Monday, April 29, 2019

How Nativism became the norm in the Dominican Republic

Guest blogger: Nancy Giesel, Masters in Migration Studies, graduate student, University of San Francisco

Last summer, I lived and worked in the Dominican Republic in an area known as “the bateyes.” Historically, the bateyes were settlements that were built around sugar cane fields to house Haitian migrant workers. These migrant workers ended up settling in the Dominican Republic without documentation and have continued to live in these  now-abandoned settlements for generations, often isolated, both physically and socially, from society. My time in these communities made me question: what does being Dominican mean for the descendants of migrant workers, living outside the traditional definitions of citizenship?

The sugar cane industry is the cause of much of the migration from Haiti to the DR, and also a central reason for the success of the Dominican economy. Haitian labor migrants were a critical part of the development of the Dominican Republic, but their status as migrant workers meant they were  seen as “less than” by the general population. As General Rafael Trujillo took office in 1930, the leader used anti-Haitian sentiments as a political tool. Trujillo wanted to ‘Dominicanize’ (read: de-haitianize) the sugar cane industry. This strategy was almost impossible considering the dependence on cheap migrant labor within the industry. This did not stop Trujillo from massacring Haitian migrants by the thousands. Although Trujillo is generally considered a violent and evil dictator, the nativist values that he instilled are still prevalent today.

Understanding nativism in the Dominican Republic is dependent on this historical context, but is not contained by history itself. These attitudes have continued into the modern age. In 2013, a ruling known as “La Sentencia” passed in the Dominican Republic. It revoked birthright citizenship for anyone born on Dominican soil and did so retroactively. This means that many Haitian migrants who had been living in the Dominican Republic for generations were suddenly stateless people because they did not possess the documents necessary to prove Dominican residency. Many of these migrants were stripped of their citizenship because they could not regularize their status by showing proof of their birth on Dominican soil. In my time at the legal aid office in the DR, I met many people living in the bateyes who had no formal record of their birth, which is needed to prove that they were born in the Dominican Republic. Many of the people who came through the doors of our office would never think to label themselves as “Haitians” or even “Haitian Dominican.” In their eyes, they were Dominicans, just as their parents and grandparents were. Even though they had been living in the Dominican Republic for their whole lives and for generations before them, they were being threatened with repatriation to a country that most of them had never been to before, Haiti.

These people who were once Dominican citizens were now stateless people in a limbo of citizenship between Haiti, a place where many had no familial ties, job prospects, or language skills, and the Dominican Republic, where institutional barriers and nativist attitudes prevented them from living freely in the only country they had ever known. By stripping these sugar plantation workers of their citizenship, the Dominican Republic was only further legitimizing the anti-Haitian sentiment that has prevailed in the country for decades. These sentiments have not only been normalized, but formalized into the legal system of the Dominican Republic.

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https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/04/how-nativism-became-the-norm-in-the-dominican-republic.html

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