Tucked high in the mountains near the Jimaní-Malpasse border crossing is an ecological campground that caters to birdwatchers. Although this part of the border is very dry and barren, the mountains are lush and green.

In the video below, Kate describes the birds that can be seen in the area:

The camp itself is located in the town of Puerto Escondido

The camp has both tents and basic screened rooms as well as showers and toilets. Kate can either arrange to have your meals cooked for you or you can bring your own food. It is a wonderful way to experience a very special part of the borderlands.

Kate provides basic tents with pads under a thatched roof

The camp has a nice dining area and Kate can provide meals

For more information, visit Kate’s website: www.todytours.com.

If you are interested in seeing more of the border, visit our Get Involved page and join us in creating opportunities in the Dominican-Haitian borderlands.

The border at Elias Pina-Belladere

Daniel O’Neil

Transporting goods across the Dominican-Haitian border is a mess. Large trucks are queued from the border far down the road into the Dominican Republic. There is no clear process to the inspections. Haitian market women stream through the border with goods on their heads. Little documentation is provided to anyone.

Whereas Dominican airports quickly and efficiently process large numbers of people, the border is a mess. This mess and confusion is also a significant source of conflicts. Both Haitian and Dominican exporters complain of arbitrary fees, excessive delays, and expropriation of merchandise. Haitian market women complain of their treatment by Dominican authorities and Dominican exporters complain of their treatment by Haitian ones. The arbitrariness of the treatment stems from the lack of clear rules governing cross-border trade. Although both countries have clear rules for imports, these rules were written for the ports in the main cities and require inspections and approvals that are not available in the border–this is the result in the odd process through which the border went from being a wall to being porous. Without clear policy guidance and in violation of their own laws, each country has developed procedures to allow for goods to flow through their border. These procedures are neither documented nor fixed. This lack of transparency and consistency creates confusion for importers and makes it easy for officials to solicit bribes.

Last year, we convinced the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to give us a grant to study this mess. We told them that we wanted to find out the rules that govern imports and exports on both sides so that we can publish them in Creole and Spanish. We figured if everyone knew what the rules were; it would be easier to insist on fair treatment. USAID agreed and we conducted the study. Rather than finding a clear set of rules that we could publish, we found a complicated set of requirements which could not be fulfilled by the officials in the border region.

On the Dominican side, we found that most of the goods that Haitians are importing are prohibitied by different rule:

• Animals: Can only be imported through the airport and seaport in Santo Domingo as per law 43-55.
• Fruits: Can only be imported through either Santo Domingo or Puerto Plata as per resolution 84-96 from the Secretary of State for Agriculture (SEA).
• Vegetables: Prohibited except with specific authorization from the SEA which is no available in the border.
• Beans and chickpeas: Prohibited except with specific authorization from the SEA which is no available in the border.
• Used textiles (re-exported from the United States): Prohibited as per law 458-73.
• Rice (re-exported from the United States and elsewhere): Prohibited except with specific authorization from the SEA, which is not available in the border.

The Dominican government also prohibits the re-export of fuel. The full report can be downloaded by clicking here (PDF document in Spanish).

The Haitian government does not have specific laws that ban certain products. Instead, the process for clearing customs is very complicated and requires many approvals that are not available in the border. They also require that payment be made only at the Banque de la République d’Haiti which does not have any offices in the borderlands.

We went back to our donor and said that we had a problem. We couldn’t publish a simple guide to importing and exporting across the Haitian-Dominican border because too much of the commerce is illegal. Rather than helping to facilitate cross-border trade, our study would provide ammunition for officials seeking bribes.

As we discussed our findings with our donor, the Trade Office of the Organization of American States, and representatives from both governments; we came to realize that the path towards transparent trade will be a complicated one. Both countries will need to revise their own laws and regulations to create a workable structure that could be implemented at the border. However, before they can revise their laws, both countries need to understand the current flow of goods across the border and to decide how they wish to manage it.

Improving management of commerce is a win-win situation for both countries. The governments’ should be able to recover more customs duties from a larger flow of legitimate goods. Exporters should be able to export more efficiently. Consumers in both countries would be better protected by a better phytosanitary controls. Finally, by reducing the amount of legitimate goods that are smuggled  across the border, the officials in both countries will be better able to focus on the smuggling that threatens national security—that of drugs and weapons.

In my next series of posts, I will explore how the border currently works, what goods are imported and exported, and finally the steps that both countries would need to take to establish fair and transparent rules for managing cross-border commerce.

We are helping the Haitian government to build a new complex at the Belladere-Elias Pina border that will allow Haitian officials to properly supervise this border crossing

New flyer from the mobile telephone company Orange promoting their service to Haiti

Today was an odd day for news on relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On one hand, the reporting of interview that the Secretary General of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, gave to a local  newspaper focused on the “heavy weight” that Haitian migration imposed on the Dominican Republic (link to story in Spanish). On the other hand, Haitian and Dominican business leaders jointly announced a plan to increase binational cooperation.

However, my favorite item of the day was the flyer that the mobile phone company, Orange, is handing out in the Dominican border towns (shown above) that highlights their promotion of cheap phone calls to Haiti–”You can call Haiti for the same price as a local call.” This is quite a change from the normal pricing which has phone calls to Haiti at four times the cost of a local call. Not only is this a great message of solidarity, it is also accompanied by a great image.

Daniel J. O’Neil

The border gate at the Dajabon-Ouanaminthe border crossing. Photo: Ciudades y Fronteras

Following the signature of the 1936 border treaty, the Dominican President, Rafael Truijillo, began tightening restrictions on Haitians in the Dominican Republic and stepped up deportations in an effort to reduce the number of Haitians. He visited the border region in August and September 1937, and concluded that his policy was not working. On October 2, 1937, he gave the order that resulted in the massacre of tens of thousands of Haitians in the borderlands (Eric Paul Roorda, The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 131). This massacre is brilliantly portrayed in Edwidge Danticat’s haunting fictional narrative, The Farming of Bones.

President Truijillo then began a policy of “Dominicanizing” and strengthening the border. He created new provinces with the border towns as the provincial capitals (see the table below), built a string of military observation points along the border, and providing incentives for Dominicans to live in the border region.

The origin of the main Dominican border provinces. Source: http://www.jmarcano.com/mipais/indice.html#indice

The importance of a strong border region is the third section of the 1955 Constitution with phrasing which has been repeated in every subsequent revision of the constitution including the current 2002 version:

SECTION III: Economic and Social Regime in the Border

Art. 7.—It is declared of supreme and permanent national interest the economic and social development of the territory of the Republic the length of the border line, as with the diffusion of the culture and the religious tradition of the Dominican people. The agricultural and industrial improvement of the border rivers will continue, regulated based on the principals consecrated in the article 6 of the Protocol of Revision of the 1936 Treaty of the Border of 1929 and the article 10 of the Treaty of Peace, Amnesty, and Arbitrage of 1929.[1]
(source: http://www.consultapopular.gov.do/reformas-anteriores.html ):

On the Haitian side, the government did little to reorganize the territories to reflect the new division of the island. As a result, the Department of the West is on the eastern side of the country below the Department of the Northeast and above the Department of the Southeast. None of the border towns are departmental capitals and, with a brief exception in the 1940’s, there was little government investment or focus on the border region until recently.

Map of the Haitian Departments, source: www.geology.com

Although Haiti did not reorganize its geographic divisions, President Dumarais Estimé (Haitian President from 1946-1950) did start the process of strengthening the border in 1948:

Another Estimé project was the rebuilding of the border town of Belladère opposite Elias Pina, the town that Trujillo had rebuilt on the Dominican side of the border. Belladère was on the main road from Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Republic.  At a cost of $600,000 Estimé paved the main street, put in a new hotel and new homes, supplied them with electricity and drinking water.  It apparently made Trujillo unhappy to see such progress next door. In opposition, he rerouted Dominican traffic through the town of Jimaní, a more southern border exit, and Belladère was left isolated. (Diderich and Burt, p62)

Belladère remained a relic of its former glory until 2008 when the Haitian government undertook an ambitious project to repave the town streets, restore electricity, and rebuild the public buildings.

After the fall of the Trujillos in 1962 and the election of Juan Bosch as President in the Dominican Republic, anti-Duvalier forces began using the Dominican Republic as a base in their plots against the Haitian President. On April 26, 1963, the year that President Francois Duvalier’s term was to end, a former supporter of Duvalier shot the bodyguards and driver of Duvalier’s two children, Jean-Claude (age 11) and Simone (age 14) while the children were being dropped off at school. One of the suspects of the shooting took asylum in the Dominican Ambassador’s house. President Duvalier sent his Presidential guard after the suspects. The guard and some Tonton Macoutes forced their way into the Dominican Embassy and then into the yard of the Dominican Ambassador’s residence and stayed (Diderich and Burt, p192-205).

The following day, President Bosch issued an ultimatum to President Duvalier stating that if he did not withdraw the Haitian forces from Dominican embassy, the Dominican Republic would invade Haiti. Over the next several days as tensions increased, President Bosch worked with his army and air force to develop an invasion plan. The OAS was called in to investigate. While the investigation went on, the war fever died down in the Dominican Republic and the invasion never happened. Anti-Duvalier forces continued to work out of the Dominican Republic through the rest of President Bosch’s term and the Dominican civil war until the former Trujilloista, Joaquín Balaguer, won the Presidential elections in 1966.

From 1966 until the fall of the Duvalier government in 1986, the border remained open to trade, but little trade occurred. Although there were no paved roads to the border on the Haitian side, both countries maintained customs and migration facilities at the main border crossings. In an effort to stimulate trade, the governments of Presidents Antonio Guzmán Fernández and Jean-Claude Duvalier negotiated a free trade agreement in 1979. This agreement was ratified by the Dominican parliament in 1981, but never by the Haitian parliament.

Summary of the Commercial Agreement between the Dominican Republic and Haiti (December 13, 1979)

Article 1 states; “The two parties have decided to create, under this present agreement, a free trade zone between both countries for products that originate in their respective territories.” The accord provides for the elimination of quotas and the exoneration on all import taxes. (Art. 2)

The agreement applies only to products that are totally produced within the country of origin (Haiti or the Dominican Republic) or those that have an added value of at least 35% (Art. 8 ) with the exception of the production within free trade zones (Art. 5). Additionally, each country has excluded a short list of products. For the Dominican Republic, these were ceramics, refined salt, white cement, and pharmaceutical products. For Haiti, these were sisal wire, fruit juice (guyaba, pineapple, and mango) and artisanal products (except textiles). The agreement also prohibits the re-exportation of products that benefited from these exemptions (Art. 10).

The agreement stipulates that the commercial operations must follow each country’s procedures and requirements for customs, diplomatic, health and any other non-tariff barriers (Art. 7).

During this period, trade flows was roughly equal in both directions. For example, in 1983, the Dominican Republic exported to Haiti $US 5.4 million and imported more than $US 11 million. (Frontera en Transición, Dilla, 2007). During the collapse of the Duvalier regime in 1986, the Dominican closed the border for security reasons.

On March 13, 1987, the Foreign Ministers from the Haitian and Dominican governments signed an agreement [2] to reopen the Haitian-Dominican border with a promise to promote the open border “in a regular manner, the transit of people, personal effects through the border points of Dajabon-Ouanmainthe and Malpasse-Jimani” (source: El Nuevo Herald, March 29, 1987). However, for the next twenty years, the government in Haiti struggled with crisis after crisis and neither country focused on developing rules and procedures for the border region. Paradoxically, it was during one of Haiti’s greatest crisis, the time following the 1991 coup against President Aristide, that cross-border trade began to grow.

Part 4 will cover the modern situation on the Haitian-Dominican border.

Daniel J. O’Neil

The History Series:

Part 1: Gold, cows, and pirates: the story of the of how the island of Hispaniola (or Quisqueya) ended up split into two countries: 1492-1777

Part 2: The birth of the Haitian-Dominican border: 1777-1936

Part 3: The border becomes a wall: 1936-1987

Part 4: The porous border: 1987-present

[2] We were unable to locate this agreement, but did talk with a member of the commission to verify its existence.

One of the concrete "bornes" that mark the Haitian-Dominican border

In last week’s post, we looked at how Gold, Cows, and Pirates led to the division of Hispaniola between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. We left off in the story with France building up the economy of its sides of the island through the development of large sugar plantations while the Spanish continued to neglect the eastern side of the island.

The French success came from their participation in the infamous, but very profitable, triangular trade: manufactured goods from Europe were sent to Africa in exchange for slaves, slaves were sent to the Caribbean, and the sugar and rum produced with their labor was sold back to Europe. In 1789, just before the outbreak of the wars on Hispaniola, the French colony of Saint Dominque was the richest colony in the world. It produced 40% of the world’s sugar—more than all of the British colonies combined.  The population of the colony had swelled to include 430,000 black slaves, 30,000 Europeans and 25,000 of mixed descent (mulattos). In the Spanish colony, the population was only around 125,000, mainly of European decent but including some slaves. Ships were sailing on a regular basis between five ports in the French colony and Europe while only one ship a month sailing between Europe and Santo Domingo.

The revolutionary war in the French colony began as a power struggle between the ruling classes in 1788 and later flared into a slave revolt. The 16 year war destroyed Haiti’s economy and the brutal fighting left deep scars. Haiti’s first ruler, General Dessaline had been a field slave and hated his former masters. Through his constitution of 1806, he declared that no white could own land (Article 27) and declared the entire island to be part of the Republic of Haiti. His sudden death and the infighting between his successors led to a two decade-long power struggle and delayed any attempt to control the rest of the island.

In 1821, as Haiti was emerging from its internal power struggle, the Dominican Republic simply declared its independence and no one objected. The leader of the movement, Nuñez de Cacerez wanted to have the newly independent country join the Gran Colombia that was being established in South America by General Simon Bolivar. However, other leaders preferred to align the new country with Haiti. Within a year of the Dominican independence and on the pretext of an invitation from the Govenor of Santiago, Haitian troops were sent to occupy the former Spanish colony.

The Haitian domination of the island lasted for 22 years. The Haitian government conscripted the Dominican youth into the army and used this army to control the country. They abolished slavery and redistributed State and church land. President Boyer also negotiated recognition of Haiti’s independence by France. This involved a substantial payment that was not fully paid off until 1947. To begin payment of this debt, he encouraged heavy logging of the forests and imposed stiff taxes on the entire island. Beginning in the 1830’s, Juan Pablo Duarte began organizing a clandestine opposition to the Haitian presence that ultimately resulted in the independence of the Dominican Republic on February 27, 1844 (February 27^th is celebrated as the Dominican Independence Day).

Between 1844 and 1861, Haitian armies invaded the Dominican Republic several times. Finally in 1861, the Dominican President, Pedro Santana, negotiated the return of the Dominican Republic to the status of a colony of Spain—the only time in history that a free country voluntarily gave up its freedom.  Shortly after losing their independence, the Dominicans began pushing to restore it. With help from the Haitian government, the Dominican Republic won its independence on August 16, 1865 (August 16 is celebrated as Dominican Restoration Day).

In 1874, thirty years after the Dominican Republic won its independence from Haiti, the two countries finally signed and ratified a formal peace treaty. The treaty also provided for free access to each other’s ports (Article 5) and free trade for national production that is exported across the border (Article 10). The free trade provisions had a sunset provision of 25 years (Article 39), but remained in force until the United States took over customs collection in both countries in the early 1900’s and required the countries to collect customs equally at all of their ports.

Although the 1874 treaty formalized the relations between the two countries, it did not define the border. Up until the early 1900’s the border was only fixed in the far north (Massacre River) and the far south (Pedernales or Anse-a-Pitre River). The 1777 Treaty of Aranjuez , signed by the French and Spanish, had defined the border to begin and end at these points, but it bowed significantly to the west in the middle, keeping most of the middle of the island in Spanish hands. After the Haitian occupation of the island, Haitians had settled in this area and the Haitian government continued to administer it. The first treaty that sought to define a new border was not signed until 1929, during occupation of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic by the United States, and then only after the Dominican Republic had changed its constitution to renounce its claims on the border that had been defined in the 1777 treaty and Haiti changed its constitution to drop claims on the entire island.  The 1929 treaty and the clarifications in the 1936 revision were based partially on the idea that the county, whose citizens constituted the majority in an area, should be given jurisdiction for that area. The end result of these negotiations was that the Dominican government gave up rights to a significant amount of territory.

The current border is shown as a black, solid line while the border established by the 1777 treaty is approximated by the dotted line.

In the next installment, we’ll look at the Dominican government’s policy of strengthening its border lands and the Haitian government’s historic neglect of the region.

slaves; slaves were sent to Haiti; and the sugar and rum produced with their labor was sold back to Europe.