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The skeptics and armchair scholars/pundits haven’t mentioned the new US Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.   Additionally, the new US Consulate in also combined with the new Embassy.   The new location is on Avenida Republica Columbia.

Why haven’t they mentioned the new Embassy and Consulate?   They seemed to like to profusely point on out that the Embassy was located on Avenida Leopoldo Navarro and that they knew all about the job openings and qualifications to work at these places.

The reason that the US Embassy and US Consulate are looking for additional and new employees is because they are both moving into a new multi-building complex on a 16 acre site.   The job openings and qualifications (such as everyone being able to speak English) are for the new facilities.    Moreover, I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of the old employees will no longer be employed, especially those who don’t speak English.   There are guards at the old embassy (still operating at that location) who don’t speak English.

The Dominican Republic, in some facets, may resemble the old wild west in America.   There may be laws but who will enforce them?  For example, the Dominican Republic is a place were the citizens appropriate (illegally) land every day;  a person can take over an area of land and build a house and as time goes by water lines and electric lines will be connect.  Most of the barrios in the city are all illegal and the hundreds of thousands of houses within do not have property deeds (or titles, titulos in Spanish).   There is no law stating that citizens can steal land but thats what is often done, and nowadays more so in the country because the barrios in the city are pretty much all taken (the land) and most construction in the barrios nowadays is either upwards (houses on top of houses) or older (1960s) dwellings torn down by residents and reconstructed with better materials.   In event, there usually are no real deeds/titles to the land in these places, although some have a title-like paper that states that they are secure in their home and that other individuals cannot take over there home but that one day the government may take the land.  Some are even given the option to pay the government, over a number of years and many payments, for legal title to the appropriated land.

The point is that if you don’t live here you wouldn’t know how things work here. Moreover, the Spanish spoken and written here is unlike anywhere else in the Spanish speaking world.  Here the word ahorita means some point in time later or earlier but anywhere else the word means right now!  The word guapo or guapa means angry here but means pretty (in sense of being beautiful) anywhere else.   The word for bus in gaugau and the word for a kitchen cooking stove is estufa.   The structure of sentences are also sometimes very different. The list goes on and on, and none of this is slang but rather it is just the way it is here, for all classes of society.    If it wasn’t for attorney Loren Collins, the Obots wouldn’t even know what a colmado is.

Even word that means the same thing in all of the Spanish speaking world are used in a different fashion here; mi amor and mi vida are heavily used here in everyday interactions.  One time while I was in the United States eating out with the honorable Charles Edward Lincoln III and Peyton Yates Freiman  at a Mexican food restaurant I called for the waitress by saying mi amor.  I remember Charles looking at me like I was crazy.   I tried to explain to Charles (who by the way has an excellent command of Spanish like no other American I have ever met) that this was the Spanish that I know and that in RD (República Dominicana) what I said was normal.   I learned Spanish in RD.    Moreover, we then discussed the Spanish language and Charles refused to believe me that ahorita means a point in time later or earlier (rather than right now!) nor that guapo/guapa means pretty (like beautiful).

I remember that one time a long time ago I was out in the country here in an area called Villa Mella (I was in the northern outskirts of Villa Mella) and I got into a dispute with two men.   NOTE: There are four (4) Santo Domingos, and Villa Mella is in North Santo Domingo.  Btw, Villa Mella is not a bad place.  In any event, it started out in civil manner and gradually progressed into something more serious.   At some point I stated to them that if they had a problem they should call the police and that I will wait for the police to arrive.  Thats when they told me that (this isn’t verbatim but is what I remember), here we don’t have to call the police; we will take you behind trees and cut off both your arms and legs and then we leave you body to rot right there in the same place and no one will know and if someone does now it wont matter because nothing will be done about, we handle the law ourselves here.

That might sound like an idle threat or just words but it was the absolute truth.  Moreover, these men were not thugs or criminals, they were business owners with families and normal lives. When an American first experiences something like that it makes him or her become exceedingly conscious that they are no longer in the United States of America and the secure society (even in the worst areas of the USA) that they knew there does not exist in many countries.   Its a feeling that one cannot experience in contemporary America.

I’m fairly certain that Dr. Conspiracy (Kevin Wayne Davidson) knows much, first hand, about being a racist in the south in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and probably the 90s.   I’m also fairly certain that attorney Loren Christopher Collins is an intelligent University of Georgia graduate who is very familiar with state law in Georgia and that he knows all about homosexual culture because he himself is a practicing homosexual. However, they don’t know anything about Dominican society and contemporary Dominican culture.

Construction of the new US Embassy and US Consulate began in 2011 and is slated to be completed in July (2013).  The $194 million project was designed by Integrus Architecture of Spokane Washington and is being constructed by Caddell Construction Company of Montgomery, Alabama.    Btw, that doesn’t mean that Dominican workers are not working for Caddell.

The 16 acre compound also includes a chancery, compound access controls, a support annex, and Marine security guard quarters.  When completed, the new compound will provide approximately 700 embassy employees with a state of the art workspace.

There is a lot that cannot be seen in the photos that I have taken.  For example, there are building and area behind all of what is shown in the photos.

I also note that the architecture looks more American than anything than I have ever seen built in the Dominican Republic.  It makes me feel like I am in the United States.  It also looks much more friendly, classier and easier to enter than the old (still in service)  US Embassy.  However, I’m not sure it was worth the nearly $200,000,000.00 (200 million) US tax payer dollars.   One interesting observation that I have is that there will no longer be any long lines waiting outside the US Consulate when this place opens because, unlike the old Consulate (still in use) on busy Maximo Gomez in the middle over everything, this new place is out a ways and wont be easy access for many.

Truth is is that the US Consulate is nothing more than a place for Dominicans to go who want to bring their families or other Dominicans to the United States or to inquire regarding something related to those topics.   The US Consulate is rarely used by Americans.

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PHOTO CREDIT:   All photos shown in this report were taken by Lucas Daniel Smith.