Maintaining Dominican identity in the Dominican Republic: Forging a baseball landscape in Villa Ascension

Much research concerning the Dominican Republic and baseball focuses on globalization. In acknowledging the importance of such research, this study contributes a particular understanding of sport in a rural heterogeneous community, by addressing landscape and place identity. Villa Ascension and Caraballo are adjacent rural communities in the northern Puerto Plata Province. Currently there exists one usable sports space, designated as a football field, where Haitian residents practice football. Although this landscape is representative of Haitian identity, this designation transcends common sporting landscapes in the Dominican Republic, where Haitians typically use baseball fields to recreate. Dominicans also use the football field for baseball, and have forged a baseball landscape in an attempt to maintain the presence of their sporting culture. Conceptual social-geographical perspectives of sense of place and staging/performing identity in the landscape are reinforced through participant observations and interviews/conversations with local Haitian and Dominican participants to support critical understandings in this particular locale.