts were advanced in the 1980s to resist the hegemonizing effect of globalization, was accepted as a book chapter in Dustin & Sinner’s forthcoming Artwork histories: Transnational perspectives in art education. In the near future, I plan to submit the theory chapter and three other content chapters as journal articles in Spanish and English journals. I also aim to expand my theoretical and historical analysis to include pedagogical initiatives addressing issues of migration, border- crossing, negated-blackness, racism, and gender exclusion with a particular focus on the

Caribbean experience. I see my dissertation as a mirror of general lines of inquiries I have sought as a scholar and educator during the last 10 years, which include histories of art education, critical pedagogy, socially-engaged art education, Latin American Studies, and K-12 education.

Throughout my doctoral program, I did not want to be labeled as an art education historian, because of the intersection and fluidity of my other research interests. After considering what I can contribute from my positionality as a Caribbean scholar to historical discourses, historical inquiry will continue to be central to my scholarship.

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Felix Rodriguez Vita

Education PhD in Art Education + Minor in Latin American Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, School of Visual Arts (SOVA), May 2019. Master of Arts in Art Education, University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Architecture, Arts and Planning (DAAP), May 2014. Bachelor of Music Education and Theory, Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD), Santo Domingo, D.R., December 2008 Bachelor of Fine, Arts Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (ENBA), Santo Domingo, D.R., June 2002.

Teaching Experience Instructor of Record, Spring 2015, University Instructor for Art Education and Visual Culture 2015, The Pennsylvania State University, School of Visual Arts Teaching Assistant, Spring 2018, History and Philosophy of Art Education. The Pennsylvania State University, School of Visual Arts K-12 Instruction, 2012-2014 Instructor for the youth art program Art in the Market, University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Architecture, Arts and Planning

Awards and Honors 2019 Global Programs Graduate Student Travel Grant, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2018 Humanities Institute Graduate Scholars in Residence Fellowship. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2018-19 Inter-University Program for Latino Research/Mellon Dissertation Fellowship (IUPLR/Mellon), at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 2018-19 Alumni Association Dissertation Award. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2017 City University of New York (CUNY) Dominican Studies Institute Archives and Library Research Award. New York City.

Publications Rodriguez, F. (forthcoming). Folk Culture as Resistance in Dominican Art Education. In Dustin, G. & Sinner, A. (Eds.), Artwork histories: Transnational perspectives in Art Education. Stankiewicz, M. A. & Rodriguez, F. (forthcoming.), Identifying “Critical broad areas of concern in art education”: The 1965 Penn State Seminar. In Mary Ann’s Book Chapter. In Stankiewicz, M. A., Kantawala, A. & Bolin P. E. (Eds.) Stepping Stones: A History of Art Education. Rodriguez, F. (2018). Children in crisis: Maya identity and resistance in Guatemalan children’s drawings of war. Studies in Art Education, 59(4), 311-327.