Los Grupos Antiderechos: The Expansion of the Far Right in the Dominican Republic

Delegitimizing attacks against the feminist and LGBTQ+ movements are part of a long-standing tradition on the part of the most conservative religious groups in the Dominican Republic informed by the disproportionate power the Catholic Church hierarchy yields through the diplomatic agreement (Concordato) the Vatican has with the state since 1954 (Paiewonsky, 2002; Lara, 2020). However, these attacks have multiplied since 2019, when these groups orchestrated a campaign against an attempt to reactivate the Ministry of Education’s gender equality work (Hernández-Medina 2020); and eventually succeeded in defeating it. This presentation examines the evolution of these far-right attacks attempting to curtail women’s and LGTBQ+ rights as part of the conservative backlash that has taken place in Latin America since 2016 (González Vélez and Castro 2018); a more recent phenomenon the Dominican Republic is a relative newcomer to. By using Touraine (1983) and Castells’ (2010 [1999]) social movement framework and Gramsci’s (2003 [1971], Crehan 2002) hegemony theory, this presentation shows how these movements have grown in the Dominican Republic, the collective actors that are part of them, the unlikely alliances that sustain them (e.g., between the Catholic Church hierarchy and the leaders of conservative protestant denominations), and the effects they are having in their “cultural war” against all progressive movements in the country. The presentation also addresses how these far-right movements are recycling racist and anti-Haitian narratives to expand their base; even though many Christian groups work with poor racialized communities and with Haitian migrants. In so doing they are aligning even with fascist paramilitary groups tolerated by the government given its own anti-Haitian rhetoric and practice. The presentation ends by analysing the potential lessons the feminist, LGTBQ+ and other progressive movements can learn from their anti-racist peers and in particular from the movements led by Dominican women of Haitian descent (Mayes 2018).