#966: A Dominican View of Haitiano-Dominican Relations (fwd)

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Max Blanchet <MaxBlanchet@worldnet.att.net>

| | The challenges - political, social and cultural - related to the
Haitian 
| | presence in the Dominican Republic
| | 
| | By Carlos Segura
| | Professor/researcher of the Latin-American Faculty of Social 
| | Sciences - Dominican Republic Program 
| | 
| | Translated by Max Blanchet
| | 
| | Presented at the colloquium "The challenges facing the promotion of 
| | the Haitian cause in the Dominican Republic"
| | Montreal, November 5-7, 1999
| | 
| | Haitian migration into the Dominican Republic, initially linked to the 
| | development of the sugar industry, to day is characterized by three 
| | phenomena:
| | 
| | 1) Laborers who, having entered the country legally at one time, have 
| | decided to stay once the harvest is over, thereby becoming illegal 
| | immigrants,
| | 
| | 2) Those who cross the border illegally from the get go, and
| | 
| | 3) The descendants of these migrants who are denied Dominican 
| | nationality and thus become stateless, in spite of the fact they were 
| | born in the Dominican Republic.
| | 
| | In the DR, everyone has profited from this immigration: the sugar 
| | industry both private and state-owned, the construction industry, farm 
| | owners and the population at large to the extent that it generally has 
| | access to goods and services whose prices are probably lower 
| | because they are produced by poorly-paid immigrant labor.
| | 
| | Society has not, however, been capable of offering these migrants 
| | decent working and living conditions and integrating them into 
| | Dominican society as full fledge citizens. Dominican society needs 
| | these immigrants but does not take them into account. Indeed, 
| | Dominican society has not even have carried out a decent census. 
| | Nobody really knows how many Haitians there are in the DR. During 
| | the last years of the Balaguer government, the specter of the "pacific 
| | invasion" was promoted once again. At that time, the claim was made 
| | that one third of the Haitian population had crossed the border (El 
| | Nacional de Ahora, April 26, 1989.) On that basis, there were 
| | allegedly 2 million Haitians in the DR. The local press and the 
| | international media have for their part proposed a figure of one 
| | million. All these estimates are exaggerated. More reasonable 
| | estimates put the Haitian presence in the DR at between 500,000 and 
| | 600,000.
| | 
| | The presence of these migrants, illegal for the most part, exploited, 
| | discriminated against, and denied all rights, presents many political, 
| | social and cultural challenges to Dominican society.
| | 
| | The political challenges
| | 
| | The Haitian question, a recurring theme in the Dominican political 
| | debate, becomes on the eve of every election one of the obligatory 
| | issues. This phenomenon possibly hides the intuition that such a 
| | theme reflects one of the greatest shortcomings of the Dominican 
| | political system, namely the exclusion of more than half a million 
| | human beings.
| | 
| | Recently, a request of the Youth Ministry of the Catholic Church that 
| | challenged the Dominican authorities to provide papers to the 
| | stateless provoked an intense debate on the legal status of Haitian 
| | migrants, especially on the right of these migrants' children to 
| | Dominican nationality.
| | 
| | Immigration authorities are opposed to issuing birth certificates to
the 
| | children of Haitian immigrants. Nonetheless, the challenge of the 
| | Youth Ministry was supported by other sectors of the church, including 
| | certain members of the Church's hierarchy, as well as other sectors of 
| | Dominican society.
| | 
| | During this debate, it was noted that there was no unanimity within the 
| | ranks of the government on this issue. While the legal adviser of the 
| | president is opposed to the idea of providing, for instance, medical 
| | assistance to Haitian women who cross the border to deliver their 
| | babies in Dominican hospitals, the minister of health stated his 
| | opposition to such a restrictive measure.
| | 
| | In the current debate on Haitian immigration, there are two clearly 
| | differentiated positions: on the one hand, there is the radical
position 
| | spearheaded by the Nationalist Union and other right wing 
| | organizations such as the Reformist Party of Joaquim Balaguer and 
| | the National Progressive Force which oppose the Haitian presence. 
| | The discourse of these organizations has a strong racist, xenophobic 
| | and ultra-nationalist content.
| | 
| | For political and ideological reasons, this sector always 
| | overestimates the number of Haitians living in the DR. Within the 
| | context of other arguments, the exaggeration of the number of 
| | Haitians can be explained by the desire to present this immigration as 
| | the principal threat to national and cultural identity. Paradoxically,
| this 
| | sector has the greatest responsibility when it comes to the hiring of 
| | and trafficking in Haitian laborers.
| | 
| | On the other hand, a sector involving intellectuals, parts of the
| Catholic 
| | Church, organizations of civil society, certain political figures of
the 
| | government as well as farm owners favors the establishment of a 
| | migratory policy that would regulates the legal status of these 
| | migrants.
| | 
| | This sector puts the emphasis on the legal aspects, on human rights 
| | and humanitarian issues. It could, however, put more emphasis on the 
| | contribution of these migrants to the economy of the country, on the 
| | political fallout of the resolution of this conflict in terms of
| democratic 
| | consolidation, as well as on its contribution to the issue of cultural 
| | pluralism.
| | 
| | Social challenges
| | 
| | The presence of these migrants presents many challenges to the 
| | society hosting them as well as to the migrants themselves. What 
| | place will be reserved for these migrants in the society? How are they 
| | to be integrated while their culture is respected? How does one 
| | manage diversity while respecting the norms required by coexistence 
| | in a democratic society? The immigrants themselves must make an 
| | effort to rearrange their lives in a new context.
| | 
| | From what we know of the traditional Haitian Diaspora, Haitians 
| | established in NYC, Miami and Montreal have experienced upward 
| | mobility, that is to say, their social and political status has
improved. 
| | They have achieved a certain development of the organizations that 
| | represent them and of their communities. 
| | 
| | The importance of these migrants vis-à-vis Haitian society has been 
| | modified. It is mostly from the US and Canada that the aid to families 
| | left behind comes from and it constitutes one of the major sources of 
| | economic activity in Haiti.
| | 
| | The situation of Haitian immigration in the DR is a different matter. 
| | First it takes place in the context of a developing country and the 
| | Haitian migrants heading for the DR have a different profile. 
| | Furthermore, for historical reasons, there is in the DR a strong anti-
| | Haitian prejudice which became reinforced as the Haitian presence 
| | grew. Our prejudices have prevented us from dealing with this 
| | migration in a rational manner.
| | 
| | Nonetheless, the Haitian immigration in the DR has experienced 
| | important changes. More and more, the Haitian immigration to the DR 
| | follows the pattern of Haitian immigration towards other countries. 
| | More and more, these migrants become integrated into urban 
| | economic activities, in construction, the informal economy, public 
| | works, transportation, tourism, etc. Furthermore, one observes a 
| | larger presence of Haitian students in universities. 
| | 
| | On notes also a strong mobility of the labor force. From the sugar 
| | cane plantations, many Haitians have moved to plantations of rice, 
| | coffee, cocoa and other agricultural produce and from there to urban 
| | activities. 
| | 
| | The spatial distribution of these migrants is no longer the same. Their 
| | confinement to the "batey" belongs to the past. the Cristo Rey 
| | neighborhood in Santo Domingo, the market on Mella Avenue in 
| | Santo Domingo as well as activities in markets in other cities of the 
| | country such as Santiago, San Pedro, La Romana, Puerto Plata and 
| | Barahona are proof of the emergence of a new universe in which the 
| | formal and informal elements of the Dominican economy reproduce 
| | themselves. 
| | 
| | Neither their illegal status nor the recurrent deportations have 
| | prevented these migrants from occupying spaces and developing 
| | strategies for integrating themselves in the Dominican economy.
| | 
| | Structural conditions have made the Dominican economy dependent 
| | on Haitian labor. The permanence of these structural conditions 
| | reinforces this dependence and accelerates immigration. To date, the 
| | only measures envisaged in the DR to deal with this migration 
| | involves deportation. Sooner or later, these measures will become 
| | counterproductive in terms of defining a migration policy linked to a 
| | larger policy of social development and state strategy in the context
of 
| | international relations. All of this would be conducive to the 
| | modernization of the state and of Dominican society. This is the 
| | challenge.
| | 
| | The cultural challenges
| | 
| | Dominican anti-Haitian ideology is an excellent illustration of the 
| | social construction of otherness. There are differences between 
| | peoples which are the result of proximity and which result from the 
| | interest in and the desire to oppose one another. Thus, many 
| | Dominican cultural traits are the result of Dominicans' interest in 
| | differentiating themselves from their Haitian neighbors.
| | 
| | The existence in the DR of a racist historiography that puts the 
| | emphasis on the purported superiority of Dominicans vis-à-vis 
| | Haitians plays a central role in the construction of this difference. 
| | 
| | This historiography has thus contributed to the amplification of racial 
| | prejudices in the population, to the point that Dominican blacks do not 
| | consider themselves black. They are Spanish-speaking, catholic 
| | Dominicans and the real blacks are the Haitians who speak Creole 
| | and practice the Vodou religion.
| | 
| | These prejudices have deep roots: since the first years of colonization 
| | of the island, the exploitation of the Indians at first and of the
| African 
| | blacks later have produced in the ruling class a prejudice whereby it 
| | considers these two groups to be inferior to itself and incapable of 
| | civilized life. Thus emerged a racist ideology, at first spontaneous, 
| | without a theoretical argumentation, but that gradually became a very 
| | important social factor which permeated the non-white sectors of the 
| | society.
| | 
| | This influence of the racist ideology was reinforced during the
Trujillo 
| | dictatorship and prevails today in the great majority of the people, 
| | composed of blacks and mulattos who deny their African origins.
| | 
| | To this socio-cultural factor must be added another of a political 
| | nature: the definitive separation of the Dominican Republic from Haiti 
| | (the independence of 1844.) In fact, Dominican identity is built in 
| | relation and in opposition to Haiti. In this equation, the Hispanic 
| | element is exalted as being the essential element of national identity. 
| | 
| | The Dominican model, which is based on the jus soli, has not 
| | prevented other groups of diverse ethnic origins from being integrated 
| | and even assimilated into Dominican society. For instance, the 
| | refugees from the Spanish Civil War who came in the 40s as well as 
| | the Arabs who arrived at the same time are today full-fledge 
| | Dominicans while the children and grand children of Haitian 
| | immigrants who arrived well before remain Haitian.
| | 
| | Some will always argue that the refusal to grant Dominican nationality 
| | to the children of Haitian immigrants is linked to the fact that we are 
| | dealing with an illegal immigration. The reality is, nonetheless, that
in 
| | the Dominican conception of the nation there is room for everybody 
| | except for Haitians while everybody claims that there is no racial 
| | prejudice in the DR.
| | 
| | At the ideological and cultural level, the formation of the Dominican 
| | nation thus involves on the one hand a combination of values, ideas 
| | and norms related to Hispanism and on the other a strong anti-Haitian 
| | ideology. In the Dominican mindset, the Haitian is perceived as the 
| | other, the Negro, the inferior to be subordinated. It is a huge
| prejudice, 
| | deeply rooted and by therefore very difficult to dismantle.
| | 
| | To conclude ...
| | 
| | On the political nature, we must insist on the fact that the
recognition 
| | to legal existence of hundreds of thousands of Haitians will be a step 
| | towards ending the social exclusion of this minority.
| | 
| | The resolution of the question of the legal status of these migrants 
| | would strengthen the will to democratize Dominican society. This 
| | would be additional proof that the country is truly engaged in a 
| | process to consolidate a state of law.
| | 
| | It is clear that democratization of social life today requires that the 
| | rights of ethnic minorities be recognized. In fact, the resolution of
the 
| | legal status of these migrants and their descendants would render 
| | Dominican efforts more credible in the eyes of the international 
| | community. 
| | 
| | In the socio-cultural arena, we must continue to help reinforce the 
| | organizations that represent the Haitian community. We might think of 
| | creating a Haiti House.
| | 
| | Thus, just as the Spaniards and their descendants have a "Casa de 
| | España" and the Arabs and their descendants have the "Club Sirio-
| | Libio-Palestino," Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent could 
| | establish a prestigious organization whose role would be to raise 
| | Haitian self-esteem, to promote Haitian culture and to negotiate better 
| | living conditions for Haitians who live in the Dominican Republic.
| | 
|