Why does the town council own a butcher shop?

The sign below says "Ayuntamiento of the Municipal District of *Town Where I live* Services Open to All."

Ayuntamiento translates exactly to "town council." People use the word to refer to the building, the elected officials therein, the services offered thereby, and the employees who provide them. I've known this word since I talked to the vice-sindico of my CBT pueblo . Despite its flexibility, I was hard pressed to make sense of it in the following context:

In case the blood-red letters in drippy font didn't clue you in carnicería means "butcher shop" and the sign therefore reads: "Town Council Butchery of M.R.L" (¨M" is for Municipalidad and R.L is the initials of the town where I live). This building is right next to the savings cooperative where I work everyday. I can see it through the window near my desk.

Despite this familiarity, or perhaps because of it, I haven't given much thought to what it is or what goes on there. Like I wrote in my last entry, the first six months in site have been intense. When I'm overwhelmed I tend to either shut down or open up all the way, so I ended up accepting a lot of things without much investigation. Sometimes it's best to just file things under "that's weird" and move on with your day.

Last week, I saw a handwritten sign that I lamentably neglected to take a photo of. It was posted on a street corner and declared in the formal language of Dominican government announcements that the ayuntamiento would be holding a subasta for municipal service providers and that anyone was welcome to attend.

After 8 months in country, my written Spanish is pretty good. I can read the paper (without a dictionary) and contemporary novels (with one). I can write a professional email. I can write poetry. My spoken Spanish it pretty good, too, though it varies depending on context. If you are a complete stranger with a thick country accent, talking about something I am not familiar with, I might only get 60% of what you are saying. If you are an educated, urban stranger I probably bat about 80% and my average goes up when I tune into your particular way of talking. When conversing with someone I know well about a topic where I know all the vocabulary, I can sometimes communicate with 100% fluidity. On a good day, I go to sleep feeling like I speak Spanish.

That day, I was feeling confident: I understood all the words on the sign except for subasta. I looked it up in the dictionary: it means "auction." What municipal services was the town council going to auction? I was intrigued. I also felt guilty for never before having attended a meeting of the ayuntamiento. It seemed like a basic background thing that I had neglected for too long. I decided to attend.

In a small town everyone knows everyone, so even though I've only lived here half a year I recognized half the people in the room.  Some were you usual movers-and-shakers whose presence was to be expected. The presence of some of the others might have been surprising if I knew what the heck was going on. There were some greetings and smiles of recognition.  I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the building is the exact same vintage as my house and has an identical floor plan.  The meeting took place in the "kitchen." Imagine, if you will, 30+ people in the following space.

Cluttered kitchen table included for scale.

I took a seat and the meeting began. That 60% to 100% I just bragged about? That only happens in a one-on-one context where I am able to ask follow-up questions of polite people who are concerned about whether or not I understand what the heck was going on.

Gracias a Dios, the form of the meeting was identical to municipal meetings I have attended in the US. There was an agenda and a secretary to read it. But the main agenda item, the subasta felt like, well, an auction, and not a silent one. With everybody talking at once my comprehension dropped to about 25%. But one thing was clear: the ayuntamiento was auctioning off the rights to the carnicería that bears it's name.  Only on my walk home did I have presence of mind to wonder, why the heck does a city council own a butcher shop in the first place?

That night, I did not go to sleep feeling like I spoke Spanish.

The next day, I talked it over with Mariano, a community leader who also happens to be one of my favorite people in town. He has lived in the pueblo all his life and has watched it grow from a group of dozen a families to a small town of 2000+. He has been instrumental in that growth, having been involved in just about every community project over the years. He serves on the comite de crédito (credit commission) of my savings cooperative and had been at the subasta the previous night. He has a lifetime of experience that he is eager to share and is kind and patient with my uneven Spanish. He is concerned about whether or not I understand what the heck is going on.

He explained to me that in a small country like the DR it makes sense to organize services like roads, schools and police at a provincial, or even national level. As such, Dominican municipal governments have very few excuses to few taxes on their citizens which means they sometimes have little revenue. By owning, and auctioning the rights to, services like the butcher's shop the ayuntamiento can simultaneously guarantee a source of revenue for itself while also guaranteeing that these services exist in their town. What is more, the ayuntamiento sets a maximum price per pound at the carniceria to ensure that the meat is affordable to its citizens. In a town with serious hunger in living memory that makes a lot of sense.

It's an interesting way of doing business, and governance, that I am happy to have learned about. I'll probably attend more meetings of the ayuntamiento in the future and record my reflections on other interesting stuff here.