Dominican Plan to Expel Haitians Tests Close Ties By AZAM AHMED and SANDRA E. GARCIA
SABANETA, Dominican Republic — For decades, the people of Barrio Cementerio, a neighborhood divided evenly between Dominicans and Haitians, have shared a peaceful coexistence. Proximity smothered prejudice: Working side by side and raising families together helped keep tensions in check. That is changing now. A government plan that could deport tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people of Haitian descent from the Dominican Republic has started to tear at the unity that once bound this place, forcing residents to pick a side. A bitter landlord stopped renting to a Haitian tenant. The head of the local Red Cross says the deportations are long overdue, while a gang leader promises to hide his Haitian friends from the authorities. A Dominican husband fears losing his wife and their children, who have no papers. A police officer agonizes over the prospect of having to deport his best friend, who came to this country illegally from Haiti. full: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/world/americas/dominican-plan-to-expel-haitians-tests-close-ties.html --- In the next chapter Jared Diamond offers a side-by-side comparison of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two countries that occupy the same Caribbean island that was "discovered" by Columbus in 1492. They are meant to serve as cautionary tales as to what happens when you don't follow strict rules about population control and resource husbandry, most especially timber. In comparison to poor benighted Haiti, the Dominican Republic is a virtual paradise. Diamond writes: "The Dominican Republic is also a developing country sharing Haiti's problems, but it is more developed and the problems are less acute, per capita income is five times higher, and the population density and population growth rates are lower. For the past 38 years the Dominican Republic has been at least nominally a democracy without any military coup, and with some presidential elections from 1978 onwards resulting in the defeat of the incumbent and the inauguration of a challenger, along with others marred by fraud and intimidation. Within the booming economy, industries earning foreign exchange include an iron and nickel mine, until recently a gold mine, and formerly a bauxite mine; industrial free trade zones that employ 200,000 workers and export overseas; agricultural exports that include coffee, cacao, tobacco, cigars, fresh flowers, and avocados (the Dominican Republic is the world's third largest exporter of avocados); telecommunications; and a large tourist industry. Several dozen dams generate hydroelectric power. As American sports fans know, the Dominican Republic also produces and exports great baseball players." So why did these two countries, almost like twins separated at birth, turn out so differently? Haiti's revolution seems to be to blame. "Not surprisingly, French Hispaniola's former slaves, who renamed their country Haiti (the original Taino Indian name for the island), killed many of Haiti's whites, destroyed the plantations and their infrastructure in order to make it impossible to rebuild the plantation slave system, and divided the plantations into small family farms. While that was what the former slaves wanted for themselves as individuals, it proved in the long run disastrous for Haiti's agricultural productivity, exports, and economy when the farmers received little help from subsequent Haitian governments in their efforts to develop cash crops. Haiti also lost human resources with the killing of much of its white population and the emigration of the remainder." While the rest of the 19th century world was sensibly embarking on an early version of globalization, the Haitian elites were unaccountably maintaining a kind of aloofness from foreign trade that almost seems like a bargain basement version of the Japanese Shogunate. "Haiti's experience and fear of slavery led to the adoption of a constitution forbidding foreigners to own land or to control means of production through investments." http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/ecology/JaredDiamond3.htm _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
