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Haitians try to cross the Rio Masacre before the authorities open the pass for Haitians and Dominicans at the border in Dajabón.
Dajabón, on the Dominican side of the
Haitian-Dominican border, is not far from the
site of the first European settlement in the New
World. Christopher Columbus’s quest for treasure
overseas wrecked havoc on Hispaniola’s native
civilization and altered the course of history in the
region known today as Latin America. More than
500 years after the Santa Maria ran aground on
the northern coast of Hispaniola and 200 years
after former slaves declared Haiti an independent
nation, the island’s modern inhabitants, still burdened
by the complications of colonialism, come
to Dajabón seeking their own treasure.
On Mondays and Fridays, Haitians legally cross
into Dajabón to sell goods in a colorful street market.
On the day of my visit last August, rucksacks
filled with purchases were balanced precariously
on top of guaguas (public transportation vans).
The overloaded vans were not the road’s only
distraction. Dominican soldiers stalled traffic by
pulling over many of the passersby and searching
their vehicles. Dajabón’s welcome mat for its
neighbors to the west does not extend beyond the
market; these soldiers were looking for Haitians.
An estimated one million Haitians now live in
the Dominican Republic, approximately 10 percent
of the Dominican population. Traditionally, Haitian
workers in the Dominican Republic live in rural
slums known as bateyes and take on the backbreaking
job of cutting cane on Dominican sugar
plantations. They are also finding work in construction,
and the Dominican government has ironically
become the largest employer of Haitians laborers.
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Across the Dominican Republic, deportations
to Haiti have actually increased since my visit,
according to Michele Wucker, executive director
of the World Policy Institute. Wucker, SIPA
’93, authored Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans,
Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola
and LOCKOUT: Why America Keeps Getting
Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends
on Getting It Right. She believes that global economic
stress is eroding Dominican tolerance for
Haitian immigrants. “I would say that the tensions,
whether immigration is increasing or not, are definitely
rising because Dominicans are under a lot
more pressure right now,” Wucker notes.
Dominican treatment of Haitian immigrants
has long been the focus of international condemnation.
A 2002 Human Rights Watch report
condemned Dominican officials for not allowing
Haitians to collect their belongings or contact
their families prior to being shipped across the
border. In the 2005 case Dilcia Yean and Violeta
Bosico v. Dominican Republic, the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights (IACHR) called for the
Dominican Republic to issue birth certificates
for the children of Haitian immigrants. Rather
than follow the IACHR, the Dominican Republic’s
Supreme Court issued a decision interpreting its
own constitution to mean that the children of
Haitian workers are “in transit” and therefore not
guaranteed rights as Dominican citizens.
“The focus has been so much on the issue of
rights, and very much like the immigration debate
in this country [the U.S.], it’s often turned into the
same conversation over and over and over again,”
Wucker says. “The question that Haitians and
Dominicans both need to be asking is, ‘is it in the
Dominican Republic’s own best interest to deny
recognition to these children?’ That strips away the
moral reasons for it, the rights of it, which the two
sides are never going to come closer together on.”
Dajabón is one of only four guarded crossing
points between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The nearly open border is surprising, considering
that tensions between the two lands have been
palpable since Spain and France staked claims on
opposite sides of the island 400 years ago, and
migration clearly remains a polarizing issue. The
lone Dominican guard, stationed on the bridge over
the river that forms a natural border between the
two countries, explained to me that Dominican soldiers,
like those we had seen from the car earlier,
focus on catching fugitives rather than monitoring
entries and exits in Dajabón. Even the river’s name
raises historical sensitivities on both sides, and the
guard hesitated when I asked him for it. “Well,”
he said, stalling, “it has had various [names].” In
1937, notorious Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo
called for the elimination of Haitians and started
the slaughter in Dajabón. Trujillo’s army threw
corpses into the Río Masacre (Massacre River),
as the river had been christened after Spaniards
killed a group of French pirates on the river’s banks
in 1728.
More recently, the United Nations Stabilization
Mission in Haiti installed lights along the riverbank,
hoping to decrease the number of deaths by drown-