What Do We Have? Facts, Not Smoke (II)

by Josué Fiallo

31 January 2026

In the first installment of this series, I recounted how a meeting in Washington in 2013 taught me the fundamentals of the diplomatic method: preparation, coordination, language mastery. Lima, nine years later, would add another dimension: how to uphold the truth when disinformation tries to turn you into an enemy.

Lima, October 6, 2022

Shortly after the start of the 52nd General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS), we were seated around a small table on the second level of the Lima convention center, at the foot of a staircase. Damaris Patrocinio and four or five women linked to Dominican religious groups were waiting for me at the request of Representative Shoraya Suárez. We sat down, they vigilant, worried; I with my back to the stairs, facing their gazes.

The tone was restrained, different from their public appearances. They spoke of their fears about family, childhood, education. They did not repeat the personal attacks; they limited themselves to criticizing "the position of the Dominican State." They insisted that extreme positions were being advanced on issues that were not even part of the negotiation.

I explained to them how these resolutions are negotiated at the OAS. What the role of ambassadors is, of permanent missions, of foreign ministries. Who commands, who instructs, who drafts. I told them something that seems obvious but that they had chosen to ignore: ambassadors are not ideological snipers; they are executors of mandates. Unity of State position is not optional; it is the only way for a small country to have a voice in multilateral forums.

Then we entered a specific topic they had turned into caricature: references to diverse sex-gender identities. They spoke of "sex change" as an imminent barbarism. I raised the real problem of intersex communities in the southwest of the Dominican Republic, where, due to a genetic variation in the 5-alpha reductase enzyme, some children are born with the appearance of girls and later develop male genitalia. I spoke to them about stigmas, mental health problems, legal dilemmas about civil status. I spoke to them about science and nature, not whims or preferences. They were not prepared for that dose of another perspective.

I showed them that their concerns were focused on imagined scenarios, while they chose not to see the concrete human beings who do require State attention. I reminded them that the promotion of human rights, with approaches of equality and non-discrimination, is a guiding principle of our foreign policy. That is not a betrayal of family; it is fulfilling the treaties the country has signed. But more than that, it was the very essence of being Dominican: solidarity, empathy, dignity, and love.

Only after that explanation did I move to another level. I told them:

—Now I am going to address you specifically, Damaris. You owe me an apology. I have a name and a career; it is all I have. Your words, which went viral on social media, have been an attack on what I have tried to cultivate for almost twenty years. You have been unfair. You could have contacted me first to clarify any doubts, and you chose to do what you did.

Her voice broke. She cried for a moment. She said she had not thought about the consequences, that she had been outraged by what she was told, that she had not imagined the impact on my family and my environment. She apologized to me. The group fell silent.

Shortly after, on her social media, she posted the photo we took right there and wrote a message of recognition. That message was seen by very few compared to the reach of the Sunday video. But for me it closed a circle: the truth had been spoken, the offense had been acknowledged.

Months earlier, our Mission to the OAS was negotiating the omnibus resolution of the General Assembly. In the human rights section, the usual topics reappeared: rights of women and girls, sexual and reproductive rights, combating gender-based violence. The most sensitive discussion revolved around the phrase "women and girls in all their diversity."

The language we defended was not new. It was practically the same that our country, the Dominican Republic, had championed in 2019, when, in our capital Santo Domingo, the Declaration on Equality and Autonomy in the Exercise of Women's Political Rights was approved. What was pride in 2019 became scandal in 2022.

The moment I understood that the technical discussion had turned into spectacle was when several friends forwarded me a video recorded at El Buen Pastor church. In it, Damaris Patrocinio had taken the microphone to "alert" the congregation about what we were supposedly about to approve: abortion at any stage, loss of parental authority, sex-change procedures on minors. Shortly after, another video appeared featuring Pastor Ezequiel Molina repeating the same claims, pointing to the Minister of Women, Mayra Jiménez, and me as responsible for that ignominy. To top it off, a dozen representatives called a press conference outside the Congress to demand a response from the government, not without first calling for our dismissals. None of what they argued was on the table. None of it was part of the text being negotiated in Washington.

A few days later I received a call from Monsignor Víctor Masalles, bishop of Baní. He wanted to know if what he had heard was true. From what he described, I knew it was version 3 of a text that was already on version 7. At the OAS, it is normal for early drafts to be negotiated among delegates (mid-level officials); ambassadors enter when the texts are more mature.

The phrase that worried me most was when he told me he had already spoken with the President, who—according to him—had been surprised. The implicit message was clear: it was being suggested that we had deviated from the authorized line. I told him he had incomplete information, that my hierarchical superior was the Foreign Minister, and that if he had concerns, the responsible thing was to channel them through the Foreign Ministry.

The issue had already left the technical circuit and entered the terrain where facts are optional and emotion is mandatory. The Foreign Ministry ended up issuing a public statement clarifying the situation.

We arrived at the General Assembly tired, under pressure. At the inaugural plenary, the tension took a concrete face. A Dominican trans woman approached from behind to the Foreign Minister's seat and stood beside him to greet him. The session had already started; he did not respond immediately. She insisted, raising her voice until the room heard her:

—I am Dominican, and my own delegation treats me like this, they don't even want to greet me.

I walked toward her, leaned in, and told her, in a low but firm voice, that this was not the moment: the session had just begun, the Foreign Minister had to keep his attention on the plenary, but we would gladly receive her outside the room. Shortly after, the Foreign Minister stopped to talk with her. He was cordial and respectful. The conversation was brief, but sufficient. She ended up apologizing.

We had defused, with a few gestures, a scene that could have been used as a symbol of exclusion. We had upheld a guiding principle: respect for human dignity, comprehensive protection, and strengthening ties with all Dominicans abroad, without discrimination.

Meanwhile, in an adjacent room, the negotiation continued its course. The Foreign Ministry decided we should inscribe a footnote at the beginning of the resolution to mark distance without breaking the general consensus. I spoke with the Foreign Minister. I told him I preferred to draft it myself. I did not agree with the idea of the footnote, because I felt it was a crack in a principled position the country had defended for years. But I understood the political necessity of the gesture.

I drafted the footnote paraphrasing the Preamble and Articles 38 and 43 of the Dominican Constitution, highlighting respect for human dignity as the backbone of our positions. The team that had worked for weeks was demoralized. But despite the noise, not a single comma changed in the substantive text. The bottom line held. We minimized the damage that distancing from our historical position on women's and girls' rights represented for our image.

Seven Principles I Learned in Lima

1. Listen even when they attack you with false information. Not everyone who shouts lies with malice; some lie out of ignorance. There are sincere fears based on fantastical readings. Listening is not yielding principles; it is better understanding the terrain.

2. Contain without humiliating. The trans woman at the plenary, Damaris on the staircase: each situation demanded firmness without contempt. Managing moral conflicts based on false information requires more patience than managing technical conflicts.

3. Anchor every word in concrete human beings. The conversation about intersex people was not theory: it was the life of specific communities (Salinas and Saladillo in Barahona province). Speaking about them forced our discourse to be grounded in real cases.

4. Read complete biographies, not just agendas. Damaris is not just a religious activist; she is a woman who acts from sincere moral convictions. Understanding that allowed for a dialogue where before there were only shouts.

5. Uphold the truth with serenity. When I asked Damaris for an apology, I did not do so from anger, but from the certainty that my name and my work deserved respect. Truth spoken calmly disarms more than indignation.

6. Care for the team when politics uses them as bargaining chips. The discouragement after the footnote was understandable. Part of leadership was to contain, explain, remind them that the substantive text had held.

7. Separate the professional from the personal without betraying either. Defending an official line with which I did not completely agree required ethical clarity: the professional is legitimate mandate; the personal is conscience. Maturity consists in honoring both planes.

A Call from Lima

To those who raise their voice in the name of moral causes, to churches and to the media: It is legitimate to dissent from public policies, to question resolutions, to distrust new concepts. What is not legitimate is to set the conversation on fire with false claims, to attribute invented intentions, to throw proper names into the bonfire without first verifying whether what is being said has any grounding in reality.

Before turning someone into a symbol of evil, it is worth asking: do I know what I am talking about, or am I just amplifying what someone told me? The democracy and the rule of law that we all claim to defend are weakened when we normalize moral lynching as a method.

I propose a pact: do not turn disinformation into a tool of evangelization. If we truly want to build a country where different moral visions can coexist, we need to learn to disagree with truth and with respect. That means verifying before accusing, asking before condemning, acknowledging when we are wrong.

To those on the side of the State and to the next generation of public servants: Lima leaves a clear task: listen even when you are being slandered. The defense of rights cannot depend solely on texts approved in solemn halls. It needs patient pedagogy, human stories, the ability to explain why a term in a resolution is not a weapon against anyone, but an imperfect attempt to protect those who almost never have a voice.

The country needs permanent strategic communication mechanisms, institutionalized channels to explain to citizens what the country does in multilateral forums and why. It needs a policy of citizen engagement in the formulation of foreign policy, so that State positions are not surprises that can be distorted.

Do not tire of explaining, of opening spaces, of receiving attacks based on lies with serenity, of correcting without humiliating. History rarely applauds in real time, but it ends up putting in their rightful place those who defended human dignity without fear of manufactured noise.

The Dominican Republic needs a foreign service that is not only professional in technical matters, but also in human terms and in courage. One that knows how to defend positions firmly even when that turns you into a target of attacks. One that understands that true sovereignty is not isolating oneself from the world or yielding to pressures based on disinformation, but participating in it with dignity, with preparation, and with the certainty that we defend values that transcend governments and circumstances: the dignity of every human person, respect for international law, the pursuit of peace.

That is the country we deserve. That is the foreign service we must build.