From your blog;
The Dominicans are making room for them. I watched a group of men, 200 strong. motor bikes parked on the side of the new highway, machetes in hand, cutting through the virgin forest on the side of the road. When I stopped to ask what they were doing... and they said .. well.. nothing.. and I said "Vamos hacer un lakou?" which is the word for a Haitian community,,, and they all smiled and gave me thumbs up... So I gave them $100 for juice and the Obama fist bump to the head guy.
So you see 200 people destroying the forest to make illegal dwelling and all you can do is giving them money for juices?. How about calling the police Annie?.
We are not "making room for them", we are being shoved aside by the Haitians and the people who help them and please stop advocating building an orphanage for Haitian kids on the DR side.
Well, Vacara. There are hardly ANY Dominicans who own land up there anymore. It is mostly Europeans. Of 30,000 residents, 6,000 can vote.
And these were indeed Dominicans who were doing the cutting. Not a few Dominicans but an organized LARGE GROUP of locals. Whether they were making a village for the Haitians or for themselves, it did not matter to me. As far as I was concerned they were simply taking custody of unused land that is not inside a national park.
To my mind, the people who were cutting into the land to make lodging for themselves were what I considered to be the "home team".. Certainly more so than the "investors" who have filled in the swamp with caliche to make "land".
Why call the police? To enforce the rights of whom? an absentee landlord? the State? The land was not fenced. Why would this be my business?
What I did support was people out in the hot sun, doing what was needed to provide for themselves... self reliance... which I applaud.
I do not know, Vacara, I used to live in Heights. And I was born in NYC. Did I get pushed out by invading Dominicans?
You do not get to own any land that you cannot control. The land is going to be here long after you and I and anyone who remembers our names are dust particles.
You want to protect "your" land? Where is it, exactly, that you live?
There is a French Canadian who owns vast portions of Las Terrenas. He has been there for over twenty years,,,.,Occassionally he goes off his head and waves around his title papers to Come Pan... where thousands of Dominicans live in wooden shacks.. But he has the title papers.
Does he own it? The people who live in those shacks cannot sell them.. but I doubt that he could, either.
If you do not collect the Haitian children who are being trafficked into the DR with the aim of repatriating them, you will have them in your streets, in your barrios, in your schools. They will simply be more children without papers and without the rights to higher education. Their children will be a continuing problem as well...
If... on the other hand.. you have a destination collection point .. where they are actually designated as "refugee" children .. distinctly Haitian.. put under the custody of the Episcopal Church.. of which the Haitian Diocese operates out of NYC, they become NOT a burden on your country but a burden on the great world. They can be educated and trained with the goal of returning them to Haiti.
That was my intention behind my suggestion.