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AMERICAS | CABARETE JOURNAL
Dominican Resort Is a Refuge Twice Abandoned
By AZAM AHMEDJULY 30, 2015
After the owners of the resort Jard?n Deportivo in the Dominican Republic gave up on it, Haitian refugees moved into the stripped-down site and set up households and businesses. A new immigration law has again brought change to the property.
CABARETE, Dominican Republic ? Just a few kilometers down the road, in the center of Cabarete, the tourism industry pulses with life: Beachfront restaurants dish up offerings as varied as ceviche and pizza, tourists cart surfboards and sport fanny packs, and combed white sand as clean as crisp bed linen beckons sunbathers.
But here, in this abject corner of the island, fear and loathing is the more common fare. Jard?n Deportivo, once a fancy place for tourists seeking an alternative to the all-inclusive Caribbean resort, stands as a relic twice abandoned ? and as a testament to the profound change underway in the Dominican Republic.
Built beyond the outer edge of the tourist zone, the Jard?n was developed in a spot that seemed, in the early 2000s, destined to be along the path of the booming industry. But momentum stalled, tourists stopped drifting this way and the owners, of whom little is remembered, vanished.
Flora and fauna claimed the courtyard. The bright pastel walls dimmed. The bar, fashioned as a nerve center for patrons, fell dormant. Wiring, lighting, even doors were all stripped for sale.
At least until around 2010, when the Jard?n got an unexpected shot of life. After the earthquake in Haiti, a flood of new residents turned up at the Jard?n: migrant workers fleeing the desperation of their homeland.
The resort brimmed with energy once more, marked by a cheery disrepair. Haitian squatters transformed offices into bodegas with snacks and beer. Residents bought new doors and filled the hotel rooms with furniture and family photos. The old tennis shop became a discoth?que.
And now, just as suddenly, the party has stopped once more.
In recent weeks, after a government deadline passed for all undocumented immigrants in the Dominican Republic to register with the authorities, the Jard?n Deportivo once again became a wasteland. The largely Haitian tenants fled, leaving behind clothes, furniture and personal belongings as if running from a natural disaster.
?Until recently this place was filled with Haitian immigrants,? said L?elu, a Haitian neighbor whose brother was living in the hotel and was among those who fled, withholding her last name out of fear of the authorities. ?Two weeks ago, they just started leaving.?
Ahead of a presidential election in which the incumbent, Danilo Medina, is running again, the government?s plan could eject tens of thousands of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic, some of whom were born here but have no documentation to prove it.
The government bristles at accusations that it is planning mass ejections. It points to its neighbor to the north, the United States, which has been casting out undocumented immigrants for decades. The Dominicans say they are halting deportations until migrants have a chance to apply to remain in the country, adding that when they do resume ejections, it will be in a humane way, with no mass roundups.
?There is a double standard in the way we are being asked to do things,? said Josu? Antinoe Fiallo, special adviser to Mr. Medina. ?If people do not comply with our regulations and legislation, our government will implement return policies that exist in any society governed by the rule of law.?
But while the government says it has chosen to stay its hand for now, many migrants are not waiting for the deportations to start up again.
More than 40,000 people have left the country on their own since the deadline to register passed on June 17, the government says, and from the look of Jard?n Deportivo, the self-deportations were more like a stampede.
By late June, just a few Haitians remained, mostly those who could not afford to move. And they were joined, suddenly, by a cadre of Dominican residents who took over the resort, in yet another change of hands.
Photo
Haitian and Dominican men played pool in the abandoned resort. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Accompanying the new tenants was also a new fear: that the original owners of the resort, whoever and wherever they are, could one day come to reclaim their lost paradise. Residents exuded an abiding wariness of visitors on a recent trip to the resort, refusing to answer questions, firing back with questions of their own and demanding the more amiable among them to be silent.
A group formed near the central courtyard, where a fetid pool, filled with algae, trash and a half-submerged canoe, stank in the afternoon sun. A dog lapped at the water, then paused to chew on the trash that bordered the green water.
?Don?t talk to them,? yelled one Dominican resident, Camilo, wearing a Colorado Rockies baseball cap and a tank top.
Camilo, who refused to give his last name, then proceeded to offer his take on the situation.
?They had more than a year to submit their documents to register, and now that the deadline has passed everyone thinks it?s some big deal,? he said. ?They should have done it before.?
Before the man had time to finish, a Haitian resident, Julissa, interrupted.
Photo
Fabienne Norasien, 28, in the "penthouse," the only apartment on the roof of the resort, with her two children, 10-month-old Fedlina Desinord and 2-year-old Mackensley Desinord, right. Ms. Norasien was born in Cap-Ha?tien, Haiti, and lived with her family selling rice and cooking oil in the street, but said they did not make enough money, and often struggled to feed their family. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
?Why are you investigating us,? she yelled into the crowd. ?Talk to them, too,? she yelled, pointing at the Dominicans in the courtyard, like Camilo.
Julissa, who also refused to give her last name, relayed that there was tension between the remaining Haitians and the Dominicans. A Dominican lawyer, she lamented, had been renting out the rooms, despite having no obvious ownership of the property. He had been the first to stir the fears of his Haitian ?tenants,? whom he was charging usurious rates.
Camilo, for his part, defended the lawyer.
?If you want to talk to anyone here, you need to talk to the lawyer,? he said. ?He?s the only one who defends us here.?
The lawyer, it turned out, was something of a phantom. No one would even whisper his first name, never mind his last. The only trace of him was the word ?abogado,? Spanish for lawyer, scrawled over the doors of more than half the rooms in the Jard?n.
Haitian squatters claimed that the lawyer extorted them, and tried to sell his services to them to help them naturalize. Most opted to leave instead.
Young Haitians and Dominicans at an improvised discoth?que at the abandoned Jard?n Deportivo. The space was once the resort's tennis pro shop. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Repeated attempts to locate the lawyer, who residents say one day turned up and started leasing the rooms in the Jard?n with his own permission, were unsuccessful.
Other oddities were afoot. Haitian residents who remained said that days earlier, men had come to their doors in the middle of the night, banging on their doors, yelling threats and urging them to leave of their own volition.
Another Haitian resident, Orlando, stood digging a trench leading into the pool while the crowd commiserated about the owners. Black smoke rose from a small trash fire, choking the air.
?We?ve been left by ourselves here so we take care of ourselves,? said Orlando, the cheeriest of the residents.
Before he was silenced, Orlando said that many occupants had left their belongings in their apartments, fully expecting to return at some point to collect them. Someone wondered aloud whether there would be anything left when they got back.
Inside the complex, the sundry goods of life still crowded the apartments. Shoes and shirts cast on the floor, sheets bundled on a thin mattress, cookware placed atop a counter, remnants of a sudden, perhaps permanent, departure. None of the remaining residents would come out to speak.
This month, the fears of the community were vindicated: The police ejected everyone from the resort, forcing the undocumented migrants to abandon the lives built on the remains of the Jard?n once more.
A version of this article appears in print on July 31, 2015, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Dominican Resort Is a Refuge Twice Abandoned . Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
AMERICAS | CABARETE JOURNAL
Dominican Resort Is a Refuge Twice Abandoned
By AZAM AHMEDJULY 30, 2015
After the owners of the resort Jard?n Deportivo in the Dominican Republic gave up on it, Haitian refugees moved into the stripped-down site and set up households and businesses. A new immigration law has again brought change to the property.
CABARETE, Dominican Republic ? Just a few kilometers down the road, in the center of Cabarete, the tourism industry pulses with life: Beachfront restaurants dish up offerings as varied as ceviche and pizza, tourists cart surfboards and sport fanny packs, and combed white sand as clean as crisp bed linen beckons sunbathers.
But here, in this abject corner of the island, fear and loathing is the more common fare. Jard?n Deportivo, once a fancy place for tourists seeking an alternative to the all-inclusive Caribbean resort, stands as a relic twice abandoned ? and as a testament to the profound change underway in the Dominican Republic.
Built beyond the outer edge of the tourist zone, the Jard?n was developed in a spot that seemed, in the early 2000s, destined to be along the path of the booming industry. But momentum stalled, tourists stopped drifting this way and the owners, of whom little is remembered, vanished.
Flora and fauna claimed the courtyard. The bright pastel walls dimmed. The bar, fashioned as a nerve center for patrons, fell dormant. Wiring, lighting, even doors were all stripped for sale.
At least until around 2010, when the Jard?n got an unexpected shot of life. After the earthquake in Haiti, a flood of new residents turned up at the Jard?n: migrant workers fleeing the desperation of their homeland.
The resort brimmed with energy once more, marked by a cheery disrepair. Haitian squatters transformed offices into bodegas with snacks and beer. Residents bought new doors and filled the hotel rooms with furniture and family photos. The old tennis shop became a discoth?que.
And now, just as suddenly, the party has stopped once more.
In recent weeks, after a government deadline passed for all undocumented immigrants in the Dominican Republic to register with the authorities, the Jard?n Deportivo once again became a wasteland. The largely Haitian tenants fled, leaving behind clothes, furniture and personal belongings as if running from a natural disaster.
?Until recently this place was filled with Haitian immigrants,? said L?elu, a Haitian neighbor whose brother was living in the hotel and was among those who fled, withholding her last name out of fear of the authorities. ?Two weeks ago, they just started leaving.?
Ahead of a presidential election in which the incumbent, Danilo Medina, is running again, the government?s plan could eject tens of thousands of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic, some of whom were born here but have no documentation to prove it.
The government bristles at accusations that it is planning mass ejections. It points to its neighbor to the north, the United States, which has been casting out undocumented immigrants for decades. The Dominicans say they are halting deportations until migrants have a chance to apply to remain in the country, adding that when they do resume ejections, it will be in a humane way, with no mass roundups.
?There is a double standard in the way we are being asked to do things,? said Josu? Antinoe Fiallo, special adviser to Mr. Medina. ?If people do not comply with our regulations and legislation, our government will implement return policies that exist in any society governed by the rule of law.?
But while the government says it has chosen to stay its hand for now, many migrants are not waiting for the deportations to start up again.
More than 40,000 people have left the country on their own since the deadline to register passed on June 17, the government says, and from the look of Jard?n Deportivo, the self-deportations were more like a stampede.
By late June, just a few Haitians remained, mostly those who could not afford to move. And they were joined, suddenly, by a cadre of Dominican residents who took over the resort, in yet another change of hands.
Photo
Haitian and Dominican men played pool in the abandoned resort. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Accompanying the new tenants was also a new fear: that the original owners of the resort, whoever and wherever they are, could one day come to reclaim their lost paradise. Residents exuded an abiding wariness of visitors on a recent trip to the resort, refusing to answer questions, firing back with questions of their own and demanding the more amiable among them to be silent.
A group formed near the central courtyard, where a fetid pool, filled with algae, trash and a half-submerged canoe, stank in the afternoon sun. A dog lapped at the water, then paused to chew on the trash that bordered the green water.
?Don?t talk to them,? yelled one Dominican resident, Camilo, wearing a Colorado Rockies baseball cap and a tank top.
Camilo, who refused to give his last name, then proceeded to offer his take on the situation.
?They had more than a year to submit their documents to register, and now that the deadline has passed everyone thinks it?s some big deal,? he said. ?They should have done it before.?
Before the man had time to finish, a Haitian resident, Julissa, interrupted.
Photo
Fabienne Norasien, 28, in the "penthouse," the only apartment on the roof of the resort, with her two children, 10-month-old Fedlina Desinord and 2-year-old Mackensley Desinord, right. Ms. Norasien was born in Cap-Ha?tien, Haiti, and lived with her family selling rice and cooking oil in the street, but said they did not make enough money, and often struggled to feed their family. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
?Why are you investigating us,? she yelled into the crowd. ?Talk to them, too,? she yelled, pointing at the Dominicans in the courtyard, like Camilo.
Julissa, who also refused to give her last name, relayed that there was tension between the remaining Haitians and the Dominicans. A Dominican lawyer, she lamented, had been renting out the rooms, despite having no obvious ownership of the property. He had been the first to stir the fears of his Haitian ?tenants,? whom he was charging usurious rates.
Camilo, for his part, defended the lawyer.
?If you want to talk to anyone here, you need to talk to the lawyer,? he said. ?He?s the only one who defends us here.?
The lawyer, it turned out, was something of a phantom. No one would even whisper his first name, never mind his last. The only trace of him was the word ?abogado,? Spanish for lawyer, scrawled over the doors of more than half the rooms in the Jard?n.
Haitian squatters claimed that the lawyer extorted them, and tried to sell his services to them to help them naturalize. Most opted to leave instead.
Young Haitians and Dominicans at an improvised discoth?que at the abandoned Jard?n Deportivo. The space was once the resort's tennis pro shop. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
Repeated attempts to locate the lawyer, who residents say one day turned up and started leasing the rooms in the Jard?n with his own permission, were unsuccessful.
Other oddities were afoot. Haitian residents who remained said that days earlier, men had come to their doors in the middle of the night, banging on their doors, yelling threats and urging them to leave of their own volition.
Another Haitian resident, Orlando, stood digging a trench leading into the pool while the crowd commiserated about the owners. Black smoke rose from a small trash fire, choking the air.
?We?ve been left by ourselves here so we take care of ourselves,? said Orlando, the cheeriest of the residents.
Before he was silenced, Orlando said that many occupants had left their belongings in their apartments, fully expecting to return at some point to collect them. Someone wondered aloud whether there would be anything left when they got back.
Inside the complex, the sundry goods of life still crowded the apartments. Shoes and shirts cast on the floor, sheets bundled on a thin mattress, cookware placed atop a counter, remnants of a sudden, perhaps permanent, departure. None of the remaining residents would come out to speak.
This month, the fears of the community were vindicated: The police ejected everyone from the resort, forcing the undocumented migrants to abandon the lives built on the remains of the Jard?n once more.
A version of this article appears in print on July 31, 2015, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Dominican Resort Is a Refuge Twice Abandoned . Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
