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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
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