It is exceedingly hard not to be full of unbridled admiration and unwavering respect for, if not in downright awe of, His Excellency Elnio Durán, the newly appointed Ambassador of the Dominican Republic to the U.K., given his far from gilded, nay downright penurious start in life and what he has subsequently gone on to achieve.
One imagines that the trip to Buckingham Palace to officially present his credentials at the Court of St. James’s and to meet the Queen at the start of his tenure on May 12th, 2021, regally dressed in a morning suit and tails, must have been a beautiful and poignant, if not surreal moment for the new Ambassador, not to mention one of immense pride. Yet equally, one surmises that it was not something which would have fazed him in the slightest.
To be sure, the ostentatious opulence, ornate pomp and effulgent splendour of Her Majesty the Queen’s main London residence are a far cry from the bucolic simplicity of the sugar cane fields, the verdant, undulating hills and the rural indigence of the Dominican Republic (the Spanish Caribbean country which occupies the right-hand side of the island of Hispaniola, next door to Haiti) where he was born and raised. Thus, on one level, it must have been tremendously gratifying, the ostensible culmination of a long and arduous journey – from very humble, inauspicious beginnings to a stellar ambassadorial posting, and the envy of many in diplomatic circles.
But having endured severe childhood privation and myriad obstacles, as well as overcoming potentially fatal leukaemia as an adult, it was an experience which in all probability His Excellency took, like everything else in his life thus far, with equanimity and in his sure-footed and down-to-earth stride. In fact, perhaps those lines from Kipling’s famous poem If – lines which seem particularly apposite for a man like the Ambassador, with his direct personal experience of being able to oscillate between two very distinct, diametrically juxtaposed worlds went through his mind when he stood ceremonially before the Queen:
“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch.”
Suffice to say, be it in the calm, urbane reception rooms of Buckingham Palace or on the bustling, animated streets of Santo Domingo and Santiago, His Excellency does both with an aplomb and a jovial self-assurance borne out of being grateful and happy to be alive, mindful of where he hails from and at ease in his own skin – all truly admirable qualities, and yet a rarity in our meretricious day and age. With his silvery grey hair, light brown complexion belying his generations’ old, mixed Spanish and African roots and his Creole heritage, an imposing frame and broad, capable shoulders, His Excellency looks every bit the powerful potentate, august in bearing and demeanour, as if born to occupy such high office. Yet the story of how he came to be here is itself highly unusual as well as heart-warming, restoring both one’s faith in the ability of true talent to overcome adversity and rise to the top, and in the fact that just occasionally, nice guys do actually finish first.
Childhood Poverty
Born to a single mother in extreme poverty in the Dominican Republic, the sixth of eight children, His Excellency knew from an early age that education was destined to be his escape route out of penury and that it would provide him with the ability to transcend the plethora of quotidian challenges which his immediate circumstances presented. As he relates with moving frankness, “At the beginning of my life, we were very happy, but we had a lot of financial hardships, as you can imagine. A single mother raising 8 children was not easy.
The product of a stable, loving family unit with a very present,“hands on” father whose Speaking thus, with veneration of his mother and a tone of colossal filial gratitude imbuing his voice, he praises her tenacious fighting spirit, determined as she was to battle hard against the harsh exigencies of poverty.
“The Caribbeans or the Africans, they are prepared to fight in order to protect their children. My mother was one of them. She was fighting to achieve everything that she had to do, to ensure that her children grew.”
The Importance of Education
With a dazzling academic trajectory comparable to the teenage student Jose in the beautifully elegiac, award-winning Martinican film Rue Cases-Negres (about a boy in 1930s Fort de-France for whom education is his way out of debilitating poverty and life in the cane fields), His Excellency was adamant from a very early age that he was going to attend school something that many of us in the West take for granted.
Sadly, he may at times have gone physically hungry as a child, but happily, he also had an insatiable hunger for education and an unquenchable desire to go to school. As he explains, “The most important thing from all of the 8 children was that I went to school. Most of them did not want to work, I don’t know why, but I decided I wanted to go to school.”
Starting school at the age of seven (since schools in the D.R. at that time would not accept pupils under that age), the fact that his older brothers had already stopped attending actively encouraged him to go to school. For His Excellency, with a level of insight well beyond his tender years, it was clear that education was tantamount to liberation – and manumission from the onerous shackles of poverty. “Because I knew at this time, being so young, that only education can take me out of my poverty.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, a childhood full of physical privations and ill health (which he relates wholly devoid of self-pity), His excellency developed an indomitable spirit and a fiercely resilient mental attitude which would help carry him through the toughest times. Explaining where this irrepressible motivating force came from, he states:
“We had a lot of problems in my house, like no food, no clothes, but I continued. I had to survive; I mean I was a sick child. I got sick very easily, because my constitution was not so good, but I continued fighting, fighting and fighting.”
His subsequent educational journey through the grades from Primary to Secondary and then to High school was swift, but reached an impasse after High school when he was unsure which
career path to choose, mainly due to his family’s impoverished and parlous financial situation. “Because my family could not pay for my university, there were two options. One of them was to go to the army, and the 2nd one was to go to the city. If you go to the capital (Santo Domingo), you can study everything, but I couldn’t go to the capital, as I didn’t have family there; I didn’t have money, so I had to choose to either go to the university in my home city or to join the army.”
In fact, the stark choice which His Excellency adumbrates was in some respects reminiscent of that faced by the hero of Scarlet and Black, the French 19th century novelist Stendhal’s magnum opus – social advancement through the army or the clergy being the only two career choices available to a poor, able and ambitious young man looking to make his way in society.
Ironically, when viewed holistically, Ambassador Durán’s life story could in so many ways have easily been drawn from the pages of a 19th-century novel, be it by Balzac, Stendhal, Dickens or
Hardy, with him as the Byronic, quixotic but impecunious protagonist fighting against the cruel caprices of fortune, poverty and oppressive fate to excel and make something of himself.
Be it serendipity or good fortune, or a combination of the two, His Excellency thankfully had a fortuitous, almost Damascene experience that inexorably altered the course of his life. As he recounts, “One day when I was finishing high school, I was in a Maths class, and there were some tests for if you wanted to go to the University of Santiago. I said:
“What?” Then I ran immediately to the room where they were giving the test. I took the test, and I passed.”
Indubitably proud of his scholastic achievement, with a discernible glint in his eye, he continues, “Then I was accepted to one of the best universities in my country, the famous Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM). I got a scholarship.” Having finished a 5-year degree course in Agricultural Engineering in only 4 years, he graduated in 1985.
With enormous and beguiling self-deprecation, His Excellency admits:
“I don’t think that I am a very smart guy. But I think that at that time, I was responsible, I got a good degree.”
After completing his undergraduate studies, he then chose to work for five years in the cotton industry, in a hands-on capacity in the fields themselves. As he recounts with satisfaction,
demonstrating his exceptional hard work ethic,
“I was doing everything from irrigation to fertilisation, and managing people. I was in charge of the production. Doing everything. I would leave my house at 5am and return at maybe 9pm every day. I’d even work on Sundays.”
Laudably, his priorities were those of a dutiful, loving son, for whom nothing was more important than taking care of his mother. For the first time, his hard-earned wages enabled him to financially provide for her. As he recalls
“First I built a house, a small house. At this time, my mother was able to eat every day, because I had my salary, and I had some money in the bank, a little bit.”
Masters in Texas
Then in 1990 came a potentially game-changing moment in his career. He was keen to embark upon graduate study, as a result of what he had witnessed while working in the cotton fields:
“I worked 5 years in cotton production, and at that time there were some whiteflies that did a lot of damage to the crops. That’s why I wanted to do my Master’s degree in Entomology.”
Whilst he readily acknowledges that his ego would prohibit him from having a charitable
Having applied to five American universities (and been offered a place by all five), he was accepted to study for a Masters in Entomology at Texas A & M University. And so, having won
a scholarship, the university sent him on a 6-month, intensive English language course in Washington D.C. As he explains volubly, fondly recalling a happy but industrious period in
his life:
“They sent me to George Town University, to study English. I had to learn English in 6 months, and then I could go to the university. 6 months! An intensive course, from 8am to 3pm, and when you finished you had to go home and do a lot of homework – homework, homework, homework.”
However, always mindful of his responsibilities to his mother, he conscientiously arranged with his university and with his company, so that they continued to pay his salary when he was a student in the US. He admits:
“This was so I could support my mother and her brother.”
Diagnosis and Victory over Leukaemia
Then, having completed his master’s and started work, and just as things were beginning to go well, tragedy struck unexpectedly when he was afflicted by a near-fatal disease. In September 1994, he was diagnosed with leukaemia.
“I was tired, I had stomach problems, I had rashes,” he explains, recalling his disconcerting
symptoms. Furthermore, his diagnosis was not immediate. He continues:
“I spent about 15 days going to the doctor, and they did not find anything. Because the place to look for leukaemia is not in the blood, but in the bone marrow. After 15 days my daughter said to me, let’s go to the oncology department. Friday morning, I took a test, and on Saturday at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, they said I have something very bad.”
There followed the conversation with a doctor which everyone dreads.
‘What do you mean?’ ‘You have leukaemia cancer’
‘Cancer of the blood?’
‘Yes’.”
Thankfully, the company for whom he was working at the time were incredibly supportive, both emotionally and financially, and thus facilitated his life-saving treatment as quickly as possible. In fact, the speed at which his treatment began was almost unprecedented. As he explains,
remembering with real thankfulness,
“Then I called my boss, in the capital. It was on Saturday. He called the owner of the company, and he said, ‘For the sake of money, don’t let this guy die.’ Saturday, Sunday, and on Monday, I was at the hospital in the United States.”
In fact, one can tell from the martial lexicon he employs when talking about how he bravely faced the disease – telling of how he “fought my cancer”, that his indomitable spirit of resilience perhaps inherited from his mother – served him in good stead at this most difficult and testing of times in his life. Told by the doctors of the extreme gravity of his predicament – that 90% of those with his condition die, His Excellency’s pugnacious fighting spirit thankfully rose to the fore. He duly underwent three years of medical treatment – two months in the United States, followed by two years of gruelling chemotherapy back in the Dominican Republic, where he spent twelve days at a time in hospital, until he was finally – and some may say miraculously – given all clear.
It is obvious that such a perilously close brush with death profoundly affected His Excellency’s outlook on life and mortality and resolutely increased his desire to savour every remaining moment afforded to him, whilst focusing on the things which truly matter on our collective terrestrial journey.
Big (in) Bananas
After his successful and full recovery from leukaemia, the Ambassador’s career as an entomologist, working with pest management in agriculture, rapidly took off. Moving from cotton to bananas, from 1993 to 1997 he was Operation Manager of Plantaciones del Norte, where he developed and introduced new technologies in the production of bananas for export, as well as market studies for Europe and the United States. In addition, he oversaw the introduction of the Pressurised Irrigation System – a technologically advanced system that had a great impact on ferti-irrigation.
From 1997 to 2010, he subsequently served as General Manager of Sociedad Filpo Almonte and from 2014 to 2016 served as the President of the Association of Dominican Banana Producers. He then worked as an advisor to the Minister of Agriculture and acted as the advisor to the President of Banana Production.
In addition, he served as the Vice President of the Banamiel Group (a company dedicated to the export of bananas to Europe and the United States), as well as being a member of Banamiel’s Board of Directors. In 2017 he was awarded the Medal Honour of Merit from the Association of Landowners and Farmers INC for his services to the industry.
Appointed D.R. Ambassador to the U.K.
Today, as part of an elite group of one of only four African Americans to occupy the office of District Attorney in Louisiana, Tony is admittedly conscious of race but refuses to be imprisoned or stymied by it in any way. He maintains that his election to DA was not race-based. “I can say it’s a true testament to the people in our three parishes that people did not base this on race.” For Tony, his legal prowess transcends the vagaries of melanin. As he explains, “Most of my clients are white. It’s about if you’re a good lawyer, that’s what people tend to gravitate to.”
As a long-time, loyal supporter of Luis Abinader, the now Dominican president, he received a telephone call from the new incumbent shortly after his electoral victory on July 5th 2020. He relates their succinct but telling conversation accordingly:
‘Hi, my president, how are you?’ ‘Fine, how are you?’ ‘Fine.’‘I want you to work in my government’. ‘Yes, you are my president’
Yet this is the first time Ambassador Durán has worked in diplomacy – something which His Excellency freely admits, with candour, humility and good grace. “I was selected by my President to come to London.” He continues openly:
“As an agricultural engineer by trade, I have had no experience as a diplomat until now, but I have a lot of experience in business and 35 years in the private sector. Today, diplomacy focuses more on business and trade, so my experience will be valuable.”
Not only is such honesty incredibly refreshing and, truth to tell, given the level of bare-faced mendacity which we are used to hearing from our elected officials, almost unbecoming in politicians and top diplomatic appointments nowadays, but it is a testament to the colossal integrity of the man. Furthermore, it is evident that loyalty, duty and service are key concepts that thoroughly inform his outlook.
His Excellency is currently greatly enjoying being Ambassador in London. The novelty has not yet worn off, since it is so far removed from his former working life spent as an entomologist in the cotton and banana industries in the Caribbean. Ever humble and grounded, he says:
“For me, it is a good experience. I am learning a lot of things.”
However, on the direction of the D.R. government, His Excellency now has three clear and important priorities for his time in the U.K. As he explains with a galvanising sense of mission:
“Firstly, the Embassy will be looking for companies to invest in the Dominican Republic, especially in green energy. Secondly, we also must increase the numbers of tourists between the UK and the Dominican Republic. Finally, we must protect the people from the Dominican Republic living in the UK and promote our culture.”
His desire to look out for the Dominican diaspora in the UK, akin to that of a good shepherd solicitously tending his flock, is touching, and also necessary, given that the U.K. is an Anglophone country (as opposed to a Hispanophone one) with comparatively few settled and prosperous Spanish Caribbean communities, notwithstanding a few Dominican barbershops and hair salons in inner-city London.
Tourism Challenge
The Ambassador’s third stated aim – of improving tourism to the D.R. from the U.K. – is now a positively Herculean one, given the ongoing covid pandemic and the burgeoning omicron variant situation. He freely admits that “I am very sad, because there are no tourists from U.K. going to my country right now because of covid.”
However, thankfully, as of the beginning of November 2021, the Dominican Republic was no longer on the British government’s prohibitive “red list” of travel destinations – itself a source of huge relief to the Ambassador, as his country’s economy relies heavily on the UK tourist market. But without doubt, a major diplomatic challenge he has to face will be to relaunch the Dominican Republic’s tourism sector in the UK
“People do not have time for quarantining, so tourism has been affected very badly. To make matters worse, we don’t even have a direct flight between the Dominican Republic to the UK right now. So we must relaunch our tourism in the U.K.”
A People-Centred Approach
His Excellency’s approach to the role of Ambassador – and crucially to that of bringing people up from the ranks with him – in essence, to mentoring others whilst on the job, is not only exceedingly rare in the highest echelons of diplomacy, but speaks volumes about the man and his personality. As he elucidates:
“For example, if I have a meeting, I take one guy with me. This guy needs to grow with me. And I have to leave a legacy to the people, the people working with me. They can be ambassadors.”
With his customary humility, honesty and self-deprecation, as well as insight, he explains, “For me, it is like an experience, but for them, it is their life. This is their career, yet for me this is not my career. I am here maybe because I am a lucky guy.”
Given that, or rather, because of the fact that he is not a career politician, Ambassador Durán is wholly free of the cant, vanity and venality which traditionally handicap most of those who come to such a position after a long career in politics. It is painfully evident that Ambassador Durán cares genuinely and passionately about human beings first and foremost, as opposed to the ephemeral trappings of office. Above all, His Excellency is grateful for the opportunity to represent his country on the world stage, since he is conscious of being, in effect, a diplomat by accident.
Investing in Education: Oxford Scholarships
Looking to the future, and being such an ardent believer in the power of education to transform lives and affect grass roots social change, His Excellency is proud to have recently signed an agreement on behalf of the D.R.’s Ministry of Education and the University of Oxford (one of the oldest and most prestigious academic institutions in the world), to support a series of graduate scholarships for students from the Dominican Republic to study there.
This new agreement will last for five years and will fund up to ten new scholars per year to study in Oxford, the first of whom will start in the academic year 2022 – 23. The aim of this scholarship programme is to thus provide gifted students with a life-changing opportunity to develop their skills in science, technology and medicine and will be instrumental in inspiring future bright, talented students from the Dominican Republic to apply to pursue their studies in the city of Dreaming Spires.
In fact, His Excellency’s commitment to the D.R. government funding these Oxford scholarships aptly reflects and embodies the veracity of Nelson Mandela’s famous statement about the value of learning, when the venerated South African statesman declared that, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Speaking at the signing, Ambassador Durán said that, “Education is fundamental for development and growth. A country that invests in education is investing in the overall progress of its society. Education is a catalyst for job creation, economic growth and increased social mobility.” As he continued, “Most importantly, educational opportunities should be available for everyone.”
Such a desire to democratise the availability of education is not only noble and deeply altruistic, but, given his own childhood, wholly understandable. It is also the action of a thoroughly decent and caring man who is keen to selflessly push the ladder back down, so to speak, not pull it up after him. One is left wishing that more people around the world believed in such courses of action when they reach the top.
Three Wishes
Had he the proverbial three wishes, His Excellency would above all like to have good health. He freely admits, in a tone replete with lucid self-knowledge, “I don’t care right now about money. Because I understand that money is not everything.” This flagrantly non-materialistic approach to life and his healthy disregard for money are both brilliantly philosophical and wonderfully refreshing, being so thoroughly untainted by the ubiquitous desire to slavishly genuflect at the high altar of Mammon. Instead, his perspective on money is that of a true humanist and a believer in the brotherhood of man. John Donne’s famous “No man is an island” could have been written by him – someone who says, in a matter of fact and yet impassioned tone.
Likewise, in a disarmingly unpretentious yet illuminating comment worthy of one of the great sages of Western civilisation, like Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, French Renaissance essayist Montaigne or even 20th century philosophical novelist Albert Camus, His Excellency states:
“I would try to give people my knowledge of how to be human. To be human is the most important.”
It is sagacious, worldly and deeply humane pronouncements like this which make one realise just how incredibly fortunate the Dominican Republic is to have a man like Ambassador Durán at the helm in London.
In his free time, His Excellency is a dedicated cinephile and happily admits to a penchant for “political thrillers with actors like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins.” If anything, given the distinctly cinematic quality of his own hugely inspirational, almost fairy tale, rags-to-riches by dint of overcoming chronic adversity story, perhaps we should be eagerly awaiting the biopic of the Ambassador to hit the screens sometime soon?
Now that is a film, I would certainly pay good money to see! The only question is, I wonder who he would like to have play him in the film version of his life?