PORT-AU-PRINCE — The hot-button subject in the Dominican Republican is the racist “hunt for Haitians.” The current attack, reminiscent of the 1937 “Parsley Massacre” of up to 50,000 Haitian sugar cane workers, has led to the deportation of 40,000 people to Haiti in the first quarter of 2015 alone (Guardian, 6/16/15). As workers are expelled or flee in terror, they move from capitalist oppression in the DR to what is often an even worse plight in Haiti. They are the living proof that national borders serve only the capitalist ruling class.
PLP, our international communist party, has joined anti-racist struggles in support of our Haitian sisters and brothers, both here and the U.S. In Brooklyn, PLP connected the racist deportations in DR to the racist deportations and killings of Black and Latin youth in the U.S. In Port-au-Prince, comrades held demonstrations and conferences attacking the racist bosses on both sides of the island of Hispaniola.
KKKourts Ordain Racism
In 2013, the DR bosses’ highest court broke their own constitution to withdraw citizenship from tens of thousands of people born in the Dominican since 1929 to migrant parents. The new law was blatantly aimed at workers of Haitian descent, who represent 80 percent of the so-called foreign population.
While the court ruling was later modified by the national legislature, the Dominican ruling class continues to use the state apparatus to blame workers of Haitian heritage for mounting unemployment—the perpetual crisis of capitalism. Anti-Haitian racism also serves as a smokescreen for corruption charges against present and past DR governments. Most damaging of all, it divides the working class along nationalist lines.
Two Flags, Same Exploitation
In both the DR and Haiti, workers have lined up behind their respective bosses’ flags, a sure disaster. Appeals to nationalism and racism are the bosses’ main weapon to sow disunity within our class. Haitian workers are super-exploited by Dominican bosses on both sides of the island, from agricultural and construction workers in the DR to factory workers in free-trade-zone shops owned by Dominican-Haitian capitalist partnerships. And these same Dominican bosses exploit Dominican workers on “their side” of the island.
Meanwhile, thousands of more recent Haitian immigrants have fled the DR “voluntarily,” not daring to wait for more brutality. In some cases, their documents proving legal residence were torn up in front of them by soldiers and immigration agents. Others, in the DR for decades and with children and grandchildren born there, are anxiously waiting; they have few remaining ties to Haiti and speak only Spanish.
The Haitian government has done nothing about this crisis. Recently, their ministers met at the Royal Oasis, one of five luxury hotels built since the 2010 earthquake in the capital’s suburbs—with money that should have gone to housing for the earthquake’s victims. The ministers’ big plan was to set up a handful of tents in the border areas to receive refugees from the DR crisis. Much like the earthquake victims, these refugees have no jobs, no services, no hope.
Teaching Nationalist Poison
The Dominican and Haitian ruling classes are in competition to profit off the backs of workers. In the DR, the bosses’ education system is riddled with racism. It poisons working-class children with the nationalist myth that people of Haitian descent are to blame for all the ills of their society. For their part, the Haitian bosses and their politicians do their best to keep the working class in the dark with barely functioning schools. Dominican workers are taught to persecute Haitian workers, while Haitian workers are taught that they are hated by Dominicans and should respond in kind. The workers’ natural class hatred toward the bosses is subverted by racism and division.
Whether in the DR or Haiti, the local ruling classes—backed by imperialist powers like the U.S.—could not care less about workers’ deaths and dislocation. Their only concern is to make more profit. For Haitian workers, the attack is doubled. In addition to laboring under subhuman conditions for miserable wages (earning 50 to 60 percent less than Dominicans for the same work), and experiencing racist humiliation on a daily basis, they may be hanged, burned alive, lynched or shot. Historically, these atrocities have broken out whenever tensions rise between the two countries’ rulers. Haitian bosses invest their capital in the DR, while Dominican bosses make their bread and butter in both Haiti and the DR.
Communism Will Smash All Borders
As long as nationalism, individualism, selfishness and capitalist inequality exist, racism will flourish. The capitalists will use it as a weapon to divide and dominate the working class. Racism obstructs the unity of the working class. This is why communists in Progressive Labor Party fight against racism and sexism in thought and deed. We organize to build communist consciousness in anti-racist struggles. We struggle for a world of equality. Smash racism and nationalism! Fight for communism!