Haitians in the DR

ON THE QUESTION OF THE HORRORS WHICH THE HAITIAN WORKERS ARE ENDURING IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

"If Dessalines were here, Fernandez would not be here!
If Dessalines were here, MINUSTAH would not be here!"

Slogans of the demonstrators in front of the National Palace
during the visit of the Dominican Head of State on December 12, 2005

Throughout this past year of 2005, the Haitian workers and small Haitian merchants in the Dominican Republic were enduring the worst horrors. Thousands and thousands of deportees, under completely illegal and inhuman conditions in which the putrid smell of racism invariably transpires, black-skinned Dominicans being sometimes rounded up as part of the same lump! Hundreds and hundreds assassinated, burnt alive, pursued and summarily expelled, in Santo Domingo, in Santiago, in Mao, Barahona, in Higuey... Their houses set on fire, their personal belongings stolen... even the Haitian students in this neighbor country were molested. All this occurred under the watch of the police and the local authorities, and other central authority figures with full knowledge of what was going on but who chose to deny the facts saying, at best, these are “isolated incidents”. The level of the conflict was mounted one notch, however, when the Dominican president himself complicated the situation by blurting out, referring to the Haitian Immigrant Workers, "è pa fuera que van! (`Haitians: Get Out!') ". The high clergy of the Catholic Church also played its partition, endorsing the criminal acts, and even proceeded to organize the expulsion of a priest loyal to the Haitian cause, Father Ruquoy.
Capping it all, the dominant media were devoted to systematic ideological offensives orchestrated by the extreme right. Indeed, on the airwaves of various radio stations, songs reminiscent of the 1937 massacres were retransmitted in cycles. And in the most renowned newspapers, (El Nacional, Listin Diario, Hoy, Caribe...) articles and editorials abound(!) where faked nationalism, blatant racism and the most flagrant archaism competed only with the most profound debility of their arguments.
The Dominican ruling classes are cornered. They demand laws regulating emigration. They ponder the "enormous problem" constituted by the Haitian presence. They wish to re-think their Constitution in order to address the question of jus soli. They are even speaking of a “human conglomerate' – so they say! – A euphemism referring to the ‘Republic of Haïti'. They even quote from surveys reflecting a so-called “‘dominican’ preoccupation”, "and the Dominican "foreign policy" which should be more radical in the face of what they call - today – an "invasion"... The intent of all of this is, of course, to defend themselves from the denunciations of the Human Rights Organizations to the related higher international institutions, or from articles in American newspapers (the crimes would have made them neither hot nor cold) which only describe the simple reality, and, thus, to seek "to protect their image for the tourists" - There we are! - This is their unique and concrete preoccupation.
The Dominican dominant classes are cornered also because Haitian labour, despite everything, is still important, necessary, and obligatory. Haitian labor is used in the zafra and in staples such as tobacco, rice, and also in construction as well as used goods, based on the cheap labor of the so-called "illegal" Haitian Immigrant Workers, but also affecting the lowering of the wages of the Dominican workers. All of this is mandatory for the historic low-cost accumulation of wealth of the Dominican ruling classes. And it is this contradiction which undermines them in fact.
Rarely were different positions taken. However, those positions taken supported and thanked Father Ruquoy for his engagement and, in a lucid way, straightforwardly placed the question in a social context, criticizing the overall policy of the Dominican governments towards all the workers (Haitian as well as Dominican) and pointed out that the Dominican workers should very much wonder why they never had, themselves either, adequate services from these authorities, instead of protesting the fact that a few Haitians would seldom benefit from minimum healthcare or housing by luck. These progressive positions also denounced the fact that the Dominican left has kept at the very least a perturbing silence on the subject. Dominican Immigrants in New York, however, mobilized themselves to protest vigorously in front of their own consulate in the United States, knowing very well the problems of immigrant workers. They were immediately supported by Haitian progressive groups, as immigrants also. Protests of groups of support and solidarity (Haitian - GARR, PAPDA, ICKL, Batay Ouvriye... -; Dominican – Jesuit Service with the Refugees and the Migrants, Movimiento de las Mujeres Dominico Haitianas, Foro por la Preservación de la Paz y la Amistad Dominico Haitianas... -; or of common coordination - Center Bridge -) spread word of the slaughters by denouncing them nationally and internationally.
The Venezuelan President, Mr. Hugo Chavez, overseer of his country’s oil and its much coveted preferential prices, in a recent visit to the Dominican Republic, had openly taken up the cause of the Haitian Immigrant Workers. The first Dominican Citizen, Mr. Leonel Fernandez, also strongly pressured by the concerns of the extreme-right electorate which supports his rule, accepted an invitation in Haiti for a display of a good-boy reconciliation and, thus, sought to calm down international opinion, in particular that of the Western tourists on the one hand, and Venezuelan leaders on the other hand, for the good of the Dominican dominant classes. Fernandez’ demagogic speech was met by a demonstration which precipitated his exit through tight ropes. This demonstration, notwithstanding, was marked with great confusion, relating the causes of the carnage in progress to the current absence of a "Haitian army" or only to the supposed "xenophobia" of the "Dominican people". Some demonstrators went so far as promoting a spirit of revenge against Dominican workers in Haiti. It is thus necessary to better understand. First know the facts for better understanding, for the construction of a serious, profound, adequate, and definite response of the people and the real progressives of both countries. That response should serve as precedence to further actions, therefore attaining the force of a resolution.
The primary thing of importance to focus on (which pops up to the eyes but that the ideological mud of these times of the Falcons dilutes), the first most important point to notice (which, once uncovered, makes obvious the whole structure), is that these dantesques horrors befell only the cane-cutters, the poor peddlers, the small farmers, the craftsmen, the unemployed, the homeless, the workers...: the people, the toiling masses! And if some students happened to be molested, it is necessary to acknowledge that the fate of all the workers is sure to meet that reality and worst. Better yet: none of the capitalists investing or vacationing on the neighboring land, none of the macoutes who have taken refuge over there with their Dominican look-alikes', none of the technocratic petty bourgeois, is worried in the Dominican Republic; for them, to be molested is definitely out of the question. Therefore, the whole thing boils down, above all, to an economic basis, a class basis.
Everyone knows that Haitian emigration dates from the movement at the end of the XIXe century-beginning XXe of the sugar-cane workers. To Cuba, and the Dominican Republic... Everyone knows the horror of the "bateys" where direct slavery would not have anything to envy from the animal practices of these owners of "Ingenios azucareros"! Who doesn't remember the Massacre of 1937 when between 10,000 to 30,000 thousand (according to the sources) poor immigrant workers were pursued, humiliated, tracked and assassinated with the bayonet by the Dominican army itself and the militia set up for this purpose, according to the orders of the central command? Everyone is however not aware that in 1962 the Dominican army, then under the orders of Mr. Balaguer as president, set afire with napalm (!!) a whole community of Haitian and Dominican nationals who demanded that the land go to those who worked it. With napalm! With the assistance of the American army, the Dominican forces sought to exterminate this "movement of workers" mixed of a syncretic culture, the ‘Liborismo’. That occurred at Palma Sola, in the province of San Juan, in prolongation of the Central Plateau. Thousands of rebellious, Haitian and Dominican workers, were burnt alive, at the aviation.
Racism within the Dominican people has blossomed. Within some: it is the Fruit of profound and long-lasting propaganda orchestrated by the dominant classes for whom the national heroes must be enthroned in the center of the Place of Independence, in immaculate white! Fruit of a tumultuous and pathetic schizophrenia, where the refusal to see one’s real self is only increased, then ad infinitum, by the black-skinned presence of the Haitian workers. This racism/anti-Haitianism/mirror, organized and propelled by these same dominant classes ended up germinating. But it is only momentary. Isn't it this brotherly people that voted very massively for Peña Gomez? And were it not for the maneuvers (acknowledged, because, if not, why would he have agreed to leave two years before his term?) of Mr. Balaguer, this Black, of Haitian descent and known as such, would have been carried to the Supreme State Power by the Dominican people itself!
*
The causes of the problem must be found elsewhere. For that matter, one must remember – or know- that in the precise case of the Dominican Republic, the transfer of the Haitian workers ended up being regulated in the form of contract between governments! Indeed, already under the presidency of Mr. Estimé, the outlines of that contract took shape but it is truly with Mr. Magloire that this process was established definitely. It would later be systematically applied by the Duvaliers, father and son. It has thus been a well established traffic! Today, such contracts are not in force anymore. But the networks continue to exist. As a living proof of this, the recent deportees to Ouanaminthe were re-channeled within the hour by certain "notables" of this city, through the well-known ties on the other side of the border, within the Dominican army itself, pocketing exorbitant fees.
This traffic (let us say almost `Slaves', for those who know the living conditions in the bateyes) which, of the Haitian governmental organization goes to the Dominican capitalists of the cane, takes its root in the decomposition of the Haitian social formation: in the rural world. In thousand of ways robbed, tracked and dispossessed of their means of production, in particular the land, the Haitian small farmers have no other alternative but to sell their labour. And when they are not used as farm labourers, they go naturally in more developed centers of capitalist production where they could be remunerated. Our cities, considering the chronic weakness of the local bourgeoisie, do not offer adequate structures. Therefore, these proletarians travel abroad: to Cuba, initially, to the Dominican Republic, then, today, to the Bahamas, to Guyana, to Miami...
Thus rejected in their place of origin by the dominant policies in place, either ill-received or not at all welcomed in the cities, the bourgeois society project turned them into commodities, not even `Free' since negotiated by the State. One then understands why, despite the inhuman conditions of the bateyes, perpetual massacres and torments, the horrors on the person, the various governments in place never really protested, and even less mobilized to demand anything.
Once in these centers of exploitation, the worker, in addition to maximum effectiveness, (which clearly means a quasi (casi) physical extinction), must obey another implacable logic: he must become illegal as soon as possible (if he was not already). Various mechanisms are set up, which require the worker to remain longer than the term of the contract (debt, loss of transfer papers...). Illegal, then, this makes the labor cheaper still. Illegal, and yet, the worker must remain there. Insurmountable are the difficulties faced by those who already met the required dispositions, and who tried to formalize their status. Even the babies born in the Dominican Republic and who according to the Constitution itself, must be entitled with citizenship rights, have not been able to get it. It is that the situation of illegality is most profitable to keep wages low and labor cheap, best - and by far - for the capitalist! This has been the primary logic for the treatment of the Haitian worker in the Dominican Republic. It is a logic that has allowed massive accumulation of capital for the Dominican dominant classes in the second half of the XXe century.
This "treatment" encompasses massacres to punctual repression, from punctual repression multiplied ad infinitum to permanent repression (it is with a multitude of guards armed with rifles that the ` surveillance' takes place in the bateys, it is the owners of the construction companies themselves that call immigration when they refuse to pay the workers. Cultural aspects, where even the poorest of Dominicans try to act out Haitian behavior, while making fun of their clothes, their color, their odor... are operational day and night.
The wages constantly reduced to its simpler expression affect, however, that of the Dominican workers also, hauling from the bottom relations with the employers and preventing the workers to demand better wages. This compressive logic manages to limit to some extent even the poor petty bourgeoisie and even certain better-off capes of technicians. It is all the Dominican economic dominant structure which rests on this primary relation with the "illegal-barbarians", and who, starting from this point, extends on all the dominated classes. The Dominican worker in general does not realize this yet.
But there is more. The mean wage of the Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic could not vary either, insofar as the least variation would also affect that in Haiti. It would constitute an example of total success too easily acquired if they were able to be legalized easily and getting better wages (thus also to level off, and naturally then, to join the Dominican worker so that, together, they can start to develop themselves even more...), example thus of too easy attainment of success, that would drain in an unrestrained way the country’s labor force. Or, still, would require here higher wages too. A totally new cycle in which both bourgeoisies would suffer!
It’s better for them, on the contrary, to consolidate one another and to activate themselves resolutely to defend the engaged partner, as was the case at the Free Trade Zone in Ouanaminthe when, in spite of the obvious exactions of the Dominican investors who, let’s recall, had their army penetrate our national soil to abuse the workers who asserted only their rights, going even to the point of dragging an 8-month pregnant woman in mud... (!), the Haitian bourgeoisie supported without reserve their associates, their class! Here, this is not a question of "country": the capitalist globalization makes this backward nation a modern post! Later, when a court in Fort-LIberte, evidence at hand, ruled in favor of the workers who brought forward formal complaints, the central government itself of Boniface-Latortue intervened, asserting, shamelessly, that this verdict should be blocked because "it can force the investors to shy away"! (add to this "international" and understood, for more precision: "foreign").
" If Dessalines were here..., Latortue would not be here!” - it would have been necessary to add in the demonstration of Monday December 12. And to explain to the protesters that the "Haitian army" indeed was `there' during all the previous periods but always in the role - its role - of guardian of the dominant order which was to repress the workers exploited by the dominant classes. It was very well members of that army, moreover, that executed the very first repression against the mobilized workers at Ouanaminthe through the so-called ‘rebel detachment’ camped out in that city at the time.
The logic is laid out, the plot exposed: it is fundamentally about the exploitation that benefits the dominant classes of the two countries, the bourgeoisies in particular, and where the two States play, together and in a coordinated way, a role of ferocious repression or complicity without shame that needs not be proven.
But why today? Why today, again, all these deportations and these horrible exactions against the Haitian workers?
Formerly, the first destination of the Haitian workers in Dominican Republic was the fields of cane, the bateyes. Then, there was a period when these same workers were also directed towards the culture of the tobacco, then rice, tomatoes, peas... Always in agriculture thus. There they also found a local peasantry in proletarianization and in transit towards the cities. There was thus "space" and the contradictions between workers were not really acute even if they existed to a certain extent. The repression against the "illegal Haitians" was done then almost exclusively by the dominant apparatuses directly (armed, militia).
From the Sixties, the projects of infrastructure and urbanization of Mr. Balaguer concerning the big cities, the "illegal" workers, cheap labor, so to speak, quickly constituted a godsend also for this capitalist sector. Gradually, the Haitian migration had suddenly occupied these places and in the Eighties/Nineties, the most conservative figures account for 80 % the presence of the Haitian labor in the building sites in construction! This migration naturally included the small trades of all kinds, the economy known as "informal" developed tremendously. The small ambulatory peddlers followed now in every street corner in Santiago, in Santo Domingo...Simultaneously, with the decomposition of the Haitian social formation inexorably worsening, one could see a real flow of Haitian immigrants whose number today and, as we said, whose function, had changed radically. This decomposition also affects in Haiti certain layers of the petty bourgeoisie- and the services of education also dying out – It was then the universities, the centers of craft industry, the small markets, in particular the trade "pèpè" which followed suit to the neighboring land. All these activities are occurring in the cities. The Haitian migration had thus suddenly found itself in direct contradiction with the Dominican workers who then became increasingly hostile. It was a similar situation in the Bahamas at the beginning for the Eighties and Bahamian workers were able to organize themselves in bands to attack the Haitian workers at night. Those workers in turn also organized and counter-attacked; the balance of forces not being the same, the confrontation subsided. Moreover, these more recent immigrants required also health services, housing, minimum education, which the city provides... still, there is the increasingly chronic deficiencies of the dominant governments towards their "population proper". Lastly, the side effects (begging, disease...) happened to smear the "tourist image" of the Dominican dominant classes. The contradiction became antagonistic everywhere!
Within the framework of the imperialist offensive and project of unbounded exploitation and the neoliberalist domination which it promotes, contradictions within the Dominican social formation were very much sharpened recently. Contrary to the rightist propaganda which wants to make believe that the "Dominican Republic" has seen a period of accelerated growth, it is, in fact, the capitalists and, overall, the dominant classes, which only accumulate in a shameless way, naturally at the expense of the workers and the population (the people) in general. The proof is the last strikes which took place at the end of the mandate of Mr. Mejía, strikes which had actively been supported close to almost 100 % by the people of the entire country! This reflects the fact that the ditch widens. Because, it is true, in the context of the incapacity of the Dominican government to find minimum equilibrium, the workers are increasingly impoverished and the population increasingly lacks services. In reality: the Dominican Republic is in crisis! And it is precisely what the most recent attacks against the Haitian workers also seek to hide. Thus sort of a search for scapegoats, they are blamed for all evils.
This mechanism - which had always been used every time the dominant classes of this neighbor country sought to gather around such or such political party for elections, of such or such project marking a real offensive of exploitation of workers or dispossession of peasants - this mechanism thus becomes vital today, considering the depth of the crisis that this social formation is undergoing, a crisis sharpened even more by lavish enrichment of the haves. The Baninter scandal which revealed completely the spokes of the gigantic fraud in progress, brings it out clearly [ see... ], as it also clearly shows very high level alliances, the most daring and vile maneuvers: the putrefaction of the Dominican dominant classes.
It is thus in the context and because of the bankruptcy of the dominant classes of this country that the most recent and morbid attacks against the Haitian workers occur today. But these actions occur also, and as much, because of the total bankruptcy in very Haiti as well. "If Dessalines were there..." is a slogan that says it All. And one which any patriot should hold on to, if only for one moment "If Dessalines were there…"! means precisely... that he is not there any more. When one hears trash from people in government, when one reflects on the futility of the pretexts procured by those who, in one way or another, are ready to collaborate, or to endorse this project "extraverti" reaching its highest point, one can measure the extent of the phenomenon, the gravity of the problem. Another manner of understanding the situation has to do, naturally, with the incredible incapacity of the Haitian leaders. It is precisely one of the major arguments of the Dominican officials: they are saying to their Haitian counterparts that (and at the same time to the dominant classes here in general) as far as the organization of the exploitation of labor, the repression against it, in fact, the control of the situation of domination, they are not doing enough! The Haitian crisis with the popular component that comes with it, worries the neighbor. Admittedly. But what preoccupies it more still is the incapacity of the rulers and dominant classes of this country to solve this situation. Thus their repeated appeals for the permanence of the occupation and the transition to direct tutelage.
According to their calculations, the moment requires it. The various reasons analyzed above are causes for the fact that the migration of the Haitian workers meets today enormous contradictions in the Dominican Republic. On the other hand, "illegal and cheap labor force" is still needed. Further, the price of this "commodity" is, in Haiti, so ridiculous that logic dictates to... come to exploit it on Haitian territory. This project which has been germinating for a long time was recently put at execution. By capitalist logic itself which little by little introduced Dominican Capital in Haiti (the Interamericana factories in Port-with-Prince, ‘Crystal’ water in Cape-Haitian...) but, especially by the lavalas ability (let us say rather the macabre) to maneuver a project in the dark which exposes the Haitian social formation even more: the free trade zones. The first of those envisaged along the border is already under operation in Ouanaminthe. The imperialist CCI (Interim Cooperation Framework) definitely places this orientation at the top of its engagements, while a whole political, economic and ideological "Haitian" armada accompanies it, to the point of expressing clearly that "the development of Haiti necessarily passes through the Dominican Capital". The various treaties in the process of being adopted by the United States and certain countries of Central America and the Caribbean, including the Dominican Republic, (TLC, CAFTA-DR...) anticipate that in the case of the latter, the production carried out in Haiti by the Dominican capitalists could be included there. The projections for the Northeast by the latter (with the consent, of course, of the Haitian bourgeoisie which is on the point of monopolizing political power at all levels) are of scale!
Under these conditions, the Haitian labor supply is not only not welcome any more in our neighboring land but, rather, available right at home, "offered" by the local bourgeoisie up to its most “scientific” ideological hideouts (i.e., of course, mystifying lies: ` to give jobs', ` development', `to sacrifice itself for the people'...) and, especially, under the control of international armed forces. The moment of the most horrible exactions is thus ripe. It is that to which we are witnessing.
Which government will be able to solve this labyrinth? Which State will be able to be rather so autonomous of this project to be in defense of the people, of the workers?
The latter, if they understand well enough this implacable logic which is taking them to the abyss, should be rather united to face off!
The comrades of SOCOWA at the free trade zone of Ouanaminthe and those of SITRAFMIN, in Santiago, understood this well, met, set up a coordination of struggle and carried out joint mobilizations against the exactions of their common employer, Grupo M, and thus succeeded in gaining each significant victories, even if much too partial and perhaps also too temporary.
The Dominican and Haitian immigrants in New York took the same road. The most recent position of the Dominican coordination in connection with this situation testifies to their perspicacity as much as their courage and their permanent vigilance.
Instead of tearing up each other or thinking of acts of revenge, in fact, the popular sectors of the two countries should resolutely begin to do as much as possible. As fast as possible.
Batay Ouvriye (Workers’ Struggle), December 16, 2005