La Gran Libertad

I met a young twenty-something boy in my community the other day who is fresh from spending several months in Milwaukee. I think he plans to go back again after coffee harvest. I, of course, asked him what he thought of life in Neuba Yol (the Dominican version of the Spanish word Nueva York for New York). Dominicans commonly use the term New York instead of the US. Apparently over fifty percent of Dominicans who live abroad live in New York. This has made New York synonymous with the US which is an endless source of merriment and also frustration for those of us who really aren’t from New York and would like to represent our own state. Anyway, back to my story.

In response to my question the boy in the yellow t-shirt smiled kind of funny and said, “ It’s great and all over there, but you just don’t have La Gran Libertad, which roughly translates as The Great Liberty. I was puzzled. Aren’t we after all the country that tries to promote freedom above all else? We seem to give freedom precedence over reason, safety and health. And what could be more free than that? Consumerist America generally doesn’t like rules against consuming anything, even when it comes to environmentally-degrading plastic bags, killer fast-food, or lumbering one-passenger SUVs that consume about as much gas as a small Cessna. For better or for worse, we have a lot of freedom.

“What do you mean by La Gran Libertad? I asked, clearly puzzled. It was really hard for him to articulate exactly why it is that los Americanos are missing out on La Gran Libertad. He seemed to think it was a lot the atmosphere of the place, that it was lacking in the spirit of the people. I tried to get him to be more specific. It turns out this boy missed having neighbors who greeted him by name every morning as he went by their houses on the way to work. Lunch wasn’t a one or two hour affair with neighbors and friends stopping by. He worked at the Milwaukee airport so lunch was probably a 30 minute ham-and-cheese event in a small cafeteria smelling of old food. Where’s the freedom if the rice and beans are missing? Also his job was work work from morning to evening, not being able to take a long break to chat with whichever friend happened to be walking by. In the evening he went back to his house and no one asked him how his day was. As he came riding down the street revving his bike engine (obviously he didn’t even have a moto which is where the lack of freedom starts) he didn’t have friends yelling ¡Wepa! ¿Cómo tu tá? or ¿Cómo te fue? while they pumped their raised fist in salute. He couldn’t just walk a few minutes down the street to the nearest colmado to meet his friends for a super fria. According to him people work all the time. No one knows each other. When you walk down the street everyone is a stranger and it’s not obvious that any one you meet really cares about you. People always seem to be rushing somewhere, anywhere but where they are.

He said he’s planning to go back to work in the airport again, but he’s not very excited about leaving his small community where everyone knows him and shares in his day.

It was a thought-provoking conversation for me. Dominicans in general place a high value on friends and spending time with them even though the Dominican culture as a whole definitely values consumerism as much as mainstream American culture does. Dominicans (at least the ones in my community), like most Americans, love acquiring material goods. I think the problem arises when a culture tends to do nothing but scurry about working to acquire things. La Gran Libertad, if I understood my friend correctly, is (among other things) knowing when to slow down and enjoy what you’ve got with those around you. Americans might have a lot of freedom, but take it from a Dominicano who knows, it’s not near as much fun as La Gran Libertad.