On September 23, 2013, the Dominican Republic Supreme Court issued a ruling that strips citizenship from over 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian ancestry. It applies retroactively to anyone born after 1929 who does not have at least one parent of “Dominican blood.” Those affected can no longer get birth certificates, attend school or college, marry, travel, or obtain jobs legally.
This act has galvanized the anger of Dominican and Haitian immigrant groups around the U.S., in Haiti, and in the D.R. itself. Far from dividing them, many are standing together to protest this ruling. In the U.S., they see how similar racist, anti-immigrant laws have affected all of them. Many protesters blame Dominican political and judicial leaders for creating the climate that paved the way for this ruling. We in the Progressive Labor Party believe that all borders need to be smashed so that all workers around the world can unite as one class.
This type of institutional racism is not new to the Dominican ruling class. In 1912, the government passed laws restricting the number of black-skinned immigrants, but the bosses in the sugar industry completely ignored that restriction to maximize profits by using Haitians as cheap labor. The majority of these workers were brought in by the sugar mill bosses, and forced to live and work in sub-human conditions in the notorious “bateyes” around sugar cane plantations. The descendants of these workers are the direct targets of this most recent racist act.
In 1937, U.S. Marine-trained Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, then the bloody dictator of the D.R., ordered all Haitians along the border to be tracked down and executed. Many reasons have been given for the killings, the most convincing of which is that Haitian workers were organizing into trade unions alongside Dominicans. Tens of thousands were murdered and their bodies thrown into the Massacre River along the border.
Another U.S. puppet in D.R., Joaquin Balaguer (Trujillo’s right-hand man and the political brain behind him), published a book in 1983 titled “La Isla al Reves (The Island in Reverse)” in which he expressed deeply racist ideas about Haitians. Then, when Francisco Pena Gomez, leader of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) who was black, ran for president in 1996, Balaguer openly promoted the idea that Pena Gomez was an undercover Haitian spy who, once in power, had planned to turn D.R. over to Haiti.  
Balaguer was rekindling past enmities against Haitians. In 1822, the Haitian army — which had already defeated and driven out its French slave-masters on the western part of Hispaniola — invaded the D.R., which was called Spanish Haiti at the time. Although the subsequent 22-year Haitian occupation succeeded in ending slavery in the D.R., it also led to much hardship and animosity among Dominicans. The bosses were able to exploit those conditions into long-lasting anti-Haitian racism and Dominican nationalism.
So, why does the Dominican ruling class want this law now?
Because workers from Haiti make up more than 80% of the workforce in agriculture, especially on sugar plantations. There are also high concentrations in construction, tourism, and domestic services. They earn starvation wages and their collective labor has been a big factor in the overall economic upswing D.R. has enjoyed in recent years. But, following in the footsteps of their slave-master predecessors, the Dominican bosses are not satisfied with their racist profits. They insist on pushing for this law that will not only strip Dominicans of Haitian descent of their rights, but also deprive them and their families of vital social, health and educational services needed for their well-being and survival, and making their labor even cheaper.
Another reason that pushes the Dominican government to intensify a racist crisis is to help create a smokescreen for its attacks on the entire working class there. The Dominican Republic has some of the highest income disparity and unemployment rates in Latin America: Unemployment is officially at 14.4%, and the wealthiest 10% control 40% of the economy while the poorest half controls less than 20%.
Although the economy survived the 2010-12 global recession, and is one of the fastest growing economies in the region, it also has growing deficits. As a result, the International Monetary Fund has demanded more revenues, leading the government to pass a new tax law in 2012. As it always happens, the working class has to pay the bulk of the new taxes. However, workers and students throughout the country have been fighting back against the policy. On several occasions these actions have resulted in several deaths and injuries in confrontation with police.
The new law is so blatantly racist that many of those who have historically harmed Haiti are compelled to speak out. This includes the UN’s own Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This is the same UN that is responsible for bringing the deadly cholera epidemic to Haiti, killing over 8,500 and sickening over 700,000.
The working class in the Dominican Republic and the rest of us across the globe must send a clear message to these governments. We must not tolerate the racist treatment of our sisters and brothers in Hispaniola. The border that divides the island of Hispaniola was made by the colonialists and their imperialist successors who continue to exploit all of us. We must reject the nationalism and racism that is being pushed to divide us — we must unite as one class, one fist. With communist revolution we can rid ourselves of this vicious profit system. Only then can we construct a healthy world and a safe future for all our children.