Border Crossing Series #1: Migration of people from poor to rich countries will be with us for a long time. Let’s understand the push and pull forces that are at work!
Felicia lives in a world that does not want her. Yet, she is determined to make it on the other side of the border. For all she has endured through life so far, she can rightly call herself a true survivor. She had survived a drunk and power-hungry husband who dislocated her jaws and broke all her front teeth. Yet, she continued to love this man because he was the father of her three kids. Two of them were born in the Dominican Republic during a long sugar cane cutting season. The consumption of the same product for which they were forced to leave their home country will end up causing them pain and grief.
Back in 1995, Salomon decided to follow in the footsteps of many friends, parents from his rural village in the Southwestern part of Haiti. In fact, that trip to the other side of the border was not his first. Under Papa Doc and Baby Doc (Duvalier father and son), he went to the Dominican Republic as a young man. It was the thing to do. He decided to become a ’’bracero, ’’ a hand in the large sugar fields of Sabana de Goya because he wanted to make enough money to build a house and marry his sweetheart. Leaving his village for a country of lots of work was the only way he could reach his dreams. For many weeks, Salomon was mulling over the idea with his father, a veteran of the crossing to the region beyond the Pedernales river, the river separating the two countries. Growing up, he could easily remember the many months he and his siblings wondered whether their father was fine in the hot, searing fields of the Dominican Republic. They easily remembered the stories of large lizards, snakes and other wild animals that they found in the midst of these fields. They also remembered the horror stories of men who fought to get anything. They fought to get spot to lay their tired bodies in a shack at the end of the back-breaking labor day. The images they came to have of these men stayed with them. Their father told them about men who fought to have access to women named, ’’putas de campo.’’ A lot of them ended up having children by them. Each year, a lot of these sugar cane cutters came back to their respective villages with their broken bodies and some spending money which they used to improve the lot of their families. For months, they saved their meagre wages, what is the equivalent of $10 per day if it’s that much. It all depends on many carts of cane they cut per day. Speed is the only thing that can stop them. As the men work in team, the contribution of each one is very valuable. The more they cut, the more money they can make. And the more gifts and dollars they can take back to their villages in Haiti.
The push factors in Haiti are such that most residents of this impoverished side of Hispaniola want to go to the Dominican Republic. Under Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the bracero system became a ’’state business’’ that was regulated such a way that it ended putting large sums into the coffers of high government officials and some important individuals. They signed the contract with the Dominican Sugar companies. Most of them are multinationals whose headquarters are in the United States of America. There is so much distance and a dworld of differences between the US stockholders and those poor workers in this part of the Caribbean. These men who are pushed by misery, high unemployment rate and the rapaciousness of their own government had to produce so much output to be able to make a few dollars in subhuman, inhumane working conditions. A lot of them had to subsist on beans and rice and live like sardines in corrugated shacks covered with tin roofs. In addition to the official presence of that group of braceros, thousands of Haitians have crossed the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic to find work or engage in commercial activities. Many Dominican business people cross over to the Haitian side of the border to trade various commodities which are rare in Haiti. Many Haitian merchants often get shaken and scared by Dominican soldiers posted on the huge border. Many of them often tell tales of exploitation and abuse in the hands of either Dominican soldiers and individuals who continue to resent Haitians for the occupation of their country in the 1940s. Furthermore, brothels run by Dominican business people thrive in Haiti. They are peopled mostly my Dominican women who come to the country to participate in the oldes profession. While Haitians go to the DR to work in sugar cane fields, most Dominicans go ot to Haiti to run businesses such as brothels and socially accepted fields of work. In addition, many Dominican nationalists or the majority of the population don’t want to be identified with their African heritage. They feel happier to connect with this Spanish heritage. It is as if being a Black Dominican such as baseball great Sammy Sosa brings shame. So seeing a lot of Haitians, mostly involved in low paid jobs remind them too much of this part of themselves they want to throw away.
The Dominican Republic may be a paradise for any tourist, but it is not for the Black neighbors, Haitians. They are welcome only to work in sugar cane fields. No rights are granted to them, even to those born on Dominican soil. They don’t get any medical attention and education. It is as if the state wants this group of marginalized individuals to continue to live in abject poverty so their offsprings can be made available to cut more sugar cane. A lot of them try to escape from this hard labor by engaging in other menial jobs in major Dominican cities and tourist areas. They peddle their trinkets, merchandises on the streets. They sell their paintings and souvenirs to rich tourists who visit DR. A lot of them don’t even know of the misery of this group of Dominicans of Haitian or African descent who have been categorically neglected by their own government. Over the years, a lot of resorts and other developments that attract foreign tourists willing to pay exorbitant fees to have fun in the Caribbean have been erected. So the service industry is booming. Once these fun seekers arrive at the airports, they are shuttled away to the resorts with no time to meet the real people and the sugar cane laborers whose conditions are decried by international organizations.