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Sunday, 1 February
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — Out to Estadio Quisqueya to hunt up ticket info. Just getting into the stadium means running a gauntlet of scalpers, who swarm us like mosquitoes and are almost as annoying.
Walt’s first Dominican souvenir is a day–long headache from a close encounter with low concrete stadium stairs. Mine is a purple baseball cap bearing a yellow star, the colors of the presidential election campaign of the front–runner, former President Leonel Fernandez.
Under the incumbent, Hipolito Mejia, the economy has imploded. Many poor Dominicans now cross 80 miles of open ocean in small boats to look for work in Puerto Rico, where they often are often less than welcome and abused by the authorities. The ones who don’t make it wash ashore dead or simply are swallowed up by the pitiless sea.
Signs of grass–roots support for Fernandez are everywhere, including right outside the airport the day we arrived, big street rallies. Support for “Hippo,” as gringo expatriates derisively call him, seems limited to the paid commercial variety. If the election is honest, Fernandez probably wins.
(NOTE: Three months later, Leonel smoked Mejia like a good cigar, winning by almost 20 percent.)
On Sundays, the Malecon bans cars. Kids fly kites, play basketball and soccer in the street. After dark, couples take over the whitewashed concrete benches to dance and cuddle until dawn, or until it’s cool enough to sleep.
We watch the Super Bowl in Walt’s room, then turn off the halftime show, so we miss the Janet Jackson halftime flashing, but the news replays it later in “full” detail. Is there any member of the Jackson family who doesn’t have issues…?
Oh well, enough with the Super Bowl silliness. Tomorrow, ¡beisbol!
NEXT: Day Two
©Gregory Alan Gross,
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Last updated: 29 July 2005