Below is an excerpt from an article by Hugo Cedeño, a founding member of the Socialist Workers League (LST), a sociology professor at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, and former president of its federation of professors.
In the 1920s, Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic increased due to a boom in the sugarcane industry.
In 1937, dictator Rafael Trujillo “Dominicanized” the border between the two countries by massacring more than 30,000 Haitian nationals living in the borderlands. Later, however, Trujillo made a deal with Haitian dictators to hire more Haitian cane workers. Hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian ancestry have been born in sugarcane enclaves.
In the last 30 years there has been a considerable increase in migration for construction, agribusiness and informal trade. Nearly half a million Haitian immigrants work side by side with native Dominicans. The two groups also share poverty in the main Dominican cities.
Anti-Haitian racism has historically been strong, mainly in the Dominican ruling class. In time, this has become a systematic campaign against Haitian and Haitian-heritage workers.
The anti-immigrant campaign has peaked under the current government. Today, the principle of the 1963 Constitution that a person can be Dominican by virtue of being born in the country is in question.
Haitian immigrants’ situation is the same as that of millions of migrant workers all over the world, especially in imperialist countries. Revolutionaries are responsible to organize the struggle of all of the world’s migrant workers and to fight for the working class in each of their countries to join this effort.
