DR1 Daily News - Dominican Republic

Nelson Espinal Báez / RC Noticias

For decades, the Dominican Republic has been the buffer zone for Haiti with the country benefiting from trade and low cost labor, but also absorbing an uneducated and undocumented population and thus picking up heavy social costs. For decades, Haiti has continued in the grasp of a small group of business people who live abroad but control the country’s borders and supplies.

There has been hope for US involvement to bring major changes that will reinstate Haiti on the road to development. But a recent column by Nelson Espinal Baez in Diario Libre warns the buffer zone role of the Dominican Republic in regards to Haiti may be instead strengthened by the Trump administration.

In his recent column for Diario Libre, Nelson Espinal Báez, a lawyer who is an Associate MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program at Harvard Law School, presents a sobering...