In the Dominican Republic, I would not emphasize the heritage of slaves since slavery is associated with being black, being black with being Haitian, and being Haitian to being wild and backward. This conflation of Haiti, darkness, and savagery is the result of numerous 19th-century travel narratives that claimed to provide “unbiased” accounts of the island of Hispaniola. Indeed, Candelario includes an account that consistently contrasted the two countries and their inhabitants: “One was white, Spanish, and Catholic; the other was black, French and irreligious. One was “civilized” because he courted the United States and the Americans; the other was barbaric because he jealously defended his political and economic sovereignty” (Candelario 47). Travel tales like this one that positioned Dominicans as “the whites of the land” were adopted by Dominicans and used as a key part in the nation's race-building, and can be used to explain its affinity with