Dominican Republic Spurns Haitian Migrants: Rejection of African Heritage Fuels Anti-Haitian Views
Howard, David
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a single Caribbean island, Hispaniola, but Haitians living in the Dominican Republic-who number at least half a million out of a population of eight...
...African heritage, by contrast, is deemed unsuitable not only at the individual level, but also in institutional terms...
...Despite all this, however, many migrants stay on in the Dominican Republic after their contract ends and seek new work...
...These groups were the indigenous population, African slaves, and the Spanish colonists...
...The verb "to han African...
...3. P.R...
...Differences between Dominicans and Haitians have their origins in the different colonial regimes which governed each country and in differences in their subsequent economic development...
...I Republic...
...and to the declaration of an independent Haiti in 1804-the first independent republic in the western hemisphere with a majority popula- black in the Domii tion of African descent...
...0 24 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON RACE AND MIGRATION skin color than Dominicans...
...This resulted in heightened antagonism towards Haitian workers as immigrants increased the demand for subsistence plots, and allegedly deprived Dominicans of cash income from casual labor...
...Underlying these concerns, however, is a pervasive racism, which centers on a rejection of African ancestry and blackness and manipulates indigenous and European colonial legacies in support of nationalist sentiment or dominicanidad, "Dominicanness...
...Menendez Alarc6n, El universitario dominicano (Santo Domingo: Instituto Tecnol6gico de Santo Domingo, 1987), p. 52...
...Trujillo was acutely aware of his ethnic and socio-economic origins, having been born outside the traditional elite...
...5. Roger Plant, Sugar and Modern Slavery: A Tale of Two Countries (London: Zed Books, 1987...
...Dominicans than mulatto...
...In the 1990s popular media attention highlighted the Haitian influence in the economy, and subsequent pressure led the Dominican government to carry out forced repatriations: Between November 1996 and January 1997, 15,000 Haitians were deported...
...A or perhaps more accurately 1791 slave uprising led bleached, the image of the eventually to abolition of slavery in Saint Domingue Dominican nation...
...This article is based on excerpts from his book Coloring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic (Lynne Rienner Publishers in the United States...
...Racial terms are highly specific to person and place, and Dominicans describe race with a plethora of color-coded terms, ranging from coffee, chocolate, cinnamon and wheat, to the adoption of the term indio, "Indian...
...Three broad ethnic groups initially formed the basis for colonial society in Santo Domingo, the name instruction worker rebuilding a house in Boca de Yuma, on the east e Dominican Republic, after a tropical storm passed through...
...7 While the opinions of P6rez are extreme, it should be noted that he is the leader of a relatively well-known nationalist party that receives noticeable political coverage in the media...
...For Dominicans, the Other is invariably perceived as black, heathen and alien to light, Spanish dominicanidad...
...Trujillo, it is worth pointing out, actively castigated Haitian and African ancestry...
...Lemba was the leader e rebellion against the Spanish Significantly, during the 1990s, racism and nationalism became the basis for a racist agenda in internal Dominican politics...
...The boundary agreement of 1936 established the foundation for a program of dominicanizaci6n, but the most brutal example of this policy to reclaim the nation came a year later in the form of the massacre of around 18,000 Haitians and dark-skinned Dominicans resident in the border zone...
...In 1844, this elite declared inde- defending the Haitian pendence from Haiti...
...Dominican Republic Spurns Haitian Migrants 1. VA...
...The system continues to operate today, albeit informally or via t agreement and payment between the countries' military forces...
...The manner in which race and ethnicity have been constructed in relation to Haiti has colored, or perhaps more accurately bleached, the image of the Dominican nation-and fuels continuing discrimination against the Haitians who have gone to the Dominican Republic seeking to improve their economic fortunes...
...In Dominican banks, for example, color prejudice is most clearly seen at the cash desks...
...Eleven percent also said uld influence their vote...
...Spain, the former colonial power, has frequently been celebrated in elite circles as la Madre Patria, and Europe was conceived as the source of Dominican culture and civility...
...Blackness in timately loses elections...
...A bias towards a light aesthetic remains fundamental to any consideration of contemporary Dominican social relations...
...Despite emancipation of the slaves, small, extreme ri Dominican politics had remained restricted to a small, Nacionalista, published mainly white elite...
...Despite .a G6mez could not escape the at surrounded him...
...62, 1995...
...In the next century, the importance of slavery in the Spanish colony declined with the growing competition from sugar producers elsewhere, and most early Spanish colonists moved to the Latin American mainland, where silver and gold were said to be abundant...
...Continuing expulsions of Haitians were carried out by the Dominican military during the following decades, and an intense religious and educational campaign was pursued in the border areas...
...There's a lot of witchcraft...
...This difference has been a cause of two centuries of racist antagonism between the countries Many Domini In the Dominican Republic, Haitians are linked with vod&, a describe th belief system and practice which "indio" rather many Dominicans associate with evil...
...The myth of the superiority of hispanidad has been the ideological mechanism used by the light-skinned elites to maintain dominance...
...In advertisements that ask for employees of "good appearance" there is an implied bias towards whiteness or la blancura...
...Haitians, it was said, suck Dominican blood and ite, better to eat human flesh...
...According to social historian ing a contemporary Harry Hoetink, "Few Dominicans have not judged the Dominican nation...
...Two weeks before the second round of the Dominican presidential elections in June 1996, an opinion poll claimed that 9% of the electorate would not vote for the candidate of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), Dr...
...To "lighten" the population, Trujillo attempted to encourage the resettlement of refugees from Eastern Europe, Italy and Japan in the Dominican borderlands...
...given to the Spanish colony on the island of Hispaniola...
...the most brutal was a 1937 expulsion during which the army and police killed thousands of people...
...Lemba created some During the eighteenth century, this was the most of an important slav important French colony, providing half of the metro- colonists...
...Haiti is a backward country- they live by witchcraft...
...Perez, Santo Domingo frente al destino (Santo Domingo: Editora Taller, 1990), p. 11...
...i Despite the stress placed on "whiteness" and racial purity, one writer has described the Dominican Republic as the only true mulatto country in the world...
...During the latter half of the seventeenth century, Hispaniola was invaded by French settlers who slowly Vol XXXV, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2001 27REPORT ON RACE AND MIGRATION began to occupy the western part of the island...
...Trujillo feared the growing influence of Haitian culture in Dominican territory...
...The inclusion of opposition...
...In a study of university students who were asked if they would marry a darker-skinned partner, 55% replied that they would not, frequently expressing their concern for the "corruption" of physical appearance through "race mixing...
...suck," chupar, can also be used as a vulgar expression for having sex, which in this context, implies that Haitians are sexually attacking Dominican "bloodlines...
...Haitians are generally excluded from union organization, despite making up an estimated 80% of sugar workers in the Dominican Republic...
...Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a single Caribbean island, Hispaniola, but Haitians living in the Dominican Republic-who number at least half a million out of a population of eight million-have been subject to mistreatment and periodic waves of deportation...
...3 The practicalities of providing representation for a temporary or undocumented labor force, and the evident lack of government empathy, maintains the disempowered and unstable position of Haitian workers...
...Despite the malleable and subjective nature of racial difference, Haitians tend to have a darker phenotype or 24NMZIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS David Howard is a lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh...
...Three statues outside the Museo del Hombre Dominicano in Santo Domingo tell the story...
...For over a century and a half before 1936, there had been no mutually recognized border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti...
...In the mid 1930s, the dictator Rafael Le6nidas Trujillo aimed to establish Dominican claims to border territory by blocking futher Haitian occupation of the region and by fostering a stronger sense of Dominican identity...
...Negritud, or blackness, is associated in popular Dominican opinion with the Haitian population...
...Commissioned biographies stated that he was descended from a Spanish officer and a French marquise, and his parents were officially declared "pure" French and Spanish...
...Vol XXXV, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2001 25Tmjillo's program of dominicanizaci6n lost momen- tum with his demise and the relative improvement of relations with Haiti at an official level...
...6. Harry Hoetink, "The Dominican Republic in the nineteenth century: some notes on stratification, immigration and race," in Magnus Mbrner, ed., Race and Class in Latin America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 117...
...The manner in which race and The intensity of production ethnicity have been constructed meant that thousands of Africans were brought to the in relation to Haiti has colored, French colony as slave labor for the plantation system...
...6 island is intrinsicall Dominicans have renegotiated, resignified and reinvented their national history to create a sense of the past appropriate to their social and political present...
...These figures, however, are fairly meaningless...
...5 For many Dominicans, Haitian workers' continuing residence, the indeterminate nationality of the Haitians' offspring (with- A Haitian c, out Dominican or Haitian citizenship) and coast of th the sheer scale of undocumented Haitian immigration are issues which provoke strong emotions...
...By the middle of the sixteenth century, however, Santo Domingo was the main slave entrep6t for the region, and there were thousands of African slaves working in Dominican sugar mills and plantations...
...believed that he was Control of the Spanish eastern part of the island that race or color wo passed to French colonial, and later Haitian, authori- popular support, Pefi ties several times during the turbulent independence prejudiced politics th period...
...Haitian migrants are scape- The messag goated as the harbingers of moral and medical decay, their pres- clearly not w ence blamed for such problems be "Indian" as malaria in rural settlements and the spread of AIDS...
...The higher fertility and more rapid population growth rates of Haiti are important for many Dominicans' assessment of the so-called "Haitian threat...
...The uncivilized and savage origins of the Haitian nation are repeated in the sexual and racist overtones of the threat of Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic: the "passive penetration, repetitive and incessant," and the implied rape of a virginal, pure and blameless Dominican nation...
...According to a current report by the U.S...
...His grandparents were either black or mulatto, so he resorted to lightening his skin with cosmetic powders...
...ninicanizaci6n remains a popular Luis Julidn P6rez, the leader of a ght-wing party, the Uni6n ed a book at the start of the 1990s massacre in 1937 and advocaty campaign to defend the rez undermines the legitimacy of evolved from a French colony Id barbarity, suggesting that the SSanish...
...A booming plantation economy produced sugar for the extensive market in Europe...
...Indeed, there were official attempts to bring Haitians into the Dominican Republic...
...Lartortue, "Neoslavery in the cane fields," Caribbean Review, Vol...
...2. P. A. Perez Cabral, La comunidad mulata (Santo Domingo: Editora Montaivo, 1967), p. 11...
...Jos6 Francisco Pefia G6mez-who was born nican Republic-because they Haitian...
...Literacy rates, urban infrastructure and health services are generally of a higher standard in the Dominican Republic than in Haiti, which is economically one of the poorest countries in the world...
...7. L.J...
...pole's transatlantic trade...
...The message is: If one is clearly not white, better to be "Indian" than African...
...When I asked in interviews, "What does it mean to be Dominican?," many Dominicans answered, "not ans prefer to Haitian...
...It has been comparatively rare for a major bank to be staffed in the public space by dark-skinned cashiers...
...Forced repatriations continue to occur [see Apartheid Dominican-Style, p. 26], and the context of Dominican elections during the last decade has been one of anti-Haitianism, fueled by a growing concern over Haitian immigration and the demographic threat of a politically unstable neighbor...
...2 Some commentaries divide the Dominican population up into various proportions-65% mulatto, 15% white and 15% black are commonly quoted figures, the remaining 5% of the population being made up of other ethnic groups, such as Chinese or Lebanese...
...The border population consisted of many rayanos, people of mixed Haitian and Dominican ethnicity...
...Haitian sugar workers still live mostly in rural communes, called bateyes, under conditions that have been equated with slavery by international human rights organizations...
...18-20, 1985...
...P6 period of Haitian domination as a black page in the Haiti as a state that history of a people that would have liked to be founded on piracy ar white...
...A middle class Dominican woman described Haitians this way: "They work like dogs, but they have feelings, a religion and a language which we just can't share, and their governments are run by dictators...
...These attitudes are also apparent in Dominicans' strong feelings about the highly contested border with Haiti...
...Haitian culture is per- ceived to be the antithesis of mselves as Dominican society...
...The statues, erected in the early 1980s, represent the figures of Enriquillo, the indigenous leader of a colonial-era uprising, the African slave Lemba, and the Spanish Las Casas...
...Signal Books in the UK, 2001...
...The 500th anniversary in 1992 of the arrival of Columbus to the island was a government and Church-inspired celebration of hispanidad and evangelization...
...This priest Bartolom6 de new French settlement was called Saint Domingue...
...14, Nos...
...Although by the middle of the sixteenth century only a minute fraction of the original indigenous population of the island remained, many Dominicans prefer to use the term indio or india, rather than mulatto to describe themselves or others who can't easic e e h t ily be classified as white...
...The Haitian occupation, which lasted from Dominican politics ul 1822 to 1844, has continued to be the key historical The concept of don referent for anti-Haitian sentiment in the Dominican nationalist platform...
...4. C. Dore Cabral, "Los descendientes de haitianos no son picadores de caha," Rumbo, No...
...living in rural areas made much of supposed Haitian vampireis: If one is like qualities...
...Dominicanidad, on the other hand, has often represented a celebration of whiteness, Hispanic heritage and Catholicism...
...Bluntly, for many Dominicans, raza dominicana defines an alleged difference between the civilized and the savage-a sentiment that is regularly expressed in everyday language, in the newspapers and in contemporary literature...
...The first group has left few obvious traces today because of its rapid extinction...
...A recent survey of Haitian labor suggested that while under 20% worked in the sugar industry, 8.3% were employed in the construction industry, 8.3% in commerce and 7.2% in domestic service...
...Department of State, between 12,500 and 36,400 workers, all allegedly Haitian, were deported during 2000...
...a quota system in which the Dominican government paid the Haitian authorities for each Haitian laborer existed up until 1986...
...4 One researcher claims that the agrarian reforms in 1972 also encouraged a preference for undocumented Haitian labor, since opportunities emerged for some Dominican rural workers to farm their own small plots on the disaggregated large landholdings...
Vol. 35 • September 2001 • No. 2
