Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola, the largest in the Caribbean after Cuba, but the peoples on either side of the island rarely mix thanks to decades of political tensions and mutual fears fed by a history of wars, massacres, and other atrocities. Some are hopeful that the Dajabón market is a testament to these neighbors’ capacity to get along. But as politicians have manipulated racialized anxieties and fears that defy economic logic and business interests, the strain between the two countries has only intensified. [...]
Yet the economic imperative for Haitians to attempt the border crossing has never slackened; those who do so are leaving the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. When Haiti’s government sharply increased fuel prices in 2018, in accordance with a deal with the International Monetary Fund, political tensions escalated. A series of protests followed by violence, pillaging, and arson exposed how fragile the country’s political stability is—and how much the country’s elites are letting down their own people. After the 2010 earthquake that killed at least 220,000 Haitians, billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, but rampant corruption, corrosive poverty, misguided governance, and extreme weather events have prevented any significant improvement, and Haitians continue to struggle for better lives. [...]
The historical animosity between Haitians and Dominicans is rooted not only in language, but in attitudes toward race. Santo Domingo, founded in 1496 by Spaniards, was the first European colony in the Americas. The French settled in the western part of the island, where they made a fortune by using slaves to grow sugar cane. Then, in 1791, a slave rebellion drove out the French, making Haiti the world’s first independent black republic in 1804. In 1822, Haiti occupied its Spanish-speaking neighbor, an episode in that country’s history that has left the image of Haitians as machete-wielding killers in the collective imagination of many Dominicans. And although Haitians later helped Dominicans to expel the Spanish colonizers, in 1863–1865, the Dominican Republic still chooses to celebrate its independence from Haiti in 1844. [...]
In 1937, that history of enmity and bigotry resulted in the massacre of an estimated 20,000 Haitians along the border by Dominican soldiers armed with machetes. What became known as the Parsley Massacre—so called, according to legend, because soldiers challenged people to pronounce the word “parsley” in Spanish to identify whether they were Dominican or Haitian, killing them if they could not—was ordered by Trujillo. The Dominican strongman pursued harsh anti-Haitian policies despite the fact that one of his grandparents was from Haiti.
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