This presentation took place during a December 2, 2021, webinar. Toward Freedom has 69 years of experience publishing independent reports and analyses that document the struggles for liberation of the majority of the world’s people. Now, with a new editor, Julie Varughese, at its helm, what does the future look like for Toward Freedom and for independent media? Toward Freedom‘s board of directors formally welcomed Julie as the new editor. She reported back on her time covering Nicaragua’s critical presidential election. New contributors Danny Shaw and Jacqueline Luqman also spoke on their work for Toward Freedom as it relates to the value of independent media. Danny touched on the rising Pink Tide in Latin America while Jacqueline discussed the role of the Pentagon in Hollywood.
Many Nicaraguans expressed support for their country’s voting process on November 7 as 2.8 million people cast their votes for as many as 6 national parties / credit: Julie Varughese
This article is the first in a series on Nicaragua’s elections.
Just three days after Sandinista revolutionary Daniel Ortega won his fourth term as Nicaragua’s president with 75.92 percent of the vote, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the RENACER Act.
An acronym for the “Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act of 2021,” RENACER slaps sanctions on Ortega government officials, attempts to restrict multilateral financing to Nicaragua, monitors Nicaragua’s relationship with Russia, punishes the country for alleged human-rights violations and targets reported corruption inside Nicaragua, among other items.
Then on November 12, 25 member states of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) Permanent Council voted in favor of a resolution that criticized the elections as not free and fair and urged further action.
The OAS resolution and fresh U.S. sanctions, as well as social media platforms suspending known Ortega supporters a week before the elections and corporate media outlets inaccurately reporting on Ortega make clear the United States is the primary contradiction in the Nicaraguan people’s struggle for liberation.
A view of Victoriano Potosme’s farm in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, Nicaragua. Peasants like Potosme won land ownership when Sandinistas took power in 1979 / credit: Julie Varughese
Social Markers Improve
Ortega, a militant in the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (the Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN for short), was first elected president in 1984. His defeat in 1989 to neoliberal Violeta Chamorro, a scion of the landowning class, kicked off 16 years of neoliberal rule. During that time, Sandinista reforms were rolled back and social outcomes plummetted. That is why the era from 1990 to 2006 is referred to as the Neoliberal Period.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in 2013 / credit: Fernanda LeMarie/Cancillería del Ecuador
When Ortega was re-elected in 2006, the maternal mortality rate—a key marker of a country’s well-being–was 92.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. By 2020, that number dropped 60 percent to 37.5 deaths per 100,000 live births because of programs that include “maternity homes” to monitor pregnant women close to their due date. Other improvements include a 41 percent decrease in poverty, 100 percent electrification, 100 percent mobile-phone access, 85 percent internet accessibility, as well as a 100 percent increase in the amount of renewable energy the state generates. A free-trade zone employs 120,000 Nicaraguans, who work for foreign companies. Those corporations are required to abide by Nicaragua’s laws as well as respect the environment and workers’ rights. All of this means few people leave the country, but many have arrived from neighboring neoliberal Honduras.
Farmers Defend Nicaragua
Victoriano Potosme once labored under the orders of “latifundistas,” white plantation owners in Nicaragua.
“We were slaves under them,” he said while standing on his mountaintop farm in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, about an hour from the capital of Managua. There, he and his family grow award-winning fruits and have developed an internationally acclaimed organic fertilizer called BIO Buena Vista.
Victoriano Potosme (left), pictured with female relatives, speaks to a group of international visitors about the impact of the Sandinista Revolution on his family’s life as they farm on land seized from white wealthy landowners in San José de los Rios in Ticuantepe, Nicaragua / credit: Julie Varughese
For campesinos like Potosme, the November 7 elections were critical. After the Sandinista Revolution, peasants like Potosme were able to own the land they worked because of reforms that put 235,000 acres into their hands.
“If we go back to the neoliberal period, it would take us back 150 years,” he said a few days before casting his ballot.
The Human Rights Question
Biden released a statement on Election Day, citing the Inter-American Democratic Charter as justification for intervening in Nicaragua’s affairs. That charter was adopted on September 11, 2001, by the Organization of American States (OAS), a multilateral body the United States slapped together in the early 20th century as part of its efforts to control the Western Hemisphere. Per the Monroe Doctrine, the United States considers the rest of the hemisphere its “backyard.” After years of dormancy, that colonial term re-emerged during the Trump administration.
Then after the election, the OAS also chimed in.
“We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua,” tweeted OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro. “I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.”
We reject the results of the illegitimate elections in #Nicaragua.
I urge countries of the OAS to respond to this clear violation of the Democratic Charter during its #OASassembly.
The OAS General Assembly held its 51st regular session this past week in Guatemala. The organization could not be reached for comment as of press time.
But numerous commentators have pointed out the hypocrisy of the United States and the OAS using terms like “democracy,” “self-determination” and “rights.”
Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) National Organizer Ajamu Baraka, who has taught U.S. history in universities, recently wrote an analysis in which he said all settler-colonial states like the United States have criminality at their core because they were born out of “systematic, terroristic and genocidal violence against Indigenous populations.” The United States now is the largest empire in recorded human history.
“Democracy and human rights are no more than ideological props to obscure the real interests and intentions of the rulers and to build domestic support for whatever criminal activity the state has embarked on,” Baraka went on to write. (Full disclosure: This reporter coordinates a wing of BAP.)
Killer Sanctions
Ordinary Nicaraguans understand the pain of sanctions.
“They are going to kill all the farmers, who dedicate themselves on a daily basis to life, to building, to working the land,” Jhaniors, a youth organizer in the Managua department, told a journalist who traveled with this reporter on a recent Friends of the ATC delegation. “The sanctions don’t help—they kill.”
Today Biden signed the “RENACER ACT” that sanctions the Nicaragua gov’t. Sanctions kill ppl. Over 40,000 ppl died from sanctions in Venezuela. How is sanctioning Nicaragua going to help the ppl?
Listen to Jhaniors, a youth organizer in Nicaragua speak on how sanctions will hurt: pic.twitter.com/iPU393viuH
Farmer Saul Potosme of Ticuantepe was positive the FSLN party would win the November 7 election / credit: Julie Varughese
Potosme’s son, Saul, said when the U.S.-funded, right-wing attempt at a coup took place in 2018, his family lost out on the opportunity to sell 30,000 to 40,000 pineapples. Participants in the attempted coup had blocked the path for trade to take place unless farmers paid up.
“We had no way of sustaining our families,” Saul said as he handled a bottle of his family’s award-winning organic fertilizer, BIO Buena Vista. “Many farmers here within this community rose up to get rid of the golpistas because we were sick of the coup attempt.”
“Golpistas” means “coupmongers” in Spanish.
The farmers traveled an hour to Managua to confront the coupmongers.
“It was a hard fight,” Saul said. “The reality is farmers are the ones who sustain a nation.”
After the coup attempt, the Ortega government implemented a program to create alternative ways for Nicaraguan farmers, young people, and women start and sustain businesses.
Nicaraguans on Election Day
In the run-up to Election Day, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the “sham of an election.” Then major social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter disappeared the accounts of pro-Sandinista activists a week before the elections.
Voters in the city of Chinandega display their freshly inked thumbs, which indicates they recently cast their ballots / credit: Julie Varughese
Despite the saber-rattling and repression, more than 2.8 million Nicaraguans cast votes in a process that appeared more organized than what this reporter has witnessed in various jurisdictions in the United States. Nicaraguans took between five and 10 minutes to vote, while U.S. voters have had to stand on lines in the sweltering sun for as long as 11 hours, as seen during the 2020 presidential election. While U.S. voters must figure out how to get to the polls between long commutes, jobs and other obligations, Nicaraguans are given the day off. Plus, Nicaraguan college students get a week off to travel to their home departments to vote.
Some people are confused about how many parties/alliances are competing in Nicaragua’s elections today:
There are 7 options in total, but 1 party is regional, only in the Caribbean Coast (which has autonomy)
Support for Ortega’s party, the FSLN, was overwhelming on Election Day, resulting in an almost 76 percent victory, with 65 percent of people voting.
“I voted for Commandante Daniel Ortega for the benefit of the community,” said Raul Navarretto, 64, as he walked out of a voting center in Chinandega, a Sandinista stronghold three hours north of the capital of Managua.
Nineteen-year-old Arlen Rueda, who strolled a toddler out of a voting center, also voted for Ortega, saying she supported the government’s efforts to provide food to its population, among other endeavors.
Armando Casa Y Padilla, 75, would not divulge to this reporter for whom he voted. “Es una secreta.” Yet, he valued the voting process. “Only people can make democracy happen.”
I’m on Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Garifuna, Creole, Mestizo, Miskito managed polling with all candidates on ballot. Strong support for government in formerly neglected area. Education, transportation, healthcare improvements given as reasons.@Blacks4Peace#Nicaraguapic.twitter.com/0IQGhqVBK0
There is so much propaganda and fake news in the corporate media trying to discredit Nicaragua’s elections. I visited 4 voting centers, and there were a lot of people voting in a very efficient, quick, and transparent process.
Election night, Sandinistas inundate the streets to celebrate the victoria of the FSLN. Here they celebrate as the preliminary results come in. pic.twitter.com/6C3KB6fSgC
While the corporate media spoke of Nicaraguan candidates and journalists being thrown in jail, the only people who were actually detained include “criminals, drug traffickers and golpistas,” according to Fausto Torrez, who handles international relations for the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or ATC for short), an independent farm workers organization, as well as for the Coordinadora de Latinoamericana Organizaciones del Campo (the Latin American Coordinator of Rural Associations, or CLOC for short). CLOC is made up of 84 rural worker organizations in 18 Latin American countries.
Despite what the Western corporate media has reported, “pre-candidate” is not an official designation in Nicaragua. Those who wish to run for office must do so under the banner of one of six registered national parties, five of which are anti-Sandinista.
Many media outlets are opposed to the Ortega government and yet are allowed to operate. For example, the Chamorro family still operates La Prensa, a newspaper.
“Here, we hear from people who are against the government, but we don’t accept people taking U.S. money for coups,” Torrez said.
The Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation accepted $7 million between 2014 and this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Nicaragua has been cracking down on U.S. funded operations that seek to subvert their progress. That includes groups who were involved in the 2018 coup attempt that killed more than 300 Nicaraguans, most of whom were Sandinistas. Plus, this past September, Cristiana Chamorro, the foundation’s founder and daughter of former right-wing president Violeta Chamorro, was arrested for money laundering.
“In other places, they go to college and get drunk in financial paradises,” said ATC Secretary-General Edgar Garcia. “But here, they are in jail.”
This is the first in a series of articles on Nicaragua’s November 7 elections. The second article can be read here.
Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom. She spent a week traveling through Nicaragua as part of a delegation organized by the Associación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers’ Association, or the ATC for short), an independent farm workers’ organization.
A Dominican soldier stands by a 118-mile border wall the Dominican Republic built to keep out Haitian migrants / credit: La Prensa Latina
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis and was originally published in Eurasia Review.
On December 16, two Haitian embassy diplomats—Williamson Jean and Jackson Lorrain—were arrested on their way from the Dominican Republic’s capital of Santo Domingo to a farm in the Monte Cristi province, where they were planning to deliver 11 passports for the hundreds of Haitian workers awaiting their arrival. The Dominican military confiscated the passports and computer equipment used to produce personal identification cards—all of which belong to the Haitian state. The arrest took place in spite of Jean and Lorrain showing diplomatic identification, the authenticity of which was later confirmed by a top Haitian consulate official, Francois Guerrier.
These incidents have occurred against a backdrop of rising tensions between the two countries, with the Dominican Republic tightening border surveillance and implementing a series of measures to curb irregular migration from Haiti.
Colonial Exploitation
Present-day hostilities between the countries that occupy the island of Hispaniola are deeply rooted in the historical soil of racism and imperialism. The 1697 Treaty of Ryswick formalized French control over the western third of Hispaniola—at that time a Spanish asset—under the name of Saint-Domingue. In 1797, Spain ceded the entire island to France. A valuable spigot of wealth, Saint-Domingue supplied two-thirds of the overseas trade of France and was the greatest individual market for the European slave trade. It was a greater source of income for its owners than the whole of Britain’s thirteen North American colonies combined.
The half-a-million slaves who propped up the dazzling opulence of the French commercial bourgeoisie rebelled in August 1791—two years after the French Revolution and its ripple effects in Saint-Domingue. Collective British, Spanish and French efforts to crush the rebellion set off a war that lasted 13 years and concluded with the humiliating defeat of imperial powers. William Pitt the Younger and Napoleon
Bonaparte together lost some 50,000 troops in the campaign to restore slavery and the elaborate structures of exploitation. The defeat of the latter’s expedition in 1803 resulted in the establishment of the state of Haiti on January 1, 1804. Frightened by Haiti’s establishment of a black republic resolutely opposed to the barbarism of European civilization, Dominican elites developed a national identity that defined Dominicans as white, Catholic and culturally Hispanic, in contradistinction to Haitians, whom they characterized as black, animist and culturally African. “Antihaitianismo,” or anti-Haitian racism, became stronger with Haiti’s occupation of the Dominican Republic, which lasted from 1822 until 1844.
President Jean-Pierre Boyer—under whom Hispaniola was unified—feared the French would use Dominican territory as a base to try to re-conquer Haiti. His decision also followed a constitutional ideal: Merger of the whole island in the face of foreign aggressions. Though Haiti’s occupation was welcomed positively by poor Dominicans, the Dominican ruling class disliked being ruled by people they considered inferior. Thus, soon after Boyer was overthrown in 1843 and General Charles Rivière-Hérard took power, a small group of activists in Santo Domingo overturned unified rule. Rivière-Hérard tried to oppose the separation and sent troops eastward, but he was more focused on the consolidation of power at home and could not succeed due to domestic instabilities. On February 27, 1844, the Dominican rebels drove the last Haitian troops from the capital, securing independence.
The Myth of the “Indio”
The fight for independence among Dominicans was heavily tainted by anti-Haitian myths. One such myth concerned the Dominican “Indio.” Even though the indigenous Taíno people were mostly killed after the Spanish conquest, Dominican leaders insisted Dominicans’ ancestors were Indigenous and Spanish, not enslaved African laborers. Why were Indigenous people chosen as the central symbol of Dominican identity? Taínos are neither white nor Black—an attribute capable of accommodating the ambiguity of the Dominican mulatto, a slang term for a person of mixed European and African ancestry. Battle lines were now drawn according to this racial schema—the Indio being pitted against the Haitian, who came to be regarded as the real Black.
These conflicts intensified over the subsequent decades, preparing a context of disunity favorable to the imperial project of the United States, which threatened both nations of Hispaniola with the possibility of intervention if they did not get “upheavals and banditry” under control.
Using these pretexts, the U.S. empire invaded the Caribbean island. First in 1915 in Haiti, then entering the Dominican Republic in 1916. The 8-year-long occupation of the Dominican Republic sparked the creation of a comprador class—local people who served as a subsidiary to the foreign corporations that owned Dominican sugar plantations through their dominance in the National City Bank of New York, which managed the country’s finances. A social architecture as rigidly exploitative as this required an authoritarian government—an imperative fulfilled by the Guardia Nacional Dominicana (Dominican National Guard, or GND). The U.S. Marines instructed Rafael Leonidas Trujillo to lead the GND in 1918 and made him commander-in-chief of the National Army in 1927. In 1930, with support from his military, Trujillo supported a coup against then-President Horacio Vasquez.
Under the ruthless dictatorship of Trujillo—which lasted until 1961—antihaitianismo solidified. In 1937—during what is now called the Parsley Massacre—Trujillo aimed to whiten the Dominican Republic by expelling Haitians. Trujillo, who was known to lighten his own skin with makeup, ordered the deaths of those who refused his order to leave. These Haitians were recognized by their inability to pronounce “perejil,” Spanish for “parsley.” Most Haitians could not make the Spanish “r” sound as the French “r” was different. This massacre killed nearly 30,000 people. These mass killings were followed by the production of propaganda in favor of an anti-Haitian ideology. Dominican history books started over-emphasizing the Haitian occupation—the demonization of the dark-skinned “other” became par for the course.
In 1962, Juan Bosch ran for president under the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), inaugurating the first democratic government of the post-dictatorial era. Seven months later, he was overthrown by a coalition of the oligarchs, the old Trujillist army and the Catholic Church. Faced with a popular revolt, the putschists solicited the support of the United States, which sent its military in 1965, killing 5,000 people. After the defeat of the democratic revolution, Joaquin Balaguer—a disciple of Trujillo—led a repressive government. An anti-communist flunky of the United States, as well as a close collaborator of François Duvalier’s dictatorial regime in Haiti, Balaguer’s 12-year reign was responsible for incarcerating, torturing and murdering 6,000 people.
In the late 1970s, the PRD came to office. After that, the reins of the national government alternated among the PRD, the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) and, briefly, the Social Christian Reform Party (PRSC)—associated with Balaguer.
Antihaitianismo Under Neoliberalism
While the PLD became largely dominant, the PRD came to represent the country’s main official opposition. With the growing impact of neoliberal globalization, the progressive legacy of the struggle against Trujillismo and Balaguerismo was abandoned in favor of a rightward shift toward anti-Haitian Hispanophilic identities. In 2010, the formerly center-left PLD called a constitutional convention, largely to exclude a new group from the birthright-citizenship clause: The children of anyone “residing illegally in Dominican territory.”
The injunction was aimed at Haitians and served as a blueprint for the Constitutional Court’s regressive ruling on September 23, 2013. It declared the nearly 500,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic were illegal, thus subject to deportation. The ruling extended to the descendants of Haitian immigrants who came to the Dominican Republic as early as 1929. Systematic stigmatization has enabled the Dominican bourgeoisie to force Haitians into conditions of semi-slavery on sugar plantations, to deport tens of thousands of Haitians without a court hearing, and to deny citizenship and access to public services to Dominican-born children of Haitian parents. In the en masse expulsions of Haitians, some dark-skinned Dominican citizens have been identified as Haitian and deported to Haiti without being given a chance to prove citizenship. This is emblematic of a wider problem facing the Black and mulatto masses of the Dominican Republic: To either assume the Indio identity and Hispanic culture, or to be ostracized from the body politic.
In 2014, when former president Hipólito Mejía left the PRD to form the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), Luis Abinader—a 52-year-old businessman with no previous experience in public office—jumped on the bandwagon. In 2020, he was elected president, ending the 16-year dominance of the PLD. Dominicans of Haitian descent—who make up 7.3 percent of the population—had placed their trust in the administration, hoping it would put an end to their condition of statelessness.
Abinader, however, has continued to deport thousands of Haitians. He also has begun constructing a 118-mile border wall between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The estimated cost is over $100 million. Taking into account the negative impact of the pandemic on tourism, construction and the flow of remittances, the erection of a xenophobic wall should be the last thing on Abinader’s agenda. The government’s continued maintenance of such an exclusionary project indicates it is fundamentally anti-people in nature, using antihaitianismo to deflect the public’s attention from its destructive, market-oriented economic policies.
Yanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Children in 2010 in a camp site in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti. At the time, 4,000 displaced Haitians resettled at the site, collaboratively built and maintained by the International Organization for Migration, ShelterBox and civil defense forces from the Dominican Republic / credit: Sophia Paris / United Nations
Correction: The event in Ciudad Juan Bosch took place in May.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic—Manuel Dandré recounted a case of the injustice suffered by Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent.
Haitian parents of two girls had permanent residency in the Dominican Republic. Both children were Dominicans because they met the constitutional criteria that their parents be in regular migratory status at the moment of their birth in Dominican territory.
“In spite of this, the girls were detained,” Dandré, a lawyer, told this reporter. “The father had to go on a motorcycle to catch up with the bus that was transporting them.” With the intervention of United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and UN-affiliated International Organization For Migration (IOM), the deportation was prevented at the border.
Unfortunately, that is but one case where a family was not broken apart. From January to November 2022, UNICEF had counted more than 1,800 unaccompanied children expelled to Haiti from the Dominican Republic, often without documents to prove that they were Haitians. In the midst of this situation, Dandré provides legal assistance through two organizations that assist Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, the Sociocultural Movement of Haitian Workers (MOSCTHA) and the Jacques Viau Network.
A record-breaking 154,333 Haitian immigrants were expelled in 2022. That’s more than triple the yearly average of the period between 2017 and 2021. The Dominican government’s campaign of mass deportations is the latest episode in what human-rights advocates, and social and political activists, describe as a strategy to deepen racial discrimination.
A Dominican soldier stands by a 118-mile border wall the Dominican Republic built to keep out Haitian migrants / credit: La Prensa Latina
Deportations Continue Unabated
United Nations officials had called in November for an end to the mass expulsions of Haitian citizens. However, Dominican President Luis Abinader responded the deportations would not only continue, but would be accelerated. Abinader also issued decree 688-22, which creates a special police unit to target immigrants and orders the immediate expulsion of immigrants living on state or privately owned lands. This definition coincides with the reality of the Bateyes, communities established in sugarcane regions for migrant Haitian workers and their families.
On Nov. 19, the U.S. embassy issued a travel alert according to which travelers to the Dominican Republic “reported being delayed, detained, or subject to heightened questioning at ports of entry and in other encounters with immigration officials based on their skin color.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stopped the entry of raw sugar and sugar products produced by Central Romana Corporation, which operates in the eastern part of the country, stating it had found indicators of forced labor.
The Dominican Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ response stressed that the “humanitarian, social and political” crisis in Haiti “seriously affects the national security of the Dominican Republic.”
“The Dominican government would never have imagined such serious insinuations about our country, whose population evidences in its skin color a wide melting pot of races,” added the official note.
Central Romana, owned by the Cuban-American Fanjul family, replied that CBP’s remarks “do not reflect the policies and practices of Central Romana.”
Displaced Haitians not yet assigned individual tents share in 2010 a large tent house at a camp site in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti / credit: Sophia Paris / United Nations
Extorting Relatives of Detainees
Dandré, born in 1960, is himself one of the more than 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent affected by a denationalization policy initiated in 2004, when the migration law defined immigrants without visas as persons “in transit,” to exclude their children from acquiring Dominican nationality at birth. This policy culminated in 2013 with Constitutional Court ruling 168-13, which retroactively applied the criteria of the 2004 General Law of Migration to all born after 1929. Widespread international condemnation ensued. After litigation, Dandré regained documents certifying his Dominican citizenship.
Dandré told this reporter about a 16-year-old girl who was detained by the police and taken to the immigration detention center in the town of Haina, on the outskirts of Santo Domingo, where she was held for nine days. The law prohibits the detention of minors, pregnant women and elderly people in immigration proceedings, but such violations of the law are frequent, he said.
“The Haina detention center is overcrowded and in terribly unsanitary conditions,” Dandré explained. “If a detained person has relatives who bring food, the officers demand payments to deliver it—they extort them.”
When it was imminent that the court would order the release of the girl, she was handed over to another institution, the National Council for Adolescence and Childhood, which carried out her expulsion to Haiti.
“She should never have been taken to Haina, where most of the detainees are men,” Dandré pointed out.
Two months after arriving at Las Matas de Farfán in the Dominican Republic’s southwest to earn a living as a construction worker, Haitian Joel Lolo was shot in the back of the head by migration officer Robinson Fernelis Piña, according to local press reports, during a warrantless raid of this house he rented / credit: Vladimir Fuentes
‘Dehumanization’ of Haitian People
Ana Belique is one of the young leaders of the Movimiento Reconocido, which fights for the restitution of Dominican nationality to the people affected by ruling 168-13.
“In 2004, the new Migration Law was made and, in 2010, the Constitution was changed. Both changes are strategically designed to limit the rights of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic,” Belique pointed out.
A statement signed by Movimiento Reconocido and dozens of Dominican and Haitian organizations describes this strategy as the imposition of systematic racial discrimination, warning about the risks of ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Belique has first-hand knowledge of cases of foreigners who have suffered discrimination because they “look Haitian.” She mentions Caribbean and African exchange students, as well as the case of two Black U.S. citizens besieged in May by neo-Nazis and National Police officers in Ciudad Juan Bosch, a suburb in the eastern part of Santo Domingo.
“What worries me most about the current campaign of mass deportations is the dehumanization against Haitian people,” Belique added.
On Dec. 2, representatives of social organizations met with Dominican Attorney General Miriam German.
Among the complaints they presented regarding human rights violations against the immigrant community were the murders of Joel Lolo and Delouise Estimable. Lolo, a 18-year-old construction worker, was shot in the head by an immigration agent during a warrantless raid on his home in Las Matas de Farfan in March, while Delouise was beaten to death in a truck in the northern province of Valverde in July.
Little more than a week later, an illegal raid took place of the offices of the Dominico-Haitian Women’s Movement (MUDHA), one of the organizations represented in the meeting with the Attorney General. In a joint statement, social organizations denounced that raiding agents wore military intelligence uniforms.
Retired Haitian sugarcane worker Ephesiel Bonel (left) shows his worker card from formerly state-owned Río Haina Sugar Mill. Old worker cards are often the only identification retired sugarcane workers possess. On right is another retired Haitian sugarcane worker, Yega Fabián / credit: Vladimir Fuentes
‘To This Day, I Am Without a Pension’
Meanwhile, thousands of Haitian sugarcane workers who arrived in the country between the 1960s and 1970s, like Belique and Dandré’s parents, have organized in the Union of Sugarcane Workers (UTC) to demand the payment of their pensions. Around 15,000 sugarcane workers have been waiting, many of them taking to the streets for years. Some have passed away without the state recognizing their claim. On Dec. 7, they rallied again in front of the Ministry of Labor in Santo Domingo, to demand an end to forced labor in Central Romana.
“I joined in 1972, I worked in Altagracia, in the State Sugar Council,” recounted retired sugarcane worker Yega Fabián. “When I went to the sugar mill they gave me a machete, a sack and sent me to cut cane. I applied for the pension in 2012. To this day, I am without a pension. I have six children and 13 grandchildren. All of them have an identification card, but not me.”
The protest, to the traditional cry of “No sugarcane workers, no sugar,” was marked by news that another retired Haitian sugarcane worker, Lico Alerté, had died early that morning.
Alerté never received his pension.
Vladimir Fuentes is the pen name of a freelance journalist based in the Dominican Republic.
