Princeton PhD and Afro-Latina scholar Dr. Margarita Rosa joins Gadiel to unpack the history of the island most Dominicans never got in school: Columbus and the Taíno, maroonage and campo culture, Toussaint Louverture, the Haitian Revolution, and what 1844 was really about.
Gadiel finally sits down with Dr. Margarita Rosa, the Afro-Latina historian everybody kept telling him he had to talk to. She opens up about getting her PhD at Princeton, the summer in Morocco that changed her life, and why she never felt like an impostor until she became a professor.
Then she takes us all the way back to 1492 and walks through the island's history step by step.
What we get into:
• Impostor syndrome, purpose, and showing up as your full self
• Learning Arabic in Morocco and reading the Quran in its original language
• Why the first Spanish settlement, La Navidad, was in present-day Haiti
• How the Taíno resisted from the very first voyage
• The debate over the island's name: Ayiti vs. Quisqueya
• Maroonage and the roots of Dominican small-farm campo culture
• The two slavery systems on each side of the island
• Toussaint Louverture's 1801 constitution abolishing slavery island-wide
• The 1822–1844 unification and Dominican independence
Reading recommendation from Dr. Rosa: the work of Lorgia García-Peña.
Follow Dr. Margarita Rosa's podcast, Invisible History, on YouTube.
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