Haitian Immigrants in the Dominican Republic

Erica Bergman
310-340-01, Crossing Borders: Immigration, Refugees, Diasporas
Prof. Chip Gagnon
November 22, 2000

Imagine a women, Senora, who has just given birth to twins. One child is a boy with fair skin, and the other, the daughter, is a deep brown. Senora speaks, “Do you think my daughter will always be the color she is now?” Then, out of shock and a deep sense of concern she suddenly asks, “My poor love, what if she’s mistaken for one of your people?” One of your people...with these words Edwidge Danticat begins the novel, The Farming of Bones, and introduces the reader to the world of Haitian-Dominican relations, where the rough hand of history and open wound of the border has divided the island of Hispanola and its people. The concept of  the “Self” versus the “Other” is not foreign to any member of a modern nation-state. Yet the question remains, who is the “Self” and who is the “Other”? For one Dominican the answer is clear, “The Haitians, they’re different than we are. They are black and we are not. They are African and we are Spanish. We are Catholics and they practice voodoo. We may share the same island, but we live in different worlds.” (Kattau 4)  

The growth of nationalism within both Haiti and the Dominican Republic evolved from a concept of race. From colonization to independence, from the struggle for control over the island, to the survival of the Dominican sugar industry, race has played an integral role every step of the way.  However, for the Dominican republic, nationalism became defined by a concept of race that grew mostly in response to Haitian independence, power and nationalism and has led to a prevalent racism against Haitians. Today, the thousands of Haitians working and living in the Dominican Republic pay the price for this kind of Dominican nationalism.

Christopher Columbus reached the island of Hispanola in 1492. There, he encountered a land of densely populated communities. Those with the most complex societies living on the island were called the Tainos. The Tainos were the first peoples of the Americas to meet Columbus, and their story is as devastating as the rest. Killed off by disease, the Europeans, or laboring in America’s first sugar cane plantations, their population decreased rapidly. Slaves from Africa and the Caribbean were soon brought to the island to work in the plantations in place of the Tainos. As Spain grew more interested in the riqueza of Mexico and South America, it grew less concerned with controlling Hispanola, and in 1697 gave the western third of the island, the “high place” according to the Tainos, to the French. (Wucker 27)

The economies of Haiti (formerly known as Saint Dominique) and the Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo) developed according to the natural environments of both countries, and as Michele Wucker argues in, Why the Cocks Fight, so too did the racial makeup of their people. (Wucker 32) The landscape of Haiti was made up of broad open spaces, perfect for raising cattle. Cattle herding required a dependent relationship between the land owners and the cattle herders, thus leading to a legitimate mixing between slaves and Europeans, eventually “slurring” the racial lines. 

Wucker states that in 1549 there existed 7 different recognized racial categories: black, white, mulatto (white and black), mestizo (white and indigenous), terceron (mulatto and white), cuarteron (terceron and white) and grifo (indigenous and black). (Wucker 33) This “slurring” of the racial lines was encouraged by Spain in order to maintain Spanish control of the Dominican Republic in two ways.

In 1586, due to pressure from attacks by the French and the English, Spain promoted marriages between the settlers and their slaves to unite the people in defense. This method was also used by the crown to subdue rebellious settler, by punishing those who had married with their slaves (Wucker 32). Despite the motives, what Spain ultimately achieved in doing was creating a heterogeneous population of people of all colors, raised Catholic and treated as Spanish who, though ultimately achieved independence from Spain, would maintain pride and a great sense of national and personal identity in their connection with Spain.

In Haiti, sugar and tobacco plantations thrived in the mountainous and coastal landscape. These plantations depended on a much more strict social hierarchy between land holders and slaves than in the Dominican Republic. However, few women arrived with the first male settlers , and soon the men began mating with their slaves. At first the mulatto children were given the same rights as the white Europeans. However, by 1759 mulattos were no longer in the minority and quickly their status was lowered. Attempts to decrease their power and “threat” were made by denying them the right to arm themselves with swords, dress in European styles, or participate in any European traditions (Wucker 35). Despite the racial hierarchy, the French, like the early Spanish, also recognized many different racial types. At one point they had documented 128 different racial categories from “true mulatto” to “mixed blood”, 127 parts white and 1 part black (Wucker 34)

The Haitian Revolution from 1791-1803 disrupted the existing racial hierarchy and gave Haiti a new sense of identity. It united mulattos and black slaves against the French bourgeoisie, and abolished slavery and the plantation system, producing the first independent black nation. Jean-Jacque Dessalines, the first emperor of Haiti, ordered the killing of all white French in Haiti, leaving political power over the country to a small group of mulatto elite. The Haitian Revolution would represent a “celebration of Afro-Haitian culture as a culture of resistance, and a defense of Voodoo as a religion, {and} Creole as a language.” (Kattau 4) This concept of nationalism would only be reinforced by the US occupation of Haiti in 1915, provoking the unison of mulatto and blacks through their common African past and identity. Haiti remained the dominant country on Hispanola during the early years, trying to control the entire island and abolish slavery on the eastern side by invading the Dominican Republic in 1822 and maintaining control until 1844. (Martinez 3) For three years previous to the Haitian Revolution Haiti had also invaded the Dominican Republic in an attempt to unite the entire island under their control. The Dominican Republic achieved it’s Independence form Haiti in 1844 and from Spain in 1865. However, the years of Haitian invasion within the Dominican Republic would be remembered as the worst in Dominican History and Dominicans would celebrate their independence not from Spain but from Haiti. Dominican nationalism became a celebration of Spanish ancestry and cutlure, Catholocism, and ultimately what they did not want to be, Hatiain, black, or African.

The time, money, and energy put into the Haitian revolution, as well as its abolishment of the plantation system and refusal to accept foreign investors or sell land to foreigners left the economy of the country in peril. At the same time the Dominican Republic was accepting foreign investors, and soon sugar plantation estates were established in the country. Like all plantation systems of its time, the Caribbean plantation system thrived on unfree labor. However, sugar production was not introduced into the Dominican Republic until after slavery was abolished. Because the Dominican Republic was scarcely populated at the time and had enough open land for rural people to farm despite the growing number of sugar estates, attempts at getting Dominicans to work the sugar plantations failed.

Dominicans did not need the work, and those who did cut the cane quickly demanded better wages and labor conditions. As Dominicans proved unexploitable in the sugar industry, sugar companies turned their eyes towards the West Indies. Although congress tried to restrict non-white immigration in 1912, sugar companies were able to skirt the new laws and ultimately, they were ignored. (Martinez 5)

By the 1920s however, wage rates were falling in the sugar plantations the the West Indians began organizing and demanding labor rights. Many began working in the other fields and once again the sugar companies needed a new exploitable working group. This time they turned to Haiti. By the 1920s Haitians had already started immigrating to the Dominican Republic to work in the sugar fields and their numbers equaled that of the West Indians. The migration from Haiti to the Dominican Republic was soon to be regulated and controlled as it became apparent that Haitians were profitable in the sugar plantations. However, before 1915 migration across the border was undocumented. Between 1915 and 1930, 80,000 Haitian men had crossed over to work in the cane fields. (Martinez 6)  Today Haiti, with seven million people and growing, occupying only 1/3 of the island (the Dominican Republic owns 2/3 of the island with 7.1 million people) with political instability, rapidly decreasing resources, and environmental degregation is now the poorest country in the Americas. Its economy is extremely weak and 3 out of every 5 Haitians are jobless, 4 out of 5 are poor. (Kattau6) Thus, thousands of Haitians cross the border every year looking for work. Most end up working in the sugar cane fields of the Dominican Republic. Out of the 300-400 thousand Haitians in the Dominican Republic today, 250,000 work in the cane fields. (Wilhelms 22)

During the United States occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1916 until 1924 US corporations expanded the sugar industry, building larger plantations throughout the country. As sugar production expanded (in the 1920s sugar prices rose to 22 cents a pound, the highest it had ever been), the demand for workers rose and increasing numbers of Haitians entered the Dominican Republic. (Wucker 102) The flow of Haitians continued to rise along with the sugar boom. The greatest number of Haitians migrated to the Dominican cane fields the same year the US stock market crashed, marking the beginning of the Depression. During the Depression sugar prices fell as low as two cents per pound, and Dominican sugar exports dwindled. (Wucker 47) Sugar estates began to close down and jobless Haitians began looking for work in rice or coffee plantations, or construction jobs. By default, many Haitians also ended up living within the Dominican Republic at this time, finding themselves on the “wrong” side of the island according to the new border drawn in 1929. (Wucker 46)

In 1930, at the height of all this chaos, Rafael Trujillo and the US trained Dominican military officers took over the presidency. Trujillo would remain the dictator of the country until 1961. Like many countries experiencing a falling economy, Trujillo attempted to deflect anger and despair away from the reality of the economic despair, the falling sugar prices, US neo-colonialism, and the upper class, by placing the blame on the immigrants. However, Trujillo’s tactics would not only place blame on the Haitians for economic troubles, but would violently categorize them as racial and ethnic “other”. Once again, Dominican nationalism was defined in negative terms. If Haitians were black and African, then Dominicans were not black and were not African. For Trujillo to deny the existence of Africa in both the people and culture of the Dominican Republic, a predominantly “mulatto” country, “required a reworking of racial identities, a rewriting of history, and a whitening of culture. It also entailed a massacre of Haitians a whipping up of anti-Haitian hatreds.” The categories of black and mulatto were erased from Dominican ID cards, replaced with the term “indio”(referring to the Tainos that the Spanish had mostly killed off hundreds of years earlier). Trujillo, also made merengue the national dance, however demanded that the music be played without the African hand drum, usually an essential part of merengue music. The practice of Voodoo within the Dominican Republic was also banned. (Kattau 9)

The degree to which Haitians in fact were and are similar in ancestry and certain cultural aspects to Dominicans, as well as their shared history of brutal political leaders, political instability, poverty , and isolation from the rest of the world, only increased Dominican hatred and discrimination towards Haitians. As Michele Wucker states in Why the Cocks Fight, “Evidently, every time he (Dominican) looks in the mirror, he finds the Haitians there, and tries to break the mirror, in the sense of saying: this does not exist...The Other within, [is} the one they most want to expel.” (Wucker 244) For Trujillo, this internal conflict and state of denial was a very personal one. Trujillo entered the political sphere feeling the need to defend his socioeconomic status, as well as his race. Born out of wedlock and from the lower middle class, Trujillo also was the grandson of a Haitian and used makeup daily to lighten the color of his skin. (Wucker 51) For Trujillo, the denial of the Haitian within the Dominican was a personal struggle as well as a political tactic.

Trujillo increased the already existing Haitian discrimination and played on the economic troubles of the time by also implementing a new fear of a “silent invasion” by Haitians on the Dominican Republic. Bringing to mind vivid images of the years the Dominican Republic was under Haitian control, Trujillo spread rumors and propaganda that Haitians were again planning on invading the country, this time through the inside. He claimed that by immigration and establishing homes within the Dominican Republic and then “Haitianizing” the people, Haitians would once again take over. However, Trjuillo realized that Haitians were needed within the sugar estates to cut the cane, so while at the same time making it known that Haitians were unwelcome in the Dominican Republic, his policies encouraged Haitian labor in the sugar plantations. Under Trujillo, Dominican military control at the border increased. As undocumented workers crossed the border they were detained, round up, and instead of being sent back to Haiti, were forced to relocate to Dominican sugar estates. (Martinez 13) As sugar prices began to rise again, Trujillo quickly began to nationalize the industry in order to increase his own wealth and power. In 1948 he bought his first plantation, and continued buying, taking over Dominican and foreign companies. (Wucker 105) By 1961 Trujillo owned 2/3 of the Dominican sugar estates. (Martinez 11)

With much of the sugar industry under his ownership, Trujillo’s interest in the migration flow of workers from Haiti increased. During the times when the Haitian government refused emigration,such as they did in 1942, Trujillo took revenge on the government by forcibly rounding up Haitian within the Dominican Republic and relocating them to work in the sugar plantations, making a strong statement to the Haitian president that “curbing emigration..{was done} at the expense of civil liberties of Haitian living in the Dominican Republic.” (Martinez 10) In 1952 Trujillo entered upon an agreement with Haitian president Paul Magioire, stating that Dominican sugar companies would pay for the recruitment of Haitian workers by the Haitian government. The first year under this agreement, the Dominican Republic virtually bought 16,500 workers from Haiti. By the 70s they were paying 3 million dollars per year to the Haitian government. (Wucker 105) Under the agreement the Haitian government would only have to round up bracero workers and issue them contracts, committing them to work for one company. In turn, the company would pay the workers travel fees and ensure them a job. This agreement allowed Dominican officials to relocate any Haitians found who had broken their contracts by leaving their plantation, either to work in a different sugar estate, or another sector of employment. However this also gave Dominican officials the leeway they wanted to forcibly relocate any Haitian found outside a sugar plantation to a sugar estate in need of work. The contract also demanded that the braceros returned to Haiti at the end of the season. This too was violently enforced. The contract labor system remained until 1986. During its last years the Dominican Republic contracted 20,000 Haitian migrant laborers per year. (Martinez 11)

Haitians, however, were subject to violence and were extremely vulnerable within the Dominican Republic whether or not they had the legal papers allowing them to work. After the Haitian government refused emigration in 1942, illegal crossing of the border was the only way for Haitians to enter the Dominican Republic. And, as previously mentioned, undocumented workers were often forced to cut sugar cane. The tolerance and treatment of Haitians in the Dominican Republic was regulated as much by Dominican racism, as by the economy. Depending on the economy at the time and whether or not sugar plantations needed work, Dominican officials would tear up Haitian documents as they tried to return home at the end of the season, forcing them to work in other estates. And, as most Haitians worked in the cane fields a demand for their work existed according to the international (and especially from the United States) demand for sugar. For example, the United States imported 302,016 tons of Dominican sugar from 1985 to 1986. However, the following season they dropped the Dominican quota by 44 percent. Once again the Dominican government refused to accept any new bracero workers that year and instead rounded up Haitians previously within the Dominican Republic forcing them to cut the cane. (Wucker 120) In 1974 ( a productive year for the sugar industry) a group of Haitian workers had attempted to return to Haiti at the end of the sugar season, and were instead placed on a truck which brought them to another sugar estate. On refusal to work, the owner killed them all. (Wucker 107) In 1989 the American quota for Dominican sugar doubled as the US cut off all sugar exports from Panama, causing great demand for Haitian workers. (Wucker 122) IMF policies within the country in the 80s also helped shape the Haitian experience within the Dominican Republic. Their policies resulted in wage drops, and shortage of fuel and sugar resurfacing Dominican fears of an unstable economy and country vulnerable to Haitian takeover, again promoting anti Haitian sentiments.

The height of anti-Haitian racism and violence occurred in 1937 under Trujillo’s dictatorship. Rumors had been flying about acts of Haitian violence against Dominicans, as well as many robberies and illegal entrances. On October 3, Trujillo decided he was going to solve the Haitian “problem” once and for all, and ordered the killing of every Haitian in the Dominican Republic. Some sources say that only those Haitians on sugar plantations were spared, reinforcing the idea that the sugar estate was the only safe place for Haitians and was the only sector of society where they were welcome. However, others claim that the massacre, or “Corte” (the cutting) as it was called by the Haitians, was aimed at Haitian cane workers. In any case, 25 thousand Haitian men, women, and children were killed in the massacre. (Martinez 8) Trujillo’s army used machetes, knives, shovels, and picks instead of guns in an attempt to make it seem as if the murders were done by rural Dominicans and not the government. They also tried to cover their action by issuing deportment papers to many people before killing them. Often to decipher who was Haitian, they forced their victims to pronounce the spanish word for parsley, “perejil”. Most Haitians had trouble pronouncing the difficult word and their ability to correctly say parsley determined their survival. (Wucker 48) However, in The Farming of Bones, Danticat remarks that many people who fled to Haiti during this time were in fact Dominican citizens who were mistaken for Haitians by the darkness of their skins, or Haitians who had lived their entire lives within the Dominican Republic, knew no french nor had any ties within Haiti. As one Haitian author described the massacre, “That day, such horrors took place under the torrential rain that your mouth tasted of ashes, that the air was bitter to breathe, that shame weighed down on your heart, and the flavor of all life indeed was repugnant. You would never have imagined that such things could come to pass on Dominican soil.” (Wucker 48)

Although no full scale massacre like that 1937 occurred again, since then the Dominican Republic has continued with many forced repatriations. In 1979 The Anti-Slavery Society of London gave a report to the UN on the treatment of Haitian bracero workers and human rights abuses in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican government responded to this attack by saying that all employers of illegal immigrants would be punished at the end of the season. In turn thousands of Haitians were rounded up and expelled form the Dominican Republic. (Wucker 109) In 1991 7,000 Haitians were forced out of the Dominican Republic due to international criticism over the treatment and employment of workers under the age of 16 and over the age of 60, demanding that they be allowed to return to Haiti. The Dominican Republic took this initiative to forcibly repatriate anyone guilty of “looking Haitian.” (Kirk 9) Often those that were forced to leave were subjected to extreme abuse, were separated from their families, their property destroyed, and if their legal documents destroyed. Again, many Dominicans ended up on the Haitian side because of their dark skin. Two thirds of those who left in 1991 returned to the Dominican Republic despite saying they would never return again. Many returned for economic reasons, however an estimated 23,000 returned because of political persecution. (Kirk 11) However, those who entered the Dominican Republic for political reasons were often treated no differently and were not differentiated form those with economic excuses. The Dominican Republic has never accepted a Haitian political refugee.Most are without papers so are then in turn arrested, repatriated, or forced into the sugar plantations. Most Haitians find it easier to enter the Dominican Republic if they say they will work the sugar cane whether or not they want to.

Difficulty in obtaining legal papers also leaves children of cane cutters vulnerable to abuse. Although according to Dominican law, any child born in the Dominican Republic is a citizen of the Dominican Republic, most Haitians cutting cane do not have time, money, or access to documents legalizing their status. However, without a legal status children are not allowed attend school, nor can workers leave their plantation without fear of repatriation or relocation. Even if a child were able to acquire documents, under Haitian law any child born to a Haitian is a citizen of Haiti, however Haiti does not allowed duel citizenship. Thus, children are forced to chose between becoming a Dominican citizen where they will continue to experience racism, or remain a Haitian citizen, even more vulnerable to discrimination and abuse. Either option leaves the Haitian child nation less. (Kirk 6) As one worker put it, I’ve “lived all my life here...{I”} speak spanish better then Kreyol. I’ve never been to Haiti. So I’m almost Dominican.” (Wucker 241)

Today, there are between 16,000 and 20,000 Haitian who migrate each year form the sugar harvest. According to one study, in their average day they work 11.48 hours, working 6.4 days a week, and earning only 31 cents an hour, or 23 dollars a week. (Wucker 95) However, most are paid according to the amount of cane they have cut. Often the Dominicans who weigh the sugar refuse to pick it up, or record a lower weight in order to pocket some of the excess money. Sometimes the cane is dried before it is weighed, losing up to 1/3 of its original weight. This, along with malnutrition and weakness in the workers, describes why the average Haitian worker in Dominican sugar plantations only cuts a ton or a ton and a half of cane a day, while the average cane cutter in Florida cuts about 8 tons per day. (Wucker 97) The Haitian worker is almost kept in debt in the estates as store prices are high and wages are kept low.On top of all this, cane cutting is also an extremely dangerous profession. One out of every 5 workers is seriously injured each year. Yet, even that number disregards the number of “eyes or limbs damaged by the cane, the gallons of children's tears, the miles of cuts in black skin, the nights without dinner.” (Wucker 95) Living conditions on the plantations are horrendous as well. Most do not have running water or electricity, lack toilets an perpetuate disease. Unfortunately they also lack proper medical facilities. (Americas Watch 32) One study on a private sugar estate found that cane cutter families lived in one or two room houses, while single individuals shared one room barely able to fit two bunk beds and a chair. (Wilhelms 52) Most reports mentioned child labor and family housing, yet did not explore the issue of female labor and referred to most bracero workers as male.

Conditions have ceased to improve for migrant laborers within the sugar estates. The Dominican Republic and its sugar importers have relied on the cheap, exploitable labor of cane cutters and international and national protests have not been sufficient enough o cause a change. Haitians have had a difficult time fighting for their basic rights within the Dominican Republic, with no strong Haitian middle class to support them. Most Haitians work in the cane fields and are kept physically and socially separated from the rest of the country. Haitian president Aristide spoke out against the Dominican Republic in 1991 stating, “We must denounce, before the eyes of all humankind , the flagrant violation of the rights of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic.......Never again, not ever again, will our Haitian sisters and brothers be sold in order to transform their blood to make bitter sugar...” However he was overthrown four days later with the support of the Dominican Republic. (Wucker 137) One study claimed that most Haitian bracero workers in the sugar fields have acquired a passive and self destructive attitude in the face of their discrimination and exploitation. They are afraid to speak out against their repressors or vocalize their acknowledgment of repression, rearing forced repatriation. To questions concerning cruel treatment, some responded “I don’t know”, “I do not know what to say to this question, one should not get involved with such matters.” or “I myself cannot say anything about it, but I cannot say that this is a lie.” To the question whether or not they were paid well enough one worker answered, “yes, but they{wages} are not sufficient.” (Wilhlems 51) Because of discrimination within Dominican society, most Haitians realize that they are not wanted and are “negatively valued”. They are not given opportunities to acquire many jobs outside of the “structural neighborhood in Dominican society” that is, the sugar plantations. (Wilhelms 93) However, as Danticat eloquently expresses in The Farming of Bones, the people do have a voice that cannot be ignored. The character Amabelle, a survivor of “El Corte” believes, “It is perhaps the great discomfort of those trying to silence the world to discover that we have voices sealed inside our heads, voices that with each passing day, grow even louder than the clamor of the world outside.” (Danticat 266)

Although most Dominicans who work in the sugar estates occupy jobs of highter status than the cane cutters and live separately form them, some Dominicans harvest cane and work alongside Haitians. And in these cases, although playful teasing may occur between workers, discrimination and hatred do not exist between the two groups. However, within Dominican society anti-Haitian sentiments have continued to carry one. As discrimination forces Haitians into sugar production,they are also discriminated against and blamed form the conditions under which they are forced to live. “Poor Haitians are like animals. All they can afford to eat are tins of sardines and a little rice.” (Wucker preference) Sentiments such as believing Haitians are “savage” and without morals are perpetuated as is the belief that the only place for them is on the fringes of society where they won’t be able to contaminate Dominican culture with their language, religion, culture, and ultimately their “ black, black skin.” And, unfortunately the Dominican government and many Dominicans do not feel the need to improve conditions for the Haitian. Like many countries receiving immigrants, they blame them for their own misery. “What concern is it that Haitians do not receive proper medical care? They chose to come to Dominikani. What matter if Dominicans brought them here? They agreed to come.” (Wucker 113) The Dominican Republic also watches closely what other countries, especially the US do to potential immigrants. As thousand of Mexicans and other Latin Americans, including Haitians are turned away or forced to repatriate from the United States and many Dominicans are forced out of Puerto Rico (1 out of every 8 Dominicans emigrates) the Dominican Republic maintains its own belief that it has the right to continue treating its own immigrants the way that it has. (Wucker 257)

Concepts of race have formed national identity in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, shaping relations between the two throughout the years, and resulting in the enforced labor, mistreatment of, and discrimination against thousands of Haitians within the Dominican Republic. However, this concept of “Self” versus “Other” is not unique to Hispanola. It is a common thread in all immigration and race conflicts all over the world. Although the history and internal struggle of Hispanola is uniquely its own, the Dominican-Haitian conflict forces us to once again reflect upon our own stereo-types, our own immigration policies, racism, and treatment of immigrants. For as Michele Wucker claims of the Dominican-Haitian conflict, “Their struggle are ours too”.

Works Cited

Danticat, Edwidge. The Farming of Bones. NY:Soho Press, 1998.

Americas Watch, and National Coalition for Haitian Refugees. Haitian Sugar-Cane Cutters in the Dominican Republic. NY:Americas Watch,1989.

Kattau, Colleen. A question of Color. Latin American Civilization Reader, Volume 2. Fall

Kirk, Robin. Stone of Refuge:Haitian Refugees in the Dominican Republic. Washington DC:US committe for Refugees, 1992.

Martinez, Samuel. From Hidden Hand to Heavy Hand. Albuquerque:Latin American Research Review, 1999. (http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?TS=...3&Sid=3&Idx=1&Deli=1&RQT=309&Dtp=1)

Wilhelms, Saskia K.S. Haitian and Dominican Sugarcane Workers in Dominican Bateyes. Hamburg:Die
Deutshe Bibliothek, 1994.

Wucker, Michele. Why the Cocks Fight. NY:Hill and Wang,1999.