Dominicans Love Haitians Movement is utilizing performance and storytelling to reflect and reconcile with over 500 years of Eurocentrism. It is exhuming mythological injustices designed and instituted by colonialism, dictators and plutocrats to instill fear, prejudices and oppression. Dominicans Love Haitians Movement is using art as a vehicle for unravelling biases and bigotry. Its mission is to heal wounds instituted by racial stigmas. We are creating space to manifest the possibility of and the ability to witness violent acts without deflection, amnesia, or suppression and voicing those acts so they no longer hold power or designate who we are as human beings.
The catalyst for the project was in 2009 learning that my father’s grandmother was Haitian, he kept this secret for over 70 years. In 2013 I then learned of the impending legislature 168-13 that would, retroactively from 1929, denationalize and leave stateless more than 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent. Therefore, the vision of the movement is to bring these complex dissonant experiences to the forefront through participatory art and facilitation to formulate dialogues, reflections and restore compassion and healing to create a future from an unimagined place and bring communion to the island of Kiskeya Ayiti.
The project challenges current thinking with respect to how Dominicans view their history. It utilizes language in shifting the current sociological framework of oppression. The name of the project in and of itself challenges the thinking that love can exist between two nations that have been at odds with each other since the 1800s. It is imperative to dismantle the myths of race that have been instituted and internalized as hard-core values and a belief that continues to perpetuate hate and separates people by creating “others” who are subsequently used as scapegoats and seen as less than human.
Clarivel Ruiz, Founder/Cultural Alchemist
Clarivel Ruiz, Executive Director, Afro Taino (First Generation Dominican in the United States, 3rd Generation Haitian)
Clarivel Ruiz (we, us, you) is a child of the African/Indigenous Diaspora; ancestors are from Ayiti Kiskeya (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), a first-generation immigrant raised in NYC on the ancestral bones/covered shrines of Lenapehoking. Our artist work honors Black and Indigenous people whose histories are marginalized, subverted, and consigned to the fringes of memory. Clarivel Ruiz served as the program manager at Downtown Community Television Center’s Pro-TV program for several years. Clarivel worked with young people in the documentary field to provide critical media literacy and media production training; through its out-of-school time program and advanced youth fellowship program, Ruiz facilitated the production of over twenty films annually.
In 2016, Clarivel initiated the Dominicans Love Haitians Movement, incorporated in 2018 into an arts-based nonprofit using the arts and decolonization as a foundational tool to celebrate our commonalities, forge a future free from tyranny, and increase tolerance, belonging, and dignity for all. As an Artist-Activist, Educator, and Cultural Barrier, Clarivel supports people in the transformative work of cultural responsiveness and unlearning racism, evident through educational work at New York City’s Department of Education Division of Multilingual Learners, Ramapo for Children, New York University’s The Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, along with fellowships at Metropolitan Museum’s Civic Practice Seminar participant, a New Media Democracy’s Unicorn Fund recipient, and an Intercultural Leadership Institute Year 5 Fellow. Clarivel is an MFA graduate of CUNY, City College.