By Charles A. Lowman – CNS Contributor
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, Jun 17 2015 – “Tensions are noticeably ratcheting up here in the Dominican Republic. As an African-American of darker hue, I used to be mistaken for being Haitian quite often. Of course when I start speaking, people quickly realise that I’m an American, and they change their posture towards me. Unfortunately after more than two years of living here, I can count on one hand, the number of friends or associates that I have that are either Haitian or Dominican of Haitian descent. I’ve found them to be very distant and unfriendly to African-Americans. This is similar to the way many Africans behave towards us as well. Their posture towards Europeans or Caucasian Americans is much more engaging and friendly. However, I have managed to develop warm relationships with Haitian street vendors and shoeshine boys.
As an avowed socialist and a spiritual man who tries to live a life in accord with natural laws, I can’t allow my personal experiences to cloud what is clearly a grave miscarriage of justice that is being carried out against Dominicans of Haitian descent. I make the distinction because I believe that the country has the right to expel those who arrived in the wake of the earthquake as well as their children born within the country in the interim. It is those who have never known any place but the Dominican Republic…those who are descendants of migrant workers who were ‘imported’ and in some cases ‘sold’ into perpetual servitude by the despotic Haitian dictator Duvalier and his equally despotic counterpart, Dominican dictator Trujillo who ‘brokered’ these initiatives on behalf of his buddies in the sugar plantation industry who ultimately got wealthy off the backs of Haitian sugar cane cutters… it is these children of the bateyes, who are the genuine victims of this unjust Supreme Court ruling that ignores the constitution and essentially makes it lawful to retroactively deny citizenship to an estimated 200,000 people born and raised in the Dominican Republic. These are people who have never even set foot on Haitian soil.
I’m very careful not to get so caught up in the emotional fervor surrounding the racial component of this issue, such that it enables the larger component, the real culprits behind this pending human disaster to remain unexposed and therefore unopposed. In a nation that has a population in which 90 percent of its citizenry would be categorised as ‘Black’ in the US, it’s silly, and in fact disingenuous, for me to be overly-simplistic and couch this issue in purely racial terms. Haitians in the Dominican Republic are in many ways very similar to those who form the migrant worker communities in virtually every nation in the world. When the economic and political climate is ‘good’ the influx of migrants who enter these nations legally or otherwise, is welcomed or tolerated. However when things start to go bad for the status quo, attitudes toward these people suddenly change as they become the scapegoats for everything that is wrong with a broken socio-economic and political system. What happens in the wake of this malaise is perhaps the ugliest as nationalist and fascist elements stoke the flames of smoldering embers of resentment to call for the expulsion or marginalising of a people that have already historically existed on the periphery of the society.
The state of descendants of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic is unique with some very potentially perilous consequences. These are descendants of Haitians who actually waged war against the parents of the very Dominican people who are today seeking to deport them. What is also different in the Dominican Republic is that you have a country that, while not as poor as Haiti, is dangerously dependent upon foreign dollars in the form of tourism and remittances from Dominicans and patrons living abroad. Most of the people do not benefit from tourism. Those dollars trickle down to only a very small number of people who live near the tourist areas. Even that number is dwindling now with the ever-increasing preponderance of exclusive ‘all-inclusive’ guided tour packaging that shuttle tourists away from the genuine Dominican community….a practice that has had drastic effects on small local craft shops, restaurants, nightclubs and locally-owned hotels. In the Dominican Republic everybody except the Dominican makes money on tourism. Last year, remittances surpassed manufacturing as the second largest source of income in the country. Tourism led by a slim margin, but it was money being sent via Western Union, Moneygram, or direct deposits that is the next highest source of income. These economical markers illustrate how very fragile the country is. A nation in this precarious economic condition can ill afford to have a significant number of its population undocumented and not paying taxes.
Wrought with political corruption, crumbling infrastructure (excepting the swank all-inclusive hotel resorts and casinos), social unrest, massive unemployment, and the lowest-ranked public education system in all of Latin America and the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic is ripe for a people’s revolution. The last time it happened, the US Marines were dispatched to unseat the country’s first democratically-elected president, the revolutionary Juan Bosch. They installed a puppet, and put down a popular people’s revolt in the typical bloody brutal fashion whenever the US decides to undermine democracy and murder those who seek it. Ironically the numerous invasions by US forces are lost on the psyche of the Dominican, yet the military battles fought between Haiti and what ultimately became the Dominican Republic after independence from Haiti, are on the forehead of most Dominicans. While downplaying the atrocities committed against innocent Haitian migrant workers by the dictator Rafael Trujillo and his henchman Joaquín Balaguer , opportunistic neo-fascist nationalist pundits for their respective political parties are eager to remind the people of atrocities against innocent women, children and elderly that were committed by the occupying Haitian forces. The habit of white-washing history by omitting certain unsavory facts that is typical of most pro-Haitian advocates only bolsters these neo-fascists and enhances their credibility. The ‘over kill’ espoused by Haitian leadership in the campaign against Dominicans was such that some Haitian military leaders publicly renounced the brutality and joined the Dominican ranks.
Where do we go from here? I believe that the discussion needs to be shifted away from divisive topics and instead focused on the greater underlying issues. We must pull back the curtain and expose the grand wizards behind the scenes and hold them accountable for what we see being played out today.
Do Dominicans have a self-loathing issue with regards to their African heritage such that it borders on psychosis? Yes! However the same is true of multi-ethnic people on virtually every continent that were once colonised by Europeans. It is an ugly residual effect of white supremacy that still haunts far too many folk today as they use all sorts of measures to minimise their indigenous and African traits. We find no better example of this than the African-American community of the US. Here is a people who had Marcus, Martin, and Malcolm in their midst yet today are still marginalized and steeped in ignorance of how to leverage their power, still drowning in self-loathsome self-deprecating behavior despite having the spending power greater than more than 75 percent of the nations of the world.
Therefore, let us rise above this arrogance of passing judgment on a people who have been both under-educated and mis-educated about themselves and about their enemies. Instead, let us be honest and courageous enough to pull back the curtain and expose the role that France, the US, and UK has played (and continues to play) in undermining and destabilizing Haiti and the Dominican Republic. While we demand accountability from our leaders and the corrupt NGOs (i.e. Red Cross, Global Clinton Initiative) we need to be proactively engaging the people on a truly grass roots level with educational and empowerment programs.
As I travel around this beautiful country and engage people, I see so much opportunity for progress and impacting communities in a positive and sustainable way. While the people need a cultural reawakening, they also need to improve their standard of living. Wherever there is massive corruption, centralization is like pouring resources down the drain. We need to change the approach by shifting the focus away from centralisation and to localisation by helping to develop sustainable micro-communities. This can only be accomplished by direct engagement with a decolonizing approach to education and a sustainable approach to microeconomics.
Tactics aimed at pressuring the Dominican Republic court to reverse its ruling should not be so short-sighted. The knee jerk reaction typically calls for a boycott of a tourism sector that hardly benefited the people to begin with. Why not take some of those tour package dollars and donate to a grassroots project or come anyway, but plan to spend a few days away from the resort and assist those who are involved in these projects. I’m personally involved in developing two educational television initiatives (English-language & STEM) for the general public and for schools. The first initiative is scheduled to launch in August. We could certainly use help.
