Resistance in the Rubble: Post-San Zenón Santo Domingo from Ramón Lugo Lovatón’s Escombros: Huracán del 1930 to Carlos Federico Pérez’s La ciudad herida

Abstract

On 3 September 1930, hurricane San Zenón ravaged the city of Santo Domingo and the reconstruction effort became instrumental to Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s consolidation of his autocratic power in the Dominican Republic. Fumagalli puts in dialogue Ramón Lugo Lovatón’s Escombros: Huracán del 1930, a collection of journalistic articles published in the immediate aftermath of San Zenón which fully endorse Trujillo’s despotic project, with the novel La ciudad herida by Carlos Federico Pérez. Published in 1977, Perez’s novel revisits the effects of San Zenón highlighting the existence of different forms of social solidarity which aimed at counteracting Trujillo while tentatively putting forward the possibility of an (albeit deferred) alternative to despotism.