Reformers
sought to fashion
an experiment
which would overcome
the traditional
concentration of power
and decision making in the
hands of the federal
government. This was
-and remains-
a daunting task.
As President Leonel Fernandez and his Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) gradually reveal the political direction of their new govern- ment, a semi-rural, north-central province called Salcedo may be emerg- ing as a model they would like the rest of I
follow. It was here in the early 1990s tha
vice president, Jaime David Ferndndez M
federal senator from Salcedo, led an energ
decentralize and democratize the Domin
process. Since the successes and seti
Salcedo experiment reveal a great deal a
rent state of Dominican society and the
change in the near future, it is vital to un
the project is all about.
Salcedo’s experiment in decentralizatio
ratization took shape after the provincia
1990-elections won by the PLD. A
reformers, joined by leftist leaders and un
Lilian Bobea is a sociologist at the Latin American Faculty (FLACSO) in Santo Domingo, and at the S of New York at Binghamton.
VOL XXX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1997
An Experiment
in Local
Democracy
A health promoter makes a home visit in the kind of local initiative the new
government may soon begin promoting.
the country to tatives, sought to fashion an experiment that would
t Fernindez’s overcome the traditional concentration of power and
[irabal, then a decision making in the hands of the federal govern-
etic project to ment. This was-and remains-a daunting task. The
ican political Dominican Constitution gives the president direct con-
backs of the trol over most of the national budget, and this under-
ibout the cur- mines the ability of municipal and regional govern-
prospects for ments to carry out projects and reforms according to
derstand what local needs. Control over the police force is also con-
centrated at the national level, weakening local mecha-
n and democ- nisms of accountability. And there is no such thing as
1 elections of local legislation: all Dominican laws are national.
slate of PLD Salcedo is not alone in its attempt to bring political
iion represen- decision making to the local level. In Puerto Plata, for
Social Science example, the tourist mecca on the country’s north coast,
State University a project of urban planning and economic and social
reform began five years ago with support from commu-
27REPORT ON THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
nity organizations, churches, opposition parties and the
business community. But it is in Salcedo that the devel-
opment of a genuine local politics and the encourage-
ment of citizen participation is taking place in the most
systematic and interesting way.
Though Salcedo remains largely rural, its small cities
have grown rapidly over the past few decades. Many
farmers continue to eke out a living in the declining
sectors of cocoa and coffee production, but many oth-
ers have sought out employment in the public sector as
well as in the informal economy. Grinding poverty
plagues both the urban and rural areas of the province.
While some Salcedo houses have zinc roofs, electricity
and running water, many have roofs thatched with palm
leaves and no running water at all. Residents frequently
fetch (hopefully) fresh water from nearby rivers and
streams.
But poverty has not made the people of Salcedo pas-
sive. As the neoliberal policies of the 1980s squeezed
them even more than usual, Salcedo’s poor-lacking
other ways to influence a highly centralized govern-
ment-took to the streets to show their discontent,
demanding that the central government build aque-
ducts to supply water and that it improve health ser-
vices. The political vitality of the 1980s, in turn, had its
roots in the popular mobilizations of the 1960s and
1970s against the repressive rule of Joaquin Balaguer.
During those decades, unions, peasant organizations
and women’s groups played key organizing roles while
young activists throughout the country organized
sports groups and social clubs that became centers
of popular education and resistance to Balaguer’s
authoritarianism.
By the 1980s, the scenario had changed dramatically.
Between 1970 and 1990, the country’s urban popula-
tion climbed from under two million to over four mil-
lion. This rapid urbanization transformed the nature of
collective action, displacing older sites and styles of
political organization. In the rapidly growing marginal
barrios of Dominican cities, new political forces
emerged in response to the growing poverty and deep-
ening inequality brought on by neoliberal economic
policies. Urban movements began to focus their ener-
gies on issues that were truly local-like access to basic
services such as schools, health clinics, electricity and
potable water.
In this new scenario, traditional collective actors,
such as political parties and unions, became less rele-
vant than before, and the connection between left-wing
parties and local struggles grew ever-more distant. This
reflected, in part, the near disappearance of a coherent
national project for the left-a process that was accel-
erated by systematic government repression throughout
the 1980s and into the 1990s. Equally important, how-
ever, was the rigidity and intolerance of the two center-
left opposition parties, the PLD and the Dominican
Revolutionary Party (PRD), which failed to present
programs that realistically responded to the desperate
conditions in which most Dominicans lived.
Alongside the parties and the trade unions, then, a new
political actor has emerged-the new urban poor who
live in the so-called “marginal neighborhoods.” They
seize land from the state or large landowners, illegally
While Salcedo’s social
movements exist outside
traditional politics-in a kind
of political limbo-they
continue to struggle against
their spatial and political
segregation to assert their
citizenship rights.
appropriate electricity and water, and create ad hoc
councils to demand basic services from the govern-
ment. These actions, which exist outside the structure
of traditional politics, have not attracted the support of
any political party or “respectable” organization. Slum
dwellers find that their urgent day-to-day problems, and
the mechanisms they create to solve them, exist in a
kind of political limbo. As a result, these urban social
movements are more diffuse and fragmented, and their
capacity to negotiate vis-ii-vis the state is weaker. Yet
they continue to struggle against their spatial and polit-
ical segregation to assert their citizenship rights.
t is within this larger context of social change that
Salcedo’s decentralization experiment makes sense.
The political confrontations and mobilizations of
the 1980s were seen by participants as struggles against
the centralized authority both of the PRD administra-
tions of the early 1980s and Balaguer’s Social Christian
Reformist Party (PRSC) government after 1986. While
the PLD was not itself a new political force in 1990, its
newly installed municipal and provincial leaders felt
they had a mandate to reform the province, above all
through the decentralization of resources and decision
making. In fact, prior to the province’s 1990 elections,
NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28REPORT ON THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
politicians from both opposition parties, the PLD and
the PRD, “agreed that whoever won would initiate a
new system.”‘
Once in office, the PLD put together a plan to spur
local development by means of a broad process of con-
sultation and collaboration among the diverse political
and social forces in the province. Central to the plan
was an effort to promote forums where different pro-
posals could be aired and collective decisions agreed
upon-a policy of dialogue and decision making known
as concertacidn. The PLD hoped to bring the diverse
popular organizations that functioned in Salcedo into
this process, including neighborhood associations, women’s groups, peasant associations and sports clubs.
The first step was the creation of a group called the
Community Development Forum, which brought
together provincial and congressional officials, local
clergy, political leaders and community group leaders.
The Committee developed a strategic plan based on
project proposals for the region, and also administered
public funds allocated by the central government for
local use. At the same time, the new leaders organized
meetings with an even broader range of community
groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to
identify critical problems in the province. The meet-
ings, which also sought to foster support by explaining
the decentralization process to community groups, identified health, education and employment as priori-
ties.
When Salcedo’s new leaders declared that the
province had moved “de la protesta a la propuesta “-
from protest to proposal-they often pointed to these
new mechanisms of popular expression. Yet devising
new alternatives had as much to do with the high levels
VOL XXX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1997
of political mobilization before 1990 as it did with the
new avenues of expression. “The province of Salcedo
was already one of the most organized in the country,”
commented one leader. 2 If Salcedo moved from protest
to proposal, it did so at least in part because the protests
made the proposals possible. The protests, after all, had
forced local politicians to imagine new and creative
ways to deal with the province’s pressing problems.
The reformers-PLD municipal authorities as well as
then-Senator and current Vice-
President Jaime David Fernandez
Mirabal-organized their initial
efforts around an ambitious public
health plan. 3 A technical office was set
up to design infrastructure projects,
including rural and urban clinics,
drainage and water systems, and
garbage-disposal systems. It also
trained dozens of community residents
as public-health educators to advise
their neighbors on hygiene and other
health issues.
The reformers faced two fundamen-
tal problems at the outset. First, the
decentralization plan was sui
generis-as a local initiative, it was
not linked to any broader commitment
by the central government to introduce
nationwide reforms. Funding, given
the limited budgets to which Dominican provinces have
access, was therefore a major problem. To succeed, the
decentralized political institutions of Salcedo would
have to be parallel to, and largely independent of, nor-
mal structures of government. To begin with, local offi-
cials looked abroad for resources. The Pan-American
Health Organization, largely underwritten by the Italian
government, offered substantial funding for the project.
In fact, Salcedo’s success in attracting funds is widely
attributed to Fernindez Mirabal’s ability to make use of
his contacts in Italy, where he had obtained a degree in
public health.
y many measures, the Salcedo experiment has
been a great success. On the health-care front, the project organizers oversaw the training of
dozens of nurses to work in primary care at local hos-
pitals and clinics. They also organized an immunization
campaign against tuberculosis and other diseases, and
they promoted health education in poor neighborhoods.
In just a few years, Salcedo’s infant mortality rate has
notably decreased. Beyond progress in the area of
health, the project also created a series of agricultural ini-
tiatives (mostly to help small farmers grow and market
nontraditional crops), an office to fight discrimination
29REPORT ON THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
and violence against women, and a project promoting
democratic participation that has trained over 2,000
community leaders to act as liaisons between municipal
agencies and the province’s communities.
Yet the decentralization experiment has faced a num-
ber of problems, among them Salcedo’s long history of
partisan rivalry. “Salcedo was the most conflictive
province in the country,” said one political leader. “The
authorities could never agree on anything. One leader
was always boycotting the other’s plan, so that they
never came up with solutions to the problems of the
community.” 4 The reformers believed they could over-
come sectarian in-fighting through their policy of con-
certaci6n. While the opening of the province’s political
system after 1990 encouraged a more productive way
If genuine decentralization
is the transfer of power
and responsibility not
just to local caudillos but
to the people themselves,
then much work remains
to be done.
of engaging in political dialogue, it is not clear how
successful the reformers were in keeping their promise
to promote “the effective coordination of all the social,
political and economic forces of the province with the
goal of enhancing the general welfare.” 5 The provincial
electoral defeat of the PLD in 1994, moreover, put the
entire decentralization project at risk, revealing the
fragility of Salcedo’s much-heralded concertacidn.
More important is the issue of what popular partici-
pation means in Salcedo. Several new organizations of
grassroots participation were formed, such as the
Committee for Community Development, which coor-
dinates community activities and brings together
already-existing groups for dialogue and mutual aid.
Another new form of popular expression is represented
by the cabildos abiertos, or open councils. Convoked
by municpal authorities, they are open to the participa-
tion of all adult members of the community. Although
the cabildos serve only as consultative bodies, they
have still encountered resistance from traditional lead-
ers who fear the growth of popular participation.
Despite the good intentions embodied in these new
participatory mechanisms, a tradition of top-down deci-
sion making continues to hamper the process, as one
recent experience illustrates. A subsistence farmer
named Eugenia was selected to take part in a pilot agri-
cultural program. She agreed to invest in nontraditional
crops for her small farm. After the first crop failed,
technical assistants urged her to try another, and then a
third. In the end, Eugenia had no crop and owed a sub-
stantial sum of money to the project. She felt mistreated
because the “experts” simply told her what to plant,
then gave no technical support. She had no sense of
how her experience fit into the larger project, nor what
the project was, who was in charge or how decisions
were made.
As Eugenia’s case suggests, decentralization in
Salcedo at times recapitulates longstanding inequalities
between peasants and experts, and contradictions
between democratic decision making and the desire for
certain instrumental outcomes. At times, the rhetoric of
participation masks a hierarchical approach to problem
solving. “The community was the main protagonist,”
said one consultant. “It is the community that develops
and executes the project. They take part at the key
moment, as manual labor.” And a community leader
drove the point home. “The authorities,” she said, refer-
ring to the new reform-minded provincial government,
“came into the community looking for people to get
involved. It’s not that the community had no impor-
tance-the project never would have worked without
them. But it was the authorities who took the initiative.” 6
The weakness of Salcedo’s decentralization experi-
ment became evident by 1994. Despite progress in
many areas, the PLD was turned out of office by
Salcedo’s voters. While the loss in Salcedo was part of
a nationwide rout of the party, it is hard not to conclude
that the vote signaled the PLD’s failure to bring
together the diverse political forces in the region and to
mobilize the population in favor of a far-reaching
process of political transformation.
“Participation is like trust,” observed a Salcedo
activist. “It takes time to develop.”‘ 7 And while
Salcedo’s reformist leaders were politically committed
to their decentralization project, genuine participation
remains an unconquered territory. If genuine decentral-
ization is the transfer of power and responsibility not
just to local caudillos but to the people themselves, then
much work remains to be done. Fundamental to a trans-
formative project is the conviction that democracy is
both a means to an end and a good in itself. In a soci-
ety that is only now emerging from the deep-rooted
authoritarian tradition of Joaqufn Balaguer and count-
less lesser caudillos, the process will clearly not take
place overnight.
An Experiment in Local Democracy
1.Interview with a social promoter at the Provincial Technical Office,
Salcedo, July, 1996.
2.Interview with Orlando Rosado, a PRSC Congressman.
3.The charisma of Jaime David in Salcedo is in part owed to the national,
indeed international fame of his three aunts, the Mirabal sisters, mur-
dered by Trujillo in an act that sparked popular resistance to the
regime. The Mirabal sisters are the basis of Julia Alvarez’s recent novel,
in the Time of the Butterflies.
4.interview with Miguel Angel, consultant for the Provincial Technical
Office, Salcedo, July, 1996.
5.Salud, Medioambiente y Lucha contra la Pobreza,” project concept
paper, 1991.
6.Opinion expressed by community leaders at an evaluation meeting in
Salcedo, July, 1996.
7 Focus group with community leaders, Salcedo, July, 1996.
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