News Information

• NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
• NEWS_POSTED_ON: Oct 08, 2016
• Views : 1635
• Category : General News
• Description : wbur.org
  By Ken Shulman
  October 08, 2016
  
  Photo Credit: wbur.org
• Location : Santo Domingo, Santo Domingo Province, Dominican Republic
• Website : http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/10/07/adonis-peguero-dominican-republic?platform=hootsuite

Overview

• They say that poverty makes the fighter. But not too many fighters come from a place as poor as Guanuma. A hamlet on the northern fringe of Santo Domingo, the Dominican Capital, Guanuma used to be a sugar town. Half the people who live here are Haitian migrants who came to cut cane. But the nearby plantations have all shut down. And these days most of Guanuma’s men play cards or stare into space. Women, if they’re lucky, board early morning buses for day work as maids. The less fortunate ones work nights in the sex trade.
  
  For Adonis Peguero, the son of Haitian migrants, Guanuma was an easy place to get into trouble.
  
  "I was a bit of a hothead when I was younger," he says in Spanish. "I was always getting into fights. I guess I had a problem with some of the people here. I just couldn’t control myself or my anger. It made me very aggressive."
  
  Dreaming Of Something Better
  
  Adonis lives about half a mile off Guanuma’s only paved road. Like many Dominican boys, he dreamed of making it to the major leagues, like David Ortiz or Adrian Beltre. But he threw more punches than strikes. One day, about four years ago, a neighbor invited him and a few other local toughs to lace up gloves and don headgear.
  
  "He told us that boxing wasn’t really a sport. It was an art," Adonis says. "He told us that in order to be a good boxer, you first had to be a person of good character. A person of quality, who can control his anger and his fear."
  
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