Haiti represents 'the gravest threat ever presented to the Dominican state and nation'. The assertion came last week from the Dominican armed forces minister, General José Miguel Soto Jiménez.
Addressing a seminar on 'The frontier: a priority in the national agenda for the 21st century', which had been organised by the military, Soto said that the threat was not military ('that would be absurd') but took the shape of social and economic pressures. Nonetheless, he said, ignoring it would be 'a stupidity that would cost us dearly.'
Alluding to the constant inflow of migrants from Haiti, Soto blamed the Dominican 'oligarchy' for encouraging Haitians to cross the porous border in search of jobs in agriculture and other sectors, which Dominicans 'no longer want to do' -at least not at the rates the Haitians are paid.
General Soto said it is the role of the armed forces to control the influx of Haitian migrants across the border, in what he described as the 'modernisation' of the concept of security. Border control policies, he added, should be kept free of racial and cultural prejudice.
Military traffickers. Another speaker at the seminar, historian and former ambassador to the US Bernardo Vega, agreed that illegal immigration from Haiti is a major issue -but added that the military were very much part of the problem, as direct participants in the trafficking of Haitians. 'Pressures from the US,' he said, 'have kept our military from profiting from drug trafficking, but nothing has prevented the trafficking of illegal Haitians from continuing to be a traditional business of our army.'
In the past this was handled within the confines of the state, with the state-owned sugar council, CEA, turning to the military to provide low-cost Haitian labour. After the privatisation of the CEA, said Vega, the new private owners of the sugar estates have continued the practice.
Vega sees this as a vicious circle. First, the abundance of cheap Haitian labour dissuades the sugar industry from modernising its production methods. Second, the sugar industry is a first stop: off-season, the Haitians seek jobs in other sectors, where their presence as and alternative keeps Dominican wages depressed. Once they've worked elsewhere, says Vega, they have no wish to return to cane-cutting - which makes it necessary to bring in a new batch every year.
By Vega's reckoning, at present one out of every 16 people living in the Dominican Republic hails from Haiti.
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