While many could argue they were not the only foreign armies on the ground but the Dominican military was not welcome. The history of this two countries in the Hispaniola island has a deep darker history where many are too young to know about or too old, their memories have been lost. The Dominican Republic was occupied by the Haitians from February 9, 1822, to February 27, 1844. That’s one of the main reasons that the animosity of the Dominicans against the Haitians is so great.
Under the brutal regime of the Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, in the fall of 1937, up to as many 20,000 Haitians (perhaps many more) were massacred — many in the most horrific ways — by Dominican soldiers and civilians wielding machetes, bayonets and rifles. The mass slaughter has since been known, bizarrely, as the Parsley Massacre.
With the sugar industry that was booming in the Dominican Republic, and with the needs for workers, in the 90s many Haitians were willing to cross the border to go to work. They quickly find out they were not allowed to leave the premises they were working on. They were guarded by men with guns. They were not allowed to go back to their homeland. Those that tried to escape were shot and killed. Till today many Haitian families don’t know what happened to their loved ones that went to the Dominican Republic. With time they figured they are deceased.
Adding insult to injuries, on Sept. 23, 2013 the country’s constitutional court in an 11-2 decision ruled that the citizen provision in the 1929 Dominican constitution should not apply to the children of parents who were not “legal residents” at the time of their children’s birth, and, further, that subsequent generations born on Dominican soil also should be denied citizenship. An estimated of 200,000 people born in the country have Haitian parents, according to the last census, by far the largest immigrant group in the country and thus the one most widely affected by the ruling. Haitian immigrants occupy the lowest rungs of society, and have for generations, living in urban slums or squalid sugar plantation camps where wage abuse remains common.
It is not a matter that, the Dominicans were willing to help in the time of despair, but the intentions behind their action, having their military crossing the Haiti’s land. Whether they wanted to protect their aid convoy from being stolen. Even with all that you can see the reason why so many Haitians are mind boggling over the decision of the interim president Jocelerm Privert for allowing the Dominican military come to Haiti. It’s their agenda to have their military base in Haiti. The awkward thing is the Dominican willing to snatched away citizenship from Haitian children leaving them stateless, and now to show how generous they are, they are willing to send 100s load of food trucks to Haitian in needs, at the same time they send they military. The Haitians need to open their eyes before they find themselves in a deeper conflict with a neighbor that are willing to take more and more advantages from the Haitians.
The Dominicans are Haiti’s closest neighbor but one thing the Haitians know for sure, they are not their friends. History speaks for itself. While many countries are welcome but the Dominican army should know they are not.
