Tourism as a Reproduction of the Plantation in the Dominican Republic

The essay by Luisa Jimenéz explores how tourism in Samaná, Dominican Republic, adds an extra layer of dispossession and exploitation to the political strata of the place. European and North American investors acquire land for luxury and “eco” tourism reproducing systems of racial, ecological, and economic exploitation. She contrasts personal memories with the area’s rich Indigenous and Black histories, and the colonial and antihaitianismo complicity of the Dominican state.

The small maroon curtains frame the tinted windows as we move from the congested city through the center of the island towards the peninsula of Samaná. The bus is one of the many retired Korean buses that found a second life in the Dominican Republic. As we make our way, several vendors hop on and off, some sell cell phone covers, others homemade candy, towards the end of the journey my favorite vendor comes on selling queso de hoja, at the stop we are surrounded by damp rice fields on either side. It takes in total approximately 2.5 hours to reach the town of Las Terrenas, Samaná. This trip used to take over 5 hours, before this relatively new freeway was built. Unlike Punta Cana, the popular destination on the eastern edge of the island where there is overt segregation between the hotel sites and the neighborhoods that house the local Dominicans and Haitian populations who work at said hotels, Samaná is slightly different, providing a seemingly more “authentic experience.”

In 1984 Samaná was where my mom and dad took their first trip together out of Santo Domingo. After the 5-hour trip, they made it to the Bahia de Samaná where they took a fishing boat to the small, then uninhabited, island of Cayo Levantado that sits in the Bay of Samaná. Today this island is nicknamed “Bacardi island,” due to the filming of the Spanish-founded, Cuban rum company Bacardi filming their advertisements here. The island now hosts a “Victorian inspired” 5-star hotel owned by a Spanish and United States company. The cost of rooms average between 870 to 2,500 USD per night. For context, the average Dominican salary in 2024 was around 350 USD per month. They advertise being a “sustainable” resort committed to protecting the delicate ecosystem of the island.

The vast majority of the Dominicans and Haitians living and working in Samaná are paid in Dominican pesos, making the land that they steward and that their ancestors fought for wildly unattainable.

The bus is making its winding way through the mountainous landscape. As I have my head leant against the window I begin to search for something that has become more apparent over the years. And surely, I slowly begin to see more of the earth, literally. Between breaks in the dense tropical landscape the iron-rich, dark red land is revealed. It took several months of living in Samaná for my brain to really register these sights, but now I can’t help but to see them everywhere. At first, I noticed them subconsciously, later I was drawn to being able to see the color and texture of the earth. Through more scooter drives in remote parts of the peninsula, I began registering these sights more consciously as sites for future development, almost always for some sort of luxury or “eco” tourism project.

This dense tropical forest is where tourists get an adrenaline rush from the ziplines, or go on a yoga retreat perched on a hill. The turquoise water is perfect for an instagram vacation post. Yet, the vast majority of visitors are unaware or uninterested in the layers of history that is living and was lived on this land. Indeed, the Samaná peninsula lived the first recorded site of active resistance from native people towards the European invaders on Columbus’s first voyage to the Caribbean. This resistance was done with arrows by the Ciguayo people—which today are an almost forgotten people by most, overshadowed by the more populous Taino peoples. On Columbus’s first journey to “the Americas,” his ship creeped along the whole Northern periphery of the island, stopping in various points between ​​Môle Saint-Nicolas on the Eastern edge of the island and ending in Samaná on the Western edge. The Italian and Spanish invaders had recorded various pleasant “encounters” with the Native people along this incursion of the Northern part of the island. However, when they reached Samaná, the Ciguayo peoples, which were initially willing to trade with the early Colonists, suddenly became suspicious and pulled arrows out on them and began to shoot. This confrontation led them to end the initial colonial mission and return to Spain. They then labeled the bay where this altercation occurred as “La Bahía de las Flechas” (the Bay of Arrows).

Centuries later, during the brief period when the island was unified with Haiti, President Jean-Pierre Boyer, in line with his anticolonial pan-Africanist stance, envisioned the entire island as a free Black nation and encouraged Black Americans to immigrate. Samaná then became home to a Black population coming from the United States, in this newly united island that had freed itself from European slavery. Many people from Samaná today can trace their ancestors to the free Black Americans that arrived in the 19th century. Samaná holds this powerful entangled legacy of Indigenous and Black sovereignty and courage, as well a legacy of living with this landscape.

Sugar, cotton, coffee, gold were all forcefully extracted by the Spanish and the French through the enslaved labor of the Black and Indigenous people of the island. While the continuation of these forms of extraction undoubtedly still exist, there is also a newer more insidious extractive economy. The island that was once taken for plantations, is now being restructured for luxury and/or “eco” tourism largely by foreign investors from European and North American countries.

While the Dominican government is distracting its population with a so-called “Haitian invasion,” the literal land beneath us is vanishing from our attainability. The Dominican Republic is happily being sold to the highest bidder, with complete disregard for the actual inhabitants of the island.

While I speak about the particularities of the Samaná region, I see replications of this dynamic throughout much of the Caribbean, a region continuously grappling with the open wounds of colonialism, from the plantation to the resort. This is seen in Labadee, a peninsula in Haiti leased to the North American cruise company known as Royal Caribbean Group, where local Haitians are not allowed to enter unless they are working at the resort. The resort is fenced off from the rest of Haiti by a double fence and heavily guarded with armed guards, cruise ships come and go for visitors to enjoy this piece of beautiful Caribbean ocean and land that is not permitted to the original stewards of the land. Haitians serve, clean, and cook for them at abysmal wages. The vast majority of the wealth generated on this Haitian land goes to the Royal Caribbean Group, headquartered in The United States. Similarly, our neighbors in Jamaica have faced a massive privatization of their beaches, where according to The Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement under 1% are accessible to the local Jamaican population, with much of the coastline privatized by hotels, resorts, and private beach front properties. In Puerto Rico, a similar pattern plays out. Bad Bunny sings about it in his song “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii” (2025):

Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa
Quieren al barrio mío y que abuelita se vaya
No, no suelte’ la bandera ni olvide’ el lelolai
Que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawái

Aquí nadie quiso irse, quien se fue sueña con volver
Si algún día me tocara, que mucho me va a doler
Otra jíbara luchando, una que no se dejó
No quería irse tampoco y en la isla se quedó
Y no se sabe hasta cuando

When I returned to live in DR after spending most of my life outside the island I decided to make Samaná my home. As beautiful as it was to be back, every day was a perpetual heartbreak. There was this undeniable stench in the air, I couldn’t help but feel most of the tourists and digital nomads would prefer the island without us. This feeling continued to haunt me, I felt they do not care about us unless it is to serve them or provide them with the charming side of our culture. The Dominican government boasts about being the most touristed nation in the Caribbean, to me, this celebration cannot be untangled with our obsession with whiteness. The tourists can actively choose to blatantly ignore how violent their presence is, because too often we do.

I try to remain optimistic from the smallest gestures. A pot of coconut rice that my friend made for me. A barefoot bachata dance at the edge of the shore. A moment at a secluded beach that is “too dangerous” because of its lack of infrastructure. Or a failed investment project where the tropical vegetation takes back the cut earth. ■