Dominican Republic 1982
Written: Livio Maitan;
Published: March 22, 1982;
Source: Intercontinental Press, Vol.20, No. 10 p. 238;
Transcribed: by Amaury Rodriguez, 2021.
Transcriber’s note: Written by Italian socialist Livio Maitan, this article appeared in Intercontinental Press (IP), a weekly magazine published in New York on behalf on the Fourth International from 1963 to 1986. I thank Pathfinder Press for granting me permission to post this article.
[The following article appeared in the January 25, 1982, issue of Inprecor, a French-language fortnightly published in Paris. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
A certain number of Haitians flee their country in small boats in hopes of reaching the United States to find possible employment. But a much greater number are pushed by unemployment, chronic underemployment, and hunger in the most literal sense of the word to emigrate to the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. There, Haitians constitute a very important segment of the agricultural proletariat.
There are, first of all, a layer of more or less stabilized workers who have lived in the Dominican Republic for years and even decades. Often, their children have never set eyes on their country of origin. According to official figures, there are at least 250,000 of these workers, representing about 10 percent of the total economically active population. For the most part they work on the sugar cane plantations, the basic sector of the Dominican economy.
The reality of the living and working conditions of these Haitians is becoming known. The most significant and most complete report is undoubtedly furmished by Maurice Lemoine in a remarkable piece of reporting (Maurice Lemoine, Sucre amer [Bitter sugar], Paris: Editions Encre, 1981).
A visit to a batey (camp) and discussions with the people who work there only serves to confirm what Maurice Lemoine relates. Walking through the streets of the batey, the abject poverty is seen in all its aspects. The “houses” are actually broken-down barracks, where six, eight, or even ten people live in ten to fifteen square meters.
In these bateys there is a sinister division of labor, aimed at pitting the exploited against each other in a fierce battle for survival. Men who are exhausted and ravaged by malnutrition work the plantations. Some of them seem to be thirty-five or forty years old but turn out to be only twenty. How much they can earn depends on the jobs they have, how efficiently the work is organized, and other factors like the season. To the extent that an average can be determined, in the harvest season the monthly wage varies between thirty and fifty pesos.
Officially one peso is worth one dollar, although on the street the dollar exchanges for 1.25 to 1.30 pesos. To give an idea of the purchasing power of such a wage, suffice it to note that a pound of rice – the basic foodstuff- costs forty to forty-two centavos (one peso= 1(K) centavos) in the batey stores.
In addition, a May 25, 1979, law fixed the minimum wage for an agricultural worker at 3.50 pesos per day. According to 1978 calculations, a family of six would need 205 pesos per month to live. Social services simply do not exist, and there is no recourse to medical help except in extreme cases.
Normally these workers are not organized in unions. Despite this, one peso per month is taken out of wages for the union, which furnishes work clothing in exchange.
The majority of these immigrants do not have permission to stay in the Dominican Republic. They are therefore at the mercy of the Dominican authorities, who can simply expel anyone viewed as undisciplined or “suspect.” If the person expelled is delivered over to the Tontons Macoutes, Haitian President Jean-Claude Duvalier’s private militia, he is thrown into prison or simply murdered.
Although it might seem absurd, these workers – known as the “old-timers"- have a relatively privileged position compared to the seasonal workforce that only remains in the Dominican Republic for the six months of the sugar harvest.
Officially, there are only 15,000 seasonal workers. But in fact, including the illegal immigrants, there are many more. This immigration is regulated by an agreement signed between the governments of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the application of which basically depends on the State Sugar Council (CEA), a nationalized company that has twelve sugar refineries on 100,000 hectares of land (1 hectare = 2.47 acres). The conditions of the contract (transport, housing, social security, etc.) are almost never respected. The Haitian state receives a sum of $1,250,000 from the CEA for providing 15,000 workers, a sum it augments through abuses of all sorts. Only an insignificant portion of this amount is expended on the workers. In fact, it could be stated that the 15,000 Haitians are literally sold by their government. Moreover, the secretary of the United Haitian Communist Party (PUCH) explained in an interview that the government received fourteen pesos per head for Haitians delivered to the Dominican exploiters.
Considering that these immigrants do not have the right to leave their batey, which is watched by armed guards organized in a paramilitary body, and that they have no civil rights, the term “slavery” closely corresponds to the reality. It is significant in this regard that these workers are generally referred to as the “Kongos.” The last slaves to arrive in Santo Domingo in the nineteenth century came from the Congo.
The recruitment of these workers takes place under conditions that expose them to all sorts of harassment and swindling. They are transported in trucks on roads that are barely passable, which is made even worse by the fact that they must often wait days and days at the border without shelter or food.
When they arrive at the batey – where they are lodged in barrack shacks that make the “houses” of the “old-timers” seem luxurious – they may be there five, ten, and even fifteen days before starting to work, during which time they are not paid. As a result they suffer hunger and fall into debt to the camp money lenders in order to survive.
Once they begin to work, they are not paid until after the cane has been weighed (they are usually cane cutters or gatherers), which sometimes takes several days. In the meantime, the cane has dried out, losing weight, and their wages are therefore lower since they are paid by the ton.
In addition, these super-exploited workers are the favorite victims of the constant anti-Haitian racism in the Dominican Republic, where the Haitian is considered an inferior being who will accept work that even the poorest Dominicans will not do, and who is thought to be capable of committing any type of crime. Mothers will even warn their children that they will call “the Haitian” to deal with them if they do not behave.
In reality, one can do just about anything to the Haitians in the bateys, and even outside. Killing a Haitian does not necessarily lead to a conviction: in most cases the murderers remain at large or are acquitted by compliant judges.
This is a tradition that goes back a long time.
The most dramatic episode was the cold-blooded massacre ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1937 during a very serious economic crisis. The Haitians at that time were the subject of Dominican hatred as “Black foreigners in the country,” “contemptible,” “cattle thieves,” etc. Between 30,000 and 40,000 of them were murdered in a little less than two weeks.
Black Dominicans were also killed during this massacre, since the criteria for “selection” were not overly rigorous. The gangs of murderers stopped every Black they encountered and told them: “Say parsley"(perejil). Since Haitians have a hard time pronouncing the word correctly in Spanish, any person who could not say the word with a correct Spanish pronunciation was fair game. [1]
During the last census the enumerators were told to note – among other things – if the person interviewed had a “Haitian” or “foreign” accent. This indicates that the Dominican authorities, while claiming to be “democratic socialists” since the election victory of the social democrats in 1978, still have ominous instincts. [2]
1. See “With God and Trujillo!,” Workers Age, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1938, p. 3.
2. The Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) was affiliated with the Socialist International (SI), the worldwide organization for social democratic parties. In 1978, Antonio Guzmán Fernández (1911-1982), a wealthy landowner from the PRD, defeated right wing strongman Joaquín Balaguer.