Palito de Coco (an epilogue to the Constitutional Court Blog Post)

A blog post by Adam. This was originally part of the previous post, but it was so long I had to break it up. This will be shorter. I promise.

Amidst the craziness of the recent Dominican Constitutional Court ruling striping citizenship from thousands of Haitian Dominicans, a different kind of craziness swept the country. That is Palito de Coco craziness. 

Palito de Coco is a coconut treat sold on the street. It is a little ball covered in red syrup served on a stick. I don't know where you can get it in La Romana, and when I saw it in the capital something about the red syrup scared me. In other words, I have not tried it.

But the Palito de Coco sensation has little to do with red syrup or even coconut. Rather, it is all about a Youtube video featuring an undocumented Haitian Palito de Coco street vendor. Similar to other street vendors, this vendor accompanies his sweet treats with an extremely catchy tune. It is so catchy, in fact, that someone recorded and uploaded it to the Internet. It wasn't long before everyone was talking about it, it started getting play time on the radio, and people began singing it to one another on the street, at the beach, or even at work.  In a matter of weeks it became the Dominican Gangnam Style and it's singer became a national superstar.

You can't help but love it. You also can't help but wonder how an undocumented immigrant becomes a hero (now with his own music video) while the government dashes the hopes of thousands of undocumented immigrants. It is a crazy world.

With few answers, at least we can enjoy Palito de Coco...

Click here for his newly produced music video, including background dancers.