In one of the main bus depots in Santo Domingo, a very sweet-looking old man in a blue button-up shirt—buttoned all the way to the top—walks around and makes people think he’s crazy.
He’s the local evangelist (a silent and unobtrusive evangelist, but still an evangelist) for the “Asociacion de Ateos Dominicanos [Ateodom]”—the Association of Dominican Atheists. People think he’s crazy because the Dominican Republic is about 0% atheist. Those who aren’t part of the 98.75 percent of Dominicans who profess an organized religion are mostly likely into voodoo. (It’s hard to know, since many people are shy about discussing their household voodoo practices.)
So this happy-looking old atheist wanders around the bus depot, not saying a word but handing out cards.
Try to conduct your life and not the way another conducts his, because nobody knows better than you do the value of your life and your ideas…
If people like what they see, they give him 10 pesos and keep the card. If they don’t like what the see, they hand it back to him with more or less severe expressions of disgust.
Nobody liked what they saw.
The man walked around the depot, everybody watching as he was rejected by person after person. And when he came to me and I read his card, I thought of Dan for some reason—and gave a donation to the Association of Dominican Atheists (or the world’s least effective bus-station scam) in Savage’s name.
Only one other person in the bus depot gave the guy a donation. But his sweet, serene expression never changed, no matter how much people seemed to dislike him and his card.
Vaya con Dios—er, vaya con something—old Dominican atheist.
Well, the evangelist is human spam in a public place: no wonder you thought of Dan, who hates this kind of thing.
I should have specified that he was totally silent—you took the card, you give him money or not, but there was no patter, no insistence. Which, if you have to be an evangelist, is the best kind.
I much prefer that to the slips of paper from street kids that threaten to turn to a life of delinquency if you don’t give ’em ten pesos, the implied threat being that they’ll become delinquent right now and just take the ten pesos from you, leaving you bleeding on the greasy bus floor.
Why? Everyone who practices voodoo openly in Haiti is Catholic, and those who practice it secretly are Protestant. Why would the Dominican Republic be different?
@4: Maybe because voodoo is associated with Haitians, and no one in the DR wants to be taken for Haitian.
@ 4. Could be that, plus the Catholic church’s profile in the DR (historically, politically) isn’t identical to its profile in Haiti.
@2, damned by faint praise.
@5,
That might explain why few people practice it, but it doesn’t explain why Dominicans who practice it allegedly claim no other religion.
@6,
The differences between the history of the Church in the DR and Haiti are kind of irrelevant here. It seems like you pulled the voodoo claim out of your ass.
@5, Some kind of Yoruba-derived, Vodou-related West African religion is practiced everywhere in the Caribbean, not just in Haiti. Most often it is syncretized with Catholic symbolism, as in Santería. There are also Congo-derived religious traditions throughout the Caribbean. Most of the people in both groups will always be officially classified as “Catholics”, not their separate African practices.
Most of the rest are probably Mormons.
Nice message, especially the quotes at the end:
“Ignorance is the root of all evil” Socrates
“Only education makes us free” Eugenio María de Hostos (A Puerto Rican intellectual and education advocate of the 19th century)
Buena suerte a los hermanos ateos dominicanos. Muchos en secreto piensan igual que ustedes, pero les falta vuestra valentía.
sorry if someone’s already pointed it out, but your translation missed the mark a bit. it should’ve said:
Try to conduct your own life and not have someone else conduct it, because no one knows more than you the Value of your Life, your Ideas.