Nationlism

I am still quite enamored with The Farming of Bones and this whole history that was unknown to me less than a month ago.
Another point that I have gone back to thinking about is the issue of nationalism and the molding it does with ethnicity, racial identity, community, and family. When the nation-state is formed, in order to unify the people (and in making it easier to get them to fight for, die for, pay taxes, or work themselves to death for), every nation, it seems, has had to formulate some image of what they want their nation to be and then molded the people within that, killed or severely oppressed the ones that didn't fit with it, and created campaigns to get certain members to feel that this country was for them. The idea of patriotism is quite interesting as well. Just in the U.S. context, how easily one can be swayed or how being "unpatriotic" is seen as such a bad thing in this country just shows how this idea takes root without people properly questioning it. I felt like it was such a great critique Muhammad Ali put out when he was drafted for the Vietnam war when he said he had no issue with the Vietnamese. He related the issues of Black people in America still being treated as second-class citizens, and the hatred Black soldiers who returned from WWI received to how absurd it was that they expected him to have some false sense of patriotism. And even at that time, with few civil rights, Black people still felt that this was their nation; we were "Americans". This forcible consciousness of Americanism and patriotism takes root even when one is blatantly and overtly dehumanized and legally discriminated against. I think it just shows how strong and imperceptible these ideas are and how difficult it is for us to break away from. They are intertwined with our own personal and collective identities.

Which brings me to my point about nationalism in reference to the Dominican Republic and other Latin-American nations. How does one separate themselves from the nationalism of their/a nation while maintaining an identity that is acknowledged comes from that specific area? I think it's even more problematic when we talk about islands that are complete (or nearly complete, in the case of Hispanola have two nations on it) nations.  This is the case for the Dominican Republic, Puerto-Rico, Cuba, Grenada, etc. How can someone from Cuba step outside the nation-state of "Cuba" and claim their own ethnic, social, cultural identity? Is it possible to embrace the social and cultural changes and situations that have come into being from that island, colonial, cultural-mixing atmosphere without equally embracing that nation? Because many Cubans, I've heard, might say "I'm not Black [white, Latino, etc.], I'm Cuban." Understandably, their identity is their own and it is whatever they say it is, but given the problematic nature of these nations, how does one separate themselves from it?

For example, i personally have issues with identifying with the United States or as an American. It relates to issues of oppression relating to people of color, sexism, classism and a slew of political issues that I cannot respect in this nation, but also because of circumstances and activities the U.S. has carried out overseas and in other nations. Identifying with this nation, even though it is my birthplace, is problematic. Yet, how does an African-American identify get formed and outside of that? Indeed, it is formed by those issues of oppression and second-class citizenship.

Overall, I think the issues surrounding nationalism have to be addressed properly and in-depth if we are to truly unpack why atrocities such as the Parsley Massacre happened and yet there are Dominicans who still proudly proclaim that they are Dominican. How is the pull of nationalism and patriotism so strong that it will allow people to kill or turn a blind eye to killings done in the name of their country (because while some Dominicans helped Haitians, there still was no mass uprising against Trujillo or the government in general, and Dominicans are still celebrating their independence from Haiti, still using Haitians for back-breaking labor while paying them pennies, and still denying their Blackness).