The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [33]
Concern about whitening the race was continued after Trujillo’s death by his former puppet president, Balaguer, who in 1983 wrote a book titled La Isla al Revés, The Island in Reverse, that claimed the Haitians were still trying to invade though no longer using the military. He called it a “peaceful invasion,” an invasión pacífica, a favorite term of Trujillo’s. The new invasion, he wrote, was “biological” and he warned of the “fecundity” of black people, saying that they “multiply with a rapidity that is almost comparable to that of vegetable species.” To further illustrate his point, he included five pages of color photographs of families from his native region to show what fine Caucasian faces they had.
When José Francisco Peña Gómez—a popular politician with black skin and African features—ran for president in 1996, Balaguer insisted he had a secret plan to reunify the country with Haiti. Peña Gómez was a Dominican born of Dominican-born parents with one Haitian grand-parent, and yet he was frequently said to be Haitian.
Even as recently as 1997, President Leonel Fernández, who said he would be different, discovered that the Dominican Republic was threatened by a Haitian “mafia”; some 35,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian ancestry were subsequently deported.
But unlike the Americans, Dominicans do not see their society as divided between white people and black people, with anyone with any touch of African blood considered black. Dominicans are mostly mulattos, and in Dominican society mulattos are not considered black. In fact, mulatto is too vague a term for all of the variants—morenos, indios, chabins, people with African hair, commonly known as “bad hair,” and green eyes, people with “good hair” but bad noses—all recognized classifications that in America were considered black. Dominicans had not expected to be treated as though they were haitianos.
It was predictable that the first black Latin players would be Cuban. White Cubans had always been in the major leagues. Thirty-two Cubans had played in the majors before 1948, starting in 1871 with the first Latino major leaguer, Esteban Bellán, known in the majors as Steve Bellán, who was one of the founding forces in Cuban baseball. Cubans such as pitcher Dolf Luque, nicknamed “the Pride of Havana,” were mainstays of the majors during the white-only years. There was no gentlemen’s agreement on white-skinned Latinos.
In 1951, Minnie Miñoso from Havana, the speedy outfielder nicknamed “the Black Comet,” moved from the Negro League to the Cleveland Indians and then to the Chicago White Sox. Miñoso was the first black Latino player in the major leagues. The door was slowly opening for San Pedro.
In 1952, Sandy Amorós moved from the Cuban League to the majors—a good story, since he was black but didn’t speak a word of English, and so reporters never talked to him. A spectacular player in Cuba, he was a shy man who seemed lost in the English-speaking world of the 1950s major leagues. When he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers he had no home but lived on the yacht of Roy Campanella, the Dodgers’ black catcher who had learned Spanish playing in the Mexican League. The unseen Amorós had his one moment of fame, a spectacular catch of Yogi Berra’s hit by the low left-field wall of Yankee Stadium that turned into a double play, saving the 1955 World Series for the Dodgers.
In the 1950s, when there were few Spanish-speaking players and few black players in the majors, it was not going to be an easy move for Dominicans. The first Dominican to play major-league ball was Osvaldo Virgil. Virgil left