[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
30311: Pierre (Comment) (fwd)
From: Kawonabo1500@aol.com
Elizabeth – please allow me to call you Lizie- this is my thinking on your
presentation:
Dominican society must undergo a deep spiritual soul-searching to uproot the
deep-seated racism fueled by the racist and ultra-nationalist fascist ruling
classes, the hierarchy of the Dominican Catholic Church, the right-wing
media, government authorities and army high command against Haitian Immigrant
Workers. Their anti-Haitian propaganda has poisoned the rest of Dominican
society to the point where the possibility of the recurrence of the massacre
of
1937 by Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo resulting in the murder of 30,000
Haitian Workers is real. The level of hatred they further generate against
Haitian Workers in the Dominican Republic is not justified. In perpetrating
this
level of hatred and racism against people of Haitian Descent, the Dominican
authorities violate their own constitution which recognizes children born on
Dominican soil as Dominicans. The cause of these violations is clear. The
Dominican economy is in desperate need of cheap labor. The source of such cheap
labor must be people in great desperation. The way to keep people in such
degrading desperation is to rob them of every inch of rights. The way to
deprive
them of rights is to create conditions to keep those people permanently in an
“illegal status”, therefore generating an under-class that is equivalent to
slavery. Such is the plight of 800,000 Haitian Immigrant Workers in the
Dominican Republic. To keep Haitian Immigrant Workers and Dominicans of
Haitian
descent in such adverse conditions, the Dominican authorities make all sorts
of ridiculous claims and invocations, namely, “National Identity”,
“Border
control”, “Sovereignty”, “Haitian invasion”, etc. Furthermore, to
consider
all these people who have no intention of going back to Haiti or who do not
even know Haiti as “migrants in transit” is ridiculous. The whole story
boils
down to abject exploitation of cheap labor. The deportations have absolutely
nothing to do with so-called concerns over illegal immigration but rather
have a lot to do with renewing and replenishing the pool of cheap labor in the
Dominican Republic. Case in point, everyday, thousands of people are
recruited from Haiti in a human trafficking chain to go to the Dominican
Republic
to work. Both the Dominican and Haitian governments and ruling classes are
complicit in creating this under-class in the Dominican Republic. This helps
bring down wages in the Dominican Republic generally. However, they rather
blame the Haitian Immigrant Workers who are the victims of this human
trafficking. It should be clear that this is not going to change completely
without a
radical transformation in the structure of society on both sides of the
island. However, national and international progressive forces must bring
enough
pressure on the racists and fascists in the Dominican ruling classes to make
things better for the Haitian Immigrant Workers and Dominicans of Haitian
Descent in the Dominican Republic. In 2007, “il faut que ça change!”
(That
situation must change)
Mr. M. Pierre
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.