She sits on a curb, knees wide and skirt tucked for modesty. Before her is a dusty street, behind her a crowded tent city of confusion and crying.
Her breasts are full and the front of her cotton dress, now almost as dusty as the street she watches without expression, is wet. But her arms are empty.
Her baby, not quite 3 months old, is back in the Dominican Republic. This young mother has not held her, fed her, sung to her in five days and cannot know if she ever will again.
Picked up in a military sweep of Haitian migrant workers at the outskirts of Santo Domingo, she was forced onto a bus. Her tears and pleading failed to move the uniformed men who herded her and 60 others to the border of Haiti.
With just under 3,000 of her compatriots, she waits at Bon Repos, the hastily organized reception center outside the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. She waits for news or a familiar face among the frightened families arriving every day. She may wait a long time.
She is one of the thousands of Haitian migrant workers who were uprooted from their homes in the Dominican Republic in response to Dominican President Joaquin Balaguer's well-calculated expulsion decree in June. Balaguer's decree expelling every "illegal" Haitian immigrant over 60 or under 16 that led to this mass exodus was precipitated by what the 85-year-old president called a "smear campaign."
Four human rights groups had just issued exposes charging, among other things, that Haitian children as young as 8 were being kidnapped and forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day in the state-owned cane fields of the Dominican Republic. Recent U.S. media reports revealed the slave conditions of the bateyes (villages of cane cutters) in which these children lived.
A U.S. congressional committee heard damning testimony and threatened to cut the Dominican Republic's "sugar quota" as well as withhold aid. And the U.N.'s International Labor Organization, for the third year in a row, censured the country for its continued failure to abolish "forced labor."
So Balaguer, infuriated like many of his compatriots by the press reports and international criticism, ordered the Haitians out and the deportations began.
Roundups, most of them indiscriminate, many of them violent and abusive, began in the cane communities but quickly spread to Haitian neighborhoods in the cities. Within 10 days of the decree, Dominican authorities had rounded up 580 Haitian men, women, and children.
By mid-August, 500 people were voluntarily crossing the border each day, most of them on foot. At the end of August, wire services and international organizations estimated that as many as 10,000 had been forcibly deported and another 28,000 had fled in fear of arrest or worse.
"Any individual with black skin is assumed to be Haitian, and then no questions are asked," Rev. Alain Rocourt of the Caribbean Conference of Churches (CCC), who traveled along the border and through Haiti as part of a CCC investigation team, told the Haiti en March newspaper. "They are forced into police vans without any chance to alert their families."
Rocourt's bitterness is shared by Rev. Yvan Francois, a Haitian priest who meets those forced out at the Bon Repos Reception Center. One of the tragedies he sees too frequently are the babies who don't survive the seven-hour bus trip. They arrive dead from dehydration.
AS INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM of the expulsion decree grew, Balaguer attempted to justify his action, telling the press he feared the country's survival was at stake. "We could lose our identity as a nation," he said, if Haitians continue to flood the country.
Dominicans, who live on the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, believe more than one million Haitians live on their side of the border and that Hispanic culture is threatened. International organizations dispute that figure, setting it at 500,000 to 600,000.
What is certain is that the Haitian workers -- most of them black -- are an essential part of the Dominican economy, performing all the low-paying, low-status jobs the mostly mulatto and light-skinned Dominicans disdain.
The Dominicans' fury and the Haitians' terror of Dominican retaliation are rooted in a long history of racial and cultural tensions between the two nations. In 1822, Haiti invaded the Dominican Republic, occupying it for 22 years. The shame of that loss of independence lives on in Dominican memories. In 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo instigated a massacre of 20,000 Haitians throughout his country. The horror that put in Haitian hearts is still only whispered today. Yet it is what drives hundreds, in panic, over the border.
But those fears are just part of the story. Behind Balaguer's decree is his need to swing the spotlight off a deteriorating economic situation in his country. He is faced with growing anger among Dominicans at austerity measures imposed in anticipation of aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Making Haitians scapegoats is a way to relieve pressure from angry groups such as doctors -- on strike for months because their salary demands have been ignored -- and teachers who are also pressing for higher wages. Frustration is growing in response to high prices, declining services (including extremely sporadic electrical service), and rising unemployment.
It is no coincidence that the expulsions began at the time the sugar harvest was ending in June, nor is it an accident that they may cease before the next harvest begins this November. What was an accident was the tremendous pressure on the Dominican growers to find thousands of extra canecutters this past year who are now de trop, or in excess.
Two winters ago, a severe freeze destroyed the entire Louisiana sugar cane crop and caused significant damage to Florida's crop as well. When the supply could not meet the U.S. demand for sugar, the U.S. Department of Agriculture raised the quotas of sugar it would buy from other countries. The Dominican Republic's quota nearly doubled, and the State Sugar Council (which oversees the state-owned plantations) had to find thousands of more workers immediately.
The council turned to buscones, the infamous agents paid to bring new workers to the plantations. Soon after they started "recruiting" children, the abuses increased and led directly to the investigations by human rights groups.
A report released earlier this year by Americas Watch, Caribbean Rights, and the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees exposed the false promises made to potential workers. Though they were told they would receive "$300 a month for easy work" and be able to leave voluntarily, once they crossed the border they were taken into custody by Dominican soldiers who delivered them to the cane fields. Armed guards then prevented them from leaving, and they were paid less than it cost to feed themselves.
Another recent report documenting conditions in the bateyes, this one by the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, describes workers as living without potable water, latrines, electricity, medical care, or cooking facilities.
MANY CANE cutters who have returned to Haiti after the harvest find a country they do not know. Some left Haiti 30 or 40 years ago; others were born in the bateyes. A few have never adequately learned their parents' Creole language.
Many have arrived either traumatized or sick; and they need shelter, food, clothing, and medicines. Some can go immediately to communities they remember, but thousands have no family or friends and know no community that will recognize them.
The reception center at the northern gateway to Port-au-Prince was once a clinic and office complex intended for 300 people. Today its buildings are turned into shelters, its grounds are covered with tents, and almost 3,000 people are living there.
Rev. Francois estimates that more than 15,000 people have come through Bon Repos since the end of June. Like the other members of the interdenominational commission organized to run the center and oversee the "re-insertion" of those being repatriated, the Episcopal priest is painfully aware of the need, as yet unmet, for pastors, social workers, and professionals experienced in work with migrants and refugees. Though several international organizations have donated money and supplies, the need is overwhelming the volunteers who are trying to meet it.
The long-range goal, says Francois, is to obtain state lands and establish new communities, building on the skills of those workers who've returned. In the meantime, a hundred or more people were arriving at press time, and Francois fears it may get worse before it gets better.
Nan Cobbey was features editor of Episcopal Life, the national newspaper of the Episcopal Church, at the time this article appeared. She worked as communications specialist for the Diocese of Haiti during 1985-1987.
As Sojourners went to press, just days after the military coup in Haiti, still-deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide had just arrived safely in the United States to meet with international officials concerning a return to democratic government.
Before assuming power in Haiti's first free elections last December, Aristide -- a 38-year-old Catholic priest -- had challenged the traditional hold on power in that country by the army and monied elite. "Aristide symbolizes the struggle of Haiti's poor and oppressed to transform their society," said Richard Deats of Fellowship of Reconciliation, in a statement condemning the coup.
Worth Cooley-Prost, of the Washington Office on Haiti, told Sojourners she was pleased with the initial response of the U.S. government and the international community, but urged that any actions taken should respect the sovereignty and self-determination of the Haitian people. "It's important to stand in solidarity without taking over."
Sojourners' coverage of Haiti will continue in the December issue.
-- The Editors
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