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Originally Posted by Hillbilly
Interesting.
This weekend I had an experience that sort of points out what one of the posters referred to: Money don't make class.
As I went out to pick up the morning papers, I found the beautiful box from a bottle of Johnny Walker Green Label....there in the street.
My first thought was "What kind of a person would have the money to spend +/-RD$3500 for a bottle of good whiskey and then lack the brains to know that you shouldn't throw the empty out onto the street?"
I asked this of my corner "bodeguero" aand he answered:"HB, that person doesn't work." Which to me meant that it was some sort of hoodlum class person....sort of what I felt initially.
Class in the DR: Think back....You went to your girl/boy friend's house. You met her grandmother. What was the first thing out of the dear old lady's mouth?
"¿De quién es usted, mi hij@?"
She wanted to know who and where you were from. She wanted to know what "quality" you were from, too.
Part of living here, I suppose.
As an answer: Yes there is. But it can be porous, if the climber has any couth at all. For example, in Santiago, all the old families have disappeared from 'view' ....The Bermúdez, the Cabrals, the Espaillats, the Tavárez...are still there, but they are no longer the spokespersons for the local scene.
All of the new people have come up by dint of intelligence, education and hard work. 40 years ago there was just the Chamber of Commerce and Industry as a platform.
Now there is the Association of Merchants and Industrialists, the Association of Industrialists North Region, The Associaton for the Development of Santiago all of which serve as platforms for opinion and for forging opinions.
None of the above are headed by any of the old families....
HB  |
HB,
This is the european/spanish influence that is still lingering here. I hear than in England (and this is not exclusive to England, btw), people are more interested from where the parents of a person are from than the person him/herself. Even if a person is born in England, people are more interested in knowing where the parents came and if the parents were foreigners, the kid would be considered a foreigner as well, despite being born in England.
Apprently, being English means having English roots all the way.
To respond to the post, I will simply repost what I posted in another thread:
In this region of the world (Caribbean and Brazil), a person (regardless of race, color, or blood lines) can gain access to upper crust society if he/she acquires a good education, some money, some culture or class and the such.
This is not true of other societies in the rest of the hemisphere or the world, where once you are born in a particular class, it does not matter what you do, you will never enter the upper classes. This is true of England, where even the richest of the rich will not be considered upper class if he was not born into one of those few families. Also, in the US, being part of a race is connected with certain stereotypes which are connected to blood lines and previous perceptions. Once you are born into one, you will not come out until death.
Here, improve your lot by improving yourself and soon you will notice that blood lines, race, and class are not more important than that.
The exeption comes among the tutumpoles, where ancestry is very important but you will be surprised how open they become when the person is not of "respectable ancestry" but has a good class, education, and wealth belt around his/her waist.
So yes, Classism is alive and well here and often enough, social status (which is connected to class) is more important than anything else.
This also explains why so many people here focus so much on their public image as well.
BTW: Many foreigners (not just DR1 foreigners, but all sorts of foreigners) fail to differentiate racism from classism and often make comments complaining of racial discrimination when in fact, its simply classism in action.
This is why when you date or are about to marry someone, you will almost always get the questions:
What's the surname of your fiance?
If they don't recognize the surname, they will ask about your fiance's profession, who their parents were, what they did, etc.
Usually, if they don't recongnize that either, they will ask from where they are from and this one usually gives them the answers they are looking for.
Where you live in town says everything in terms of class, social status, and the such.
A recent "revelation" to me came recently, where I heard that this attitude even exist among the lower classes, though I don't know if it does for the same reason.
Apparently, when someone marries another person among the lower classes here, usually people commnent "fulano married so and so, the daughter of xyz from La Vega" and depending on the reputation the parents have, people would either approve or disapprove from such union.
This is interesting, because it points to, perhaps, subclasses between the lower class as well. The more I learn about this, the more I will post because its interesting.
All this time I thought only the upper classes practiced this, only to realize that it exist at all levels of Dominican and perhaps, Caribbean societies.
-NAL