The Latin American Identity and the African Diaspora: Ethnogenesi ...

that African captives brought with them to the Americas and that served to ensure a certain spiritual strength that in turn was passed on to their descendants. It has been said that in no other realm are African cultural forms more evident in Dominican society than in spiritual expressions (Torres-Saillant 132).

Fukú americanus is the classical entry that the author assigns to this transcendent force, transformed from its African image to accommodate the conditions of a new geographical and social environment. But in the local vernacular—that is, the popular speech of the Dominican Republic—this spiritual “it” is referred to simply as fukú, and is approached by Diaz in accordance with the reality of Dominican folklore and experiences: “fuku [is]…generally a curse or a doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World” (1). However, in quotidian terms, fukú appears to have both a negative as well as a positive aura. Given that the scourge of slavery in the Americas was introduced with Santo Domingo as the gate, Diaz feels justified in declaring that “Santo Domingo might be fukú's Kilometer Zero, its port of entry, but we are all of us its children, whether we know it or not” (2). The perception that the reader intuits is that fukú's purpose is in some way connected to the transfer of the African's essence to an alien and hostile environment; and for Diaz, all inhabitants of Kilometer Zero—that is, Santo Domingo, and by extension all of Hispaniola (in other words, Haitians as well as Dominicans)—fall under the sway of fukú's potency.

According to the belief system of most African philosophies that were transferred to the Americas along with Africa's sons and daughters, the Supreme Being of all creation has dispensed aché (Spanish), or axé (Portuguese) to everyone. In this cosmovision, aché/axé is perceived as life force, power, grace, or blessing. In some philosophies, Orichas/Orixas or assistants to the Supreme Being are responsible for the guidance of each individual. While this explanation may appear somewhat simplistic and makes reference only to the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking communities in the Americas, this explanation in fact refers to a complex metaphysical system that has survived in West Africa over millennia and in all of the Americas since the introduction of African slavery. Central to the