Juan Bolivar Diaz
Ambassador of the Dominican Republic to Spain
Manuel Paillole
Juan Bolivar has weeks left at the head of the Embassy of the Dominican Republic in Spain, where he has “felt very well” and to which he reserves a chapter in his memoirs. But he has not yet written it. “When I feel more liberated”, he assures. His next destination as a diplomat will be Mexico. A very special place for him: “That’s where I started my career as a journalist”. And since then he has always moved between these two worlds.
What have you enjoyed more: diplomacy or journalism?
The truth is that what I am is a journalist, and also marked by 50 years of very intense practice, which is no small thing. I was at the center of national debates, I was a university professor of Communication, a leader of the Journalists’ Association, a committed activist in the 90s to promote democracy, against corruption and for transparency, and many other things.
I worked as a diplomat between 1984 and 1986, but I returned to journalism in a hurry because diplomacy was something else then. It was too slow for me. If I had been in Spain then, maybe I wouldn’t have felt that way. But I was in Peru and relations were purely protocol. There wasn’t much to do there and within a year I was giving up to leave, although I had to stick it out for a second year.
And what was more relevant in journalism?
In 1978 we lived through a critical period because the Government tried to stay, as it is now in Venezuela. That time we received great international solidarity to stop the attempt to disregard the electoral results of Joaquín Balaguer, who had already been in government for 12 consecutive years, an ‘almost’ dictatorship. And you know what? Venezuela was the country that gave the most solidarity to the Dominican Republic at that time.
What a paradox, isn’t it?
Venezuela was for more than 50 years the democratic model when all Latin America was plunged in military dictatorships. When in the Dominican Republic we started the democratic transition with the 1978 elections, only Colombia -although it had a strong insurgency- Costa Rica and Venezuela were spared.
Then everything degenerated.
But not during Hugo Chávez’s first term. I believe that it was an authoritarian government, but it cannot be qualified as a dictatorship. There were still no political prisoners or exiles, nor were opponents killed.
What do you think about what has happened these days in Venezuela?
I think he (Edmundo González) lacked energy. He should not have left Venezuela. He should have stayed in the Spanish Embassy. Because, in addition, at that moment, the regime was on the defensive. That was interpreted as an aid of the Spanish Government to the Maduro regime, which was not fair because the Spanish Government gave him asylum and Foreign Minister Albares clearly said that he could stay here as long as he wanted. Spain did not ask him to leave.
Does the Dominican Republic agree with that Spanish position?
Yes, in our bilateral political meetings we maintain that coincidence, the same as on Nicaragua and other regional conflicts. We maintain a very important coincidence with the Spanish foreign policy in defense of democratic principles.
Are you concerned about how things are developing in the United States?
Democracy is a process. The United States was for decades the democratic model. But it is not exactly what we have seen in the last 6 or 7 years, from the assault on Congress until today.
And in Europe itself we should be concerned that Christian democracy and social democracy, which were the pillars of the welfare state for 6 or 7 decades and created a model system for all, have practically disappeared.
Should Latin America fear the new Trump Administration?
There is concern in the Dominican Republic, you can see it in the press articles. But the Government is very prudent. And it is logical because we have a very strong economic and geopolitical dependence on the United States for obvious reasons.
And in our case we must also add that there is concern about immigration because we have a very large colony in the United States, where since the 60’s more than one and a half million Dominicans emigrated and today, with their children, they exceed two million.
This migration had a double positive effect for the country: on the one hand, it took pressure off the socio-labor boiler and, on the other hand, these workers now contribute to the national economy with their remittances.
What do these remittances mean for your country?
This year the Dominican economy expects to receive more than $10.5 billion in remittances from all over the world. That amount represents 50% of the country’s total tax revenues and is equivalent to all social investment, which includes education, public health and assistance programs.
Eighty-five percent of those remittances come from the United States. Therefore, for us it is worrying that they start to send us massively immigrants who still do not have a regular status, although he (Trump) does not distinguish much between regular and irregular immigrants and even blames them, in general, for acts committed by Americans, such as the New Orleans atrocity or the bombing in front of one of his hotels. This discourse is very dangerous.
There is also an important Dominican community in Spain.
Spain is the country with the second largest number of Dominicans in the world. It was a very strong movement in the 80s and 90s. With the financial crisis of 2008, several thousands of Dominicans left for other countries, including the United States, but with Spanish nationality.
The latest data indicate that the vegetative growth of the Dominican community in Spain is 2% per year. That is to say, a growth already integrated within the Spanish society.
There are currently 193,000 Dominicans registered in Spain, of whom 120,000 have Spanish nationality and passport. Are the years when they were seen as a problematic community over?
This had a very notable visibility during some years in which they were blamed, sometimes unjustly, for problems of delinquency, gangs, trafficking of women. All that left a trail but it no longer exists because many controls were established. And from then on, most of the immigrants were domestic workers, who already came with visas.
In recent years migration has been of professionals, young people who came to study and stayed. In the last 12 years my government has granted 14,000 scholarships to postgraduate students, for masters and doctorates. An average of over a thousand a year. This breaks all those xenophobic speeches that say that immigrants only come to take advantage of the country. This proves the opposite, because those who stay, approximately 30%, are the brightest and have the best employment prospects.
To get to this point you also had to fight against the gangs, and that fight is still going on.
There are still two gangs in which Dominicans have had influence and leadership: the Dominican Don’t Play (DPP) and the Trinitarios. The others have disappeared. And in these two, the members are no longer only Dominicans, there are Moroccans, Romanians, Spaniards, but it is considered a Dominican gang.
How has the anti-gang plan worked?
It is still in force. It is called Proyecto de Intervención Integral e Interdisciplinar con jóvenes para la prevención de la violencia en Madrid. We have worked a lot in the neighborhoods because it is important to reduce the negative effect that the presence of these kids has on the image of the country. There are 200 or 300 Dominican boys involved in this. Not many, but enough to make a lot of noise.
The important thing is that we are making progress. Fortunately, for 2 years now there have been no deaths, when until 2021 we had an average of 3 per year.
We are connected with the police authorities and with all the municipal authorities. A very intense work has been done, linking with Spanish and other countries’ organizations working in the neighborhoods. We have given violence prevention workshops to 30,000 children.
How have you been able to reach so many youngsters?
Because we have done it with public schools. I don’t know if we can attribute the decrease in violence to this program, but in any case, prevention in itself is very important because there are many children who, probably due to lack of information, got involved in this and the workshops have given them the tools to control themselves.
And we also ‘invade’ the courts, which are their territories where they live, where they fight, where they use drugs, although they are not drug traffickers, and our technical staff has had the capacity to get in touch with them.
And for that we have also relied on sports. Every year we have given 400-500 basketball and volleyball uniforms and we have organized teams in all the neighborhoods.
Have you also worked with prisoners?
I have been to the prison several times to talk to some of the prison leaders. We have done workshops with them. There is a very intelligent program in the Soto del Real prison to train social leaders. They try to channel those energies, to make them positive.
Has culture also played an important role in these plans?
Of course it has. In 2023 we collaborated again with the Community of Madrid, which dedicated its Hispanic Week to us, to bring 40 artists from the Dominican Republic. But this time we plan to do it differently. Our government established that the first foundation of our foreign policy is the promotion and defense of the Dominican diaspora. And that is why the embassy’s policy was to bring down to the neighborhoods many activities that used to stay in the center of Madrid.
How has the ‘All cinema, all Dominican’ series influenced the country’s foreign projection?
Culture is a substantial element of human coexistence. And through cinema we project the identity of Dominican culture, which has a fabulous mix of Spanish and African influences, of which we are very proud.
Let’s talk about the bilateral relationship with Spain, how would you describe it?
We have three major chapters of Spanish cooperation. On the one hand, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation has been sponsoring environmental programs in the Dominican Republic for many years in the areas of water and waste.
On the other hand, Spanish direct investment in the Dominican Republic today is the second largest after the United States and the second fastest growing. This investment has mainly gone to non-renewable energies, where 55% of the investment corresponds to Spanish companies, and also to the real estate sector, where a Spanish company is building close to 2,000 homes. It is no longer only the construction of hotels.
But the third chapter you are talking about, I suppose, is still tourism.
Yes. 75% of the investment in hotel rooms today is still Spanish. And the trend is upward.
UN Tourism considers your country among the ‘virtuous ones’ of tourism development, why is that?
We gained a lot of prestige with UN Tourism because we were the first country to reestablish tourism after COVID. We took advantage of the fact that China donated its vaccine, which was the only one available at that time, and we started vaccinating before Europe. The fact is that it worked and, in addition, the tour operators were informed that health insurance and life insurance had been set up for tourists. Very few needed it because there were almost no contagions. And they started coming back.
In the last quarter of 2022 we reached the numbers we had in 2019. And we have continued to grow until we are the second country in Latin America after Mexico in number of visitors.
What are the Dominican Republic’s tourism goals for 2025?
To maintain the 12% growth we have had this year, which we have passed 11,000,000 visitors. But for that, we also have to improve some water and environmental sanitation problems in tourist areas.
Also the Ministry of Environment has assumed more control than before in the permits for constructions and to preserve the richness of the coasts, the corals. There is also a program to control the dimensions of high-rise buildings.
By the way, during your administration, the Embassy has become the first ‘Green Embassy’ of the Dominican Republic in the world. What does this mean?
We signed up to an international program to establish a series of energy-saving and non-pollution parameters. And they gave us the ‘Green Embassy’ certification because we meet those standards. They come every year to check whether there are water leaks, whether our waste treatment is correct, and so on. It is important for the image that a government projects abroad, in this case through its embassies. But, in addition, and even more important, it makes us more rational in our consumption.
