Desires by candlelight
At 6:40 in the evening, the sun started setting between two clouds in the frontier area of the South while the pickup truck raises a cloud of dust in the dirt that covers the road. The road is steep, lonely and unpopulated, but along some stretches there are children playing with slingshots. Fifteen minutes later down the stretch, four men play dominoes with the last light of the day in a colmado in La Altagracia, a farming community without electricity stuck in the middle of the Sierra de Bahoruco, some 330 km from Santo Domingo.
"I didn't come as a prisoner, nope," he says and everybody laughs out loud.
Belonging to the municipal district of José Francisco Peña Gomez, Pedernales, are La Altagracia and the communities of Aguas Negras and Mencia, the three without electricity, and at one time recipients of projects of solar panel installations. There are homes where the panels never arrived; in others, they got damaged or were - supposedly - stolen. In José Francisco Peña Gomez, the indicator of the quality of life is barely 27.5, with 97.4 of the homes living in poverty, and extreme poverty reaches 91.5%. In all of the municipal district there are 9699 persons, according to the information of the Poverty Atlas.
While the group plays dominoes, other rural farmers share the afternoon on the sidewalk of the same business. With the sound of the dominoes hitting the table songs from the Guatemalan singer Ricardo Arjona sound from a business a block away.
Glebi Cuevas is 30, has an eighth grade education, and works in the small food store where the music is coming from, fed by a solar panel. Although today Arjona is playing, their preferred songs are of the bachata singers Anthony Santos and Romeo. In order to cool the beers, Glebi buys blocks of ice in Pedernales - at a price of 200 pesos per unit - which last between four and five days in disconnected freezers. Cuevas explains that besides the drinks, he sells a lot of cleren, an alcoholic drink made from sugarcane in Haiti, since the beers and Dominican rum are luxuries reserved for the fiestas. In order to accompany breakfast or dinner, the colmados offer eggs and salami because with an archaic system of conservation, selling cheeses would be risky.
Although in his house there are two photovoltaic panels, for Gloria Eufemia Herasme - wife of Francisco Creciano - the energy is barely enough to light the house. After 7:20 on a moonless night, Gloria, 56 and from Neiba, sits next to the small garden with her husband, under a single light bulb. If today had not been sunny, they would have to melt wax. When the woman is going to prepare meat she can only buy in town enough for two days at the most: one which she saves is washed with sour orange and is hung to dry if the temperatures in the Sierra de Bahoruco are low. Now, during a hot and dry May, she can only buy the meat that they are going to consume that same day. They also buy ice when they go "to town" and they store it in ice chests, but it last for a short time. How do you wash clothes? By hand.
Gloria - - they call her - has a prepaid residential telephone from the Haitian company Digicel, the only signal that reaches the community surrounded by steep hills. Also, the radio stations that they listen to in La Altagracia are also those from Haiti.
Francisco Creciano Almonte says that the coffee and the beans that they have planted have been lost to the drought of more than a month - he says that they usually don't have more than 10 days between one rain and the next - and he recalls that the production of the coffee farms has fallen off in recent years, partly by the coffee rust plague. In spite of the decadence of farming, the man considers that the principle need in the area is electricity.
Ignacio Estevez Torres comes to Francisco's house. He is a loquacious man, some 78 years old who arrived at the little town as an adolescent, when Rafael Leonidas Trujillo moved his family out of Las Manaclas (San Jose de las Matas), in order to create the J. Armando Bermudez National Park. So instead he left the place "where Tavarez Justo was from" in order to end up in Mencia, some seven minutes from La Altagracia.
"Trujillo (in reality the people that worked under his orders) went and brought in a truck, a Catarey, to the door of the house and began to throw all of my mother's clothes and everything that there was in the house into the truck. My mother was the last thing that was thrown in there, he gave them a house, property, beds, pots and pans, he gave everything to my daddy," recalls Ignacio.
Estevez Torres also tells that there are people living in the area from El Pedregal (San Jose de las Matas) and that the dictator tried to "refine" the Dominicans on the frontier line.... carrying people with light skin from the hills of the Cibao to these corners of Pedernales.
Next to Francisco's house are the basketball court and the park. Enmanuel Florian, 18 and a student in the second year of high school, spends the afternoons playing basketball and at night he gets together in the park with other young persons and children in order to watch the movies that the district board projects, using a satellite dish with energy from solar panels. In La Altagracia there is a community electric plant which is used to on the weekends at nightfall, with fuel donated by "the Mayor" - the people attribute the donation to the president of the district board, Solenny Gomez.
The youngsters keep arriving for the first show when it 7:50 p.m., Orbito Mendez Soriano, 63, lights a candle on a can on the table of his house, where there is hulled corn for the hens, an upside down chromed glass covered with wax and a bowl with rice and beans - Moro.. Now Orbito is going to prepare some eggs with little tomatoes for dinner, without a refrigerator he can't save food from one day to the next.
At 8:00 at night darkness is thick
In Mencia, a group of persons have brought chairs out to the sidewalk, in front of Dionisio -Pepin-- Confesor Rosario's house and have sat down to talk.
Pepin, 69, is a short man with honey colored eyes, from San Francisco de Macoris. He has been living in Mencia for 58 years and he is a volunteer who works as the liaison between the community and the engineers of the Rural and Suburban Electrification Unit (UERS) who are building a hydroelectric micro-generation system which will use the waters of the Mulito River. The small generator will have a capacity to generate 61 kW that will carry energy to 220 homes and 1100 persons. The information of the institution shows that the turbines for the micro - unit will "soon" be in the country.
Besides being a farmer, Pepin is the watchmen at the rural clinic of the community, where he takes advantage of the energy of the solar panels to charge the battery of his cell phone, since in his house the light comes from the candles.
Trujillo baptized the town "Flor de Oro" because when he went to inaugurate it he found trees with flowers so yellow that they reminded him of this precious metal, but above all in honor of his eldest daughter. After the assassination of the tyrant they changed the name to Mencia. This was recalled by Pepin on the way to the Mulito River. After crossing a road full of dead leaves, the man showed with enthusiasm the construction of the hydroelectric project, but it is still missing the room where the machines will go and funnel the current.
In the community of Aguas Negras they say that the electricity from the micro - generator will not reach them. Geovanny Felix Carrasco, 38, lives there. In order to recharge the battery of his cell phone he has to ask the favor of his neighbors because he exchanged his solar panel for a 90 cc. motorcycle, according to him, in order to avoid being the victim of a robbery.
Luis Arroyo Valdes, the manager of Tecnicas Energeticas Solares (Tecsol), tells that this company won in 2005 the tender to install photovoltaic panels in 10,000 homes and 50 community centers in the provinces of the frontier strip: Pedernales, Montecristi, Dajabon, Independencia, Elias Piña, Santiago Rodriguez and Bahoruco. The Ministry of Industry and Commerce provided 85% of the investment (RD $269,692,919) and they were be in charge of financing the remaining 15%, which the customers would later pay in quotas of RD$100 during 36 months "in order to give them a sense of property" of the system.
The project ended in 2006 and, nevertheless, says Arroyo, the persons refused to pay in spite of having contracts signed assuring the commitment. The businessman complained that many people sold their panels and that his company has a debt of RD$45 million because of the lack of payment, taking his business "to the edge of bankruptcy."
Together with Geovanny, sitting in front of the park of Aguas Negras, is Valerio D'Olio Mendez, 67, with his stained hat, his plastic rimmed glasses and three days worth of beard. He also doesn't have any photovoltaic panels.
The electricity generator in Aguas Negras worked until 2004, when the government donated the fuel - they say - and now the room is abandoned and dusty. D'Olio alleges that the only president who has helped the frontier town was the deceased Joaquin Balaguer, because he gave them cows, houses - the housing units in this area were built by this president - and land in order that they did not migrate to the city. Since then, not a single government has provided them with anything, they feel like orphans.
Some time ago, Francisco Creciano underwent open heart surgery in order to unclog his arteries and he is still recovering. When evening falls and four or five friends come to his house to share the latest stories on any day, they are illuminated by the reflection of the afternoon sun on the light bulb.
"I didn't come as a prisoner, nope," he says and everybody laughs out loud.
Belonging to the municipal district of José Francisco Peña Gomez, Pedernales, are La Altagracia and the communities of Aguas Negras and Mencia, the three without electricity, and at one time recipients of projects of solar panel installations. There are homes where the panels never arrived; in others, they got damaged or were - supposedly - stolen. In José Francisco Peña Gomez, the indicator of the quality of life is barely 27.5, with 97.4 of the homes living in poverty, and extreme poverty reaches 91.5%. In all of the municipal district there are 9699 persons, according to the information of the Poverty Atlas.
While the group plays dominoes, other rural farmers share the afternoon on the sidewalk of the same business. With the sound of the dominoes hitting the table songs from the Guatemalan singer Ricardo Arjona sound from a business a block away.
Glebi Cuevas is 30, has an eighth grade education, and works in the small food store where the music is coming from, fed by a solar panel. Although today Arjona is playing, their preferred songs are of the bachata singers Anthony Santos and Romeo. In order to cool the beers, Glebi buys blocks of ice in Pedernales - at a price of 200 pesos per unit - which last between four and five days in disconnected freezers. Cuevas explains that besides the drinks, he sells a lot of cleren, an alcoholic drink made from sugarcane in Haiti, since the beers and Dominican rum are luxuries reserved for the fiestas. In order to accompany breakfast or dinner, the colmados offer eggs and salami because with an archaic system of conservation, selling cheeses would be risky.
Although in his house there are two photovoltaic panels, for Gloria Eufemia Herasme - wife of Francisco Creciano - the energy is barely enough to light the house. After 7:20 on a moonless night, Gloria, 56 and from Neiba, sits next to the small garden with her husband, under a single light bulb. If today had not been sunny, they would have to melt wax. When the woman is going to prepare meat she can only buy in town enough for two days at the most: one which she saves is washed with sour orange and is hung to dry if the temperatures in the Sierra de Bahoruco are low. Now, during a hot and dry May, she can only buy the meat that they are going to consume that same day. They also buy ice when they go "to town" and they store it in ice chests, but it last for a short time. How do you wash clothes? By hand.
Gloria - - they call her - has a prepaid residential telephone from the Haitian company Digicel, the only signal that reaches the community surrounded by steep hills. Also, the radio stations that they listen to in La Altagracia are also those from Haiti.
Francisco Creciano Almonte says that the coffee and the beans that they have planted have been lost to the drought of more than a month - he says that they usually don't have more than 10 days between one rain and the next - and he recalls that the production of the coffee farms has fallen off in recent years, partly by the coffee rust plague. In spite of the decadence of farming, the man considers that the principle need in the area is electricity.
Ignacio Estevez Torres comes to Francisco's house. He is a loquacious man, some 78 years old who arrived at the little town as an adolescent, when Rafael Leonidas Trujillo moved his family out of Las Manaclas (San Jose de las Matas), in order to create the J. Armando Bermudez National Park. So instead he left the place "where Tavarez Justo was from" in order to end up in Mencia, some seven minutes from La Altagracia.
"Trujillo (in reality the people that worked under his orders) went and brought in a truck, a Catarey, to the door of the house and began to throw all of my mother's clothes and everything that there was in the house into the truck. My mother was the last thing that was thrown in there, he gave them a house, property, beds, pots and pans, he gave everything to my daddy," recalls Ignacio.
Estevez Torres also tells that there are people living in the area from El Pedregal (San Jose de las Matas) and that the dictator tried to "refine" the Dominicans on the frontier line.... carrying people with light skin from the hills of the Cibao to these corners of Pedernales.
Next to Francisco's house are the basketball court and the park. Enmanuel Florian, 18 and a student in the second year of high school, spends the afternoons playing basketball and at night he gets together in the park with other young persons and children in order to watch the movies that the district board projects, using a satellite dish with energy from solar panels. In La Altagracia there is a community electric plant which is used to on the weekends at nightfall, with fuel donated by "the Mayor" - the people attribute the donation to the president of the district board, Solenny Gomez.
The youngsters keep arriving for the first show when it 7:50 p.m., Orbito Mendez Soriano, 63, lights a candle on a can on the table of his house, where there is hulled corn for the hens, an upside down chromed glass covered with wax and a bowl with rice and beans - Moro.. Now Orbito is going to prepare some eggs with little tomatoes for dinner, without a refrigerator he can't save food from one day to the next.
At 8:00 at night darkness is thick
In Mencia, a group of persons have brought chairs out to the sidewalk, in front of Dionisio -Pepin-- Confesor Rosario's house and have sat down to talk.
Pepin, 69, is a short man with honey colored eyes, from San Francisco de Macoris. He has been living in Mencia for 58 years and he is a volunteer who works as the liaison between the community and the engineers of the Rural and Suburban Electrification Unit (UERS) who are building a hydroelectric micro-generation system which will use the waters of the Mulito River. The small generator will have a capacity to generate 61 kW that will carry energy to 220 homes and 1100 persons. The information of the institution shows that the turbines for the micro - unit will "soon" be in the country.
Besides being a farmer, Pepin is the watchmen at the rural clinic of the community, where he takes advantage of the energy of the solar panels to charge the battery of his cell phone, since in his house the light comes from the candles.
Trujillo baptized the town "Flor de Oro" because when he went to inaugurate it he found trees with flowers so yellow that they reminded him of this precious metal, but above all in honor of his eldest daughter. After the assassination of the tyrant they changed the name to Mencia. This was recalled by Pepin on the way to the Mulito River. After crossing a road full of dead leaves, the man showed with enthusiasm the construction of the hydroelectric project, but it is still missing the room where the machines will go and funnel the current.
In the community of Aguas Negras they say that the electricity from the micro - generator will not reach them. Geovanny Felix Carrasco, 38, lives there. In order to recharge the battery of his cell phone he has to ask the favor of his neighbors because he exchanged his solar panel for a 90 cc. motorcycle, according to him, in order to avoid being the victim of a robbery.
Luis Arroyo Valdes, the manager of Tecnicas Energeticas Solares (Tecsol), tells that this company won in 2005 the tender to install photovoltaic panels in 10,000 homes and 50 community centers in the provinces of the frontier strip: Pedernales, Montecristi, Dajabon, Independencia, Elias Piña, Santiago Rodriguez and Bahoruco. The Ministry of Industry and Commerce provided 85% of the investment (RD $269,692,919) and they were be in charge of financing the remaining 15%, which the customers would later pay in quotas of RD$100 during 36 months "in order to give them a sense of property" of the system.
The project ended in 2006 and, nevertheless, says Arroyo, the persons refused to pay in spite of having contracts signed assuring the commitment. The businessman complained that many people sold their panels and that his company has a debt of RD$45 million because of the lack of payment, taking his business "to the edge of bankruptcy."
Together with Geovanny, sitting in front of the park of Aguas Negras, is Valerio D'Olio Mendez, 67, with his stained hat, his plastic rimmed glasses and three days worth of beard. He also doesn't have any photovoltaic panels.
The electricity generator in Aguas Negras worked until 2004, when the government donated the fuel - they say - and now the room is abandoned and dusty. D'Olio alleges that the only president who has helped the frontier town was the deceased Joaquin Balaguer, because he gave them cows, houses - the housing units in this area were built by this president - and land in order that they did not migrate to the city. Since then, not a single government has provided them with anything, they feel like orphans.
Some time ago, Francisco Creciano underwent open heart surgery in order to unclog his arteries and he is still recovering. When evening falls and four or five friends come to his house to share the latest stories on any day, they are illuminated by the reflection of the afternoon sun on the light bulb.