That was a political move more than anything else, and the purpose was to boost his image abroad, which eventually it did. Otherwise, how can anyone explain the anti-Semitic laws that Trujillo put in place a few years afterwards, including limiting the Jewish presence to Sos?a with any Jew found outside of there to be swiftly deported back to that town.
The Japanese were mostly settled in the up-until-then uninhabited Constanza Valley. The Japanese that arrived were experts in developing temperate climate crops, which thanks to the cool climate of the Constanza Valley, those crops flourish there to this very day and that is the only place in the entire Caribbean where that is made possible.
This notion that they were used to
?create a virtual fence to further deter the entrance of Haitians? is seriously challenged by the fact that the Constanza Valley is nowhere near the Haitian border and the valley is where most of the Japanese were sent.
Now, what Trujillo did do was move some DOMINICAN families to the border region, and this was done precisely to make it easier to spot an illegal Haitian immigrant, since Haitians look different from most Dominicans.
That was an attempt of attracting whites of the Latin variety, however they had to be farmers and many were pressured to form families with Dominican women. One has to wonder they the regime didn?t encourage the immigration of white women or even pressured the Spaniards to form family with white Dominican women. Nothing would have worked better at whitening the population than creating more white people, and yet that was not the case.
Some, like the Hungarians, were mostly deported almost as soon as they were brought due to their mischievous ways. All the whites were free to leave the country if they desired to, the Dominican government was even willing to pay for their return trip. This was sort of oxymoronic when it comes to a whitening plan at a time in human history when notions of white supremacy and the notion that white people were essential to create a society with white-European standards of living and ways of doing things (ie. European lifestyles which to this day is what?s considered modern, decent and desirable vs. Native American/African/Asian ways of life which were seen as backwards, harsh, undesirable, etc). For example, living in a cement home with tile roofs, European furniture, etc. is seen as the way all people should live; that contrasts sharply with the opinion people have of living in a wooden hut with dirt floors, rattan home-made furniture, zinc or thatch roofs, etc.
In any case, the migration of whites during the Trujillo dictatorship was so negligible that the white segment of the population didn?t even rise by one percentage points. By the end of the Trujillo dictatorship, most of the white families where the same ones that existed before Trujillo was even born.
The acceptance of Spanish exiles was also a way of Trujillo showing loyalty of sorts to Spanish dictator Franco, who was a very close friend of Trujillo to the degree that Franco accepted to be the baptism godfather of A?da Trujillo.
One thing many people ignore is that the Dominican population of the time was overall much whiter than it is today. There were many towns that had white majorities, even some in the eastern region like Hig?ey according to the Spanish refugee Jos? Forn? Farreras in his 1943 memoirs (
see page 38, second paragraph). This, however, was more prevalent in the Cibao, at that time it was where most of the population (urban and rural combined) lived. You can search other memoirs written by foreigners that settled and others that simply visited the country, and their description of the Dominican population in the different towns and regions slightly differs from today?s reality.
People do try to add to ?that list?, but in reality the massacre was simply an anti-illegal immigration act (many were expelled, the others that decided to defend their stay were eliminated), and this becomes clear when the following is taken into account:
- Documented Haitian immigrants (in that time most were working in the sugarcane industry) were left alone.
- The descendants of the Libertos (African-Americans that were brought by the Haitians and settled mostly in Saman?, Puerto Plata, and the Santo Domingo area) were left alone.
- The descendants of Cocolos and the Cocolos themselves (black immigrants from the British West Indies ? Jamaica, Tortola, St Lucia, Barbados, etc) were left alone.
- Black Dominicans were left alone.
Who were eliminated?
- Basically, illegal Haitian immigrants in the border region.
- Unfortunate black Dominicans that had trouble properly saying perejil, and these were few and far between.
Have you ever wondered why the word perejil was used in this operation? If it was a black racial cleaning attempt, the military guards would had been ordered to eliminate any black person they see, and the massacre would not had been limited to the border region. And if this was not just an anti-illegal immigrant scheme and purely an anti-Haitian scheme, then the Haitians that had their documents that allowed them to work temporarily in the DR would had also been eliminated, and yet they were not.
In any case, massacres are a ?normal? part of the history of the island. Ironically, more massacres were created by the Haitian government than the Dominican government (the multiple massacres of mulattoes that took place through out Haiti (see here and here), the massacre of Dominicans on Dominican soil ordered by the Haitian government (
see here), etc. vs. one massacre of undocumented Haitians under Trujillo ?a man that solved everything with the sword ?I say this was due to his training to live and think like a Marine, a Marine without control- and ended up killing over 30,000 Dominicans in total for pure political reasons).
The opposite is true, the ?violence? tends to be isolated and more an exception than the rule, usually after a Haitian criminal does something brutal to a Dominican, such as murder, rape, etc. Other than this, the ?violence? you speak of is more part of your imagination than anything else.
Much more interesting was the Dominican response through out January, February, March, even in to April towards Haiti and Haitians after the earthquake. Do a quick search, you will find plenty to defy your logic of this ?violence? you speak of.
That?s what happens when people move illegally to another country and live outside the legal framework. Take a look at how things function among illegal immigrants in the US. Race has nothing to do with this, not following the rules does. Had race been an issue, the 200,000 or so legal Haitians in the DR would also be relegated to the bottom of the barrel, and yet their Dominican born kids are given Dominican nationality with no hesitation (not so for the illegals), they legally work in formal jobs with benefits such as health insurance, paid vacations, etc (not so for the illegals), etc. Do you see a pattern here between being legal vs illegal?
And to make matters even more interesting, getting a visa in the Dominican embassy in Port-au-Prince or at the consulate in Cap Haitien is a very easy and straight-forward process. Unless the person doesn?t suffer from a disease such as aids or malaria, and are able to finance the cost of the transactions; they will have their legal visa to enter the DR for touristic, residency, working, studying, etc. purposes in no time.
First of all, batey conditions are no worse than the standard of living of the typical rural Haitian family in Haiti and they earn more than the average Haitian makes in Haiti; so if batey conditions and labor is ?slaving?, then all of Haiti is a huge slavery camp, which it isn?t.
Second, the Haitian population in the DR is approaching 2 million. The population of all the bateys combined is less than 30,000. Please explain to everyone how 1.5% equals a large portion of the Haitian population.
For the record:
Regarding the guy that claimed that
Jamaicans attempted to invade the DR, he?s partly correct, however it was not Jamaicans, but the British during colonial times (they also attempted to invade Haiti). Whenever the British attempted to capture any place in the Caribbean or Central America, they always departed from Jamaica which has been a British stronghold since the 1600s. Even today, descendants of immigrants from the British West Indies (ie. Cocolos) are sometimes referred to as
Ingleses (the English) by many Dominicans.
Also, at no time in Dominican history has most
Haitians in the country ever worked for the
Vicini?s. The largest employer (even today) in the country has been the Central Romana, which up until the 1970s, was owned by an American family from New York. The other big employer of Haitian cane cutters was the Dominican government itself, but this is no longer true since a good deal of the sugar cane fields owned by the government are no longer in operation. Also keep in mind that when the sugar industry was being developed from the late 1880s until the 1930s, it was overwhelmingly owned and operated by foreigners who had no qualms about imported foreign labor, despite the native Dominican population?s desires first due to linguistically/cultural/religious differences and then due to historical animosities. At first the labor source was the British West Indies, most of who were English speakers, Protestants, and had an Anglo way of interpreting things which clashed with the Dominican way which has always been Spanish speaking, Catholic, and Latin. Then, during the American military invasion from 1916 to 1929, the Americans, who also had troops in Haiti, started to take a greater stake in Dominican sugar and began using Haiti as a source of labor. From the 1930s to the 1980s the Dominican state began to take a larger stake in the sugar industry, then in the 1990s it started to go downhill and has never fully recovered. This is why today the two biggest players in the sugar industry is the Central Romana (currently owned by a Cuban-American family that lives in South Florida, and also are the largest sugar producers over there. One brother is a democrat and donates large sums of money to that party while the other is a republican and also donates large sums of money to that party. They have done quite a deal in influencing the US government to give preferential treatment to American produced sugar -aka, their family business- AND give Dominican sugar preferential treatment -aka, their family business again!-. They did got in trouble in the US for importing Jamaican laborers to South Florida to work the fields, which is why their Florida plantations are completely mechanized and the US government deported all the Jamaicans back to Jamaica; their Dominican operation is still highly dependent on Haitian labor). Central Romana makes up roughly 60 to 70% of the Dominican sugar industry; much of the rest is Casa Vicini, who are mechanizing their operations up to 80%. There are a few other players, but they are rather small and unimportant.
