WASHINGTON, 2 November 2003 — On Columbus Day, I visited the Faro a Colon, Spanish for “Columbus Lighthouse,’’ a monument towering over Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. Completed in 1992 to mark the anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the New World, the lighthouse encloses a crypt that is said to contain Columbus’ remains. But the Faro — eight stories high and roughly as long as a city block — is meant to honor not only the explorer, but also global unity. So Dominicans have offered space to embassies from around the world to put up exhibits of their choosing. The result is more than 60 rooms of national displays, in the manner of an old-fashioned World Exposition.
Most countries exhibit items that proudly reflect their heritage and history. China displays examples of calligraphy and a model of the world’s first printing press. Israel’s room includes an ancient menorah, while Brazil’s showcases brilliant Amazonian headdresses. Some displays are worth millions of dollars, such as Ecuador’s contribution of 2,500-year-old pottery. As I wandered the halls, I wondered how the US Embassy would choose to represent our own rich heritage in this unusual forum of international culture.
The US exhibit, put up during the past year, consists of two walls. One bears a few small photos of July 4 celebrations: Fireworks and flag-waving. The other wall, much more eye-catching, is covered in poster-sized front pages from US newspapers, all of them dated Sept. 12, 2001: DAY OF TERROR — Concord Monitor HOW MANY DEAD? — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette OUR NATION SAW EVIL — The News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C. WAR AT HOME — Dallas Morning News
No other items are on display. A museum guide registered the shock on my face and thought I was mourning the Sept. 11 dead. “You must think of it every day,’’ he said, shaking his head sympathetically.
It is a small thing, perhaps, a display in a Dominican museum. But for all the current talk about the importance of public diplomacy, the Columbus lighthouse reminded me that we can be astonishingly tone-deaf in the way we broadcast ourselves to the rest of the world, even to friendly nations such as the Dominican Republic.
Curious about the thinking behind the display, I phoned the US Embassy in Santo Domingo. A spokeswoman said the embassy’s cultural section had sent the posters (which were produced by the State Department) “so people can see and get in contact with Sept. 11.’’ In other words, an easy opportunity for cross-cultural understanding was lost to the excesses of flag-waving and Sept. 11 pain-sharing.
I was reminded of this when I visited a nearby public school to see what Dominican students learn about Columbus. The school has flooded toilets, no electricity, few textbooks and so many students that the school teaches three shifts each day, the last one ending at 9 p.m. Yet when I finished quizzing the students about Columbus, they asked questions of their own that made it clear they felt sorrier for me than I did for them.
“Do you still travel in airplanes?’’
“Are there terrorists everywhere?’’
“Is it safe for my brother to visit New York?’’
“Will they think he is a terrorist?’’
This view reflects not only what Dominicans see on television, but also their view of the US Embassy in Santo Domingo, a compound so heavily fortified and sealed off from the surrounding city that it looks as accessible and inviting as Alcatraz.
I returned home to Virginia in time to watch the World Series, which baseball-crazed Dominicans follow as avidly as we do. During the seventh-inning stretch in Florida, a uniformed US Air Force captain took the field and sang “God Bless America’’ in front of pilots in flight suits, while the TV camera panned to fans waving placards recalling Sept. 11.
“God Bless America’’ can be stirring, and the men looked sharp in their uniforms. But I wondered what message this performance sent to my Dominican friends and to millions of other viewers abroad. Isn’t the national anthem, which opens each ballgame, sufficient homage to America and its armed forces?
A patriot, according to the Random House dictionary, is “a person who loves, supports, and defends his country.’’ I’ve spent half my adult life overseas, and have frequently defended my country against the distorted images that others so often have of the United States. The “real America,’’ I’ve insisted a thousand or so times — in Arab souks, in Russian villages, in Australian pubs, in letters to the editors of foreign papers — isn’t the mindless, jingoistic, Humvee caricature of a culture that’s frequently presented in the foreign media, or in the crassest exports of Hollywood and Madison Avenue. It’s a vibrant, varied, open and warm society. Come visit and you’ll see for yourself!
I still believe this, but few outside America will if we continue to present ourselves, in even the most innocuous settings, as a militarized and self-absorbed people who are in a state of perpetual siege. That view is not only false, it diminishes us. Sept. 11, 2001, was a momentous and tragic event in our history.
It’s appropriate that our government work hard to protect the nation against future attacks. But homeland security shouldn’t define who we are, or how we appear to the rest of the world. We’re bigger than that, and better.
Some day soon, I hope, the US exhibit at the Faro a Colon will include a beacon of our own — a model of the Statue of Liberty, perhaps — as well as cultural artifacts that speak to the richness of our history. And maybe, by next year’s World Series, we can leave the patriotism behind by the seventh inning and go back to singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.’’
— Tony Horwitz is a former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the author of “Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before’’ (Picador).
