Mobility and Transculturation in the Americas

The history of the Samaná Americans begins with their resettlement in 1824 from Philadelphia to the Samaná peninsula as part of the plan of the Haytian President Boyer to populate the first free black republic in the Western Hemisphere. Only a few decades later, the piece of land would become part of the Dominican Republic and witness several mechanisms of nation building. The preservation and hybridization of language, linguistic identity, group identity and collective memory due to displacement and transnational mobility, spanning a period of almost 200 years, are the focus of this study, which uses a multidisciplinary approach of cultural studies, ethnohistory, and sociolinguistics.