Posts Tagged Truijillo
The porous border: 1987-present
Posted by ONeil in History of the Borderlands on October 22nd, 2009
CESFRONT soldier on the Pednernales-Anse a Pitres border on market day. Photos by Karl Grobl
In previous posts, we looked at how the the “Spanish Island” became divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, how the current border was formed, and the fifty year period when the border became a wall. Today we look at how the border went from being a wall to the sieve that it is today.
There has been a spate of news stories in both the Dominican press and later in the US press about the growing Haitian presence in the Dominican borderlands. Former President Carter invigorated this debate when he called the illegal flow of Haitians into the Dominican Republic “unstoppable.” Cross-border trade has become a significant issue for both countries and there are a growing number of Dominican investments in Haiti. Unfortunately, this growth in cross-border exchanges have happened in a policy vacuum. The rules that govern the border are still those that were developed when the border was largely closed. Therefore, most of the cross-border exchanges violate Haitian and Dominican law. Today we look at how this mess developed. Read the rest of this entry »
The border becomes a wall: 1936-1987
Posted by ONeil in History of the Borderlands on September 29th, 2009
This is part three of a four part series on the history of the Haitian-Dominican border (parts 1,2,3,4)
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. Read the rest of this entry »
