14215: Simidor comments on "Haitian Menace" to Dom. Rep. [post #14193] (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor <karioka9@mail.arczip.com>


>Letter to the editor
>Listin Diario
>December 2002
>
>Why Haiti Is Menace To My Country

... snip

>Frankly, I am ashamed to have been from the same land with the
Haitian
>intellectuals and elite.
> In fact, they represent a danger to the whole island because they
> don't
>like their own.

Of all the things Dominicans should be ashamed of, this is
certainly the most unexpected.  This guy is ashamed to be "from
the same land with the Haitian intellectuals."  Strange.  But what
about the Haitian elite?  I readily concede that they are quite
shameful, but is the Listin Diario guest columnist, Mr. Abelardo
Gonzales, not equally ashamed of the Dominican elite's treatment
of the Haitian braceros?  Does he feel no shame for Trujillo's and
Balaguer's crimes against the Haitian people?  Does he feel no
shame about the racist and inhumane treatment of Haitian
immigrants and of Dominicans of Haitian descent, under a
democratic Dominican government?  Does he feel no shame about the
sub-colonization of Haiti by the Dominican ruling class that is
going on today?

>Maybe it is the reason they don't like Aristide: he looks too much
>like the masses.

And maybe it is the author's own anti-Haitian bias speaking.

> No matter what his faults are, he was duly elected.

How  does Abelardo Gonzales, sitting pretty in New York's
Washington Heights, know who was DULY elected or not in Haiti?  I
say, there goes a presumptious fellow!

>We have been long accused of discriminating against Haitians.
>Maybe some of us have.

A massive understatement.

>But what about those Haitian mulattoes and even the
>intellectuals who hate the Haitian masses and keep creating
terrible
>conditions thus causing poor Haitians to go working in -I must
admit-
>infrahuman conditions in my country?

Again, this Dominican obssession with skin color, and Gonzales'
own anti-intellectual bias.  This particular gentleman choses to
ignore the reality of supply and demand in the Dominican labor
market.  The decried Haitian migrant worker doesn't just happen to
cross the border.  He is actively recruited -- then by the
Dominican state (remember the shameful contracts between the
Duvaliers and Balaguer?), nowadays by Dominican "buscones" who
team up with the Dominican border guards and various Dominican
industries.

But of course, once you acknowledge the demand for Haitian labor
in the Dominican economy, all the talk of a
Haitian "menace," "invasion" or "danger" becomes exposed for what
it is: cheap chauvinist nonsense.  According to a recent article
in the British press, there is presently a rising demand for
Haitian children who are "employed" as beggars in the Dominican
Republic.  The treatment is so rough that the children are begging
… to go home.  But it's only a matter of time before some
Dominican clown comes up with a gripping story about the "peaceful
invasion" of Haitian children.
>
>Many of my progressive Haitian friends used to talk of revolution
in
>Haiti.  But  they never worked for it.  They always meet here in
New
>York, but never make a plan let alone carrying it.

The proverbial case of familiarity breeding contempt...

>Now those same Haitian brothers are
>calling for Aristide's ouster.  Do they really know how far back
they want to
>turn Haiti?

And does Gonzales pretend to know?

>Most Haitian politicians want to be president, but are too lazy
(or
>too intellectual) to work for it.

Stupidly stereotypical.

> what I know, Aristide did work for it.

Here again, Gonzales shows he doesn't know what he's talking
about.  Was Aristide not propelled to power by the more prominent
politicians and intellectuals (the FNCD group) who oppose him
today?  The question this kind of article never raises is why they
supported him then, and why they oppose him now.  It is much
easier to speak of Haitian political atavism.  The reality is
slightly more complex.  The Haitian elite have their own reason
for hating Aristide.  Some of it has to do with their hatred and
contempt for the masses who still hold him as their son, albeit a
bad one.  But some of it also has to do with Lavalas' all
encompassing greed.  ("I am not the richest one," Aristide is
quoted as confiding last year to the French magazine "Le Point.")

>My country is in great danger because Haitians are incapable to
work
>together and compromise.
>Abelardo Gonzales
>Washington Heights
>New York, NY

What is the point of writing or propagating this kind of trite,
chauvinistic propaganda, if not to lay the basis for a "failed
state" invasion/occupation of Haiti by the US and its
Dominican "ally."  Shame on you, Abelardo Gonzales!

Daniel Simidor