La Vega
La Concepción de la Vega, more commonly referred to as “LA VEGA”, just 30km southeast of Santiago, started out as one of Columbus’s gold-mining towns, only to be levelled in a sixteenth-century earthquake and rebuilt as a farming community. Aside from the ruins of this old settlement, known as La Vega Vieja – well outside town – there’s little in today’s noisy, concrete city to hold your attention. However, La Vega’s Carnival celebrations in February are generally acknowledged to be among the most boisterous and authentic in the country. A twenty-block promenade is set up between the two main parks, along which parade platoons of demons in impressively horrific masks, the making of which is something of a local specialized craft. Many city-dwellers who spend their days as hotel clerks, bankers or auto mechanics use much of their free time perfecting mask making; in addition to papier-mâché, they often use materials like bull horns, bone and sharpened dogs’ teeth. There’s the usual stack of blaring loudspeakers and food and liquor vendors to animate and feed the crowds, which average up to seventy thousand each afternoon – many of them watching from rooftops. If you’d like to purchase a mask, try Robert’s Restaurant and Car Wash, on the Carretera La Vega; if they’re out of stock, they can direct you to the individual artists; expect to pay at least RD$1000, depending on how elaborate the design is.
Carnival in La Vega
Archeological evidence from La Vega Vieja indicates that Carnival has been celebrated in the area since the mid-1500s – and in the intervening period they’ve got really quite good at it. A twenty-block promenade is set up between the two main parks, along which parade platoons of demons in impressively horrific masks, the making of which is something of a local specialized craft. Many city dwellers who spend their days as hotel clerks, bankers or auto mechanics use much of their free time perfecting mask making; in addition to papier-mâché, they often use materials like bull horns, bone and sharpened dogs’ teeth. If you’d like to buy one, try asking at Hotel Rey or in the new Museo de Vega; expect to pay at least RD$1000, depending on how elaborate the design is. Better still, head to Santiago and visit “El Mambo” . Accompanying the parades are blaring loudspeakers and food and liquor vendors that animate and feed the crowds, which average up to seventy thousand each afternoon – many of them watching from rooftops.
Piñon trees
The piñon trees that line the winding rural roads just west of Bonao and about 40km south of La Vega – as well as many other roads across the country – are thought by many to have magical properties; local brujos use their wood for staffs with which to heal the sick. This belief stems in part from a strange physical characteristic: around the time of Good Friday the piñon leaves and bark turn red, which locals claim is in emulation of the Crucifixion. The trees do have some remarkable regenerative properties, too; stick one of the branches in the ground and allow it to take root – within a year the branch becomes another full-grown tree.
Moca
MOCA, a sizeable farming depot 16km east of Santiago, is set amid some of the most fertile land in the valley. It’s better known, though, for two episodes from Dominican history – as the birthplace of the 1842 Moca Constitution, which set democratic standards for government that have rarely been adhered to, and as the site of nineteenth-century despot Ulises Heureaux’s assassination. There’s nothing here to commemorate the former, but the latter event is celebrated in downtown Moca at a small park on Calle Vasquez, where you’ll find the Monument to the Tyrant Killers, a small Deco sculpture honouring assassins José Contreras and José Inocencio, erected right on the spot where Heureaux was shot. Across the street from the park, above Espinal Car Wash, a miniature locomotive has been placed to honour the old railroad that brought initial prosperity to Moca, while the rest of downtown is crowded with storefront businesses, warehouses and restaurants.
Nicer than anything in the workaday downtown district, the nineteenth-century Iglesia de Corazón de Jesús, corner of Sánchez and Corazón de Jesús, sports a neo-Plateresque facade and a prominent clock tower. The spacious interior floods with light and boasts an impressive pipe organ. From the church you can also drive northwest down Avenida Duarte to the local cigar factory.
San Francisco de Macorís
The farming city of SAN FRANCISCO DE MACORÍS, with a 200,000-strong population in the heart of the Vega Real, owes its prosperity to the cocoa industry – the business behind what few major sights there are in town. Chocolate is not the only money-making product here; in recent years, San Francisco has served as a laundering point for cocaine profits, a far cry from its slightly more benign tobacco-producing days in the nineteenth century. The compact downtown holds most of the major office buildings, restaurants and discos – the latter of which supply San Francisco with some of the DR’s best nightlife.
Santiago
For five centuries SANTIAGO (or Santiago de los Caballeros, to give it its full name) has been the main transport point for Cibao tobacco, bananas, coffee and chocolate; farmers still truck the lion’s share of their produce here before it is transported to Puerto Plata and Santo Domingo for export. Set at the intersection of the western Cibao and the Vega Real, and with easy access to the country’s two major ports, its prime location has brought settlers back time and again – Santiago’s population of just under a million trails only that of Santo Domingo – even after destruction by various earthquakes, invading armies and fires.
Founded in 1504 as a mining town and demolished by an earthquake in 1562, Santiago has been associated with tobacco since it was introduced for export to the French in 1679. The Haitian army slaughtered most residents during an 1805 invasion, but the city was again rebuilt and served for the rest of the century as transport hub for tobacco headed to Puerto Plata and Germany. During this time merengue périco ripao – the classic Dominican music using accordion, tambora and güira – evolved in Santiago, and the city has since produced many of the DR’s top musicians, giving it a bit of cultural flair amid agriculture’s pre-eminence.
There’s also a good club scene, based mostly around this indigenous music, so you won’t lack for fun at nights. Otherwise, it’s worthwhile to spend a few days, probably no more, browsing around downtown Santiago and its surrounding barrios. Downtown holds the most of interest, in both busy street life and a couple of fine museums devoted to folkloric art and architecture. On the edge of the city centre looms the mighty Monumento a los Héroes de la Restauración, visible from pretty much anywhere in the city. Further out, you can opt for a few nice factory tours, either to check out the local tobacco product or to see how rum is made.
Centro León
The most compelling attraction in all of Santiago is the Centro León, 27 de Febrero 146, just east of Avenida Estrella Sadhalá in Villa Progreso (Tues–Sun 10am–7pm; RD$100, Tues free; 582-2315,www.centroleon.org.do). Opened in 2003, this outstanding, multifaceted cultural centre is housed in an ostentatiously postmodern building – all concrete, glass and angles – surrounded by neat gardens dotted with palms. It’s a huge place, divided into four large sections. Section one is home to a museum of history and anthropology detailing the story of the Dominican peoples, examining the population’s various conflicts, ethnic diversity and growing sense of national identity, as well as the impact people have had on the country’s ecosystems and natural resources. The highlight is the remarkable collection of Taino artefacts, including a host of intact aboriginal necklaces, cemi statuettes, decorated pots, daggers, axe-heads and vomit sticks, used to induce vomiting after a large banquet.
Section two is devoted to a superb Dominican art collection. Notable works include local Modernist masterpieces like Jaime Colson’s folk-Cubist Hombre con Pipa and Celeste Woss y Gil’s imposing self-portrait Autorretrato con Cigarillo, as well as more abstract works such as Paul Guidicelli’s Expressionist depiction of a Vodú priest sacrificing a chicken, Brujo Disfrazado de Pájaro. The third section is set aside for the temporary exhibitions, concerts and film screenings that take place throughout the year, while the fourth is devoted to a display on the lives of the León Jimenes family, whose tobacco and alcohol wealth paid for the centre – they’re the owners of Aurora cigars and Presidente beer. The highlight here is the mock tobacco factory, set up to look like one from the turn of the twentieth century, where you can observe cigars being made and sample a stogie afterwards. In addition, the centre is home to a good café, pleasant gardens adorned with statues and a gift shop where you can buy replica Taino artefacts.
Santiago festivals
Santiago is one of the country’s prime places to celebrate Carnival. Festivities take place every Sunday in February at the monument with throngs of costumed participants wearing colourful papier-mâché demon masks and assaulting each other with inflated sheep bladders; don’t wear anything that you feel too precious about. Things culminate on Independence Day (February 27), when the entire city comes out for a parade around the monument, accompanied by mobile freak shows, home-made floats and Haitian gagá bands. If the local baseball team wins the Caribbean Series Championship, the partying lasts for another week. The local fiesta patronal, in honour of patron saint Santiago Apóstol, is held on July 22 and features dancing, drinking and live music in an outdoor bandshell beside the monument.