Imagine getting lost here...at night...

suarezn · #1 10-19-2009, 03:52 PM

What if you found yourself lost in one of these Santo Domingo hoods (Capotillo, Los Guandules, Las Canitas, etc)? I got curious and decided to take a look at these hoods from the "air" using google maps and it really drove the point home why cops don't even bother trying to go there or if they go sometimes end up fleeing for their lives. Look at this...absolutely crazy. Think for a minute that in each one of those tiny specs live 4,5, 8, 10...or who know how many people. Imagine if you lived there? Wouldn't you take the first Yola to Puerto Rico you could get a hold of.

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DavidZ · #2 10-20-2009, 12:04 PM

wow!!!!! that's an amazing sight... like a flat version of the favelas in Brazil...probably built alongside the ozama river or other water source that floods every times it rains...

windeguy · #3 10-20-2009, 12:51 PM

Photographic evidence that there are too many people making too many more people.

frank recktenwald · #4 10-20-2009, 01:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by windeguy

Photographic evidence that there are too many people making too many more people.

Especially when because of lack of electricity they have nothing else to do than making whoopy

Golo100 · #5 10-20-2009, 02:52 PM

While all the above comments are well intended and have truths in it here's the other side.
Poverty or not, people in our barrios appear on the surface(and that says a lot)to be happier than people in Anacaona Avenue. I recall a study or something that indicated that Dominicans were the happiest people in the planet(electricity or not). They were not refering to Dominicans who own Casa de Campo villas or Miami Beach condos. They were refering to the real Dominicans living in Capotillo, Libertador de Herrera, Buenos Aires, Sabana Perdida, etc.
When you got nothing to lose you have a certain happiness."What can you loose?" Like the song by Brazil's Isabel Antena with the band Thievery Corporation. It can't get any worse. We can only go up.
Years ago those same barrios were mostly wood and zinc tops. No radio or TV. No refrigerators. No cell phones.
Today, an interminable wall of concrete alleys with cement block houses, many with no "empañete" on the side walls has replaced those hurricane weak wooden shacks. TV dishes fill the roofs with SKY cable.
Cable TV has arrived there. WiFI. Huge Coca Cola and Presidente beer trucks drive thru narrow streets looking for this profitable markets of drinkers, who have now arrived, thanks to the golden parachutes sent by their brothers and sisters abroad, wire transfers via Vimenca and setting up all kinds of small businesses and chimichurris.
If it weren't for the poor service and unequal return of their taxes in services and paved streets, these barrios would even look beautiful. Their houses painted with bright colors that people in Piantini would not dare use in their mansions. The same colors used by those beautiful wooden houses in the road to Bavaro. Yet, this colorful picture paints the dynamic of a vibrant community.
It's amazing how at night, when electricity is on, the barrios look beautiful with their lights on. These tiny houses don't look so bad. You can see their living rooms lighted up with their doors wide open not fearing anything. Lively loud music. Loud vendor trucks exceeding the decibel limit of funny cars. Religious fanatics walking down with loudspeakers praising their religion. Haitian women screaming "Aguacate"! "Guineo maduro"!
Beauty parlors on sidewalks with electric generators to dry their beautiful women's hair so they can go to the disco or colmadon.
And yes, this is the best...the most beautiful and exciting women in the country are in the barrios.
Las Menores, they call them, underage teens with adult bodies, and curves that can only be driven with a Mitsubishi Evolution at 5000rpm. They are the queens of the barrio. They own the men. They own the streets. They name the price. They sing along, dance and shout in the streets to the music of PEPE and reggaeton. They are happy, unlike girls in rich neighborhoods. They show their bodies and move their hips, as if life is forever.
The palomos, the young generation of mostly unemployed men in the barrios now drive motorcycles and passolas to impress Las Menores. They pay their loan doing motoconcho. But it's rich guys from Piantini, Anacaona, NACO, Casa De Campo and Punta Cana who come to the barrios driving their Porsches GT3's and Mercedes SL63AMG's who eventually, at least for the night, take them out to expensive Cabañas in San Isidro.
But the palomos in the end win their hearts. They own the streets doing their motorcycle wheelies.The viejevos are no match, except when they show up with their wallets full and ready to burn nitro. Just for the night of course. Their boring wrinkled and Prozac wives are no match for Las Menores.
It's not all that bad in Las Cañadas.

suarezn · #6 10-20-2009, 03:39 PM

Good post Golo...of course you're romanticizing it a bit, but you're correct in places like this is where the soul of the country lies (even if we're afraid to visit there).

I think we all at a certain point in our lives probably wish we could live such worry free lives. No meeting to attend at a certain time, no schedules to keep, no time and expenses to submit, etc...But the truth is that life in these Canadas can be tough and rough. Maybe not as tough as it looks from the air, but still not a place to visit / live in just for giggles.

I do admire the fact that you stay current with the slang / talk of the street in spite of your age. Tiene bujia el viejo...

DavidZ · #7 10-20-2009, 03:40 PM

Golo...Nice!! that was great prose...painted a beautiful picture of life in the barrio...are you a writer?

Berzin · #8 10-20-2009, 03:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by windeguy

Photographic evidence that there are too many people making too many more people.

Sorry, but you are way off base. It's not about overpopulation, it's about unequal resource distribution.

If these people had access to the same opportunities your pals over in the better neighborhoods have to education and jobs, you really think that photo would look as it does now?

badpiece33 · #9 10-20-2009, 04:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by suarezn

What if you found yourself lost in one of these Santo Domingo hoods (Capotillo, Los Guandules, Las Canitas, etc)? I got curious and decided to take a look at these hoods from the "air" using google maps and it really drove the point home why cops don't even bother trying to go there or if they go sometimes end up fleeing for their lives. Look at this...absolutely crazy. Think for a minute that in each one of those tiny specs live 4,5, 8, 10...or who know how many people. Imagine if you lived there? Wouldn't you take the first Yola to Puerto Rico you could get a hold of.

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I did find myself lost in there one afternoon, I was thinking with the wrong head and volunteered to drive this girl home, I made so many turns and streets just ended for no reason,streets were torn up in parts it was pretty scary and the sun was going down. I finally paid someone to get in and get me out of there.

suarezn · #10 10-20-2009, 04:22 PM

Haha...You sound almost like a vampire movie where you're trying to get out before the sun goes down and it ominously just starts to descend in horizon. That's a situation where I would definitely be giving some cab fare.