Racist attacks in Dominican Republic

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SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 2015 9 There is a new wave of racist attacks on Haitians and Domini­ cans of Haitian descent inside the Dominican Republic (DR). The latest was the rac­ ist expulsion of 300 Haitians and Haitians of Domini­ can origin in the Ortega community in Moca.

All Haitians in Moca were blamed for the April 8 death of a motorcyclist, Carlos Jose Gomez Nunez, and driven out of town with sticks and clubs by racist goons.

In a widely circulated video of the Moca incident, a Haitian woman is thrown to the ground by racist goons, Haitians are beaten, a young man’s dreads are cut by a mob and a home is totally trashed (https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGgGmjNJ-IE).

The violence followed the hanging, KKK style, of a Haitian shoeshine worker, Henry Claude Jean, last Feb. 11 in the midst of a downtown park in Santiago, the DR’s second largest city. The same day, a Haitian flag was burned by a group in another part of the city.

In response to the hanging, on Feb. 25, 10,000 angry Haitians protested in the Haitian capital of Port au Prince, attacking the DR embassy and other targets.

Some 500,000 out of the 9 million population of the DR are considered Haitians or Dominicans of Haitian origin. The Dominican Republic shares the Caribbean island of Hispañola with Haiti, situated to its west.

The current wave of racism has been spurred by a series of racist immigration laws and policies that be­ gan in 2006. Essentially, immigration rules catch Hai­ tian workers or Dominicans of Haitian origin living in the DR in a deliberate racist Catch 22. Authorities refuse Haitians birth certificates and other documen­ tation, while demanding documents to register as citizens.

A racist Supreme Court decision in 2013 ruled that those without papers—going back as far as 1929!— were “in transit” and stateless. After an international human rights outcry, a 2014 law created a pathway to citizenship. Yet, only 5% registered, others lacked documentation, didn’t bother, or perhaps feared re­ taliation. Amnesty International estimates that as many as 110,000 qualify.

Simply put, Haitians or Dominicans of Haitian ori­ gin, face possible mass deportation in June 2015.

Racist violence in the DR has been encouraged by a ruling class that has, for many decades, proclaimed Dominicans superior to Haitians—despite the fact that some 11% of Dominicans are considered Black and that those people are mostly of Haitian origin.

Dubbed “anti-haitianismo,” the ideology was first introduced by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961), who was trained by the U.S. Marines during the first U.S. imperialist occupation of the DR (1916-24). He himself was part Haitian. In 1937, Trujillo killed up to 20,000 to 30,000 Haitians in five ... Summit (continued from page 7: “U.S. set back at Panama Summit”)

Both sides play the same game in the U.S. plutocracy, adapting their politics to the needs of the system. But which­ ever politician succeeds Obama will be obliged to contend with the same dif­ ficulties, in order to recuperate the lost territory in their own backyard.

Internal obstructions The Summit confirmed the significant level of political autonomy that Latin America has achieved. But this higher level of independence coexists with the stagnation of all the projects for econom­ ic integration.

While new seats for regional organiza­ tions are inaugurated and a great rheto­ ric in favor of common action is unfurled, the main initiatives of economic contem­ plation languish. The ring of energy, the shared infrastructure, the shared man­ agement of resources, the coordinated exchange systems, and the funds for monetary stabilization remain simply proposals.

The perpetuation of Latin America’s insertion into the world arena as a pro­ vider of raw materials is not the exclu­ sive responsibility of the right-wing gov­ ernments. The same scheme for export specialization, intensive agriculture, open-air mining, and industrial factories can be observed in the administrations of the other side.

Nor is subscribing to free-trade agree­ ments the patrimony of the neoliberal presidents alone. The government of Ecuador negotiated the same type of agreement with Europe, and Uruguay is discussing the implementation of similar treaties (TISA).

Furthermore, everyone agrees on in­ dividually forming agreements with China that aggravate primarization [the process in which underdeveloped coun­ tries focus on the export of raw materi­ als—oil, mining, and agricultural prod­ ucts—in exchange for finished industrial commodities from abroad]. They accept agreements for basic exports and manu­ facturing imports that do not include obligations for productive investment or technological transfer. This position pre­ serves the old breaks between countries that privilege the interests of their local bourgeoisie in external negotiations.

This adaptation to the neoliberal global order can lead to traumatic consequenc­ es if an adverse economic turn is con­ firmed on the international scene. Raw materials no longer increase, growth has stopped and the valuation of the dollar stimulates the outflow of capital. Certain governments begin to implement deval­ uations, which anticipate assaults on the living standards of the people.

More dangerous is the economic turn by various “center-left” governments. In Brazil they have already accepted the agenda imposed by the Stock Exchange, designated ministers selected by the large corporations, and prepared finan­ cial adjustment programs designed by the banks. days—many with machetes—the most brutal massa­ cre in so short a period in recorded history up until that time.

Trujillo’s successor, the U.S.-backed dictator Joaquin Balaguer, a staunch opponent of the Cuban revolution, retained racism as a state ideology. Balaguer, trained by the U.S., fought a nationalist uprising alongside a U.S. Marine invasion in 1965, which drowned Domin­ icans—and a number of Haitian partisans—in blood. In addition to their deep-seated racism, both Trujillo and Balaguer ruthlessly attacked leftist opponents.

For many years, capitalists and politicians on both sides of the border made big money in the official and unofficial trade in what amounted to Haitian slave la­ bor. Cutting sugar cane, under brutal conditions, was once the single most common occupation for Haitian workers in the DR but construction and service work has gained ground.

Not simply a product of dictatorship, racism is the ideology of Dominican capitalism, dividing the Hai­ tian and the exploited Dominican workers by race. The post-Balaguer “democrats” likewise conducted brutal waves of mass expulsions of Haitians, often ac­ companied by racist violence and sometimes murder. In the last 20 years or so, 20,000 or more Haitians were expelled from the DR.

This course of adjustment to the es­ tablishment demoralizes the population and facilitates the rightist channelization of discontent. In some countries these tendencies are already insinuating them­ selves as a response to the frustrations generated by the vacillations of progres­ sivism. We can also catch a glimpse of a coercive tendency of presidents who confuse popular demands with the rightwing destabilization.

The critical point for Latin America is not actually found in the resistance to the United States. The main problem takes root in the establishment of capi­ talist models that are adverse to the as­ pirations of the main population.

The significant political sovereignty that Latin America has achieved in the last few years is not sustainable with re­ gressive economic orientations. Experi­ ence demonstrates that aspirations for autonomy decline with the consolidation of bourgeois power. Only the path to­ wards a complete break with neoliberal­ ism, [and the rise of] popular initiative, political radicalization, and confronta­ tion with the capitalist class can pave the way toward achieving the Second Inde­ pendence.

Joy at the other Summit The mainstream media also did not register in Panama the occurrence of an important Summit of the People. In this activity, for three days, the social move­ ment came together over an intense pro­ gram of anti-imperialist debate.

In the inauguration of this event, it (Above) A man in the Dominican Republic holds racist sign: “Defend your homeland! There can be no mixing between Dominicans and Haitians.”

Although the cheap labor they provide is needed by Dominican capitalists, Haitians are scapegoated for the miseries of the impoverished Dominican work­ ers, especially during an economic crisis—just like immigrants in the U.S.!

Both the Haitian and Dominican governments im­ pose an anti-worker austerity economic model sought by the U.S.-dominated World Bank. The Dominican government still enjoys a “most favored trade sta­ tus,” and receives millions in U.S. military and police equipment and training from Washington’s “Merida Initiative,” despite gross human rights violations.

U.S. and international solidarity with the anti-racist struggle in the DR must grow. An anti-imperialist observation of the 50th anniversary of the 1965 U.S. Marine invasion of the DR took place. on April 24 at Word-Up bookstore in New York City. To a full house of mostly young Dominicans and a number of Haitians, speaker after speaker of both nationalities slammed U.S. imperialism and racism in the Dominican Repub­ lic. More solidarity activists, anti-racist activists, and U.S. trade unionists need to follow their example! n was very clear why Panama is not Mi­ ami. There were multiple demands that the Empire beg forgiveness for the 1989 invasion and offer compensation to the victims. In the workshops demands full of information were analyzed, such as the lifting of the Cuban embargo, the re­ turn of Guantanamo, Puerto Rican inde­ pendence, and the end of the British oc­ cupation of the Malvina Islands.

The meeting reinforced the world cam­ paign that gathered millions of signa­ tures to demand retraction of the U.S. de­ cree against Venezuela. In many cities on the continent this demand was accompa­ nied by mobilizations and reinforced by the support of noted intellectuals.

The Summit of the People consolidated a tradition of meetings parallel to the presidential meetings. In contrast to the official meeting, the popular event was crowned with an important final decla­ ration. In this closing session an explo­ sion of enthusiasm broke out when the victory against Obama’s decree was re­ vealed.

This climate contributed the best ba­ rometer to evaluate what happened in Panama. They achieved a diplomatic suc­ cess that consolidates popular hopes in Latin America. n Claudio Katz is an economist and pro­ fessor at the University of Buenos Aires.

His website is www.lahaine.org/katz.

This article was translated from the Spanish by Socialist Action, and slightly cut for space. See the full Spanish-lan­ guage article at www.socialistaction.org.

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(Left) Leon Trotsky testifies before a tribunal looking into the May 24, 1940, armed attack by Stalinists on his home in Coyoacán, Mexico.

ago. A normal person would never be able to un­ derstand anything about this theory except one thing: it was invented to ruin his life.

Mikhail Basmanov, author of the cult book “In the Train of Reaction: Trotskyism from the 1930s to the 1970s,” quoted above, noted, “Un­ like many other political movements that had the opportunity to confirm their ideological and political doctrines through the practice of statebuilding, Trotskyism has not put forward a posi­ tive program of action in any country in all the years of its existence.” It is so destructive, that “with its cosmopolitanism, carried to the point of absurdity, which excludes the possibility of developing national programs, Trotskyism un­ dermines the stances even of its own ‘parties’ in certain countries. […] Trotskyism is entangled in the nets of its own theories.”

It is important that the idea of the Trotskyist conspiracy against practical reason, reality, and stability was never popular in late-Soviet soci­