Ríos Are for Chivos and Eternity
The billy goat, or el chivo, has a long cultural history in the Dominican Republic. It is a common farm animal, often turned into a beloved dish, and the nickname that many used to refer to one of Latin America’s most brutal dictators, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. The chivo meets the rivers, los ríos, in Bonifacio’s collection. The ríos are carriers of joy and celebration, of food and music, but they are also sites of horror and genocide, separation and exile.
Ríos Are For Chivos and Eternity reckons with what the river carries, which is not just the traumas of a previous generations, but those of all Dominicans on and off the island. As such, these poems are about the universal joy and terror we all carry, Dominican or not, and pass to others for eternity.