Update/Dominican Republic: The Deportees

...Tonight the total number is 46, 40 men and six women...

...She was visiting one of his sisters in New York City when she passed away after suffering for years as a chronic diabetic, a disease he also inherited...

...But for the most part it's the small fry who are picked up and railroaded through the courts, many "copping a plea" for fear of losing their case in front of a jury and thereby ensuring that instead of 10 to 12 years they might be doing 15 to 20...

...for not having your cedula [identification stamp] and if they know you're a deportee they'll always try it on you...

...What else are you supposed to do...

...I'd like to get a better job but you need a nota de buena conducta (good conduct letter...

...I tell you, this is a fucked situation...

...I haven't seen them for years...

...Javier relates to me his circumstances and how he felt when he first arrived in March 2001, after spending seven years in the character-building institutions 8NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 8 NACI2A REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Deportees like Javier struggle to make ends meet in a country they barely know...

...What did I do...

...Deportations of this kind began in the early 1990s as the U.S...

...Mostly you make very little, just enough to buy one meal a day and maybe a beer...

...The door to a small second-floor apartment suddenly opens and a tall, gaunt man appears, probably in his early forties...

...I spent nine years in a maximum security prison in Trenton, New Jersey...

...They knowingly broke the law of a country where they were guests, and now they have been dealt with according to our system of justice...

...Manolo's comment succinctly describes the vicious circle many deportees are frequently caught in...

...Back to the daily grind of electricity blackouts, erratic water supply, unemployment, no government retraining programs and a host of public services taken over by U.S...

...Do you...

...I do little jobs for tourist guides...

...Without hope, help or opportunity, old habits and life styles resurface, often endangering themselves and others...

...My rent is 14 hundred pesos, I pay my phone bill and I have enough to eat...

...I think a lot of people die from diabetes because they can't afford the medicine...

...I still doe don't believe it...

...My mom always said something bad would happen to me if I kept messing up...

...Cruz told them: "You are human beings and you deserve the protection and privileges of all human beings...

...The five deportees then talked about their vision of founding a national organization of deportees and establishing a casa de repatriados (house of the repatriated) where people could come and find social and moral support...

...As planeloads of deportees continue to arrive at the airport, they will be met by a growing number of men and women in Santo Domingo who refuse to live their lives suffering in silence...

...Republic...

...No one seems to talk about it, but it's true...

...Once more in the poverty stricken barrios of Santo Domingo-often where they grew up...

...Your skin color changes and you basically lose control of your life...

...George, a local English teacher at a private language school, recounts the circumstances of his own deportation: "I got caught with two ounces of cocaine and I got 20 years...

...George was unable to visit her or even attend the funeral because of his deportee status...

...Jos6 is a deportee and street hustler who has promised to introduce me to a para soft, almost monotone voice about their struggle to survive in a country where they barely eke out an existence...

...Sometimes I still don't believe what I went through...

...Don't talk to me about U.S...

...They both spoke in there's the police...

...It's so hard to think positive when 10 NMLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10 NCIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASUPDATE/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC you're here...

...I saw the Americans invade this place...

...You know what those Vol XXXVII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCtOBER 2003 9 Vol XXXVII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003 9UPDATE/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC places are like...

...I have my green card, I have my tax statements, I have my social security stubs, I have everything...

...The Americas' first cathedral peers imperiously over our proceedings...

...The only ones I can say I know out of them now are my oldest daughter and one of my sons...

...Jos6 motions me to come upstairs and join them...

...Many lack any legal knowledge or fluency in English and are the victims of institutional poverty and racism...

...I used to keep in touch with all of them and I had three of them living with me when I was put away...

...Principles of equal treatment before the law or the notion of innocent until proven guilty are largely mythical concepts when we consider the handicaps facing so many ghetto- and barrio-dwellers waiting to be arraigned...

...We are sitting on a bench in Parque Col6n in the colonial zone of Santo Domingo...

...Luis (left) completed law school after being deported and now works on behalf of other deportees...

...We have no interest in the matter...

...I had six children from three different marriages...

...munity...

...Of course the government wants to blame you for everything, what else can you expect from a bunch of liars and crooks...

...My insulin is the most difficult thing to buy...

...I have six children all living in New York City...

...Their ages vary...

...immigration policy any time soon...

...These guys have a lot to tell you...

...I try to call them when I can get enough money for a long distance call but you know how things are here...

...Who are these hapless Dominican wanderers descending on Santo Domingo...

...You end up scratching and breaking out in a rash...

...I've lost almost half my fucking life to the joint...

...In effect, the present act guarantees that almost any non-citizen resident receiving a sentence of 12 months or more is automatically subject to deportation...

...Javier's encapsulated history is not unlike that of others I spoke with like George, Juan, Jos6, Luis or Manolo, or many other of the 20,000 formerly legal residents of the United States who have been deported back to their homeland during the last ten years...

...Now we have to focus on the future...

...Meanwhile, the Dominican government does absolutely nothing to make life tolerable for this involuntary population whose many skills and talents go wasted in a land where underemployment is running at 50% and poverty, both absolute and relative, afflicts at least a third of the populace...

...war on drugs reached another level of draconian inventiveness...

...If you're a deportee it's stamped all over it, so as soon as the employer sees that, it's all over...

...But they're different to those of us raised in New York and elsewhere...

...Over here, people look at you funny if you don't behave like them...

...But all that's behind us...

...They probably did have a lot to tell me, but unfortunately, in their present state it wasn't forthcoming...

...One thing is certain: There will be no positive changes in U.S...

...This was occasioned not by any outside agency but largely by the deportees themselves and their friends in the com0 0 Luis and Leon are both deportees...

...Luis, a cofounder of the group and a practicing barrio lawyer, stated: "We've got to let the people know that we're not animals or criminals...

...The women look to be mostly in their thirties and there are many men in their forties and perhaps even fifties...

...Most of them will never entertain the possibility of returning to their loved ones who continue living in the United States...

...or Spanish corporations, ensuring that monthly telephone bills are on a par with those of Manhattan and electricity prices are, according to the U.S...

...They can't help it...

...Congress passed the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act which states: "An alien convicted of an aggravated felony shall be conclusively presumed to be deportable from the United States...

...Insulin used to be cheaper, but then the government cut out all the price supports for medicine...

...Within a few weeks, talk had translated into action with a site for a house established and an informational brochure inviting all deportees to become members of a dynamic new support group...

...But this...

...You can't see your family, you miss your friends, you can't make a decent living...

...It costs me 200 pesos for each bottle and I need at least one a week...

...George inherited his living space from his mother who died earlier this year at the age of 71...

...Tears well up in his eyes as he tells the story and motions to his girlfriend...

...You have to reclaim yourselves from those negative labels put on you by the media, by different criminal justice systems and by governments...

...Nearly all of them have relapsed after spending time back here...

...Were it not for their remittances from relatives living in the United States, they would probably be rummaging through garbage cans for food and mugging unwitting victims...

...I saw a lot of things back then and now I'm long as I have ten students in the class...

...I hardly ever go out any more...

...m sitting on a beer crate outside a grocery store in another rundown quarter of the capital waiting for Jos6 to beckon me...

...of Attica and Sing-Sing among other New York State penitentiaries: "I have all my papers with me...

...I'm an intelligent man...

...Basically, I teach my English classes and I spend my time with my honey, thank god I have her...

...So you always gotta be giving them some cash to get them off your back or else they'll throw you in the hole without missing a beat...

...All of those guys up there have lost their jobs, their cars, their apartments, everything...

...You go from day to day...

...While the number of deportees from the United States increases dramatically throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, this embryonic movement of the expelled in Santo Domingo perhaps offers a glimmer of hope and a model for others to follow...

...Well, they are all here...

...I speak three languages fluently...

...Manolo explained the predicament of the addicts in this way: "They all do that shit up there, all of them...

...They are this week's batch of deportees from the United States, coming to spend the rest of their lives in the Dominican David Brotherton is associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at The Graduate Center, City University of New York...

...We're Dominicans just like them, and we deserve to be given a chance...

...I'm one myself...

...It's mean stuff...

...Similarly, the United States-despite its imposing presence here with its massive embassy, its trade mission and its aid headquarters-takes a handsoff approach best summarized by a political attach at the U.S...

...I'm used to having my own money, to having work, to having food on the table...

...Literally hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class men and women have been dragged away from their families to spend the next five, 10, 15 and even 20 years behind bars for an ounce or two of cocaine, a couple grams of crack or a few bags of marijuana...

...What am I doing here...

...It'll knock you out for the best part of a day and cost you about six dollars...

...Twenty years...

...Juan, the owner of the apartment "shooting gallery," tells of the difficulties he experiences in resettling: "I've got nothing against Dominicans, don't get me wrong...

...Unfortunately for them, either when they were in prison or just before they were sent away, the U.S...

...The two that I did manage to engage over a tape recorder were very high and couldn't stop scratching themselves...

...Others were guilty of nothing, but they got busted anyway...

...So now you have to organize yourselves and regain your dignity...

...He lives in a roomy though spartan apartment on El Conde, Santo Domingo's once famous shopping street that has now been eclipsed by malls that have mushroomed throughout the suburbs...

...Ambassador, the highest in the world...

...George tells me his story as he rocks back and forth in a cane rocking chair...

...justice 'cos it back again...

...I make 5,000 pesos a month [about US$200], as !sn't exist for the likes of t ticular sector of deportees in the city: the heroin addicts...

...All my family's over there, all of them: my mom, my dad, my brothers, my sisters, my children...

...And so here they are...

...I bet you know the barrio where I grew up better than I do...

...Looking tired and somewhat bewildered, they descend the steps of the large, gray Hyundai bus...

...I was gonna take an overdose of something...

...I tell you, when I first arrived I wanted to kill myself...

...As I enter the front door, I see a number of men in their twenties and thirties standing around in little groups...

...It is out of these luckless multitudes that the Dominican deportees are derived and transplanted to a country from which they often feel socially and culturally estranged...

...One of the key aspects of this legislation was the dramatically increased list of offenses that now constituted an "aggravated felony...

...They are beginning to organize to make their lives more bearable...

...He recently co-organized the first conference on deportees from the United States in Santo Domingo and is planning a national life course study of this popu- lation in the Dominican Republic...

...The air is thick with cigarette smoke and the men are courteous though a bit wary when Chino, a strapping, tall deportee who I interviewed several weeks before, comes forward...

...For that I got seven years and deported to a country I hadn't been to in 20 years...

...Embassy: "Dominican deportees are not the problem of the United States...

...justice 'cos it doesn't exist for the likes of us...

...They'll hit you up IS...

...When they first came back they were trying their best to get by, but gradually they just sink down, lower and lower...

...It gets a hold of you and then you can't kick it...

...Of course, there have been a number of relatively big-time dealers among them...

...And then "Don't talk to me about U.S...

...I don't think like them anymore...

...Some of us screwed up, and we paid our debts to society...

...Some are young men, almost boys, in their early twenties...

...Most of them will never entertain the possibility of returning to their wives, children, mothers, loved ones who, in turn, continue their lives in the different Dominican enclaves of New York, Boston and Miami...

...The situation of the deportees is not entirely hopeless...

...They arrive from the airport every Wednesday on a government provided bus to the same central downtown destination...

...I sold prescription drugs, I think it was morphine, to an undercover...

...I went to the United States because of the political situation back here when I was 14-years-old...

...As a number of commentators and social scientists have pointed out, the impact of the drug war on communities of color has been especially disastrous...

...To be frank, I haven't had the opportunity to meet any of them and nearly every deportee I've spoken to or interviewed has been living at a subsistence level sometimes with the help of U.S.based family members who do what they can to contribute...

...It's fucking unbelievable isn't it...

...I don't know why I didn't...

...Some days you can make 500 pesos (20 dollars), other days you make nothing...

...Not for us who don't have tons of cash to spread around to pay all the fancy lawyers that are gonna get you off and the investigators that are gonna dig up contrary evidence...

...Hi there, Davey, come to do a few interviews...

...But there are those deportees who are said to have "made it," and are now leading fruitful lives as businessmen, police administrators and even as politicians...

...At the back of a church in Cristo Rey, one of the poorest barrios in Santo Domingo, five deportees met with one of the country's most famous radical priests, Padre Rogelio Cruz...