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((Juan Bosch and Joaquín Balaguer meet - Listín Diario photo))

US agencies spied on Bosch, supported Balaguer

[Translation of an article from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo for February 17. See original here and related articles here and here. US troops landed in Santo Domingo on April 28, 1965, four days after an uprising against the coup government that had ruled the country since September, 1963, when Juan Bosch was deposed. The country was still under heavy military occupation in June, 1966, when presidential elections were held.]

By María Isabel Soldevila

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spied on and intercepted telephone calls of deposed Dominican President Juan Bosch between April and September of 1965, at a time when Bosch was in exile in Puerto Rico, and used its influence to put Joaquín Balaguer in office, according to revelations in a recently published book, Enemies: A History of the FBI, by Pulitzer-prize winner Tim Weiner, a 511-page account based, the author says, on more than 70,000 pages of declassified documents, with no anonymous sources. (more…)

In memory of Haitian-Dominican activist Sonia Pierre

[Translation of an article from AlterPresse Haiti for December 9.  See original here.]

Hundreds of people affected by the policy of denaturalization enforced by the Dominican Central Electoral Board held a demonstration in Santo Domingo on Thursday, December 8, in front of the parliament of the neighboring republic to denounce the condition of legal uncertainty created  by the administration of President Leonel Fernández, according to reports supplied to AlterPresse.

Coming from Puerto Plata, La Romana, El Seibo, Monte Plata, San Pedro de Macorís and the capital, Santo Domingo, the participants condemned a ruling by the Dominican Supreme Court recognizing the Electoral Board’s authority to issue administative writs when Dominican law specifically grants that authority to courts of the first instance.   (more…)

[Translation of an article from Listín Diario of Santo Doming for April 14. See original article here and related article here. The population of the Dominican Republic is approximately ten million, about the same as Los Angeles or New York.]

by Juan Eduardo Thomas

According to a report issued by the Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH – National Human Rights Commission), at least 260 people have died so far this year at the hands of the National Police in so-called “exchanges of gunfire.”

The figure includes  recent deaths in Boca Chica, where two youths lost their lives, as well as the youth who was shot to death by a police officer in Villa Faro on Monday, during the labor stoppage called by a group of social organizations.

According to Manuel María Mercedes, president of CNDH, some 429 people had been killed through August 16 of last year, during the tenure of former National Police chief Rafael Guillermo Guzmán Fermín. That same year some 2,155 people died in acts of violence.

Mercedes stated that there is a tendency in the country that should be corrected immediately, in which there are more and more incidents of several people being killed in what could be considered executions.

He cited the cases of Boca Chica, which took place last Sunday, and the supposed attack on a bar in the country in which four individuals lost their lives.

Mercedes reported also that of every five such instances in which a person is killed, a police agent is involved in four of them.

July 11 Protest against government economic policies involved the whole country

[Translations of three articles from El Nuevo Diario of Santo Domingo for July 11 and 12. See originals here, here and here.]

In Capotillo -- Listin Diario photo

Three killed during strike

Santo Domingo, July 12 – According to figures released today by authorities, three people were killed during the general strike held yesterday in the Dominican Republic, which was called by social organizations to demand reductions in the prices of food, medicine and fuel. Two of the deaths were in Santiago, the country’s second-largest city, where 12 people were injured as well and some 20 were arrested, official sources report. Those killed were identified as 24-year-old Edwin Manuel Felipe Abreu and Carlos Luis Alonso Filión, 22 years of age, according the the National Police, who say the latter died last night in a gun fight with police.

According to the police report, Filión died when demonstrators attacked police officers with gunshots and rocks in the Rafey section of Santiago and police responded. (more…)

Constitutionalist heroine is down but not defeated

[Translation of an article from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo for April 25. See original here and related article here.]

By Ramón Pérez Reyes

You would see her during the fighting in April, 1965, a rifle in her hands, making her way through the Constitutionalist commandos doing battle around the Duarte Bridge against the troops coming from San Isidro. At that time she was a 20-year-old who had joined the war like the thousands of other Dominicans who made up the “Army of the Humble” that the poet Federico Bermúdez wrote about. Before her husband taught her to use a Mauser 98K rifle, she would slip through the combat zones to supply the soldiers with grenades or to help soldiers cross the Ozama River after the war had taken them by surprise in the eastern part of the city. (more…)

[Translations of two articles from El Nuevo Diario of Santo Domingo for April 23. See originals here and here and related article here.

April 24 is the anniversary of the 1965 military and popular uprising against the “Triumvirate,” the junta that ruled the country after the coup d’état against center-left President Juan Bosch.  Bosch was the first democratically elected president after the 31-year bloody dictatorial regime of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, who had been assassinated in 1961. Bosch was in office for seven months. Led by Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deñó, the April 24 rebels, known as Constitutionalists, sought a return to constitutional rule and the reinstatement of Bosch to the presidency.  Soon after the uprising began, US ambassador William Tapley Bennett reported to President Lyndon Johnson, falsely, that the embassy was under fire and that US citizens in the country were in danger and by April 28 some 400 US marines landed on the island, followed within a few days by several thousand members of the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. (more…)

New director of immigration is openly anti-Haitian

[Translation of an article from Agence Haïtienne de Presse for March 9. See original article here and related article here.]

Santo Domingo, March 9 – The ministers of the treasury, the interior and education of the Dominican cabinet, as well as the director of immigration, have been replaced.

The new functionaries are Daniel Toribio, José Ramón Fadul and Josefina Pimentel. In the General Directorate of Immigration, involved mostly with Haitian migration, the appointment of the secretary general of the Fuerza Nacional Progresista (FNP – National Progressive Force) party, known for openly anti-Haitian rhetoric, is seen as a sign of a hardening of Dominican migration policy toward Haiti. (more…)

Profits and xenophobia

[Translations of three articles from Dominican newspapers on relations with Haiti and Haitians.]
Dominican exports to Haiti doubled last year
Haiti is now the country’s largest trading partner

[From Nuevo Diario for February 18. See original here.]

Dajabón – The export of Dominican products to Haiti last year reached a value of 462 million dollars, making the neighboring country the Dominican Republic’s most important trading partner, ahead of Puerto Rico and the United States, general director of customs Rafael Camilo announced in this border city on Thursday. The government official stated that among the principal food products sold to Haiti are wheat flour, soybean oil, broken rice, bottled water, crackers, pasta, bananas and chicken parts and giblets.

He added that construction products like cement, steel reinforcing rods, zinc sheets and stainless steel cable are another important part of the commercial exchange between the two countries occupying the island of Hispaniola.

Camilo offered these data after participating in the inauguration of a new building to house the offices of Customs and Migration in Dajabón, on the border in the northern region… (more…)

[Translation of an article from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo for January 19. See original here.]

Santo Domingo – Hundreds of drivers gathered in front of the Venezuelan embassy on Wednesday to denounce the lack of transparency on the part of Dominican authorities in the management of resources resulting from the agreement on petroleum between the two countries.

“Since we have been in Petrocaribe, fuel prices have never fallen,” said Ramón Pérez Figuereo, leader of the Central de Transportistas Unificados (United Transportation Workers Union) after delivering a statement to Venezuelan ambassador Alfredo Murga. (more…)

[Translations of excerpts from five recent articles in the Dominican press. See related article here.]

Army deploys military cordon along length of border
Measure follows meeting with president on Wednesday

[From Listin Diario for November 25. See original here.]

A military cordon made up of 1,500 members of the National Army and hundreds of public health profesionals and workers has been posted in the most vulnerable areas of the border with Haiti to prevent the spread of cholera, which has caused almost 2,000 deaths in the neighboring country.

The military guard is under the command of the head of the National Army, Major General Carlos Alberto Rivera Portes, who arrived last night at the Third Infantry Brigade in this city at the head of a military supply convoy. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Haïti Liberté for November 19. See original article here and related article here. Of the three cases of cholera reported in the Dominican Republic so far in the current epidemic, the first involved a Haitian migrant construction worker who had made a recent trip to his homeland.]

Since the confirmation of the first case of cholera in the Dominican Republic, the government of that country has strengthened preventive measures considerabely, among which is the ban on hiring new Haitian employees in the construction industry and in tourism without authorization from the Ministry of Health.

The construction industry

The construction sector has described these new measures as “unreasonable.” To prohibit the hiring of Haitian workers will create greater insecurity in the country, declared Jaime González, president of the Asociación Dominicana de Constructores y Promotores de Viviendas (Acoprovi – Dominican Association of Housing Promoters and
Constructers). He holds that such a measure would also result in a significant slowdown in the real estate sector. “What will these people do on the streets if they don’t have other jobs and can no longer earn money?” Jaime González recalls the importance of the Haitian work force in the construction field, citing as examples Bávaro, Samaná, where 95 percent of the construction workers are Haitians, or Santo Domingo, where they make up close to 75 percent. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo for October 26. See original article here and related article here.]

Santo Domingo – Minister of Public Health Bautista Rojas Gómez today authorized the resumption of normal functioning of the binational markets in the five border provinces with the provision that established hygienic measures and controls be observed to avoid cholera in the Dominican Republic.

Rojas Gómez said the cancellation yesterday of the market in Dajabón resulted from Dominican authorities’ analyzing of actions to be taken in the face of the cholera edpidemic in Haiti.

The minister of health, the president of the Dominican Medical College, Senén Caba, and the representative in the country of the Panamerican Health Organization, Lilian Renau, travelled to the border, where they observed measures for controlling the disease.

Rojas Gómez explained that sanitary control measures have been established along the entire length of the border, made up of the provinces of Pedernales, Independencia, Elías Piña, Dajabón and Montecristi.

The government has made the logistics available to guarantee hygiene and sanitary controls around the markets, with driniking water, soap and chlorine…

He affirmed that the Dominican Republic is still free of cholera and stated that strict vigilance is being observed to avoid its entry into Dominican territory…