#fukú

I meet people from many different cultures in my line of work and my tribe of friends is like a small gathering of nations. Many times my friends have heard me struggled as I try to translate some weird Dominican word only to keep wondering where do we find such a plethora of idioms and crazy words without solid translations. During a recent trip, Angie Orth from angieaway.com asked me about “Fukú” and made me think about other cool representatives of our very irreverent and cultural rich vocabulary. Here is my attempt to explain some of my favorite words in “Dominicanish” (term made famous by the title of my friend Josefina Baez’s book).

My family has lived on a farm in DR for many generations and had the perfect mix of Old World traditions blended together with African believes and New World legends. Since early on I was introduced to the magical surrealism of familiar words like “Cuco”, “Bacá” and “Fukú”. The use of these words with their respective European and African roots mixed with a New World charm echoed the country multicultural heritage and depict my own mutt upbringing.

I remember being very young when I heard my grandmother’s stories about witches and spells as I questioned the Azabache pendant (a perfect fist with the thumb positioned in between the index and middle fingers carved out of jet mounted on gold) pinned on my new baby sister’s shirt in order to protect her from “el mal de ojo” or evil eye. Later on, during my college years, I was deeply intrigued by my ancestors’ origins as I traced them through their travels from Europe to Santo Domingo then Cuba and Puerto Rico and back to DR during almost four centuries. I compared the similar childhood songs and legends from my European friends and found how deep into the Judeo-Christian traditions some of my earliest experiences were. Like most of my friends, “El Cuco”, a version of the bogeyman or the nightmarish Spanish character “El Coco”, haunted my childhood. I find myself using “más feo que un Cuco” to define a very ugly thing or person and in worst case scenario to refer to my deepest fear.

My childhood was surrounded by magic adapted to the tropics and coming from many different countries like the Dominican people themselves. Joining the medieval legends, characters and words were the Taino’s own magical beings like Ciguapas and the many different African traditions ever present in our life from sunrise to sunset, but specially during the magic of the night. I was terrified of our neighbor’s supposed ownership of a “Bacá”! This evil spirit or demon is a direct descendant of the devil itself and capable of granting its host many riches and unlimited wishes.  In order to keep the riches and “good fortune” the “Bacá” provided, its host must feed it human life, sometimes even members of their own family! If it would have not been for the killing of one’s family, I confess that at times of slim pickings owning a “Bacá” has crossed my mind.

In time I incorporated these words into my daily vocabulary, but until these days the one that stuck and I used the most is “Fukú”. The catchy word refers to a thing or a person that has been jinxed or cursed. Many times during my life I have believed that I may have had a “Fukú”.  Right after graduating college I really believed “que me había caido un Fukú”. I was unemployed for almost a year and went on many daily job interviews and concluded the “annus horribilis” with more than two thousand sent resumes and homeless! Eventually having to perform the most famous Dominican “Fukú” cleansing ritual: moving to a different country.  When asked by travelers about the meaning of the word (made famous now by Junot Díaz’s book “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”) I say that it is the perfect blend of bad luck mixed with mayhem that one could fall into or get thrown at by the biggest sorcerer: life.

Now as I bask in my fourth decade and with the advent of my circle of multicultural friends I can reflect on how the mix of words in our daily Dominican language represents a cultural log throughout our history and a perfect record of my own heritage. Similar to these words coming from different parts of the world I can see my own journey and that of my family from their towns in the Old World far ago picking up many words, traditions and stories in every port they landed; acquiring many friends and new family members until finally becoming undoubtedly Dominicans and cementing their own vocabulary in the history of this island.

By Waldo Tejada

Check out our website for cultural tours of DR at iLoveDominicanRepublic.

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