For decades, residents of Haiti have sought work, peace and stability in neighboring Dominican Republic. This trend has increased as Haiti faces unprecedented political, economic and environmental challenges. In response, the Dominican government is building a new border wall, cracking down on immigration, revoking the rights of some citizens and deporting record numbers of people. The government says it needs to control
Team Members
Alex Appel
Keetra Bippus
Morgan Casey
Francesca D’Annunzio
Roxanne De La Rosa
Audrey Eagerton
Faculty Advisers
Rick Rodriguez
its borders and look after its own people, many of whom live in poverty. Meanwhile people of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic feel targeted, afraid and exploited. Our project covers the stories, hopes and dreams of the people who share an island home, but are divided by physical and philosophical borders.
The trip and this book were generously funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
Trilce Estrada Olvera
Shelly Garzon
TJ L’Heureux
John Leos
Deanna Pistono
Andrea Ramirez
Albert Serna Jr.
Logan Stanley
Caitlin Thompson
Adrienne Washington
Rae Wills
Jason Manning Adriana Zehbrauskas
Table of Contents
4
Economic growth in Dominican Republic fueled by investment and migrant labor
By TJ L’Heureux/Cronkite
Borderlands Project
20 Dominican Republic border wall deepens tensions over Haitian immigration
By Roxanne De La Rosa/Cronkite
Borderlands Project
28 Black activists take on Dominican government and society in quest for justice and recognition
By
Morgan Casey/Cronkite
Borderlands Project
42 Haitian workers endure harsh living, working conditions in company settlement
By Keetra Bippus/Cronkite
Borderlands Project
50 Haitian sugarcane workers in the Dominican Republic suffer amid U.S. embargo on Central Romana
By John Leos/Cronkite
Borderlands Project
66 As Santo Domingo develops, vulnerable people are left behind
By Caitlin Thompson/Cronkite
Borderlands Project
78 For immigrants in the Dominican Republic, access to HIV treatment is difficult to obtain
By Albert Serna Jr./Cronkite Borderlands Project 82 Baseball has huge on- and off-the-field impact in the Dominican Republic
By Logan Stanley/Cronkite Borderlands Project
93 Baseball academy helps young Dominicans chase big dreams
By Trilce Estrada Olvera/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Immigration Economics
Economic growth in Dominican Republic fueled by investment and migrant labor
New construction abounds in the capital city of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Here, a skyscraper is under construction on March 6, 2023.
Photo by TJ L’Heureux/Cronkite Borderlands Project
By TJ L’Heureux
Cronkite Borderlands Project
June 29, 2023
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic –Economically, the Dominican Republic is the crown jewel of the Caribbean.
Over the past decade, its economy has been among the fastest growing in Latin America. Foreign investment is pouring into the country. New construction abounds in the capital city of Santo Domingo. Tourism, which took a dip during the coronavirus pandemic, is booming at a record pace.
At the same time, the country has come under international criticism for its treatment of people of Haitian descent. Recent crackdowns have targeted undocumented new arrivals, longtime residents, and even those born in the Dominican Republic. In November, the country’s deportation of Haitians drew a rebuke from the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights and a warning from the U.S. State Department to Black Americans traveling to the country.
Ironically, the group of people Dominican immigration officials are seeking to deport is the same group whose labor has helped fuel the country’s economic boom.
“The Dominican economy relies on indirect taxes of migrants, whether the migrants are legal or not,” said William Charpantier Blanco, coordinator of the National Coalition for Migrations and Refugees. “The growth and development of the Dominican Republic take place thanks to migrant workers, who are largely Haitian.”
There has long been an uneasy interdependence between the island of Hispaniola’s neighbors. While the Dominican Republic is booming economically, Haiti is by most
measures the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Civil strife has created a power vacuum; large segments of the population live in gang-controlled areas.
Since 1990, both the Dominican Republic and Haiti have seen steep increases in their populations, which are now both nearly equal to the population of Cuba, at about 11 million people – meaning that Hispaniola now has twice the population of Cuba, which is a larger land mass at 42,000 square miles compared to Hispaniola’s 29,000 square miles.
The Dominican Republic’s growth has surprised even lifelong residents.
From behind the wheel, Enger Peña, 28, looks up at the concrete slabs that reach toward the sky in Ensanche Naco, an upper middle class neighborhood in Santo Domingo’s National District. He said that these will be residential buildings.
“They’re building towers. Because there’s too many people.”
Peña drives for Uber, one of several occupations he’s held in the past decade. He feels ambivalent toward the job. “You have to work,” he said. His last job was at a call center in a zona franca, a business or industrial area where the government has offered incentives for corporations to operate. He said the amount of foreign capital entering the country has changed it, especially in Santo Domingo, where he was born and raised.
One island, two economies
Money of external origin has played a major role in transforming the Dominican Republic into one of the Western Hemisphere’s most explosive economies.
Along with an increase in foreign direct investment and huge growth in tourism, the country is receiving greater remittance money sent by Dominicans who have found work in more developed countries to their families still on the island. Remittances alone accounted for 11.4% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2021, according to the World Bank.
These factors helped make the Dominican economy the fastest growing in Latin America and the Caribbean during the 2010s as GDP increased at an average of 5.8% per year, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The story is different on the other side of the island. For a country with a similar population size, Haiti’s economic figures are strikingly lower, leaving large segments of its population in dire poverty. The instability of Haiti’s government, plagued by gang violence and civil unrest, in part explains why in 2020, foreign investment in the Dominican Republic was nearly 100 times greater than in Haiti.
‘Everyone
knows the enormous contribution immigrants make’
The Dominican Republic’s economy has a long history of reliance on the labor and contributions of migrants, who have been and remain predominantly Haitian.
In the 1950s, the Dominican Republic and Haiti began signing agreements to bring Haitian laborers to work in Dominican sugar refineries.
“The Dominican economy was based on the sugar industry. It was a fundamentally rural country,” said Charpantier Blanco, the coordinator of the Coalition for Migrants and Refugees (known by its Spanish acronym, MENAMIRD). “Haitians have been contributing to the economy and the growth of the country.”
Charpantier Blanco, a son of Haitian immigrants, noted that while Haitians have been coming to work in the sugar industry for decades, more have been seeking jobs in urban areas or tourism zones. A 2019 study from the Dominican
Population Growth in Caribbean Countries
Republic’s National Institute of Migration estimated that Haitian migrant workers made up over 9% of the total workforce and nearly 30% of construction workers, which underscores their importance to the building boom.
Despite the reliance on Haitian labor, a surge of nationalist anti-Haitian sentiment and policies have reverberated through Dominican society since 2010, including new laws that rendered 200,000 people stateless and the construction of a wall on its western border with Haiti.
For decades, children born on Dominican soil were granted citizenship. In 2010, a constitutional amendment retroactively outlawed birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.
The amendment was reaffirmed in 2013 by the country’s Constitutional Tribunal, retroactively taking citizenship from children of undocumented immigrants born in the country since 1929. The ruling impacted hundreds of thousands of people, making them unable to work in the formal economy, enroll their children in the public school system or register their newborns. Those affected are mostly of Haitian descent.
A new naturalization law was passed in 2014 to mitigate the effects of the court ruling. It allowed people registered as Dominicans to obtain documents needed to exercise their rights as citizens.
But many Dominican and immigrant workers have faced difficulty navigating state systems, either to confirm their nationality or exercise rights like receiving social security, a program to which many contributed for decades. A report from German nonprofit Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung found that in 2022, about 20,000 former workers were waiting on pensions and over 3,900 died waiting for theirs.
Political rhetoric about Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic has often reflected political talking points on immigration in the United States, and vice versa. In late May, former President Donald Trump said that if elected president in 2024, he would end birthright citizenship through an executive order. In the Dominican Republic, it has been argued that Haitian laborers are a drain on social safety net programs, like public health funding.
In a call for greater social acknowledgement of the contributions of Haitian migrants,
Foreign Direct Investment
Dominican sociologist César Pérez wrote that the migrants are not a burden on the Dominican state or economy. He claimed that immigrant contributions to the country’s GDP may be higher than 14%.
“Here, everyone knows the enormous contribution immigrants make,” said Charpantier Blanco, the migrant advocate. “But what happens? They don’t want to recognize it. They don’t want to guarantee migrants’ rights. They don’t want to guarantee protection for them.”
MENAMIRD, Charpantier Blanco’s organization, works to help migrants and refugees obtain key services and resources, which he said are fundamental rights established in Article 38 of the Dominican Republic’s constitution.
Bouncing back from the pandemic: The Abinader presidency
Migrant labor is also key to the tourism sector, which took a major hit when the pandemic rocked the world in 2020. Now, tourism is experiencing a record-setting boom. In May, the government reported a 36% year-over-year increase for the first four months of 2023 and said the sector has been supporting 25% of the nation’s economy over the past several months.
Dominican President Luis Abinader took office in 2020, running as a businessman who had never held elected office and advocating heavily for economic growth policies.
William Charpentier, coordinator of the National Table for Migrants and Refugees, sits in his office on March 3, 2023.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
The country rebounded quickly from the pandemic. In 2021, the Dominican Republic’s GDP reached $94.2 billion, a 12.3% increase from the previous year and 6% increase from 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.
Abinader is up for reelection in 2024 and had a 25-point lead in a May 2023 poll conducted by Dominican firm Markestrategia.
Victor Aquino, director of communications at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, is eager to talk about the growth.
“The economy has grown through the strategy of President Abinader,” Aquino said. “President Abinader is an economist. The first thing he did in office was reduce minimum public salaries and implement a plan to create private jobs.”
According to Aquino, the president worked to boost industrial policy and create more jobs in zonas francas, industrial areas that attract private
by TJ L’Heureux/Cronkite Borderlands Project
companies by offering low-tax incentives. They are typically known as export-focused manufacturing hubs, but Aquino said the zonas francas are now host to an increasing number of service jobs. For those jobs, certain post-secondary technical skills are required, something to which most Haitians don’t have access, according to Aquino.
He also said the zonas francas and industrial growth have been key to the Dominican Republic’s economic recovery from the pandemic and are part of a larger strategy.
“President Abinader is creating a vision of work in which he is reducing the state and incentivizing industry,” Aquino said.
A ministry press release noted that from August 2020 to November 2022, the administration created 15 new zonas francas and welcomed 204
companies to operate in them, bringing the total figures to 84 and 778, respectively.
Economic growth from the zonas francas has been consistent. Even while GDP growth in construction dropped from 23.4% in 2021 to 0.6% in 2022, the GDP growth related to zonas francas was still 5.4% last year, according to the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic.
In 2021, total investment in the industrial sites reached $5.9 billion, with 80% of funding coming from foreign investors.
According to the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic and the U.S. State Department, the United States is by far the largest source of foreign investment inflows for the Dominican Republic.
Victor Aquino, communications director for the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Industry and Trade, working in his Santo Domingo office on March 6, 2023.
Photo
The lasting impact of the American military’s occupation
Wilfredo Lozano is the executive director of the National Institute of Migration. He marches into an interview and says he had just come from a meeting with the president at the National Palace, where he was asked to write a memo by that evening. His time is limited.
Lozano is a well-known public intellectual in the Dominican Republic. He is the author of more than 30 books, about a dozen of which are about migratory issues, according to the INM’s website.
He wrote in 2021 that migrant Haitian laborers have gone from confronting complete social, political and geographic exclusion a century ago to currently experiencing “segmented inclusion” in the society and economy of the Dominican Republic.
To explain the origins of current migration
trends between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, Lozano rewinds a century.
“Historically, Haitian immigration surged in a particular situation – when the two republics on the island (of Hispaniola) were dominated by the American military apparatus,” Lozano said. “The yankees contributed significantly to the creation of the modern state in the Dominican Republic.”
Investments in sugar were made in the 19th century, mostly by Cuban and Italian investors. But in the 20th century, American investors became interested in entering the sugar business, especially The National City Bank of New York, which later became Citibank.
According to a U.S. State Department historical summary, President Woodrow Wilson in 1915 ordered U.S. forces to invade Haiti, to establish strategic and economic advantage in the hemisphere and block other countries, such as France and Germany, from gaining a foothold in the region. After the invasion, the United States
Dr. Wilfredo Lozano, executive director of the Dominican Republic’s National Institute of Migration, delivers a keynote speech at a migration and development conference in Santo Domingo on January 24, 2023.
Photo courtesy of Instituto Nacional de Migración de la República Dominicano
seized control of Haiti’s financial assets.
The American military occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. It also occupied the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. The U.S. government handed the finances of both countries to the National City Bank, and with it, ownership of land for sugar production. During the occupations, thousands of people were killed in both countries and widespread human rights violations were recorded, including torture, summary execution and forced labor.
Meanwhile, large investments were made in sugar production during the occupations.
But why did bankers make greater investments in the Dominican Republic than in Haiti?
“It has to do with the power of the campesinos (rural peasants) in Haiti,” Lozano said. “On the Dominican side, the campesinos didn’t have political force. And they were concentrated in the north of the country.”
When big investments began to pour into the eastern part of the Dominican Republic, producers had a problem: They couldn’t find workers.
Meanwhile in Haiti, there was an abundance of poor rural laborers. According to Lozano, that was partly a result of Haiti’s inheritance laws that required fortunes be passed to the firstborn child. It primed the island for an exodus of poor workers from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, facilitated by the American military.
Borders didn’t matter so much. “The island was administered by the same entity: the United States,” Lozano said.
After the U.S. left Hispaniola, dictators rose to prominence in its absence. Rafael Trujillo, the autocratic who ruled the Dominican Republic for three decades, gave financial support to Haitian presidents to keep the workers flowing.
“Those Haitians never integrated into society,” Lozano said.
‘The poor, the sugarcane workers are dying’
Emilio Boye, a 62-year-old retired cane worker, came to the Dominican Republic when he was 19. He and his daughter, Rosa Boye, are coordinators for the independent Sugarcane Workers’ Union, known as the UTC.
“We are in a constant battle to make sure the government follows through on its responsibilities, like delivering pensions for cane workers,” Rosa Boye said. “They owe workers dignified living, a pension and health care.”
Rosa Boye said many workers became undocumented in 1995 after the Dominican Republic declared that a commonly used worker identification card could not be used as legal documentation. That made it much harder for workers to obtain financial and health benefits.
“A lot of people arrived here as adolescents. They’ve spent their whole life in this country,” she said. “We want them to have a cédula (national identification card) or permanent residence in the Dominican Republic.”
The plight of workers who had not received their pensions drove Jesús Nuñez to begin organizing them into a labor organization that became the UTC. The independent union countered company unions such as the Sindicato Unido de Trabajadores at sugar giant Central Romana, which has allegedly discouraged workers from organizing.
Recently, Nuñez has battled cancer and has sought treatment in Cuba. But Rosa Boye said the union is continuing its organizing efforts in 105 bateyes – ramshackle settlements near sugar mills – pushing corporations and the government to provide benefits and dignified living to both current and retired workers.
Central Romana, by far the largest sugar producer in the Dominican Republic, entered the
international spotlight in November when the U.S. banned imports from the company. The U.S. decision came after Customs and Border Patrol received information “that reasonably indicates the use of forced labor” at Central Romana production sites.
In a conversation with Corporate Accountability Lab, Nuñez denounced the workers’ treatment.
“In a place that is modern, touristy, and industrialized there cannot be a population that is enslaved, surveilled, and abused.”
The wear of the difficult labor is visible on Emilio Boye. He can hardly walk due to swelling in his feet. He suffers from kidney problems, an enlarged heart and constant migraines. His dark eyes are enveloped by a yellow hue and a slight tremor rattles his words.
When workers like Boye can’t obtain proper medical care, their health problems compound and get out of hand. When they aren’t receiving their pensions, it becomes nearly impossible to afford care.
Fortunately for Boye, he receives his pension and is in a relatively good position to afford medications. But his wife Sainteine Jean, who worked as a cook, planter and cultivator for decades, does not receive the pension she is owed, according to their daughter Rosa. (Sainteine Jean is deaf and could not be interviewed.)
“The economic growth of this country is only reflected in the lives of the millionaires,” said Rosa Boye, raising her voice to match the roar of a truck passing on the streets outside. “The poor, the sugarcane workers are dying. They’re dying because they’re sick and don’t have money to buy medications.”
A changing society
While sugar remains a key Dominican export, the country continues to shift away from its historical agrarian economy. And despite the country’s economic gains, Dominicans are continuing to emigrate, legally and illegally, to the United States.
In 1960, there were fewer than 12,000 Dominican immigrants in the U.S, according to Census Bureau data. By 2021, that number was over 1.25 million. There has also been a surge in Haitians seeking refuge in the U.S. For those who find work, the result has been an increase in dollars sent home to family members in both countries.
Olan, a Haitian construction worker who preferred not to share his last name, is helping build residential towers in Santo Domingo. He said Haitians are migrating to cities to participate in non-sugar sectors.
“Nobody wants to come for sugar work,” he said. “It’s much better to work in construction. Or if you speak three languages, (to work in) tourism.”
Olan said he learned Spanish in school, and so he was in a good position to migrate and find work.
The better working conditions of construction, the possibility of living in an urban area and Olan’s knowledge of Spanish highlight changes in the migrant labor market. Historically, Haitian laborers were isolated geographically and linguistically, two factors that enabled government and corporations to wield power over them.
Rosa Boye sits as her parents, Emilio and Sainteine Jean Boye, pose in their home in Santo Domingo’s Bienvenido neighborhood on March 7, 2023. Both Rosa and Emilio are coordinators for the Sugarcane Workers’ Union and Emilio worked over four decades as a sugar worker.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite
Borderlands Project
Not everyone in the Dominican Republic is happy about that changing, according to Lozano, the migration scholar.
“Little by little, the Haitian population has become more prevalent in Dominican society. A space has to be found for them. And a lot of people are displeased about that.”
Lozano hypothesizes that the recent rise of both nationalist sentiment and economic growth in the Dominican Republic relates back to the history of political power over labor in the island’s countries.
“There aren’t strong unions in this country. Workers don’t have power. That’s key to understanding political stability,” he said. “Haiti has a climate of perpetual instability. The Haitian ruling class could never effectively control the working class and direct it toward a modern industrial state.”
He notes that while there was a democratic pathway to industrialization in England and the United States, industrial development came from more authoritarian avenues in the rest of modern nations, including the Dominican Republic.
To Lozano, the island represents a side-by-side comparison of two economic models. “One is a model that is strategic and despotic, but was ultimately successful. On the other side of the island, workers maintained power, but at the cost of impeding modernization.”
Translating economic wealth into social well-being
At a time when the Dominican Republic’s leaders are undertaking an effort to shrink the state and incentivize business, an agency in the Ministry of Economy is gathering data about social and economic inequality could help the state make decisions that benefit the people who need the most help.
“We have the eighth-biggest GDP per capita in Latin America. But in social results, we are in the bottom,” said Jefrey Lizardo, director of the agency known by its acronym, SIUBEN. “We have one of the highest maternal mortality rates. We have a gap between how you distribute economic wealth into social welfare.”
He said reducing inequality also will require fiscal reform and a greater share of taxes paid by the wealthy.
There are a variety of challenges for remaking policy decisions through data-driven efforts. The Dominican Republic’s economy has a high rate of informal employment. According to the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic, nearly three of five jobs are informal, and so workers aren’t registered.
In addition, recipients of government benefits aren’t always registered. About 30% of pension beneficiaries are not registered, according to Lizardo, presenting a formidable problem that requires SIUBEN to convince agencies to collect more data.
But the most important challenge SIUBEN faces is convincing other government institutions to use its data. In early March, Lizardo said there are five agencies using the data in decision-making processes. Its goal is to have at least 10 agencies using its data by the end of the year.
“This is a process. When you change to (a data-driven) system, you are taking away power from the institution that gets to assign benefits,” said Lizardo, even if those institutions will gain greater ability to identify people who need assistance.
SIUBEN’s challenge is a sobering reminder that the final policy decisions remain political, and the politics of the Dominican Republic remain a consequence of history.
Construction workers build the foundation of a residential tower in Ensanche Naco, an upper middle class neighborhood in Santo Domingo’s National District, on March 9, 2023. It’s estimated that over 30% of construction workers are Haitian migrants.
Photo by TJ L’Heureux Cronkite Borderlands Project
Immigration, Race
Discrimination
A group of Haitians, including a young girl, are deported to Haiti at the border gates in Dajabón, Dominican Republic, on March 4, 2023.
Photo by Roxanne De La Rosa/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Dominican Republic border wall deepens tensions over Haitian immigration
Regulating immigration has become a hot-button political issue in the Dominican Republic and, as in the U.S., the Dominican government decided that a partial solution to this problem was to build a border wall.
By Roxanne De La Rosa Cronkite Borderlands Project
May 8, 2023
DAJABÓN, Dominican Republic – It’s a breezy, partially cloudy day in March as Mayor Santiago Riverón puffs on a cigar while sitting outside his home on his sprawling ranch not far from the controversial border wall being built between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Riverón loves his country and takes pride in his Dominican heritage. And in an echo of anti-immigrant voices in the United States, he says Haitian people are “invading” his country.
The reasons for the construction of the wall that borders this northwestern city of 17,000, he says, are to prevent people from poverty-stricken, gang-overrun Haiti from illegally entering, and to make a resounding political statement.
Dominican Mayor Santiago Riveron’s doves fly as he feeds them at his ranch home near Dajabon, Dominican Republic, on March 4, 2023.
Photo by Roxanne De La Rosa/Cronkite Borderlands Project
“It has been embraced by Dominicans as a patriotic symbol, and that cannot be changed,” Riverón said. “That cannot be changed.”
The wall being built here would add to a growing list of border barriers worldwide. According to a March 2022 report by University of Quebec researcher Élisabeth Vallet, there were 74 border walls in the world, most of them constructed in the last two decades, and 15 others in various stages of planning at the time of her report.
Opponents of the Dominican wall say it will not prevent Haitians from trying to flee the ongoing violence in their country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, where violent gangs control large segments of the nation.
“We always say that we do not agree with any wall in any part of the world. This wall is being built to appease conservative and nationalist groups,” said William Charpantier Blanco, a leader at the nonprofit National Coalition for Migrations and Refugees. “The government’s narrative is that the wall is going to control organized crime. That will never happen. In no part of the world do border walls work.”
Riverón, the Dajabón mayor, says a border wall will help slow down drug trafficking, theft and prevent the gang-driven violence in Haiti from coming into his country. Yet Dominican supporters of the wall don’t expect it to solve everything. Some claim, for example, that border officials are corrupt and accept bribes from deported Haitians allowing them to come back into the country.
“The wall is a matter of national security. The wall is not going to solve the immigration issue because illegals cross the bridge (between Haiti and Dajabón),” Riverón said. ”And unfortunately, the military allows illegals to cross through checkpoints.”
As in the United States, regulating immigration has become a hot-button political issue in the Dominican Republic and, as in the U.S., the Dominican government decided that at least a partial solution to this problem was to build a wall. But compared to the Mexico–U.S. border wall, the Dominican wall is far less formidable.
The Dominican barrier will have a concrete base approximately 4-5 feet high, topped by integrated chain link fencing and finished off with barbed wire. It will stand nearly 13 feet high with watchtowers and surveillance cameras that have yet to be installed. Construction of the wall, which began in February 2022, has been slow and is behind schedule. According
Mayor Santiago Riveron gives a tour of his personal ranch and the animals he owns near Dajabon, Dominican Republic, on March 4, 2023.
Photo by Roxanne De La Rosa Cronkite Borderlands Project
to government estimates, it will cost approximately $32 million to build and will cover about 106 miles of the 240-mile border between the two countries, leaving large segments of border unfenced.
The U.S. border wall is made of various materials – but all tougher than chain link. It is also as tall as 30 feet high in some segments, contributing to a five-fold increase in the number of traumatic injuries to those who have fallen trying to climb over it, according to a recent report by physicians in the San Diego region. Approximately 700 miles of the nearly 2,000 mile U.S.-Mexico border is fenced in some way. Technology, including drones, surveillance cameras and nearly 300 smart towers have been installed along the wall.
Dominican President Luis Abinader visited Dajabón in February of last year for a groundbreaking ceremony on the wall. Abinader is
Photo by Roxanne De La Rosa/Cronkite Borderlands Project
popular for his stance against immigration and his fiery rhetoric has stoked anti-Haitian sentiment. A poll of 1,214 Dominicans conducted in late April by Markestrategia indicated that 55 percent of those surveyed would vote to reelect him in the next presidential election in 2024.
For all of the strong feelings about immigration, Dajabón is a small example of the interdependence of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the island of Hispaniola. In Dajabón, there is a weekly market where Haitians are allowed to cross the bridge into the Dominican city to sell their wares.
Haitians attending the market line up for hours until the gates open. They sell everything from
used clothes to diapers. The desperation of Haitians can be seen in some of the items they bring to sell: a used Minnie Mouse toy car scribbled on with faded black marker or one very worn-down bar stool.
Mayor Riverón says he supports Haitians coming to visit and sell their goods in the Dominican marketplace but he expects them to return to their country at the end of the day. What he does not support is Haitians crossing into the country illegally. Riverón says he wants the international community to see that Haiti doesn’t need handouts, it needs resources to create sources of employment.
“It has become a disaster. Haiti is a country that
Haitians line up for hours before the gates of Dajabón open to sell their items in the Dominican marketplace on March 5, 2023.
has no authority. It is a country that is being governed by criminal gangs, many of which are being financed by politicians from their own country,” Riverón said. “Those politicians prefer disorder and take advantage of that disorder. That’s the situation in Haiti. Unfortunately, Haiti is not prepared to be a democratic country. It has to be a country that is dominated with a heavy hand.”
But interdependence of the two economies goes far beyond small markets and is rooted in the need for cheap labor. Haitian immigrants make up a large portion of the workforce in agriculture, construction and other sectors of poorly paid manual labor jobs in the Dominican Republic. In a February report, the Dominican
College of Economists (Codeco) estimated that 700,000 Haitians are employed in the Dominican Republic, a country of about 11 million people. Immigration advocates even say the border wall is being built by the same people it is meant to keep out – Haitians who are fleeing their homeland due to poverty, violence and instability.
Along a portion of the border wall, the Dajabón River – also known as the Massacre River, after the massacre of French buccaneers by Spaniards in the 1700’s – runs between the two countries. Today hundreds of Haitians come to the river daily to wash their clothes and lay them out to dry on the nearby rocks. Haitians cross the river and hang their clothes to dry on the low concrete
Haitian woman washes and dries her clothes near the unfinished Dominican border wall. In the background, clothes are hung to dry on the wall near Dajabon, Dominican Republic, on March 4, 2023.
Photo by Roxanne De La Rosa/Cronkite Borderlands Project
A
Photo by Roxanne De La Rosa/Cronkite Borderlands Project
ledge of a mostly unfinished border wall.
Busloads of Haitians are deported daily, in plain sight of the border gates of Dajabón. Mothers with babies and young children in their arms are forced back into Haiti. Some have their only possessions in their hands. Under Abinader’s presidency, there has been a massive increase in Haitian deportations, including some deportees who are legally in the country.
Both Dominicans and Haitians are deeply affected by the current anti-Haitian movement in the country.
Carlos Zepeda is a rancher who needs Haitians
to work his land. He isn’t convinced his country needs a new border fence. Instead he thinks what’s needed is comprehensive immigration reform.
“I want to help reform it (immigration), for us to have it as it should be,” Zepeda said. “Since I am a rancher, we need Haitian workers just as they are needed in the construction sector.”
Zepeda has found it difficult to keep and find workers to work his land due to anti-Haitian sentiments in the Dominican Republic. He says homes where Haitian migrants live are being raided in the middle of the night by government agents and workers are being detained and
A Haitian mother holds her baby in her arms as she is deported to Haiti through the gates of Dajabon, Dominican Republic, on March 4, 2023.
deported regardless of their legal status. Zepeda says during the night raids women are awakened and aren’t allowed to dress themselves before they are detained, and Haitian children scream and cry out of fear.
“There’s no need to create so much panic. But to avoid that, you have to reform it,” Zepeda said.
“So that they (Haitians) don’t have to live that way with everything that is happening all over the country.”
Hector Perea and Zepeda are part of a group called Defensa Civil, or “Civil Defense,” which protects and fights for immigrant rights. Perea has been involved with this work for around 30 years and says his faith called on him to help.
“Protecting human beings, because human beings have no race or color, they must be
defended wherever they go,” Perea said. Perea, too, has seen the raids, which he says are a violation of human rights. He says Haitians are robbed by border officials of anything of value they own, including cell phones and televisions.
Another section of the wall is being constructed not far from El Partido where Zepeda and Perea live. When asked about the border wall being constructed Perea said:
“That’s practically not going to solve anything. Because the wall itself is about money. We have to unite our ideals and work, share the little we have because we are human beings. Our creator has no border, he has no color, we are all his children and his creation.”
Haiti has been plagued with gang violence and
A Haitian mother sits on a bus with her young child waiting to be unloaded from a deporation bus in Dajabon, Dominican Republic, on March 4, 2023.
Photo by Roxanne De La Rosa/Cronkite Borderlands Project
upheaval since the assassination of the country’s president in July 2021. Thousands of Haitians have been displaced due to the ongoing turmoil, which has been compounded by deadly natural disasters. While many Haitians have left the island in search of stability, the bulk of the displaced have looked to the Dominican Republic, sometimes overwhelming government services. At the same time, the Dominican Republic relies heavily on Haitians for labor and Haiti is the country’s key trade partner.
“Although the Dominicans do not like to admit it, this is an island in which both sides are needed,” said Zinnia Martinez, a communications coordinator for the International Organization for Migration. “That is why it is a longstanding relationship and despite that the Haitian economy is very, very crippled, they continue to be our main buyers.”
The country depends on Haitian workers like Julbeon Sainvilien who has lived in the Dominican Republic for the past 23 years. Sainvillen works the sugarcane fields of a Dominican landowner and also works in construction, training other workers to build homes.
Sainvilien lives with his wife and children in a small wooden shack of a home on the land he works. Nonetheless, Sainvilien is grateful to work and says his life in El Partido has been tranquil for the most part. Every morning he gets up around 3 a.m. to cut weeds and work in the sugar fields.
“Thanks to God. We live here peacefully,” Sainvilien said.
Across the street from Sainvilien home is a different story. Sainvilien has witnessed Haitian migrants living there being raided by border law enforcement in the middle of the night.
Sainvilien’s wife, Elimene Onexile, says Haitian migrants in the home are detained and deported whether they are documented or not. Onexile fears one day, even though her family is documented, border officials may come knocking on
A Haitian family is being unloaded off a deportation bus at the gates of Dajabon, Dominican Republic, on March 5, 2023.
her door in the middle of the night.
“It is an abuse. I feel very bad that they are detaining documented Haitian immigrants. I came here (Dominican Republic) to make a life,” Onexile said.
Onexile and Sainvilien say they are protected because of the Dominican land owner. Onexile works cooking, cleaning and washing in the Dominican landowner’s home and also cares for
Photo by Roxanne De La Rosa Cronkite Borderlands Project
an elderly woman at night.
“Here in the Dominican Republic the majority of the workers are immigrants,” Onexile said. “The Dominicans have no reason to detain immigrants who are working all day and all night.”
Onexile says in all her years living in the Dominican Republic she has never seen or experienced anything like what is going on.
“These have been the worst times ever,” Onexile said.
Onexile and Sainvillen are both nearing their 50s and worry about the day one of them is unable to work anymore. Onexile says an immigrant who cannot work cannot eat.
“No employer is going to help an immigrant who cannot work,” she said.
Black activists take on Dominican government and society in quest for justice and recognition
AfroDominican activists are fighting against the Dominican Republic’s discriminatory legislation and social attitudes that negatively impact Black Dominicans and Haitian migrants.
By Morgan Casey Cronkite Borderlands Project
Sept. 15,
2023
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic –
The Dominican Republic is cracking down on
migration from Haiti, in an effort that is roiling the country and leading to accusations of racism in the Dominican government and society.
Under the assumption that black skin and curly hair equals Haitian, Black Dominicans are being targeted by police, the military and, sometimes, their fellow citizens.
Reconoci.do coordinator and co-founder Elena Lorac speaks about racial discrimination at a “3 Causales” march in Parque Independencia on March 4, 2023.
Photo by Morgan Casey/Cronkite Borderlands Project
The discrimination against Black Dominicans was so severe that the U.S. Embassy in the country issued an advisory last November to “darker skinned U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens of African descent” traveling to the country. The advisory said the Dominican government was detaining dark-skinned travelers, assuming they could be Haitian.
The Dominican government refuted the discrimination claims, saying it was “manifestly unfounded, untimely, and unhappy.”
Leonel Fernández, who served three terms as the Dominican president, also denied charges of racism in the country.
“What we’re dealing with here is a historical issue, a geographic issue, a migratory issue of survival between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but it’s not a racial issue,” Fernandez told Dominican Today in November 2022.
But racial discrimination in the Dominican Republic and the governmental denial of its existence is nothing new according to AfroDominican activists; it is why their movement exists. The activists’ methods vary widely, from anti-colonial tours to grassroots education, but their goal is the same: equal rights for Black Dominicans.
Struggling to embrace a Black identity
One of the largest AfroDominican organizations is Reconoci.do. The group fights for the rights of Dominicans of Haitian descent and against discriminatory policies and culture.
A large part of Felipe Fontes’ work as
coordinator for Reconoci.do is deconstructing Black Dominicans’ self-discriminating views, which he said were built by centuries of anti-Haitian and anti-African rhetoric.
Many Dominicans refuse to identify as Black. Only 8% of Dominicans identify as Black in some capacity, according to a 2022 study of the Dominican Republic by the United Nations. It’s no wonder they don’t: Black Dominicans face difficulty obtaining official documents, accessing education and other discrimination.
“All our institutions are telling you not to be Black,” Fontes said.
Non-Dominicans more readily identify many Dominicans as Black. The country has the fifth-largest portion in the world of the African diaspora, with almost 8 million Black people living in the country, according to the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy. If the ICD’s estimate is correct, that would mean just over 70% of the country’s 11.3 million residents have African
Few Dominicans identify as Black despite outside organizations classifying many of them as such.
Graphic by Morgan Casey/Cronkite Borderlands Project
roots. Those numbers offer a huge contrast with the U.N. study of Dominicans’ self-reported racial identity that put the number of Black Dominicans at 896,000, about 7 million fewer than the ICD report.
The U.N. survey found many categories for self-identification within the Dominican population, including, translated from Spanish, “Black,” “mulatto”, “brown,” “Indian” and “white.” Within each of these were sub-categories: “oscuro” or “dark,” and Spanish variations on “light,” including “claro” and “lavaito,” terms the survey authors said were used to “distance” a person from “Blackness.”
“The Dominican Republic is a country primarily made up of Black people that don’t identify as Black,” said Fontes. “They identify as Indio and white because of poor education.”
Reconoci.do puts on seminars and community events to provide the Black history education, which is lacking in the official Dominican history curriculum. The purpose: To get Dominicans of Haitian descent to change their psyche, forgoing ideas of “negro malo” and instead learning that Black is beautiful and to be proud of their Black identity.
Once Reconoci.do teaches a person to view Blackness positively, they encourage that person to become a community ambassador and help others unlearn anti-Black ideas.
Reconoci.do is also petitioning the Dominican government to change its history curriculum. Fontes said Reconoci.do’s wants to remove the fallacy that Haiti and Black Dominicans are the enemies popularized by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the country from 1930 until his assassination in 1961.
However, Reconoci.do says it is making little progress in changing people’s discriminatory thinking and even less with the Dominican government.
Calle General Cabral divides the colonial district and Santa Barbara, one of the first free Black towns in the Americas. Santa Barabara is characterized by poverty and violence despite its proximity to the colonial district.
Photo by Morgan Casey Cronkite Borderlands Project
“The psychological and social consciousness of the Dominican Republic isn’t changing easily,” said Fontes.
The Dominican Republic’s history of anti-Blackness
The Dominican Republic has a long history of anti-Blackness, according to Saudi Garcia, an assistant professor of anthropology at the New School and executive director of In Cultured Company — a U.S.-based activist organization focused on correcting the history of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Garcia said much of the Dominican Republic’s anti-Blackness stems from Trujillo’s 30-year reign.
Trujillo spent much of his dictatorship distinguishing the Dominican Republic from Haiti, with a push from the United States to do so. Since he couldn’t do it at first economically, as both countries had relatively similar economies, he did it racially.
“(The Trujillo) dictatorship was interested in presenting the Dominican Republic as a more white nation in comparison to Haiti,” said Garcia.
Trujillo embedded prejudices against anything with an African, not just Haitian, origin, Garcia said.
That prejudice still exists in Dominican society today and forms the basis of the country’s migration and citizenship policies, Dominican anthropologist Tahira Vargas told Dominican Today in September 2022.
The Dominican Republic has three primary laws
governing migration and citizenship.
The first, Law 285-04, was passed in 2004 and classified recently migrated Haitians and those settled in the country as “nonresidents” and perpetually in transit.
In 2013, the Dominican government edited its constitution with Judgment 168-13, more commonly known as La Sentencia. La Sentencia retroactively eliminated birthright citizenship for Dominicans born between 1929 and 2010 to foreign-born parents, most of whom were Dominicans of Haitian descent.
Finally, last November, the government passed
Women with natural hair often face discrimination, causing many to avoid natural hair salons like Grecy’s Natural Hair. They opt for straightening their hair instead.
Photo by Morgan Casey/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Decree 668-22, creating a specialized police unit to prosecute anyone unlawfully occupying private or state-owned property. The force primarily targets bateyes, which are settlements mostly occupied by Haitian workers near sugarcane fields.
The laws built off each other, explained Wendy Hunter, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. Each law grew the maze of bureaucracy to prevent Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian migrants from ever gaining Dominican citizenship, she said.
The laws have increased discrimination, according to Fontes.
“Racism has grown, particularly in the last 10 years,” Fontes said.
Liliana Dolis, general coordinator of the Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitianas, the Dominican-Haitians Women’s Movement, said the country’s border patrol is highly discriminatory. People with dark skin and/or non-Hispanic surnames face persecution by the border patrol because they are presumed to be Haitian.
“Dominicans of any origin have been arrested because of their skin color,” Dolis said.
Because of this history, the Dominicans whose skin color is too dark to allow them to identify as white identify as the next best option in the racial hierarchy: Indio. Around 45% of Dominicans identify as Indio, according to the U.N. study.
Creating a Black consciousness
With a small percentage of Dominicans identifying as Black and even fewer embracing their African heritage, Danilo Contreras, an assistant professor of political science at Wellesley College, said it is almost impossible to form a collective.
“The kind of Blackness that you see in the DR,
it’s not the kind of Black group identity that most Black Americans in the U.S. identify with,” said Contreras. “You don’t have a politicized Black group consciousness for a number of historical and institutional reasons.”
AfroDominican activists are trying to cultivate that Black political consciousness in the Dominican Republic.
“It is not enough to accept that this (discrimination) is going to happen,” Dolis said. “I have to keep going. Despite everything, I have to fight to make a change possible.”
One method for jump-starting political activism includes bringing issues of anti-Blackness and racial discrimination into other causes. For example, the co-founder of Reconoci.do, Elena Lorac, spoke at a protest for abortion and women’s rights in March about the discrimination faced by Black Dominican women.
Other tactics are Reconoci.do’s grassroots education model. MUDHA, Dolis’ Dominican Haitian women’s group, also uses this model to get the members of the 20 bateyes they operate in, most of whom are Dominicans of Haitian descent, to proudly claim their Haitian identity.
MUDHA also teaches people how to advocate for themselves and their community.
“We empower the community so that they can claim and demand what their rights are, that they are trained and prepared to speak to local authorities to solve their problems,” Dolis said.
However, the Dominican Republic’s long-standing discrimination against Black Dominicans makes it hard for them to obtain enough political power to advocate for themselves, said Fontes.
“We do not have access to more than very little. That limits you in everything because it is a chain,” Fontes said. “If you are in power, you drag your group to power. And we have 300 years, 400 years of being far from power. Therefore, we are limited in everything.”
Ruth Pion, the founder of the AfrohistoriaRD tour, listens to a tourist speak about their experiences with racism in the Caribbean on a March tour around the colonial district.
Photo by Morgan Casey Cronkite Borderlands Project
Rewriting Dominican history
In Santo Domingo, Ruth Pion recounts Dominican history in ways that acknowledge the country’s enslavement of Africans and its connection to discrimination against Black Dominicans today.
Pion founded AfrohistoriaRD, a tour company that operates in the colonial district and educates people about the Dominican Republic’s mostly untold Black history. Her tour, Hidden History: A Decolonial Tour, retells the history of the Dominican Republic with a focus on its roots in slavery.
“Afrohistoria is a disruption of (the Dominican Republic’s Spanish) narrative. It’s asking people to ask themselves, ‘Is this true?’, to challenge people to read the history books again, or to look for other sources, to hear other voices studying our history,” Pion said.
Pion says she is the only tour guide who discusses slavery in the Dominican Republic. The union of colonial district tourism guides dictates the scripts of other colonial district tours and doesn’t mention slavery or any African contributions to Dominican culture.
On Pion’s tour, people go to the tops of the walls surrounding Alcazar de Colon – the fortress of Columbus – walking the same worn and uneven stones thousands of enslaved Africans were forced to walk, and they see the Puerta de las Atarazanas, the port entrance to the colonial city, called the Gates of No Return.
The Dominican Republic’s lack of Black Dominican history education is purposeful, Pion said.
“If we’re not communicating Black history through archaeological sites, through tourism, through education, through museography, then there must be a political intention,” Pion said.
The political intention is to maintain the juxtaposition of the Dominican Republic as a white country and Haiti as a Black country, Pion said.
That’s why the colonial district’s walls and the Gates of No Return are crumbling, despite the colonial city’s designation as a UNESCO heritage site. Without physical
“The walls surrounding Alcazar de Colon – the fortress of Columbus – were built by enslaved Africans.
Photo by Morgan Casey Cronkite Borderlands Project
reminders of slavery, Pion said the country wipes clean its connections to Africa.
To wipe clean the country’s history, the government actively destroys some physical reminders of slavery. La Picota, a column where enslaved Africans would be tied up and flogged, no longer exists. The government destroyed it in 1864 and replaced it with a statue of Christopher Columbus and the last Taíno queen, Anacaona, who fought against the Spanish.
“They delete the evidence of colonial violence,” Pion said.
Other physical reminders are destroyed through a lack of preservation by the government. La
Negreta, a warehouse complex that housed enslaved Africans before their sale, collapsed years ago and is now mostly rubble.
Predominantly Black towns like Santa Barbara are also left to sink into poverty and crime, said Pion. Santa Barbara was one of the first Black towns in the Americas and where La Negreta formerly sat.
Pion hopes learning about Black Dominican history and the history of slavery in the country, even without the physical monument to it, will advance the AfroDominican movement.
“If we can see a historical starting point, maybe we can see an end,” Pion said.
At the feet of the Christopher Columbus statue in Parque Colon, a statue of the last Taíno queen, Anacaona, sits, writing in Latin: “Great and illustrious Columbus.”
Photo by Morgan Casey/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Grecy’s Natural Hair manager Katherine Aleantoa wants to teach more women selflove when they speak about their natural hair.
Hair salons, a place of resistance
Located off Expreso 27 de Febrero in Santo Domingo, Grecy’s Natural Hair is a salon that caters to natural hair.
Salons like Grecy’s are few and far between in the Dominican Republic. Most salons specialize in straightening hair, either with heat or chemicals. Dominican salons are known for how straight they can get even the curliest hair textures. The salon’s treatments are so effective, they were popularized in the United States under the name Dominican Blowout.
Women with even the slightest curl to their hair are often discriminated against. They can be passed over for scholarships, as was the case for Nicky González Méndez, a Dominican political science student who said she didn’t receive a scholarship from the Ministry of Education in 2016 because of her hair. They also can be sent home from school, which is what happened to 11-year-old student Omara Mia Bell Marte in 2019 for wearing her natural hair.
“Hair surpasses skin color as the most salient racial determinant,” wrote Jacqueline Lyon, an assistant professor of anthropology at Bates College, in her paper, Pajón power.
Women with natural hair are fighting against this discrimination and Dominican beauty standards simply by existing, said Katherine Aleantoa, the manager of Grecy’s Natural Hair. She hopes that, as more women keep their natural hair, they can make society realize that natural hair isn’t any different from other textures.
“I don’t want (wearing your natural hair) to be an act of resistance,” Aleantoa said. “I don’t want it to be a movement, I want it to be something natural.”
Aleantoa and Pion said the natural hair community in the Dominican Republic is growing. Aleantoa sees the women bringing their friends into the salon, having convinced them to start on their natural hair journey.
“I just want to motivate people to build selflove,” Aleantoa said.
Photo by Morgan Casey Cronkite Borderlands Project
The long road ahead
While the AfroDominican movement has made inroads in convincing women to wear their natural hair, learn Black history and embrace their Black identity, Contreras, the Wellesley College professor, believes much work is still needed.
“The challenge is whether the movement can also have a similar effect in the electoral space where they can parlay the kind of social influence that they’ve had,” Contreras said.
AfroDominican activists recognize the difficulty of unraveling centuries of anti-Blackness from Dominican society. One of their biggest obstacles is people’s wariness of associating with the AfroDominican movement for fear of being attacked.
“People who are Black cultural workers or artists, people who are challenging the European,
Hispanic-centered narrative are literally being physically attacked by authoritarian fascist groups, which are growing in the Dominican Republic over the past five years,” said Garcia, the New School professor.
Hunter, the University of Texas professor, pointed to one ray of hope for AfroDominican activists: U.S. President Joe Biden’s halting of imports from Dominican sugar company Central Romana Corp. for human rights violations.
“I think if progress is going to be made, it’s not going to be for humanitarian reasons,” said Hunter. “I think it’s going to have to come from trade issues.”
International attention is what the AfroDominican movement needs, said Fontes.
“It forces people to change,” said Fontes. “The government pays more attention to us if there’s international attention pressuring them to do so.”
The Puerta de las Atarazanas, dubbed the “Gates of No Return” by AfrohistoriaRD founder Ruth Pion, has no plaques or markers memorializing the thousands of enslaved Africans who walked through it.
Photo by Morgan Casey Cronkite Borderlands Project
Labor Conditions
Haitian workers endure harsh living, working conditions in company settlement
Laundry hangs in front of the “barracks,” a dwelling for families and single men in the Central Romana Batey.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Multiple workers reported that agents of Central Romana warned residents in the bateyes against speaking to journalists under threat of forced eviction. For this reason, personal identifying information has been removed and names of workers have been changed for protection.
“They don’t want us to talk, but our life is not good.” – Central Romana employee
By Keetra Bippus Cronkite Borderlands Project Aug. 10, 2023
LA ROMANA, Dominican Republic – They call it a batey. The word itself is defined as a settlement around a sugar mill.
For workers who live in the bateyes of Central Romana, the largest sugarcane company in the Dominican Republic, it’s not just a settlement, it’s home, albeit in a company-owned shantytown that’s difficult to leave because for most of them, there’s nowhere to go.
Most workers in Dominican sugarcane fields are Haitian immigrants without documentation or people of Haitian descent whose Dominican citizenship was retroactively stripped by the Dominican government in 2013, making them vulnerable to deportation and dependent on private companies for places to live.
Many infants born in Dominican hospitals to Central Romana sugarcane workers, or cañeros, have no Dominican birth certificate or residency papers because their parents don’t have legal status in the country. They aren’t citizens of Haiti either, making them stateless. The lack of documentation makes it difficult for them to go to school or find work elsewhere — leaving generations of workers to toil in the fields and live in the bateyes.
Central Romana isn’t the only company whose workers live in bateyes. And some of the settlements remain even as the sugar mills they surrounded have wound down production. Estimates
of the number of bateyes and people living in them vary widely. A 2015 United Nations Development Project report noted there were “approximately 425 bateyes in the national territory where approximately 200,000 people live.”
Central Romana, the largest exporter of Dominican sugar to the United States, has come under recent scrutiny because of its labor practices.
At the end of November, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a withhold release order (WRO) on all sugar from Central Romana, stating that sugar imported from the company won’t be allowed into the U.S. The WRO was issued “based on information that reasonably indicates the use of forced labor in its operations.”
The CBP cited five indicators of forced labor in issuing the order: “abuse of vulnerability, isolation, withholding of wages, abusive working and
A Central Romana worker holds his grandchild in the batey.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
living conditions and excessive overtime.”
The order continues to block U.S. imports of sugar from Central Romana.
“CBP will not modify or revoke a WRO until all the indicators of forced labor identified by the agency are sufficiently addressed and when it is satisfied that forced labor is no longer being used to produce the goods targeted by the order,” a Customs and Border Protection representative said.
In a press release, Central Romana said that the company has “great respect for every individual who works for our company, regardless of role, and in that regard, we have always provided appropriate wages, housing and other benefits.” The company did not respond to requests for further comment.
Workers living in the Central Romana bateyes told the Cronkite Borderlands Project of their struggles at work and in the bateyes.
Esther, a Haitian migrant who came to the Dominican Republic in 2005, said her husband works six days a week for 10 to 13 hours a day cutting sugar and he makes about 2,200 pesos, or about $40, every week — which isn’t enough to buy enough food for their five children.
If her husband stops working for the company, she said they will be evicted from the company-owned housing. Since she doesn’t have any legal documentation to stay in the country, her children lack documents, too. They are stuck at Central Romana.
“I have five kids, all of them born in the hospital. But when I asked for registration, they said ‘No you have to show me documents.’ As I don’t have documents, so I can’t have documents for my five kids,” Esther said.
Without documentation her children can’t attend public or private schools not owned by the company. Currently, her kids attend school that Central Romana provides in the bateyes, she said.
“Next year, we are going to be in trouble. Because my children cannot stay in this (Central Romana) school and have to go to another school far away from here, they will ask for documents. And that’s going to be a problem,” she said. “They are warning me that in seventh grade if you don’t have documents, you just stop there.”
Even if children do attend public schools, they cannot receive their diploma without documentation. The COVID pandemic further complicated things with online learning since many batey communities lacked access to electricity and internet, a report by the U.S. Department of Labor said.
Life in the bateyes
An electricity generator sits roaring in front of the two-room home where Roseline lives. The generator is a workaround to charge people’s phones since their batey has no electricity. Roseline was born in the Dominican Republic and so was her 2-month-old daughter, Lovelie. Lovelie lays swaddled in a blanket on the bed which takes up most of the space in the room. Because Roseline doesn’t have documentation, Lovelie doesn’t either.
Central Romana’s company website said that its bateyes are equipped with electricity, but no individual home we visited had electricity.
The workers said to keep their homes in the bateyes they must work in the fields or the mills. When workers get too old to work, they said, they are evicted.
James received a notice to pack up his things and leave his batey: he was being evicted. The reason? He had left his job at Central Romana and was working fixing homes in other bateyes with a coworker but he was still living in the company’s batey.
“They sent (the eviction) to me to make sure that I come back to that house and stay there,” James said.
He came back to Central Romana to work and he said the company left him alone and he was allowed to stay in his batey.
Becoming too old or too weak to work in the fields spells eviction. Esther said that she has seen many elderly workers evicted from their homes in the bateyes.
“There is a man who was my neighbor who lived in front of me. He’s not here anymore,” she said. “They put him out of his home because he’s weak now, he’s not strong enough to work in the sugarcane.”
Ricardo lives in a batey with his brother Stanley, who works at Central Romana cutting cane. Ricardo used to work for Central Romana but had to stop for health reasons as he has poor vision and Type 1 diabetes. If his brother wasn’t working for the company, he couldn’t live in the batey.
“He’s living here because of us,” Stanley said.
Central Romana said on its website that it provides workers with health services. Ricardo gets his medication from a public hospital, he said.
Life in Central Romana is nothing new to Peterson.
“I was 10 years old when I started working in the sugarcane,” he said.
Peterson came to the Dominican Republic in 1961 and has been working for Central Romana ever since. He said he, his children and his grandchildren all received Dominican IDs. All of his three children work for Central Romana, either weighing sugar in the cane fields or as a waitress in Casa de Campo, a resort owned by the company with famed American visitors such as Beyoncé and former President Bill Clinton.
Unlike other workers interviewed, Peterson was lucky to receive his company pension of 10,000 pesos (or about $182.50) a month. Still, it wasn’t enough to support his family and so he continues working at Central Romana.
“I’m at an age to be retired. But if I don’t have anything to eat, I have to work and 10,000 (pesos) is not enough because food is expensive,” Peterson said. “10,000 isn’t even two weeks for us.”
by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
A batey in Central Romana next to the sugarcane fields where cañeros work.
Photo
Peterson works as an overnight security guard.
For many, working at Central Romana has become a generational commitment.
Even though Peterson and his children have Dominican identification papers, it’s still dangerous to leave the batey. After the 2013 ruling, many documents previously issued to Haitian immigrants, or people of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic, are no longer considered valid by government officials.
“Yes we are afraid even though we have our ID in hand,” Peterson said.
Multiple workers interviewed mentioned immigration officials grabbing and deporting undocumented migrants, including targeting bateyes, which they said is a recent development.
Mario Jacobs, a Dominican lawyer who defends people who have been evicted from the bateyes,
denied vacations or other issues – was himself born in the bateyes.
In 23 years, “I’ve probably represented about 3,000 workers,” Jacobs said. He said is currently working on 156 cases.
Most of the cases end favorably for the workers, he said.
“We’re working to make sure that workers get their labor benefits and then helping them obtain their pension (from the state),” Jacobs said.
The company has a labor union, Sindicato Unido de Trabajadores, that cañeros (sugarcane workers) pay dues to, but it doesn’t represent their interests, Jacobs said.
“It only covers a percentage of the workers and it doesn’t help them… It’s a union for workers in name, but only defends the company,” Jacobs said. “It doesn’t defend workers.”
Haitian hands, American stomachs
Although workers like Peterson are far from the continental United States, the sugar from their work has most likely been put into the hands of U.S. consumers.
About 28% of the sugar consumed in the United States is imported and America is the top buyer of the Dominican Republic’s sugar, with 100% of official exports from the country sent to the United States in Marketing Year 2020/21, according to statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture.
So far in production year 2022/2023, the United States is the world’s third-biggest sugar importer, sixth-highest producer and fourth-highest consumer, according to statistics from the USDA.
For sugar imports, the United States has a tariff and quota system. Each country is given a quota,
set by the United States Trade Representative, for how much sugar they can import before incurring prohibitively high tariffs. Despite not even being in the top 25 sugar producers in the world, the Dominican Republic has the highest quota allocation, 17% of the total, according to the USDA.
This means that the allocation that the Dominican Republic is given every year from the U.S. strongly influences how much sugar is produced.
Before the embargo, sugar export from the Dominican Republic was mainly from Central Romana, since it was the largest sugar producer.
“In this case, Central Romana has the highest volume because it’s the biggest producer,” said Ramón Darío Hidalgo, secretary of the Dominican Sugar Institute (INAZUCAR).
In fiscal 2022 Central Romana accounted for almost 63% of the Dominican Republic’s tariff
A woman stands in front of the window of her batey.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
and quota allocation, according to a report from the USDA.
The Dominican Republic has the capacity to increase sugar production, Isaac Terrero Sánchez, director of studies and sugar policies at INAZUCAR said, “but it depends largely on the allocation for the North American quota and the growth of the local market.”
“(The sugar industry is) extremely important. Last year, sugar exports with the U.S. had a value of (over) $130 million,” Sánchez said. “Those exports hold huge significance for the Dominican Republic’s trade balance.”
But the United States may have more influence in the sugar industry than just sugar exports –but in the actual business itself.
The Fanjul Corp., owned by Americans Alfonso Fanjul and J. Pepe Fanjul, acquired a large share of Central Romana in 1984 from American company Gulf + Western. Currently, Fanjul Corp. owns a 35% stake in Central Romana, according to court documents. The Fanjul family also owns Florida Crystals, which sells sugar under the brands Domino, C&H, Florida Crystals, Redpath and Tate & Lyle, and is the world’s largest producer of refined cane sugar.
In a lawsuit, Central Romana workers alleged that the company forcibly evicted them from their homes, “destroyed Plaintiffs’ homes and their personal property, and caused Plaintiffs to suffer physical and emotional injury,” according to court documents. The workers sued Fanjul Corp., alleging that the company was the “alter ego” of Central Romana. The case was dismissed in 2021, “finding Plaintiffs’ allegations that Fanjul owns 35% of Central Romana’s shares through a subsidiary and that Fanjul and Central Romana share four overlapping officers and directors were ‘insufficient to plead an alter ego theory’” the dismissal said.
The U.S. Department of Labor has issued periodic reports since 2013 about “egregious working conditions” in the Dominican Republic’s sugar industry. In its seventh periodic report, published in September 2022, it found that outreach and inspections have continued to fail workers and found several indicators of forced labor.
Nevertheless, workers like Peterson said he’ll remain at Central Romana and worries that his grandchildren will, too.
“I don’t have any hope for them because I don’t have anything,” he said.
A cañero worker in Central Romana walks through the sugarcane field.
Photo by John Leos Cronkite Borderlands Project
Haitian sugarcane workers in the Dominican Republic suffer amid U.S. embargo on Central Romana
By John Leos Cronkite Borderlands Project
Aug. 4,
2023
Multiple workers reported that agents of Central Romana warned residents in the bateyes against speaking to journalists under threat of forced eviction. For this reason, personal identifying information has been removed and names of workers have been changed for protection.
“They don’t want us to talk, but our life is not good.” – Central Romana employee
LA ROMANA, Dominican Republic — A row of small concrete homes sits secluded among towering fields of sugarcane and crisscrossing dirt roads. Young children play under the sparse shade of trees while exhausted women hang the wash to dry under the sweltering Dominican sun – and under the control of the country’s largest corporation.
Three workers stand in a clearing surrounded by sugarcane stalks ready for harvest in La Romana province, Dominican Republic, in March. Before the U.S. ordered an embargo on Central Romana’s sugar due to forced labor conditions, much of the sugar harvested in these fields would have been exported to the United States under low tariffs.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Marie, 36, lives with her husband and five children in one of these houses. The dimly lit threeroom structure is caked in dirt on the outside, but the inside is filled with piles of her children’s clothes and the smell of reheated rice. Seven people occupy the home, but none are authorized to live in the Dominican Republic.
They are among the thousands of workers
tending fields owned by Central Romana Corp. They live in a company town— known locally as a batey — that is also owned by their employer.
Central Romana owns Marie’s house. It provides her family’s sole source of income. It runs the schools that educate her children and offers her the only refuge from Dominican immigration authorities.
Marie, 36, and her oldest daughter, 13, live in Central Romana company housing in La Romana province in the Dominican Republic. The family of seven depend on a single salary from the Dominican Republic’s largest sugar producer, but income for Marie’s husband has been decreasing since the United States ordered a halt on imports due to forced labor conditions.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Marie has lived here since 2005 without legal documents. Her children were born into statelessness. Her husband has a severe physical disability, but he still spends 12 hours a day, six days a week, in the sugarcane fields cutting the heavy stalks by the metric ton in order to earn a meager wage of 50 cents an hour, an income she reports as shrinking.
“It’s not enough for eating,” she said. “We are seven people living here. You can imagine what this means for us.”
Marie wants to find work herself and contribute to the family’s earnings, but her undocumented status keeps her confined to the home. She yearns for a better future for her children, but there isn’t much room for hope. Her oldest daughter will soon age out of the nearby school,
and the intermediate school outside of the settlement requires papers.
The neighbor next door was recently evicted from his home by Central Romana because he was unable to work. Marie fears her family could be next.
The last time she went to the market in the nearby town of Guaymate, she witnessed immigration agents grabbing Haitian people off the streets. She ran through the market so she wouldn’t be caught, but later, two others were captured in the settlement.
“The fear that undocumented people have is high now,” she said, “You cannot be free in the batey.”
Marie and her family’s survival reflect the thousands of other Haitian and stateless people of
Haitian descent living and working on Central Romana’s land amid an embargo on the corporation’s sugar products by the United States government.
By law, the United States is prohibited from importing goods produced by forced labor.
In November 2022, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that it would be enforcing an order halting products that originated from Central Romana’s plantations from being imported to the United States.
The order came after federal investigators found forced labor practices on Central Romana’s plantations and worker housing following a formal petition from international advocates.
The corporation, owned in part by the Florida based Fanjul Corp., denied all allegations of workers’ rights violations in a statement issued after the embargo was enacted.
“In the coming weeks and months, we expect to engage in a dialogue with CBP about the issues they have raised, and we will share our position
A woman hangs laundry to dry in a worker settlement, known as a batey, owned by Central Romana. The corporation owns hundreds of settlements throughout their plantations, many of which are dilapidated without running water, electricity or adequate housing for the worker population.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
A wooden company house sits next to fields where cane workers spend much of the harvesting season cutting sugarcane stalks for Central Romana Corp. Workers who live in the company’s housing have accused the corporation of sudden, violent evictions and demolition of homes.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
fully and transparently. We hope to be able to work collaboratively with CBP to resolve this matter,” said Central Romana in the statement.
In the meantime, diminishing wages, forced evictions and immigration raids have left Central Romana’s largely Haitian workforce even more vulnerable.
Evictions and Demolition
Etienne, 71, sits in a weathered wooden chair outside a dilapidated brown house in a row of identical brown houses with hand scrawled
numbers painted above each door. There are power lines running by this and other Central Romana properties, but none are connected to the electrical grid. The houses also lack running water.
Etienne, a short, soft-spoken elder, brushes his hands over his salt-and-pepper hair as he describes being evicted from his home by Central Romana three months earlier.
The corporation demolished his settlement, called Batey Nigua, or “flea batey,” one month after the embargo was enacted. Other residents
were put on buses and spread out to other company towns. Because he had family in this settlement, Etienne moved here.Central Romana has a pattern of forcefully displacing its employees living in company housing.
In 2021, after an investigation by Mother Jones revealed negligible living conditions, the company bulldozed a settlement known as Batey Hoyo de Puerco, or “Pighole Batey,” ahead of a U.S. congressional delegation visit to La Romana province. Central Romana denied the timing of the demolition was related to the visit.
In 2020, Central Romana and Fanjul Corp. were sued in U.S. federal court by 24 families after the destruction of a settlement in El Seibo province. The residents allege that in 2016, armed militarized guards working for Central Romana forced them from their homes and demolished entire settlements in the middle of the night, without any prior notice.
The lawsuit was dismissed in 2021. The court’s opinion cited a lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The lawyer for these families, Robert T. Vance Jr., is the same
Workers weigh and load tons of sugarcane onto railway cars for processing in Central Romana’s sugar mills in La Romana province. Workers, paid per metric ton, earn about $55 a week. Central Romana has been the subject of numerous allegations of forced labor practices and human rights abuses, leading to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection order to halt imports from its plantations – which has hurt worker’s earnings.
Photos by John Leos Cronkite Borderlands Project
lawyer that filed the official petition with CBP to enforce the embargo against Central Romana.
For now, Etienne resides at his brother’s house, where he has become completely dependent on his family. He requested a pension from the Dominican government in 2008, but never received a response.
The only document he has is a Central Romana worker identification card.
Etienne immigrated to the Dominican Republic in 1975, when he was 23 years old, escaping Haiti’s political and economic turmoil. As soon as he set foot in La Romana province, he began
working in the canefields cleaning weeds and cutting cane.
Now, Etienne suffers from vision loss and high blood pressure from Type 2 diabetes, which has made it impossible for him to return to work without putting his life at risk. If Central Romana officials catch him living on company property without working, he fears he will be evicted again.
“They are abusing Haitians now,” said Etienne, “They are saying it’s because of Haitians that there is an embargo with the United States.”
A group of aging workers stand outside Central Romana company housing. If they cannot perform manual labor in the sugarcane fields, workers are ineligible for company housing. Many work in the fields into old age to avoid deportation or homelessness, since the majority of Central Romana’s workforce are undocumented Haitians or stateless laborers.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Prohibitions and politics
The United States is prohibited from importing goods produced under forced labor practices under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930. In 2022, the Law Offices of Robert T. Vance Jr., a Philadelphia-based firm, filed a petition under Section 307 with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to cease imports from Central Romana.
“CBP receives numerous allegations of forced labor from a variety of sources, including government partners, reports by non-government organizations, media coverage, firsthand accounts and the general public,” said Jeffrey Quiñones, an agency representative, in a written statement. “We will continue to use the resources at our disposal to evaluate these allegations and to identify and prevent goods made with forced labor from entering the U.S. commerce.”
CBP did not provide the details on the inception of the investigation, but a congressional delegation visit to the Dominican Republic, a Department of Labor report and negative reports from human rights advocates all happened in the months leading up to the embargo.
In a meeting of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade in 2021, Rep. Earl Blumenaur, D-Ore., also cited reports by The Washington Post into dubious financial practices by Central Romana leadership and a two-year investigation by Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
A subsequent investigation by CBP found five of the International Labor Organization’s indicators of forced labor in Central Romana’s operations, including isolation, withholding of wages, abusive working and living conditions, and the exploitation of people in a vulnerable position.
In response, the Dominican government sought to help Central Romana by engaging in a dialogue with U.S. officials to reverse the sanction. The Ministries of Labor, Foreign Affairs, and
A repurposed school bus sits at the edge of a sugarcane plantation, waiting to take Central Romana’s harvesters back to company housing at the end of the workday. Some sugarcane harvesters report cutting in the fields for 12 hours a day, six days a week, just to earn enough to feed their families.
Photo by John Leos Cronkite Borderlands Project
Industry and Commerce have been employed to monitor the situation, according to presidential representative Homero Figuero.
“We understand that the decision to suspend imports to the United States of sugar produced by Central Romana has nothing to do with the role of the Dominican Government,” said Figueroa in a statement on Nov. 25, 2022, “but since it affects the international image and the country’s economy, we have to get involved. We want to do it in a constructive way.”
Central Romana cane workers and human rights advocates fear that political pressure from the
Jean-Baptise, a sugarcane cutter for Central Romana, wipes the sweat from his face while taking a break from harvesting on the company’s plantations in March. He immigrated to the country from neighboring Haiti in search of economic opportunity, and now lives undocumented with his two children in Central Romana’s dilapidated company housing.
Photo by John Leos Cronkite Borderlands Project
Dominican government could lead to the order being lifted without any substantive changes to working conditions. Dominican officials did not comment on the status of the governmental commission, or how they were engaging with U.S. officials.
“CBP will not modify or revoke a WRO (withhold release order) until all the indicators of forced labor identified by the agency are sufficiently addressed and when it is satisfied that forced labor is no longer being used to produce the goods targeted by the order,” CBP’s Quiñones said in a written statement.
Machetes and the sugar economy
A repurposed school bus waits at the edge of a seemingly endless canefield to transport Central Romana’s workers back home to company housing after the workday’s end. Among the piles of dead stalks and swinging machetes is JeanBaptiste, who wipes the sweat from his brow after boasting that he can harvest one ton of sugarcane in an hour. He earns $55 a week for this labor.
Jean-Baptiste immigrated to the
A worker for Central Romana uses a machete to manually harvest tons of sugarcane on the company’s plantations in La Romana province, Dominican Republic. The majority of Central Romana’s workforce are of Haitian descent, and many live stateless in the Dominican Republica without immigration papers.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Dominican Republic from Thiotte, Haiti, in 2009 with hopes of a stable economic future after working as a taxi driver in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. He is now the father to three children, all living on Central Romana’s property without documents. Just days earlier, he witnessed two of his friends apprehended by Dominican immigration officials and sent to a detention center.
Jean-Baptiste said he knew an embargo was enacted, but did not know the motivations behind the decision.
“We are in misery here, but we prefer to come here,” said Jean-Baptiste before disappearing
into the thick of the sugarcane, machete in hand.
Central Romana is the Dominican Republic’s largest private landowner and the biggest employer in the country, accounting for about 70% of total sugar production in the country, according to the company’s website.
Nearly every granule of raw sugar officially exported from the Dominican Republic in 2022 ended up in the United States, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Over the last five years, the U.S. has bought more than half a billion dollars worth of crude and refined sugar from Dominican sugar producers, according to data from INAZUCAR, a Dominican
governmental body that makes domestic policy recommendations on sugar production.
The United States imports raw sugar and sugar products under a quota system that guarantees relatively low tariffs. In 2022, the Dominican Republic was allocated the largest share of these quotas among 40 exporting countries, according to data from the U.S. Office of the Trade Representative. By the end of fiscal year 2022 that share had grown to over 20%, one-fifth of all sugar products imported under reduced tariffs, according to the USDA.
More than half of that allocation was filled by Central Romana: 150,347 metric tons of sugar entered the United States in 2022 under what is now classified as forced labor.
The North American market is critical for the Dominican Republic’s trade balance, said Isaac Terrero Sánchez, the director of studies and sugar policies at INAZUCAR. “The livelihoods of over 40,000 employees depend directly on the production of sugar.”
Following the announcement of the embargo, Dominican officials at INAZUCAR reassigned Central Romana’s trade quotas to the other two major sugar producers on the island, Consorcio Azucarero Central and Consorcio Azucarero de Empresas Industriales. The two companies have faced allegations of worker rights abuses similar to Central Romana.
Amid diminishing wages, increasing immigration raids, and the fear of forced eviction, some sugarcane workers said they still support the economic sanction against Central Romana. They believe that the economic pressure will finally lead to accountability for the company.
A cycle of vulnerability
In a cramped and darkened two-room row house, a newborn baby sleeps quietly with her young mother and uncle by her side. Esther, 17, gave birth in a Dominican hospital one month earlier but received no birth certificate for her daughter, Rosa.
Esther was born and raised in this same settlement after her father immigrated to the Dominican Republic from Haiti to work as a cane cutter for Central Romana. Last year, she applied for her own legal documentation, and was even photographed and fingerprinted by Dominican officials. But she never heard back about the status of her application.
Both mother and daughter were born stateless in the Dominican Republic.
Barely a month old, Rosa represents the hope and motivation for her mother to break free from the cycle of vulnerability that has existed in this impoverished settlement for three generations.
“When I get my papers, I want to work in a hotel,” she said watching the dozing child, “I want to help my baby, I want to help my family.”
Baby Rosa lies sleeping next to her uncle in Central Romana’s dilapidated company housing in La Romana province. Three generations of this family currently live undocumented or stateless on the company’s property, amid increasing immigration raids by Dominican officials.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Esther, 17, and her newborn daughter both live stateless in Central Romana company housing in La Romana province, Dominican Republic. The new mother has applied for papers through Dominican immigration authorities, but has been waiting over a year for a response. She said she hopes to work in a hotel to earn enough to help support her family.
Photo by John Leos/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Health
Poverty
Kids play basketball on the site where the government is building a road in Domingo Savio on March 3, 2023. The thousands of homes that once stood along this stretch of the Ozama River were torn down as part of an infrastructure project.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
As Santo Domingo develops, vulnerable people are left behind
As the Dominican Republic invests in development and climate resiliency, government projects aimed at improving quality of life and guarding against climate change are having a negative effect on some of the very people they were designed to help.
By Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
Nov. 9, 2023
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic –Red letters painted on the wall of the concrete house indicated its fate. In this neighborhood in the capital city, marks like this are a sign that a home will soon be reduced to rubble, often within hours of its inhabitants’ eviction. That moment came for this house, and the family that lived in it, on a clear day in March.
Cruz Mejia, third from left, says a final goodbye to the home she has lived in for almost all of her life.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
The two-story house – yellow walls on the top floor, orange on the bottom – belonged to Ana Maria Cruz Mejia. She has lived in the house since she was 3. She is now in her 40s. The home had seen all the twists and turns of her life. She ran a business on the ground floor, selling consignment clothes, hence the mannequin propped up against the wall.
“It is my whole life, really,” she said. “All my memories are here, my children were born here,
Movers pack up Ana Maria Cruz Mejia’s house in Domingo Savio, a neighborhood in Santo Domingo on March 9, 2023. Cruz Mejia and her neighbors are being forced to move to make room for a new road that the Dominican government is building as part of an infrastructure improvement project.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
Cruz Mejia, fourth from the left, talks to an employee from URBE, third from the left. Cruz Mejia says the government first told her she needed to move about a year ago. Like other families, she was compensated.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson/Cronkite Borderlands Project
my grandchildren. My father died here — in other words a whole life. They say a person makes the place…”
Cruz Mejia didn’t want to leave. But the Dominican government plans to build a new road that will carve through this section of Domingo Savio, a sprawling network of informal settlements stretching up from the Ozama River into the heart of Santo Domingo. It’s part of a project to mitigate the effects of climate change and improve the lives of people in the impoverished neighborhood by building schools, a market, recreation areas and a better system for wastewater and trash.
Cruz Mejia’s house – and many others around it – stands in the way.
As the Dominican Republic grapples with the growing pains of an expanding economy, even the most well-intentioned development projects have unintended consequences. In cases like Cruz Mejia’s and other families who have been displaced, sometimes the most vulnerable people become collateral damage.
Cruz Mejia’s family is one of several that were
evicted on that same day. Over the years, thousands of families have been displaced to make room for the government’s urban revitalization project to improve infrastructure in Domingo Savio and protect residents along the river against floods.
on the same day in March.
One by one, Cruz Mejia’s things fill up the moving truck. She is one of several families evicted
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
bulldozer
The government intends to build a road through this area to connect the informal settlement of Domingo Savio with the rest of the capital city.
Cruz Mejia’s house – and many others around it – stands in the way.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
Cruz Mejia said her family owns the land where their house stood, but the government disputes this. Many people in the informal settlement don’t have formal title to their property. At the start of the Domingo Savio project, the government bought the land and distributed the titles to the people.
Over a year ago, the government agency in charge of the project – Executing Unit for the Readjustment of Neighborhoods and Environments, or URBE – told Cruz Mejia that she needed to move. At first, they offered her about 420,000 Dominican pesos – roughly $7,400 – but Cruz Mejia said that when she refused to leave without more money, they increased it to 735,000 pesos, or about $13,000, which she accepted.
Then, on a sunny day in March, Cruz Mejia watched pensively as men in orange shirts passed her possessions one by one into the back of a moving truck parked precariously on a steep hill. Government employees dressed in white
When employees from URBE, the agency in charge of the project, go into Domingo Savio to move someone from their home, they are accompanied by security. This is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the capital city of the Dominican Republic, and around half of the people live in poverty, according to SIUBEN, the government body that conducts population surveys.
Borderlands
A
drives by Cruz Mejia’s house.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson/Cronkite
Project
shirts roamed, clipboards in hand, overseeing the process. Three police officers stood around, relaxed. Another stood in the doorframe of a house across the street, holding a machine gun across his body. On the building next to him, a message in green paint reads “a house for a house, or fair price” — a reference to the hundreds of families like Ana who have been forced from this neighborhood. Below it another red code marked that building for destruction, too.
Just up the street, a bulldozer blocked most of the narrow road, waiting for the moving truck to fill with Ana’s things before the demolition work began on her lifelong home.
Domingo Savio
The government project in Domingo Savio – and the evictions that come with it – are a byproduct of the Dominican Republic’s rapidly developing economy and history of urbanization.
The island nation has enjoyed one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last decade, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This has led to a reduction in poverty. In 2020, around 5.6% of the population lived in extreme poverty, well below the regional average of 8.7%, according to the OECD.
But inequality remains stark. Around 30% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population. Much of the land in the capital city, including Domingo Savio, is controlled by a few wealthy families.
That inequality has led to the establishment of informal communities, said Jose Núñez Collado, a lecturer in architecture at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, who has conducted extensive research in the Dominican Republic.
“Because of the inequality existing in the country and because of the inability of the government to keep up with rapid urbanization processes, these people are forced in a way to build their
settlements in those unwanted areas in order to be closer to job opportunities,” he said.
These informal settlements, particularly along the Ozama River which cuts the city in two, swelled in the 1980s. At that point, 70% of the population of Santo Domingo lived in informal areas. Now 40% of the population of the national district – about half a million people – live in informal settlements, according to Núñez Collado.
Santo Domingo is also one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to climate change. The city is sliced by two rivers – the Isabela and Ozama – and bordered by the Caribbean Sea, making it particularly at risk of flooding during the cyclone season. The World Bank predicts that by 2050, Santo Domingo will be in the top five cities most impacted by sea level rise. Around 17 million people live in urban areas along the coast, making them vulnerable to flooding, hurricanes and rising waters, according to a report by the International Organization for Migration.
Domingo Savio, the informal settlement along the Ozama River, is especially vulnerable. In 2018, the government declared the stretch of land along the river to be uninhabitable due to the risk of flooding and announced a plan to move people living there.
In recent years, the government has recognized the urgent need to invest in projects that would tackle both the unsafe conditions in the sprawling informal settlements and shore up protection against the impacts of climate change on riverside communities. It is in this context that URBE was created to respond to some of these problems.
The rise of URBE
The community of La Barquita sat along the curve in the Ozama River in northern Santo Domingo. The low-lying area was highly vulnerable to flooding when it rained or when the river swelled during the wet season.
La Barquita was the site of URBE’s first major project. It was motivated by the goal to mitigate the impacts of climate change for the roughly 1,800 families living in the neighborhood.
It was a bold and novel idea: move everyone into newly built housing in a less flood-prone area. The government built high-rise apartments with a childcare center, a water treatment plant and space for businesses. Then they moved everyone – about 7,000 people – from La Barquita to the new community called La Nueva Barquita – The New Barquita.
The project took three years to complete and wrapped up by the 2016 election. URBE is directed by the president’s office, and the results in La Nueva Barquita were politically eye-catching.
“It was the biggest nationally known project for that term,” said Rocio Vidal, a director general at URBE. “It was very successful.”
By giving relocated people a new home, La Nueva Barquita was seen as a blueprint for revitalizing struggling communities and protecting them from flooding and other impacts of climate change.
“(The president) wanted to create a model community,” Vidal said. La Barquita “was a project of relocation and of proving that in the Dominican Republic we can have a community and an urbanism and a construction method that’s viable.”
As the agency made a name for itself, URBE started taking on other development projects that went beyond climate change, like gondolas to connect sectors of Santo Domingo without uprooting communities to build a metro line.
With Domingo Savio the agency has taken on its most ambitious project to date.
The project in Domingo Savio
Narrow streets, some unpaved and uneven, snake through Domingo Savio. Small houses – built from concrete or sheets of metal – are nearly built on top of each other. Around 43,000 people live in this small pocket of Santo Domingo. The population is so dense that a car can’t drive through much of the area.
“There is no way of getting even an ambulance in there,” said Vidal, who is managing the project at URBE.
People live without electricity, drinkable running water or proper waste disposal. Around half of the population lives in poverty, according to statistics from the Social Benefits System, or SIUBEN, the government body that conducts population surveys.
Since 2017, the Dominican government has invested in infrastructure and access to basic services in the area with a project known as Nuevo Domingo Savio. The initial phase of work is expected to be completed this year.
But working in this context is challenging.
“It’s one of the densest communities in the city in the National District. It’s one of the most dangerous,” Vidal said. “It’s just a reality that you can’t erase.”
Similar to La Barquita, the Domingo Savio project was, in part, an effort to prepare for the effects of climate change. Hundreds of families lived right on the river’s edge. They are often flooded.
In 2018, URBE released reports that showed 67% of Domingo Savio – 270,000 square meters – was
uninhabitable due to the risk of flooding and seismic activity. The area was home to roughly 1,400 families, all of which had to be moved.
Based on estimates of the river’s rising levels, URBE moved homes to create a 3-kilometer buffer along the edge of the water. Around 2,000 to 3,000 families were displaced in the process, according to Vidal. The land they once lived on became a park.
In the rest of Domingo Savio the issues are far more complex. Compared to the immediate needs for better infrastructure and basic services, the impending crisis of climate change – even if it’s just a few years away – is not as pressing.
“These communities are so, so impoverished,” Vidal said. “Climate change is an element, but there’s so many things that correlate that are also impacted.”
According to Vidal, the project in Domingo Savio is about revitalizing an entire area, providing basic services and connecting a marginalized community to the rest of the city in the hopes of improving economic opportunities and living conditions.
“Our focus is trying to improve the quality of life of 45,000 people that right now live in conditions that are not safe,” she said.
To accomplish this, URBE is removing thousands of people from homes they have lived in for decades to make room for the roads and parks that the government wants to build. It puts the agency at odds with both members of the community and with housing rights advocates.
The feasible solution
In La Nueva Barquita, URBE built new housing for everyone who was displaced. That’s not the case in Domingo Savio. Here, the government is giving money for new housing to anyone who is forced to move.
People like Altagracia Jaqueline Paulino.
The sun set over Paulino’s shoulder as she sat around the corner from where her home used to stand under the bridge in Domingo Savio. She has worked hard to buy her house.
“I was at peace because I knew nobody would come knock on my door and say, ‘You owe,’ Because it was mine,” she said. “Even if I could just buy one banana to share with my children, it was our banana. We did not have the torment of having to pay for the house.”
Altagracia Jaqueline Paulino on March 8, 2023, sitting around the corner from where she used to live. When she was evicted, the government compensated her. But it wasn’t enough money to find a new place to live. She moved in with her son.
Her eyes slowly filled with tears as she described how she raised her four kids and built a community with her neighbors around their shared
Altagracia Jaqueline Paulino on March 8, 2023, sitting around the corner from where she used to live. When she was evicted, the government compensated her. But it wasn’t enough money to find a new place to live. She moved in with her son.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Altagracia Jaqueline Paulino stands on March 8, 2023, in the rubble that is all that remains of the home where she spent nearly half her life. Earlier this year, she was evicted and the home destroyed as part of the infrastructure project in Domingo Savio.
Photos by Caitlin Thompson/Cronkite Borderlands Project
courtyard. It was more than a house.
She was devastated when she learned she was being evicted. “My heart sank,” she said. “I began to cry. And still I think, ‘How am I going to go forward?’ because I don’t have strength. They don’t give me any work. And I don’t see a way to get help. And I ask the Lord to help me.”
Paulino, who is 66 years old, had spent over half of her life in the now-destroyed home. Earlier this year, URBE tore it down because the house was under the bridge where the agency plans to build a road. The government gave her 350,000 Dominican pesos – about $6,150 – to move.
But that money was not enough for Paulino to find another place to live. She had to move in with her son.
The amount of compensation that people receive depends on the type of house. A concrete house like Paulino’s will fetch more than a structure built with metal zinc plates. If the person runs
a business from their home, they get additional pesos. URBE also adds money for each family member.
But housing rights advocates and community members say it’s not enough money to buy a new home that is safe to live in. Houses that are available in that price range are far away from this neighborhood. People are forced to move across the city from their jobs and their loved ones or double up with family.
Alicia Antonia de la Nuez has lived in Domingo Savio since she was 18. It’s where she raised her daughter and her son. She paid 1,000 pesos a month – about $18 – to rent a house under the bridge.
“That was difficult, to pay the 1,000 pesos. And I lived there – in a little place – and that was fine because I could not pay very much money, because I am sick and I am poor,” she said. “Then, they evicted us.”
When she was forced to move, the government gave her 500,000 pesos – about $8,800 – for her home and the hair salon she ran from her house.
URBE’s policy is to give most of the money to the renter so they can find a new place to live, but the owner of the structure also receives some compensation.
De la Nuez, now in her 60s, used the money to buy a new home, but it was in unsafe condition. She had to leave and move in with her brother and her mother.
The root of the problem is a lack of affordable housing, said Vidal, the project manager at URBE. She acknowledged that giving people money isn’t a long-term fix.
“There’s no perfect solution,” Vidal said. “So sometimes in these types of projects, you just have to go for what is better for the most people than for exclusive cases.”
URBE’s work has received a mixed response in the community.
José Luis Gómez grew up in Domingo Savio. Now he is a pastor and runs several churches across the neighborhood. He thinks the government’s project could improve people’s quality of life. He wants to see the schools materialize. He described it as “beautiful.”
But he takes issue with the way the government is evicting people.
“The government is in violation of the law and the rights of the people,” he said. “The public law – Article 59 – says that every Dominican has the right to a place to live. And not just a place to live, but adequate services, including health, education, streets, sidewalks, water, light – this is established. But the government does not respect the law. It is abusive.”
Gómez wants the government to follow the model of the La Nueva Barquita project. If URBE
Alicia Antonia de la Nuez stands on March 8, 2023, in the courtyard where she once lived. She used the money that she got as compensation after she was evicted to move to a new home, but it was in unsafe condition. She was forced to move in with her brother and mother.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
José Luis Gómez stands on March 5, 2023, in front of a church in Domingo Savio where he is a pastor. He thinks the government’s project is “very, very beautiful” because it could improve people’s quality of life. But he says the government is being abusive by evicting people.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
A worker tears down a family’s home shortly after their eviction on March 9, 2023. The government is displacing people and demolishing their houses as part of a government project intended to mitigate the effects of climate change and enhance the lives of people living in the impoverished neighborhood.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson/Cronkite Borderlands Project
were to pursue his vision, the government would build high-rise apartment buildings to house all the people who have been displaced by the development projects.
But La Nueva Barquita isn’t replicable in Domingo Savio, according to Vidal at URBE.
There are almost 45,000 people living in Domingo Savio – about six times the size of La Barquita. That limits what the government can feasibly do. In a place this densely populated, building new housing for everyone who was forced out of other parts of the neighborhood would invariably displace even more.
La Nueva Barquita was also too expensive. The whole project cost over 4 billion pesos, or about $70.3 million at the current exchange rate.
“You have to pick and choose and prioritize,” Vidal said. “Scalability, feasibility, all these things play a lot into account.”
The disagreement about how to create safe, affordable housing for people living in poverty illustrates the tensions between the ideal outcome and reality.
While it’s not perfect, compensating people who are forced to move is the most feasible course of action, Vidal said.
“This is the best possible solution. This is the most real solution to what we have right now,” she said. “To make these projects doable, executable. They have to have a proper scale.”
Promises falling short
The project in Domingo Savio aims to solve problems that have faced people living in the informal settlement for decades, including lack of basic services and safe living conditions.
URBE wants a sustainable solution “that
empowers or, in this case, gives tools for people to actually improve their quality of life, improve their day to day, improve their access, improve their education,” Vidal said.
But housing advocates don’t think this is happening.
“When I talk about Domingo Savio, I don’t talk about a project of the government for the vulnerable,” said Virginia Pastor, an architect at the housing rights group Ciudad Alternativa. “This is an easy way to start the gentrification.”
Pastor said the project isn’t fitting the community’s basic needs.
The central element is a park-lined road that stretches from one end of Domingo Savio to the other along the Ozama River. This was meant to connect people to the rest of the city. And then there’s the baseball and soccer fields and a multipurpose sports center. But what people really need, Pastor said, is housing.
A family that is being evicted finishes moving their things. As part of the project, the government promises to build schools, a market, recreation areas and a better system for wastewater and trash. But housing advocates and community members are frustrated that people are being displaced.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
URBE has been criticized for not involving the community in its planning. Leaders like Gómez have been meeting with URBE throughout the project in Domingo Savio. Ciudad Alternativa met with URBE twice a month for two years. The agency has an office in Domingo Savio and runs events for people in the neighborhood.
But that doesn’t mean the community feels heard or their perspective has been incorporated, Pastor said. Instead, she feels the relationship is more paternalistic.
Rather than listening to what people in the community want, the government is coming in and telling them what it intends to do, Pastor said.
“They treat poor people like idiots and like they don’t know what they need,” she said.
It undermines faith in the project.
“If you’re not working inside the community, you are not doing anything for the people. You are only building a road that is beautiful, that is
Debora Cueva Magallanes moves her parents out of their home in Domingo Savio. Since the government started the project in 2017, thousands of families have been forced from their homes.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
perfect to walk. But it’s not for the people,” she said. “Who are you working for?”
For the people in Domingo Savio, the power balance is not in their favor, Pastor said. People have little agency or ability to push back against the government when they are told they need to move. Often, they don’t have a lawyer or an advocate with them for negotiations with URBE.
“They don’t have anyone to fight for them,” Pastor said.
In the past, under the previous president and before the formation of URBE, forced evictions were more aggressive, said Katherine Almánzar, also at Ciudad Alternativa. The government would come into the neighborhood to violently move people, who were not compensated. That history has made people scared to push back.
“In most of the cases, you’re going to say yes to whatever they say because it’s the government and they have all the forces in the country to do whatever they want,” Almánzar said.
The main features that have been built are the road, a linear park, sports facilities and a market
Altagracia Delicia, right, helps her friend (not pictured) move out of her home close to the river. As part of the project, the government built a buffer zone along the river to protect homes that are at risk of flooding and rising sea levels.
by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
for local fishermen. This first phase of the project is supposed to wrap up in the fall of 2023.
When the government announced the project, it promised to build schools, fix roads and improve sewage, drainage, water, electricity and waste management. URBE isn’t responsible for building all of these elements; other government agencies are also involved. Some of those features are being built in parts of the neighborhood but not the entire sector yet. The project’s master design includes plans to expand those services to the rest of the barrio in future phases.
For some, the progress is too slow.
“So they are only moving people or doing evictions … and they are not solving the problems that are inside the neighborhood,” Pastor said. “The question is, is this the right thing to do with vulnerable people?”
A family’s house in Domingo Savio is torn down within hours of their eviction on March 9, 2023.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
Photo
Pastor remembers when houses were torn down to make room for a new school. But the government agency in charge of building it didn’t have the money.
“I think that’s the worst part because you are moving a family for a community benefit that is not working, that is not happening,” Pastor said. “But you are not solving the housing problem of the family that is struggling that lived there. So you’re not solving any problems.”
The question of how the Dominican Republic develops in a way that doesn’t bypass or further marginalize people living in poverty won’t be resolved or perfected in one government project in one neighborhood. The project in Domingo Savio highlights the challenges with building housing infrastructure and access to basic services in a way that is inclusive and sustainable.
But the project in Domingo Savio is the best
Community members and housing advocates are upset that the government is displacing people without giving them a home. They say the compensation that people receive is not enough to find a new place to live, so people have to move far away or double up with family members.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
option given the circumstances, says Vidal at URBE.
“I don’t think it’s the perfect solution. I don’t think anything is perfect. Everything can be better. But I do think it’s a scalable solution. And I do think it’s going to transform at least 30,000, if not 50,000 or 40,000 people directly,” Vidal said.
But some of the people who have been evicted from Domingo Savio are more vulnerable than they were before.
Altagracia Jaqueline Paulino, the woman from Domingo Savio, is still reeling from the loss of her home where she spent most of her life, raised a family and built a community.
“I was so happy in my house, even though it was under the bridge. I was happy,” she said. “And so I have faith that God will help me. Because I am not asking for a mansion, I am just asking for a place for me and my daughter.”
All that remains as a family finishes moving out of their home in Domingo Savio. The infrastructure project forces into focus a disagreement about how to create safe, affordable housing for people living in poverty.
Photo by Caitlin Thompson Cronkite Borderlands Project
For immigrants in the Dominican Republic, access to HIV treatment is difficult to obtain
By Albert Serna Jr. Cronkite Borderlands Project
Jan. 8, 2024
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic –AIDS Healthcare Foundation works to provide treatment for people living in the Dominican Republic. But for Haitian migrants, access to care can be difficult.
Massiel Ruiz, the country program manager for AIDS Healthcare Foundation Dominican Republic, gives reporters a tour of the AHF facility on March 8, 2023, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Ruiz oversees AHF programming for the Dominican Republic and recently opened the clinic in Santo Domingo.
Photo by Albert Serna Jr. Cronkite Borderlands Project
Stanley Payoute, a doctor with AIDS Healthcare Foundation Haiti, drives across the Haitian border into the Dominican Republic to meet with Cronkite News reporters on March 5, 2023, in Dajabon, Dominican Republic. Payoute drove with two patients and a nurse from his clinic in Cap-Haitien, Haiti.
Photo by Albert Serna Jr. Cronkite Borderlands Project
Audio Stories
Ep 1: HIV care and treatment in the Dominican Republic
Access to care and treatment for HIV is not always difficult to get – the AIDS Healthcare Foundation provides treatment to anyone who needs it. But resources for the Dominican arm of the agency are not always plentiful and a small team works to provide care across the country.
Ep 2: Resources for people living with HIV in Haiti may be difficult to come by.
In what has been described as one of the “poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere” by the Council on Foreign Relations, there are resources readily available for people living with HIV. Even so, what people ask for and need isn’t always available to them due to lack of funding and lack of communication between different agencies.
Ep 3: HIV testing and treatment for Haitian migrants in Dominican bateys
In some of the country’s poorest communities, Light a Candle Foundation dispatches mobile clinics to test for and treat HIV. Community buy-in is important, but a stigma and lack of understanding about the spread of the virus can keep the community from testing.
Health care worker and HIV tester, Katherine, takes a blood sample from a patient to test for the virus on March 6, 2023, in La Romana, Dominican Republic. Katherine tested 29 residents of the Batey La Gina, none of whom tested positive for HIV.
Photo by Albert Serna Jr./Cronkite Borderlands Project
Baseball Dreams
Baseball has huge onand off-the-field impact in the Dominican Republic
Leones De Chaca League players leave their equipment on the ground while they warm up before starting play at the Félix Sánchez Olympic Stadium in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on March 8, 2023.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera Cronkite Borderlands Project
By Logan Stanley Cronkite Borderlands Project
Sept. 5, 2023
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — It’s a breezy Friday afternoon in early March at Estadio Olimpico Felix Sanchez in the capital city of the Dominican Republic, as the sun begins to set.
Balls are flying. The clink of aluminum bats echoes in the distance. Players dash between bases.
Three groups are holding practice at this four-diamond complex. Miranda Liga, Esmeralda Liga and the Pimentel Baseball Academy share the site so children can chase their dreams of becoming the next great Major League Baseball player from the Dominican Republic. They hope to follow in the footsteps of players like Miami Marlins pitcher and 2022 Cy Young winner Sandy Alcántara.
Children as young as 7 years old suit up and train, hoping to climb to stardom.
That’s because, in the Dominican Republic, “la pelota” is king.
Jorge Torres, the technical director of the Dominican Republic Baseball League, who has been working with young players for 25 years, described how much the sport means in the Dominican Republic.
“There is something here that occurs from the moment a child is born,” Torres said. “And it is that the father says, ‘A baseball player was born.’”
The sport is so woven into the country’s culture that it ranked third in the world for most Google searches for baseball in 2022, behind Cuba and Japan, according to the publication FiveThirtyEight.
At the beginning of the 2023 season, 104 players from the Dominican Republic were on an MLB roster. That’s the most for any country outside of the United States and 11% of the entire MLB. Not bad for a country whose land mass, at 18,704 square miles, is only larger than nine U.S. states and whose total number of inhabitants is equal to just 3% of the U.S. population.
Some of the game’s most famous players over the years, like Juan Marichal, Pedro Martinez, Vladimir Guerrero, David Ortiz and Albert Pujols, all hail from here. Four of those five are in Hall of the Fame. The last one, Pujols, is likely to be a first-ballot inductee once he becomes eligible in 2028.
The next crop is just as exciting, with players like Julio Rodriguez, Juan Soto and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. building successful careers.
“For me it is everything,” said Aryeli Moises
Former professional players’ baseball jerseys are exhibited in the Museum House of the Dominican Professional Baseball Player, in front of Quisqueya Stadium in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera Cronkite Borderlands Project
Rojas Polanco, a 13-year-old baseball player from Santo Domingo who dreams of reaching the MLB. “I can’t think of anything else, or any other sport. I love it so much. I watch videos to learn more about it all the time. It’s just everything.”
But baseball is more than just a sport in the Dominican Republic. It’s a point of pride. For many in the country, it gives the small Caribbean island nation an identity on the global stage.
The diamond is often viewed as a path to instant riches – a direct line to securing financial freedom, which is hard to come by in the Dominican Republic. Remittances from baseball players are sent back to the country. Families, just like Rojas Polanco’s, invest in their sons to play the sport with the hopes of big financial returns.
“They have spent their money on me, to see my future … signing,” Rojas Polanco said.
Economic growth in the Dominican Republic has been among the highest in Latin America over the past decade, fueled by tourism and foreign investment. Yet the poverty rate was still 21.8 % in 2020 with 5.6 % of 11.3 million residents living in extreme poverty. A single major league signing bonus can lift the economic prospects of multiple people, not just the player.
This leads to a highly competitive environment, with prospects doing anything and everything they can to stand out to the next scout who will be watching.
‘Baseball is everything’:
Culture of the sport in the country
Cristian Bolívar Pimentel Pérez was one of those children who was trying to make it as a professional baseball player. But, like many young Dominican men, Pimentel did not reach his dreams.
A young pitcher delivers to the plate during a game in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on March 8, 2023.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera/Cronkite Borderlands Project
Pimentel decided to stay involved with the game in another way. He began coaching the next generation of baseball players.
“Well, this really started very small around 28 years ago … as an academy for young children, which is called Liga Deportiva Pimentel, that is, Pimentel Sport League,” Pimentel said. “There it starts … Twenty years later, then, those children who were developing in my league, we proceeded to transfer them to the academy so that they could finish their development.”
After a year of construction, Pimentel Baseball Academy was born. Since then, it has been the home for many young aspiring MLB players over the years. Eloy Jimenez, who currently plays for the Chicago White Sox, came through Pimentel.
The Dominican Republic’s youth baseball academy system
The academy system is a vital component of the infrastructure of the sport in the country, and it also shows how crucial the region has become to the major leagues. All 30 MLB clubs have their own academy on the island. The National Basketball Association is beginning to take interest in the Dominican Republic, but no professional teams from other major league sports leagues have a presence.
While the arrival of MLB teams was an obvious boost to the country, the league office in New York offered little oversight.
After years of unchecked regulation of academies within the Dominican Republic, allegations of
Boys of the Leones De Chaca League training at the Estadio Olímpico Félix Sánchez, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on March 8, 2023.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera Cronkite Borderlands Project
Cleats with the legend “Outta Here” – academy players dream of a chance to play in the U.S.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera Cronkite Borderlands Project
Players of the Leones De Chaca League stretch before practice at the Estadio Olímpico Félix Sánchez in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera/Cronkite Borderlands Project
abuse and misconduct arose. The MLB stepped in and introduced a training partnership with academies to establish a sense of authenticity and legitimacy.
There are 58 academies in the Dominican Republic associated with the MLB. Pimentel Baseball Academy is one of those in the partnership.
The academy is situated about 25 miles outside of the business district of Santo Domingo, in the countryside, 2 miles down an unpaved dirt road. The rural location choice is strategic.
“Now, when they come here, they live here,” Pimentel, 45, said. “And they do not go to their homes every day, but we try to make it a bit far away so that they can concentrate on what the practice is and focus on their work.”
The academy features three full baseball diamonds and a central building where the children live and eat. There is a “gym,” although equipment is relatively limited.
The goal for Pimentel is to mold these young men into attractive enough prospects to then market to MLB teams.
While at the academy, prospects are subjected to a routine similar to that of a professional. In addition to Dominican players, Pimentel recruits out-of-country prospects, like 14-year-old Juan Carlos Saavedra from Guatemala City and 16-year-old Ramsés Camargo from Colombia.
“Their day is made up of a work routine starting in the morning, after getting up and having breakfast,” Pimentel said. “After the gym, they begin their work routines with defense, with batting – a different teaching methodology in each of the skills. How to throw the ball, how to field a ball. The different ways to attack a rolling (ball) – to work on hitting, how to grip a bat, the weight distribution. We try to do what the industry demands at the moment.”
At noon, Pimentel explains, the boys bathe, have lunch and rest until 4 p.m. Then another practice session begins, aimed at skills the players struggled with in the morning session.
The training schedule is rigorous and represents the significance of the culture of the sport in the country. There is a whole ecosystem built around it.
“For me, baseball is everything,” Pimentel said. “Everything I have today I owe to baseball.”
Gerardo Morban, 57, has been involved with baseball for as long as he can remember. He now runs the eponymous Morban Academy as well as helping out with a league, Esmeralda. His passion for the game runs deep and echoes the sentiment that many share across the country.
“It is part of my life,” Morban said. “It’s in my blood. I believe that without baseball I would not survive as such. We breathe baseball everywhere.”
For my mom: How baseball lifts those out of poverty
With the academy system playing such an integral role in the infrastructure of the sport within the country, it has attracted attention from outside of the Dominican Republic. Teenagers from foreign countries are uprooting their lives in pursuit of bettering their lives and those around them.
Juan Carlos Saavedra was just 13 when he left his hometown of Guatemala City. Pimentel recruited Saavedra to come to the academy. Saavedra, who like Morban said baseball “is in his blood,” is aiming to make it to the MLB.
“Well, it’s been a very long journey, really,” Saavedra said. “It has crossed my mind that leaving my home, leaving everything I had in Guatemala to come here, fighting for a dream, has been very difficult. But I know that this is
Players pray before lunch at the Pimentel Baseball Academy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on March 8, 2023.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera Cronkite Borderlands Project
going to be good for me and to be able to sign and to be able to support my family.”
With a 2020 poverty rate above 59% in Guatemala, according t0 the World Bank, and a gross domestic product of just $5,025 per capita, the pressure to deliver for his family is heavy on the 13-year-old.
While Saavedra said he has enjoyed his time at Pimentel Academy, the thought of supporting his family is something that is on his mind constantly. It’s clear that this teenager is focused on one thing, and one thing only after moving 1,386 miles from home: Putting his name on a dotted line.
“It has been very difficult for me to be away from home, to be away, but here Mr. Pimentel and my coaches have told me that this is going to be difficult, but it is going to be good for me,” Saavedra said. “I work hard and someday (may) be able to sign and that’s why I’m here. That I have come to fight for a signature … My goal is to sign one day and get to my mother and tell her that I have done it. That I have succeeded.”
Its director says the academy teaches values of camaraderie to its youth, in addition to training them to play baseball.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera Cronkite Borderlands Project
Remittances and the economy of baseball
Remittances – money sent home from relatives working in foreign countries – are a significant factor in the global economy. In 2022, remittances to low- and middle-income countries grew to an estimated $626 billion worldwide, according to the World Bank.
In the Dominican Republic, the country’s central bank reported that remittances reached $417 million for the first five months of 2023.
According to the Borgen Project, a humanitarian organization focused on poverty, “Remittances make up a significant part of the Dominican Republic’s economy, with estimates placing the value of remittances at about 8% of the total GDP in 2019 — double the average of most low-income countries. While some remittances come from Europe and other Latin American countries, a staggering 75% come from the United States.”
Players stretch before taking the field at Estadio Olímpico Félix Sánchez.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera Cronkite Borderlands Project
With the median income at just $10.63 per day in the Dominican Republic, a single signing bonus can impact a family for generations to come.
“The most important thing is the passion of the child and the parents to change their economic situation,” said Brauilo Miranda, 56, who runs a youth baseball league in Santo Domingo.
“Most of the famous baseball players here in our country, such as Albert Pujols, Pedro Martínez, Vladimir Guerrero, Miguel Tejada and countless other players were born in a form of poverty and
“I would like to reach the Major Leagues if God wants and allows it.” Anderson Del Rosario Tejada, 14, stretches at Estadio Olímpico Félix Sánchez on March 8, 2023.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera Cronkite Borderlands Project
by Trilce Estrada Olvera/Cronkite Borderlands Project
today are a symbol of Dominican baseball and of the major leagues.”
Considering that the MLB just revamped its pay scale for minor league players, the impact the money can have is even greater than it was before.
For rookies, the salary will rise from $4,800 to $19,800. At Low Class A, salaries will grow from $11,000 to $26,200 while High Class A will grow from $13,800 to $27,300. Triple-A players will go from $17,500 to $35,800.
Even at the lowest level, $19,800 could last a long time in the Dominican Republic and provide support for many family members.
If a player makes it to the top level, the money is life-changing.
Of the top 50 international players signed this year, 30 – or roughly 60% – were from the Dominican Republic. Out of those signings, figures ranged from $4.7 million at the top end to $900,000 at the lower end.
These kinds of numbers paint an image for young Dominicans.
“Well, it means a great dream because with baseball if I get to sign, I’m going to help my family and get well myself,” said 14-year-old baseball player Darlin Yandel, who lives in Santo Domingo and is aspiring to make it to the MLB.
Jr. Bautista, 15, jokes with his teammates as he leans on a pile of dirty tennis shoes after practice at the Pimentel Baseball Academy.
Photo
But, with so much money involved, some on the periphery try to cash in.
“Buscones,” essentially “finders,” are a phenomenon in the Dominican Republic that have become part of the baseball ecosystem. Buscones serve as personal coaches, managers and agents to young players. Some represent players in negotiations with professional leagues. According to various news reports, some buscones take advantage of players by demanding a high percentage of their signing bonus or salary.
At Pimentel Academy, buscones are something that Pimentel deals with. But once they are at the academy, Pimentel said he does his best to protect the players and family.
“Automatically when a buscone brings a child to our academy, the contractual relationship is already between the parents and us, and the buscone is left out of what are the agreements that entail,” Pimentel said.
Alan Klein – a professor emeritus of cultural anthropology at Northeastern University who has written two books on baseball in the Dominican Republic – said anybody who isn’t directly associated with the MLB is considered to be a buscone.
During his time spent living in the country while researching and writing his two books, Klein has come across many in the spectrum of baseball in the Dominican Republic.
“I have seen academies with six people, and I’ve seen academies with 60 people,” Klein said. “I’ve seen academies run by guys who are suspicious, and then I’ve seen many academies run by guys who have legitimate operations.”
One last step: The visa process for baseball players
Once a player has made it through the academy system and reached that sought-after moment of signing a contract, there are still more steps to complete to start the American journey. The visa process is something they all must complete as they leave the country.
Athletes must go through the U.S. Embassy. Gabriel Hurst, a spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, said most professional athletes apply under a P-1 visa, which is designated for professional or amateur athletes. Hurst said a majority of these applications are for baseball players.
“Generally, their employer, i.e. their team, files Form I-129 Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker with USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services),” Hurst said in a statement. “Once the petition is approved, the applicant completes the online DS-160 application and then schedules an interview appointment at the Embassy. They complete an in-person interview, and if approved, they receive their visa and can then travel to the U.S. port of entry and apply for admission to the United States with Customs and Border Protection.”
But it is not always a smooth process.
“Visa issues” is a phrase commonly used by media outlets when it comes to signing international prospects. This can mean a variety of things.
“U.S. law generally requires visa applicants to be interviewed by a consular officer at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate,” Hurst said. “After relevant information is reviewed, the application is approved or denied, based on standards established in U.S. law. Consular officers deny visa applications if an applicant is found ineligible under the Immigration and Nationality Act or other provisions of U.S. law.
Bats lean against the fence of one of the baseball fields of the Pimentel Baseball Academy, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera/Cronkite Borderlands Project
“An application may be denied because the consular officer does not have all of the information required to determine if the applicant is eligible to receive a visa and must await further documentation, because the applicant does not qualify for the visa category for which they applied or because the information reviewed indicates the applicant falls within the scope of one of the inadmissibility or ineligibility grounds of the law.”
While Hurst said that a majority of P-1 visas are approved, this is a moment that can still cause stress on those involved.
Andres Julio Duran Sanchez, a 35-year-old baseball instructor who works for the Pimentel Academy, highlighted the passion for the sport and the desire to make it to the MLB that makes this visa process so high-stakes.
“Baseball for me is everything, because practically for us Dominicans, it takes us out of what is the environment of the streets … our minds are occupied with what baseball is.”
Video Story
Baseball academy helps young Dominicans chase big dreams
By Trilce Estrada Olvera Cronkite Borderlands Project
Aug. 10, 2023
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – Baseball is the most popular sport in the Dominican Republic. Many young people and their parents see the game as the path to a better life. Pimental Academy – a baseball focused boarding school – seeks to make their dreams come true.
Pitcher Ramces Camargo, 16, from Cartagena, Colombia, is enrolled in the Pimentel Baseball Academy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, "to be able to get to MLB." March 8, 2023.
Photo by Trilce Estrada Olvera/Cronkite Borderlands Project
