if you want to witness similar prejudice first hand just watch the people who enter the DR...the only ones patted down or checked with a wand are Latin American looking men or Black men

gringos walk right in..

.....I have never seen an English speaking African-American patted down. Seen several Dominican guys patted down.I have only seen gringos patted down at Molino Rojo. Seems fair to me.

If you are White, shut the Phuck up. You do not have ANY idea what you are talking about.

I wouldn't characterize the HDR/BM pat-downs as an example of prejudice so much as basic racial profiling.

while you could say that there is an element of prejudice in racial profiling, you could just as easily say that there is also a rational basis in it as well.

I seriously doubt that it reflects a belief on the part of the HDR security crew or its management that ALL hispanics or non-western blacks are somehow bad or not to be trusted or even most of them.

a) wealthy gringos are first and foremost where they make their money whereas chicas are just a tool toward that end and any local (and usually relatively poor) tico more often than not has no good reason to be in sych an expensive gringo-oruented bar

b) wealthy gringos down in CR on vacation (and having gone through airport security) are much less likely to be carrying any serious weapons

c) over time locals are much more likely to have been able to have acquired weapons somewhere and

d) on the streets outside the HDR there have been very very few cases of gringo on gringo or gringo on tico violence involving weapons (if any at all), but latino on gringo or latino on latino armed attacks are a daily occurence.

A much better example of hispanic on hispanic prejudice would be tico attitudes towards nicas and colombianos. The case of nicas in particular is analogous to the original example that Jazz cited regarding the french creole speaking Haitians in the Dominican Republic. In both cases, the prejudice is not so much racial or ethnically based as it is economic. In both cases you have economic (and usually illegal) migrants from a much poorer neighboring country coming in "stealing" jobs from locals through their willingness to work for much less money or overwhelming the already precarious social safety net or in the worst cases the criminal justice system. BTW, does that sound familiar to anything here in the US? Colombianos are a similar example except that they come from 2 countries away. Also with Colombianos there is a much closer association with narco-related violence and crime.

CR is probably the one latin country where you would find the least of that.

Being "whiter" or more purely hispanic than many hispanics of neighboring countries and coming from a much more peaceful and economically successful country, they can often look down their noses at other hispanics.

In closing, IMHO this is not a hispanic phenomenon. There is a natural human tendency to align ourselves in groups (or tribes). Witness the phenomenon of sports fandom. Even if we didn't have racial, language or other cultural differences we would still find some other basis for dividing ourselves up.

My wife and I stayed in the HDR together in the summer of 07. I thought her blond hair and blue eyes would be enough to keep the security bulldogs off our tails.....but the first few times we walked onto the elevator, the guards were there to greet us. and I would annoyingly growl, "Mi espousa." After they saw her ID, they were cool, and then learned who were were and stopped the hassle.