Dominicans in New York Metropolis are mourning the deaths of over 200 folks in Tuesday’s roof collapse at a Santo Domingo nightclub.
Town is dwelling to the biggest Dominican diaspora neighborhood, with over 700,000 residents claiming roots within the island nation as of 2020.
On Thursday, Teresa Tapia was amongst these visiting a rising memorial arrange within the heart of the Washington Heights neighborhood, that includes a dozen veladoras — prayer candles positioned in glass.
“Dominicans are really grieving, I tell you,” mentioned Tapia, 47, who has lived within the U.S. for eight years. “I’m so sad. I had to go out and walk. I had to get out.”
Among the many 221 confirmed useless within the tragedy on the Jet Set membership have been outstanding baseball gamers Octavio Dotel and Tony Enrique Blanco Cabrera, in addition to merengue singer Ruddy Pérez.
Tapia had seen Pérez carry out in his closing New York live performance on April 4, the place she mentioned he inspired folks to affix him at Jet Set, on the subsequent present. After shedding a number of tears, she turned to a poster of the singer.
“Thank you Ruddy,” she mentioned in Spanish, “For all the joy you gave to your country.”
Others on the memorial within the closely Dominican neighborhood met up and greeted one another, conferring briefly over the most recent headline or picture from the catastrophe of their telephones.
Above the memorial, scrawled in black pen, was a message of unity that dismissed regional and political divisions.
“Today we are not from Licey or Las Aguilas, from the PRM or the PLD,” it read in Spanish, using acronyms for political parties in the Dominican Republic. “Today we are simply a people united by grief.”
On Wednesday, mourners clutching Dominican flags stuffed the pews at St. Elizabeth Church for a mass in reminiscence of the victims. Amongst these talking from the pulpit was Ydanis Rodriguez, town’s transportation commissioner who was born in Dominican Republic. He pushed again at a story heard on-line and within the streets of Washington Heights that much less sympathy was because of the victims as a result of it was an costly nightclub.
“The individuals who say ‘it was millionaires there.’ No. It was Dominicans there. It was staff at Jet Set,” different staff and college students, mentioned Rodriguez in Spanish.
