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[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…

[Translations of two articles, the first from La Jornada of Mexico City, the second from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo, both from October 25. See original articles here and here.]

Dominican Republic closes border with Haiti

Santo Domingo – Thousands of Haitians who had planned to participate today in a binational market in the Dominican city of Dajabón were prevented from crossing the border by members of the armed forces of the Dominican Republic out of fear of the spread of cholera, official sources have confirmed.

The Dominican ministry of health ordered that Haitians be blocked from entering the coutry as part of an effort to avoid the spread of the cholera epidemic in the country.

An unkown number of Haitians nevertheless entered Dominican territory by way of the Masacre river, which divides the two countries. Members of the Cuerpo Especializado de Seguridad Fronteriza (CESFRONT – Specialized Border Security Corps) were searching the streets of Dajabón today for those who had flaunted the measure, while thousands of persons were left stranded at the Haitian border, according to accounts by local media. (more…)

by David Holmes Morris

Despite a national and international outcry, the Dominican National Police are continuing their tradition of violent repression of dissidents at a time when protests are becoming more common across the country. Some recent incidents in El Cibao, the agricultural and mining region in the north, have resulted in the arrests of many demonstrators, a number of injuries by tear gas and gunshot, and one death.

A delegation from Amnesty International had met with the Distrito Nacional prosecuting attorney as recently as early October seeking information on the large number of deaths of citizens at the hands of the National Police throughout the country and in the capital in particular. At least 226 unlawful killings by the police occurred in the country between January and August of 2009.  Thirty percent of the homicides in the Distrito Nacional during the same period were reportedly committed by the police.

In the most dramatic recent incident in El Cibao, a university student taking part in protests on October 12 against government neglect of poor neighborhoods in the area of Santiago de los Caballeros, the country’s second largest city, was shot to death when police fired into the crowd of demonstrators, and at least four others were injured. The demonstrators were demanding that roads be paved and reliable water and electrical power be provided. (more…)

[Translations of two articles from September 26, the first from El Nacional of Santo Domingo, the second from Haïti Libre of Port-au-Prince.  See original articles here and here.]

Haitians said to displace Dominicans
Most street venders and construction workers are Haitians

by Santiago González

Santiago – The Federación Nacional Unitaria de Sindicatos de Trabajadores de la Construcción (FENUSTRACON — National Unified Federation of Construction Workers’ Unions) warned yesterday that the sector is passing through a deep crisis because Haitians are displacing Dominicans in the construction work force and in agricultural work.

“The government must pay greater attention to the domestic sector of the  work force in the projects going up all over the country, since we are being displaced by Haitians and this is very dangerous,” the organization declared…

Rodríguez stated that many construction workers, principally those organized in the union he leads, have no work because engineers in charge of the jobs prefer to hire Haitians because they can pay them less for a day’s work. (more…)

[Translations of two articles from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo for August 26. The Canadian company Barrick Gold, the largest gold mining company in the world, with operations in a number of countries, is, since 2007, the majority owner of the oldest European gold mining operation in the Americas, near Cotuí, in the Cibao region of the Dominican Republic, which Spaniards began exploiting in 1505. The operation has been the target of determined protests by miners, area farmers and their supporters as well as environmentalists. See also “Barrick Gold mine workers begin protest” posted here on June 9.]

Barrick Gold workers strike for wages due

By Andrés Vásquez

Pueblo Viejo, Cotuí – Workers injured by birdshot, burning tires, trees overturned and traffic at a standstill were the results of protests by employees of the Barrick Gold mining enterprise demanding payment in full of wages to dismissed fellow workers.

During the protests Apolinar Reinoso, Rafael Antonio Ramírez and Serafín Felipe de los Santos were injured with birdshot to several parts of their bodies fired by Cotuí police officers trying to restore vehicular traffic to the mine and to Santo Domingo via Cotuí. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Listín Diario of Santo Domingo for June 8. The oldest European gold mine in the Americas, first worked by Spaniards in 1505, in Pueblo Viejo, outside Cotuí, 100 kilometers northeast of Santo Domingo, was reopened in 2007 by the Canadian multinational Barrick Gold, which controls 60 percent of the operation, the other 40 percent being owned by another Canadian company, Goldcorp. The operation has been the target of considerable protest by environmentalists and others, including rice farmers, who charge that pollution of the water supply makes farming in the area impossible. Some 3,000 Dominicans demonstrated against the mining operation in April, including a group of youths who marched 100 kilometers from the capital.]

By Andrés Vásquez

Pueblo Viejo, Cotuí — Hundreds of employees of the Barrick Gold mining company are making several demands, including overtime pay, salary increases and  medical insurance,  among others.

The protests began yesterday afternoon and today, when the company failed to provide the workers with transportation to the work site, the employees arrived on foot and in private vehicles to gather at the entrance, where they also demanded that the company improve food services… (more…)