The tyrant's daughter slept in this house, Playboy smoked cigars in its galleries, Caamaño's constitutionalists used it as a combat headquarters, and when it was all over, homeless families arrived to divide its rooms with cardboard. Santo Domingo has that custom: to reclaim its wounds
SANTO DOMINGO. – The name given to it by the people may shock some readers, especially those who are unaware of the existence of this building, right in the center of the capital, emblematic for many reasons beyond its nickname for almost 30 years: Ensanche Cucaracha.
This name, however, filled with pride those who lived there and those who contributed to a patriotic feat from within its streets. It was a name chosen not by any president, urban planner, or even municipal decree, but rather it arose from the street itself, which in this city has always been the first to name things.
Born to welcome
Some houses accumulate other people's lives like others accumulate dust, and this is one of them. Its construction was commissioned by Father Napoleón Andrickson between 1929 and 1931, on the corner of Jacinto de la Concha and Félix María Ruíz streets, now Avenida México, in Villa Francisca. This is according to the website of the Casa de la Juventud (Youth Center), the organization that currently houses the building.
It was designed to impress: on the slope of a hill, offering a commanding view of the neighborhood; with two stories of continuous perimeter galleries (a porch) and large vertical windows, designed to capture the Caribbean breeze; smooth-shafted columns, balustrades of turned concrete, and a curved corner that softens the volume with an elegance uncommon in the neighborhood, especially at that time.
But it didn't remain in the Church's hands for long. By 1935, the Trujillo family had already absorbed it into the territorial appetite that characterized the Era, and Flor de Oro, one of the dictator's daughters, went to live there. She had married Porfirio Rubirosa, the famous Dominican playboy born in San Francisco de Macorís, in 1932, and their marriage ended in divorce in 1938.
Credit: General Archive of the Nation.
When the marriage dissolved, she left the place and the house remained empty, immersed in that strange limbo of the properties of power, until in April 1965 a shock came that shook an entire country and then the house had a new mission: headquarters of a military command of constitutionalist revolutionaries, who occupied it as part of the resistance in Villa Francisca, one of the most active fronts of the civilian side.
When the conflict ended and the combatants left, the house was once again without a visible owner, and then what always happens in this city when a space is left without an owner occurred: people arrived and lived there. Families arrived from the interior of the country, migrants seeking in the capital what the capital rarely offers newcomers, and they settled inside. Then more arrived, dividing the rooms, hallways, and stately galleries with cardboard, until there were ninety families in a house built for only one.
From that overcrowding came the name the house bore for decades: Ensanche Cucaracha (Cockroach Extension). Not as an insult, but as a description: people surviving where others would say it was impossible, or that only vermin could survive. They lived like that for almost thirty years. The house that had once sheltered the daughter of the dictator and the most famous playboy of the time later housed, with the same sense of home, the poorest people in the city.
A bright destiny
With the appointment of Monsignor Francisco Ozoria as Archbishop of Santo Domingo in 2016, it became the headquarters of the Episcopal Vicariate for Adolescence and Youth of the Archdiocese. (Source/Solangel Valdez).
In 1993, Father Luis Rosario arranged for the donation of the building to the Youth Ministry of the Archdiocese of Santo Domingo. The ninety families were relocated to Los Mameyes and Los Farallones, in Santo Domingo East, and the house was restored. The Youth Center was formally established as a non-profit institution by Decree 184-95 of August 15, 1995, and for years it has housed diverse programs such as the Institute of Theological-Pastoral Formation, a dental clinic, legal aid, a youth printing press, and a telephone counseling program.
With the appointment of Monsignor Francisco Ozoria as Archbishop of Santo Domingo in 2016, it became the headquarters of the Episcopal Vicariate of Adolescence and Youth of the Archdiocese.
The same curved corner. The same columns. The same balustrades that saw the dictator's daughter pass by, the April combatants, and ninety families with their cardboard boxes, now welcome the young people of the neighborhood and the country. Because Santo Domingo has the vocation to remaster its wounds and transform them into something else.
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