Allentown embraces Dominican culture
Display honors Caribbean nation’s independence
Tuesday afternoon, red white and blue balloons and flags abounded in the firstfloor lobby of Allentown City Hall in honor of Independence Day.
Dominican Independence Day, that is: a proud tradition for Allentown’s 20,000-strong Dominican American population.
Cynthia Mota, Allentown City Council president and a Dominican American, arranged the museum-like display of the Caribbean nation’s heritage in the City Hall lobby, using cultural artifacts that she has collected over 10 years.
She visits her hometown of Los Mina twice a year, and makes a point to bring home a few items that represent Dominican culture: a bottle of mamajuana, a traditional Dominican rum; “munecas lime” faceless dolls, which aim to represent the diversity of the Dominican people; and “diablo cojuelo” masks, a vibrant costume traditionally worn during the Dominican carnival season.
“Little by little,” she has accumulated a vast collection of these artifacts, stuffing them into her suitcases to bring across the Atlantic Ocean each year, where she joked they get scanned “20
million times” at customs.
“That’s what makes Allentown beautiful, that we care about people’s heritage, people’s culture,” Mota said.
Tuesday was the 180th anniversary of the day the Dominican Republic declared independence from Haiti in 1844. A Dominican flag-raising ceremony took place Sunday and drew over 300 people to City Hall, Mota said.
Julio Guridy, director of the Allentown Housing Authority, a Dominican American and a former longtime Allentown City Council member, organized the first Dominican flag-raising in 1992. Thirty-two years later, flag raisings are an Allentown tradition, with around a dozen each year, including those of India, Honduras, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ireland, Israel, Poland and Syria.
It’s a sign of how thoroughly the city has embraced its rich immigrant tradition, Guridy said. But there is progress still to be made, he said; for example, a ballot initiative that Guridy pushed for while on City Council, which would have eliminated a provision of the city charter that designates English as the city’s official language, failed in 2021. English is still the city’s official language because of a 1994 addition to the city charter, although more than 43% of the city’s population speaks a language other than English at home, and the city’s website and nearly all city documents are translated into other languages.
Still, the two city leaders see Allentown as a leader in embracing the cultural traditions of their immigrant population. That they were both born in the Dominican Republic and came to the United States with very little but worked their way into prominent roles in Allentown is a testament to that fact, they said.
“My message is, I come from a third-world country,” Mota said. “I used to walk barefoot, you know, extremely poor family, and yet coming over here and becoming the president of City Council is meant to tell other people that look like me, other little girls and little boys that looked like me, that if I did it, you could do it.”