Dominican Republic’s retroactive apartheid

THE WRITERS Junot Diaz, Julia Alvarez, Mark Kurlansky and Edwidge Danticat wrote a letter to The New York Times in which they firmly opposed Ruling 168-13 by the Dominican Constitutional Court, under which all Dominicans born to undocumented parents are to be stripped of their citizenship. Diaz later told news cameras that he believes Dominican politicians are corrupt.

José Santana, the executive director of the Dominican government's International Commission on Science and Technology, then declared in an e-mail to Diaz that the writer was a "fake and overrated pseudo-intellectual." He later claimed in a letter to the Latino Rebels website, which published his e-mail to Diaz, that the sovereignty of the Dominican Republic is under attack because of criticism of the Constitutional Court ruling.

This is actually not the first time that I've heard the argument about "Dominican sovereignty." One of my childhood friends recently posted a picture on Instagram of a rally of the Red Nacional por la Defensa de la Soberanía Dominicana (National Network for the Defense of Dominican Sovereignty) in support of Ruling 168-13. Different people agreed with her post with comments like: "This isn't about race, it's about sovereignty."

Santana wrote in his letter to Latino Rebels: "Dominican sovereignty is the scapegoat that France and the United States intend to sacrifice in order to get rid of the 'bad conscience' representing the Haitian tragedy, and the anti-Dominicans of the media in our country assist them with enthusiasm in this ominous feast."

Santana goes on to paint a false picture of the relationship between the Dominican Republic and immigrants of Haitian descent. He describes it as one of solidarity when, aside from recent shows of solidarity during natural disasters, a close look at the history of the Dominican-Haitian relationship shows quite the opposite. Nonetheless, I won't dwell on this right now. First, I'm going to point out the irony of this letter and the overall argument that a critique of the Constitutional Court ruling--by anyone--is an attack on Dominican sovereignty.

The World Economic Forum ranks the Dominican Republic last out of 144 countries when it comes to "government waste." Most Dominicans see the government as corrupt--although this may not be true of every single Dominican official, threats like Santana's to challenge Junot Diaz in court for speaking publicly about this corruption are what truly take away from freedom of speech, investigative journalism and sovereignty of the Dominican people.

Protests in 2012 against the government's financial reform package, the so-called "Paquetazo," actually demanded a decrease in government spending rather than the proposed increase in sales taxes and taxes on fuel--especially after it was revealed that government salaries were increasing, with Education Minister Josefina Pimentel's salary rising from $4,660 per month to $7,500.

As the Economist wrote at the time of the protests:

The state hires too many people for non-essential jobs--it has more diplomats in the United States than Brazil and the seven Central American countries combined, and pays them generously. The country's central bank president earns 32 percent more than Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

There's even a term in the country--"trabajo botella"--which basically means people holding a government job who get paid simply for the title, but do nothing. So to Mr. Santana and others attacking Junot Diaz for calling out government's corruption, remember that Dominicans themselves--LOS DOMINICANOS, as Santana wrote, differentiating the words with bold and capital letters in his statement--were in La Plaza de La Bandera in 2012, chanting "¡Ladrón, ladrón, ladrón, ladroncito, ladronazo, ladronazazaso!" Is Santana going to sue them as well?

Santana's letter actually does reveal some truths: The United States and France are largely guilty for the poverty in Haiti. But remember that the U.S. is also culpable for the situation in the Dominican Republic. The U.S. has intervened in the Dominican Republic numerous times, the latest when it backed a coup in 1963 to overthrow Juan Bosch, the first democratically elected president after the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship, because of Bosch's leftist ideals.

The World Bank states that the Dominican Republic has been one of the fastest-growing economies in Latin America lately, yet 40 percent of its population is poor. FORTY PERCENT! Where is all that money from the booming economy going? Why is the Dominican Republic one of the few countries in Latin America where income inequality has actually increased over the last 10 years? If the government didn't have such a strong chokehold on its own people and the United States didn't have such a strong relationship with the Dominican Republic, I bet those numbers would change.

A report by RT shows that foreign investment exists in almost every economic sector in the Caribbean. The truly faithful servant of the United States is the Dominican government, the U.S. being the country's most important partner. This shows not just in the economic relationship between the two, but in the number of Dominicans speaking English online and in the streets, the number of American restaurants in central parts of cities, and the music playing on some radio stations.

If anything, the top court's ruling is an example of the further Americanization of the country in terms of its laws and border policies. A recent article in The Nation exposed the presence of U.S. Border Patrol in the Dominican Republic, where U.S. agents are training Dominicans. Further reinforcement of the border is actually something the United States is exporting--thus, this law isn't something the U.S. government would oppose.

In fact, given the importance of the cheap labor of Haitian immigrants in different sectors--for example, on banana plantations--I would argue that it's corporations that should be regulated for abusing their financial power by systematically forcing Dominican plantation owners to pay their workers less. Just like in the U.S. with undocumented workers, Haitian workers are exploited in the Dominican Republic, and Ruling 168-13 will allow room for even more discrimination. The presence of the U.S. Border Patrol proves the U.S.'s interest in keeping citizens of poor countries from migrating, as the Nation wrote:

It's all about Haiti, one of the poorest countries on the planet. It is a response to fears of the mass movement of desperate, often hungry, people in the U.S. sphere of dominance. It is the manifestation of a new vision of global geopolitics in which human beings in need are to be corralled, their free movement criminalized, and their labor exploited.

By imposing this ruling, the Dominican Republic is giving up its sovereign ability to choose to solidarize with Haitian immigrants, who, like the millions of Dominican immigrants in the U.S. and Puerto Rico (like myself and perhaps Junot Diaz's family), are seeking better lives. As Santana pointed out, France and the U.S. are to blame for Haiti's prevalent poverty, but aligning itself with these imperialist nations is not the answer when the Dominican Republic is still an exploited, developing country itself.

Furthermore, the Dominican Republic is a country with a culture of self-discrimination. Dominicans have lost faith in their government, which over the last few years has changed into a system dominated by two mainstream parties, especially since the deaths of Joaquin Balaguer and Juan Bosch and the decline in popularity of the Partido Reformista Social Cristiano.

In his poem "Hay un Pais en el Mundo," Pedro Mir wrote about corruption and theft of the land, but said that "faltan hombres" can revive that land. Decades after it was written, that poem can still be applied to the Dominican Republic.

Other Latin American countries are moving towards more progressive governments. In Chile, Michelle Bachelet of the Socialist Party was elected president for a second time; in Brazil, Dilma Rousseff of the Workers Party has been president since 2011; in Ecuador, Rafael Correa made headlines for stating that if the U.S. wants to have a military base in the country, Ecuador must be allowed to have a military base in Miami; Bolivia's current leader is Evo Morales is a product of the mass social movements.

Where are the missing men and women of Pedro Mir's poem who will finally revive the power of our beautiful land? When will the Dominican Republic finally see an alternative to the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana and Partido Revolucionario Dominicano?

Arundhati Roy writes in her essay "Democracy: Who is She When She is at Home?" about the rise of fascism in India. She states, "Historically, fascist movements have been fueled by feelings of national disillusionment." Ruling 168-13 is an example of this. At the end of 2012, Dominicans were protesting for change, and in 2013, they were met with a distraction.

To claim that a law that retroactively strips people of their citizenship--I repeat: retroactively--is not somehow tied to the racism that has become inherent in Dominican society is delusional. The Dominican Republic did not gain independence from Spain on February 27, 1844, as many believe--it gained independence from Haiti. Over two previous decades, Haiti imposed heavy taxes on Dominicans, freed the remaining slaves and disallowed white elites from owning land which made many of them move to Puerto Rico.

Thus, since the moment of the Dominican Republic's independence in 1844, the relationship between it and Haiti has been complicated: both countries were victims of larger colonizers: Spain, which tried reoccupying the Dominican Republic, and France, who imposed a very heavy cost on Haitians for winning their freedom. To this list, we may add the massacre during the Trujillo dictatorship on October 1937.

Overall, there is a hatred of negritude in the Dominican Republic. Being called "haitian" for being dark-skinned, for example, is considered an insult. I recently wrote the following on my blog:

One time, when I was probably around 11 years old, I was walking down a busy street in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, with my mother when we saw a Haitian man being dragged by the arm by several men. He was sweaty, scared and clearly trying to run away. If I recall correctly, I believe that he was wearing no shoes, and his chest was showing. I asked my mother what was happening, and she replied nonchalantly "Oh, he probably tried to steal something."

I was later told that he might be beaten up or even raped by those men. Ruling 168-13 is racist, and it relies on racist fear, racist beliefs and a feeling of self-discrimination that Dominicans have for their own blackness. If the Dominican government wants to fight for sovereignty, why not fight for a kind of sovereignty that will provide more room for social reform, better education programs and better protection for workers? Why is sovereignty tied to redefining nationality, rather than reforming society?

Lastly, calling someone anti-Dominican for disagreeing with the government is a form of political bullying, so to those calling Junot Diaz et al anti-Dominican: Check yourselves.

And since y'all love quotes so much, I'll leave you with this: "We are a small country, we can only grow by love, by virtue, by culture, by kindness." --Juan Bosch