Some things take time to resonate. Among the myriad of lessons and data our researcher team was fortunate to learn pertaining to the ongoing situation of migrants, deportees and refugees, my greatest takeaway was that Hispaniola’s complicated history has led to a contemporary intractable conflict that is based on racial discrimination and xenophobia. I personally felt the impact of this discrimination during our time in the Dominican Republic (DR), when I was apparently stigmatized and/or considered as the Haitian or “El Haitiano” among my fellow researchers. However, what I consider most striking is that internally this label and explicit mistreatment did not bother me and I was oly unnerved because as an “African-American” I was able to seamlessly elude Dominican interrogation based on my American citizenship.
Hispaniola’s complicated history – which is highlighted by Spain’s colonization of the Dominican Republic, France’s colonization of Haiti, Haiti’s occupation of the Dominican Republic, wars for independence, cultural oppression, the United States occupation of the Dominican Republic, the United States’ occupation(s) of Haiti, political and economic manipulation, and authoritarian leaders within both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, respectively – has created a contemporary society that has fragmented conceptions of race and national identity, yet concurrently has augmented conceptions of culture and socialization. While traveling through the DR with our team, I constantly sensed Dominicans watching me trying to assess “who” or “what” I was within Hispaniola’s context of racial identity. They did not hear me speak Spanish, nor Haitian Creole, nor French, but only fluent English with an American accent.
Since our team was based in the DR, we logistically planned to lodge in towns that were within close proximity of border towns and areas that allowed us to engage the populations we were researching and to meet with government, civil society, and multilateral organizational representatives. As a result, our team traversed around the DR, and crossed between Haiti and the DR twice. There are several Dominican agencies charged with enforcing immigration laws, such as the Dominican National Army, Cuerpo Especializado de Seguridad Fronteriza Terrestre (CESFRONT) [Specialized Border Security Corps Ground] and the Dominican Navy. Each agency has established several checkpoints to inspect vehicles and parties traveling for “illegal” Haitians. Because I look Haitian – or in other words, because I am a black man – each time our group crossed a checkpoint, the Dominican security forces requested my identification or vigilantly inspected me. Naturally these military officials were doing their job, but whenever our van crossed a checkpoint, I knew that I would be the suspected Haitiano, or suspicious individual. The fact that I was the only individual assessed or asked to produce identification among a group of twelve foreigners seemed like an unlikely coincidence, and after taking out my passport the first four times, I expected to be surveyed.
Throughout this experience I felt a weird combination of shame, disbelief, guilt, relief, gratitude, and anger. I was grateful, yet ashamed and angry to benefit from American citizenship, because in America I could have, and probably would have been persecuted for the very same circumstances – being black. The irony of my American citizenship benefiting me in the DR where the social practices and policies stereotype and victimize black people who are suspected to be Haitian, but knowing that as a black or “African-American” man the country of my nationality I would continue to be stigmatized, criminalized and persecuted for the very same reason baffled me. Apparently, there is a gradient of dehumanization that affords varying levels or “shades” of discrimination and anti-humanism because these two disparate countries have similar social practices that vary in magnitude. Meanwhile the inhabitants and descendants of the most underdeveloped state in the Western Hemisphere continue to experience extreme poverty, food insecurity, health pandemics, drought, neglect by their national government – which suffers from “corruption” and lacks major capacity – and remains relatively ignored by the international community – albeit Haiti and the continental United States are within 707 miles (or 650 nm) of each other.
During our three hour (and five to seven checkpoints) drive to the Jimani-Malpasse border crossing, we witnessed Dominican immigration police arbitrarily detain a barefoot young woman who walked the opposite direction the officials were driving. Apparently the Dominican officials could identify a Haitian on-sight, as the young woman, who was no older than sixteen years of age was abruptly apprehended. As I stared out the window, perplexed by what I was witnessing, I began to wonder what my fate would have been if I was not with a group of foreigners. Would the Dominican officials accept my documents? Would they believe me because of my English and American accent? Better yet, would they even ask or listen? Sadly, I felt like the lone survivor of an unexplainable catastrophe and embraced each moment knowing that I could “freely” roam where so many others who shared my complexion could not.
