Beautiful Horizons

Migrating From Miserably Poor to Desperately Poor

I've written about Haitians and the Dominican Republic before here and here, but Thursday's New York Times article about the migration of Haitians to the Dominican Republic and the migration of others from one developing nation to another, should be must reading for anyone who cares the slightest about the issue. Had a bad day? It can't be much worse than every day for this man:

But hundreds of Haitian migrants have risked their lives to come here and work the surrounding fields, and they are part of a global trend: migrants who move to poor countries from even poorer ones.

Among them is Anes Moises, 45, a dark-skinned man with flecks of gray hair, who has worked the Dominican banana fields for more than a decade, always illegally. Farm bosses pay him $5 a day and tell him that Haitians stink. Soldiers have called him a dark-skinned “devil” and deported him four times.

Still, with the average income in the Dominican Republic six times as much as in Haiti, Mr. Moises has answered each expulsion by hiring a smuggler to bribe the border guards and guide him back in.

“We are forced to come back here — not because we like it, but because we are poor,” he said. “When we cross the border, we are a little better off. We are able to buy shoes and maybe a chicken.” [my emphasis]

Of course this is not isolated to the island of Hispaniola. Spain has signed repatriation agreements with several countries in Africa in an effort to discourage African migrants from making the dangerous passage across the Straits of Gibraltar or from Senegal or Mauritania to the Canary Islands in flimsy boats. The net effect has been to strand some migrants from countries such as Guinea in countries such as Morocco or Senegal.

There's no easy solution to this, but learning about the issue can only help.

A Dominican Heroine

There's a fascinating and disturbing profile of Sonia Pierre, the head of the Movement for Dominico-Haitian Women in Saturday's New York Times. Fascinating for the hard work that she has put in trying to fight racism in the Dominican Republic, disturbing for the depth of racism in that country.

WHEN Sonia Pierre won an international human rights award last fall, there were two diametrically opposite reactions here: “Way to go!” and “Oh, no!”

Ms. Pierre is the Dominican Republic’s most polarizing human rights advocate, a dark-skinned woman who says she can only dream of a country in which her color — and the skin tone of hundreds of thousands of other Dominicans like her who are of Haitian descent — is a non-issue.

Carlos Morales Troncoso, the Dominican foreign minister, was among those who were infuriated at the honor Ms. Pierre received from the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. He fired off a letter to Mr. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, labeling the award “ill advised” and “myopic.”

“I fear that, unfortunately, the Robert F. Kennedy Prize is divorced from reality on the island of Hispaniola, and unfortunately there was bad information on the consequences of the work of Ms. Pierre in these parts,” wrote Mr. Morales, who blames her for smearing the reputation of the country internationally and creating, rather than healing, racial divisions.

It's clear that she is shaking up the status quo, which is good, but it is a lie to say that she is creating racial divisions. They have been a part of Dominican society for generations. Mr. Morales would serve his nation, its citizens and its image better if he would acknowledge the problems and dedicate himself to bridging the gaps. How bad are things there?

The American Embassy recently urged its staff members not to patronize one of Santo Domingo’s most popular nightclubs, Loft, because African-American diplomats were denied admission at the door while whites got past the bouncer. Ms. Pierre said she was not surprised.

The racist attitude is also blamed on the difficult relationship that the Dominican Republic has with its neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, Haiti. The Dominican Republic's major sugar growers, with the government's approval, brings in Haitian workers to effectively act as indentured servants to the sugarcane industry there. It also helps explain Morales dishonesty and reaction to Ms. Pierre:

As if to underline the importance of the sugar industry in Dominican politics, Foreign Minister Morales Troncoso himself has a long-standing relationship as an executive and major shareholder of the Central Romana sugar concern, along with Cuban-American sugar barons Alfonso and Pepe Fanjul.

The author of the Times article does a good job of hoisting Morales by his own petard:

“Haitianization” is what Dominicans call the negative influences that poor Haitians bring to their side of the island. Mr. Morales, the foreign minister, explained in his letter protesting Ms. Pierre’s award that his country could not handle the huge numbers of illegal Haitian immigrants. He put the blame on the United States and other countries for failing to improve conditions in Haiti.

Mr. Morales did not mention that as Haitians head to the more prosperous economy of the Dominican Republic, many Dominicans emigrate to better opportunities in the United States — sometimes legally, sometimes not.

Even the president that appointed Morales, Leonel Fernandez, grew up in New York and had a green card when he was first elected. In Morales' world, if it's good enough for his boss, it's not good enough for his neighbors.

As If They Don't Have It Bad Enough

As if Haitians don't have it bad enough trying to survive in Haiti, should they decide to seek work - even legally -  in the Dominican Republic, here's some of what they can expect:

The tobacco fields are being planted a little late this year because the Haitian immigrants who work them were driven away by threats of a lynching.

The troubles in this farm town in the country's northwest started in late September, with allegations that a Dominican worker had been killed by two black men. Too angry to wait for a trial, local Dominicans armed themselves with machetes and went out for vengeance.

"Where there are two Haitians, kill one; where there are three Haitians, kill two," said leaders of the mobs that descended on the immigrants' camps, the Haitians here recalled. "But always let one go so that he can run back to his country and tell them what happened."

It's worth noting that in 1994 Jose Francisco Peña Gomez, a candidate for president narrowly lost to José Balaguer, a notoriously corrupt former president of the Dominican Republic who all but came out and said that Peña Gomez, who was born in Valverde in the Dominican Republic, was a Haitian.

It's also worth noting that when he was an infant, Peña Gomez's parents were among some 10,000 Haitians and Dominicasn of Haitian descent who were massacred on the orders of Rafael Trujillo. This problem is certainly nothing new.

Fighting Corruption in the Dominican Republic

On the other half of  Hispaniola, it appears that there is a genuinely sincere effort to fight police corruption:

Franklin Almeyda remembers how he lost his temper and slammed a hand on a table at a meeting with police chiefs on his anticorruption reforms.

''This reform will go ahead,'' the normally soft-spoken Almeyda, in charge of the country's domestic security as the government's new Interior Secretary, recalled growling at the officers during that meeting. And they did.

In a country where some police officers pay their superiors up to $10,000 to get promoted -- knowing that the bribes grow as they move up the ranks -- Almeyda has launched a take-no-prisoners assault on police corruption.

Here's something I like - a lot:

But he's still fine-tuning a plan that would ease out half the force -- doubling the salaries and ending the moonlighting of those who stay so they can chase criminals full time, allowing the rest to work as private security guards.

This is something that I wish they would do in Brazil. It's ridiculous to expect cops to risk their lives  for lousy pay. It's a formula to create corruption. I firmly believe - and have believed so for years -  that fewer cops with better pay and better standards for those who want the job would go a long way to fight corruption.

Well Some in the Dominican Republic Aren't Struggling

Somehow the phrase good riddance comes to mind:

Former president Hipólito Mejía left office a millionaire even as most of his countrymen saw deepening poverty. While earning a presidential salary equivalent to $2,400 a month, Mr. Mejía, a former agronomist, raised his assets to 46.5 million pesos, or $1.26 million at the current exchange rate, from 19.7 million pesos in 2000, a declaration of wealth made public on Thursday said. Defeated for re-election in May, he left office last month. Many in his Caribbean nation of nine million fell into poverty or lost jobs after a major bank collapsed in 2003.

Perhaps it's time to call on the forensic accountants . . .

The Future of the Dominican Republic and Leonel Fernandez

My recent trip to the Dominican Republic was brief and not very comprehensive. We flew into Santo Domingo and stayed at a resort near San Pedro de Macoris.

I did talk with some people, however, about how they felt about the presidency of Leonel Fernandez. One man commented that Fernandez's predecessor, Hipolito Mejia was an abominable failure and that Fernandez could only make things better. He turned to Mércia and commented that Mejia "couldn't even get the Brazilian flag right" during last year's Pan American Games. He felt that Fernandez can only make things better for his country.

We went into Santo Domingo in a tourist cab on Sunday afternoon. I talked with our driver about Fernandez. He seems to feel that Fernandez will not be as bad as Mejia, but won't be much better. He pointed out the venues of last year's Pan Am Games and commented that there were more important concerns on which his nation should spend that kind of money. He thinks that ultimately Fernandez and Mejia are cut from the same cloth and that the avergae Dominican will not see much improvement.

He may very well be right. This article in today's Miami Herald underscores that point.

The country owes $7.7 billion, has an unemployment rate of 16 percent and faces inflation of up to 45 percent this year, according to reports by the Associated Press. This year the Dominican peso lost half its value against the dollar, skyrocketing to 44 pesos per dollar this month.

Millions of Dominicans have been living with daily power outages that last up to 20 hours, gas prices that force them to fill their tanks one gallon at a time and food prices so out of reach that proper nutrition is becoming a luxury for the impoverished.

For decades now, the Dominican Republic has been following the economic nostrums of the U.S. government and the International Monetary Fund. It has opened up its economy to foreign corporations and has shrunk its public sector. The results have been disastrous.

Recently inaugurated Dominican President Leonel Fernández is bracing himself and the country for more of the same.

''From this instant on, we start a period of austerity,'' he said at his swearing-in. He promised to cut spending by 20 percent.

Unfortunately, many other things need to be done to keep Dominicans from boarding rickety vessels to face an uncertain fate at sea.

When you're poor in a country with as many economic problems as the Dominican Republic, how much more austerity can you stand?

The economy has great potential. Gold, silver and bauxite are mined in the Dominican Republic. The land is fertile and farming is widespread. The tourism industry is growing in leaps and bounds and there are five international airports there.

As the article notes, a gallon of gas costs about $4.77. Those who think I have an animus towards Hugo Chávez will probably seize on this next point as evidence of that, but last September Chávez cut off oil supplies to the Dominican Republic for a short time claiming that officials in the Dominican Republic were plotting against him. He later threatened to do the same thing to Costa Rica. His proof? None, really. Carlos Andre Perez, the disgraced former president of Venezuela lives in the Dominican Republic and Carlos Ortega, a union leader and opposition figure in Venezuela sought and was granted political asylum in Costa Rica. Their presence in those countries is not proof any more than the Ayatollah Khomeini's years in exile in Paris are proof that France was plotting against the Shah of Iran.

What is telling about this with regard to Chávez is this: much of his rhetoric about plots against him concern the USA; whether true or not I won't speculate. I find it telling, however, that Chávez has never cut off oil supplies to the US, yet he has decided to extract revenge against two much smaller (and in the case of the Dominican Republic, much poorer) countries than both Venezuela and the USA. So what would one call someone who picks on those smaller than him while avoiding direct confrontation with those more powerful than him? Bully works for me.

I'm Back

I'm back from the land of merengue, great rum and terrific baseball players. The Dominican Republic is a lovely country and in many ways a sad country. Mércia commented that it reminded her so much of Brazil. I have often said that Cuba is the Ibero-American country that has the most in common with Brazil, I saw a number of affinities with the Dominican Republic and Brazil as well, although one characteristic that obviously ties Cuba and the Dominican Republic together and distinguishes them from Brazil is the popularity of baseball and the relative lack of interest in football (Cuba did participate in the 1938 World Cup).

The beaches are lovely, the water is delightful (coming from this longtime Floridian who can't stand New York beaches) and the culture is interesting. We went to Santo Domingo and San Pedro de Macoris (as I told someone, a factory for baseball players) and truly enjoyed ourselves. There is probably even more to do as it has a few rivers, the highest peak in the Caribbean (Pico Duarte) and an excellent tourism infrastructure, most of which appears to be lost on the USA. Nearly all of the other tourists I saw were from Germany, Italy, Switzerland, England and France; nearly every one on our flights were Dominicans or Europeans. It's worth a visit and I hope someday to return. I'll have more later in the week about how some of the residents I spoke with feel about Leonel Fernandez.

Leonel Fernandez Takes Office Tomorrow

Leonel Fernandez takes office tomorrow in the Dominican Republic and he is inheriting a mess:

Economists warn that a turnaround will require painful sacrifices. Fernandez's government inherits $6 billion in foreign debt, worsening power outages and a desperation among the poor that is driving thousands to risk illegal voyages by boat to the wealthier U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

U.S. authorities have intercepted more than 7,000 Dominicans trying to reach Puerto Rico in the last 10 months.

Last week, authorities rescued 39 Dominicans who drifted for 10 days after their motorboat broke down on the way to Puerto Rico. Forty-seven others disappeared at sea — many of them jumping overboard in desperation — and eight died of dehydration after being rescued.

Fernandez, whose 1996-2000 term as president was marked by an economic boom, trounced incumbent Hipolito Mejia in the May election after promising a return to stability.

But economists say that cannot happen quickly, given 16 percent unemployment, 32 percent inflation and a Dominican peso that has lost half its value against the dollar in two years, doubling prices in the import-dependent Caribbean nation of 8.8 million people.

I'm going to the Dominican Republic on Friday for a few days. I hope to have something to add when I get back. Meanwhile, I wish President Fernandez and the Dominican people the best of luck. It certainly seems like they are going to need it.

I Was Wrong

In assuming that $50,000 was the extent of US help to the flood and landslide victims in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This New York Times article and this one as well show that the US military currently serving as peacekeepers in Haiti have played a significant role in ferrying food, medicine and water to the stricken areas:

The gap between the aid that is being delivered now and the aid that is needed is enormous, he said. "Here in Mapou, we planned aid for 1,000 families, but 3,000 families are affected," he said, figuring on five people to a family.

In all, some 75,000 people in and around Mapou and Fond Verrettes, two of the hardest-hit Haitian towns, face "a continuing food emergency" for months to come, he said.

Fourteen helicopters of the American-led international military force that occupied Haiti after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled under United States pressure on Feb. 29 are now the lifeline for those tens of thousands of hungry, homeless villagers.

Almost all those helicopters belong to the United States military, which President Bush has said will leave Haiti in June after a mission intended to restore a measure of stability to the country.

"We rely on the military for airlift," Mr. Gauvreau said. Come summer, aid agencies may have to resort to barges, rafts and mules to carry food, medicine and shelter to a displaced population whose numbers may reach 100,000 or more.

The value of these airlifts cannot be underestimated in areas where the already difficult road journeys have been made impossible by the horrific flooding. To give you an idea as to how rapid the flooding has been consider this:

Two weeks of heavy rains, which continued Thursday, became a deadly torrent at dawn on Monday. In Haiti, as much as five feet fell in 36 hours on the town of Fond Verrettes, in a valley about 40 miles east of the capital, Port-au-Prince, officials said.

That's 1.67 inches per hour. Considering that Haiti is so severely deforested, one needn't think hard to consider how severe the mudslides must have been.

Natural Disaster on Hispaniola

The horrific flooding and mudslides the island of Hispaniola which includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic are truly heart-rending. The Miami Herald has this sad story about the events there. They also have this link describing how you can help, especially if you're in Miami.

Reuters reports that the death toll is close to 2,000 in these two nations that cannot bear this kind of suffering. They also report that some help is on the way:

The European Union was preparing a package worth $2.43 million for flood victims, the European Commission said in Brussels. The United States Agency for International Development said it was giving $50,000 to help the relief effort and was sending two disaster experts to evaluate damage. Japan also said it was giving $100,000 in emergency aid.

In New York - with a Dominican population of 400,000 and a Haitian one of 118,800 - Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sent a team of three disaster management specialists from the city's Office of Emergency Management to the Dominican Republic to make recommendations for aid to the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

The EU is giving $2.43 million and the USAID is giving $50,000?!? I really hope that is either incorrect or just a start.