Adriano Miguel Tejada, the executive editor of Diario Libre, writes today in his second page editorial that Haiti and Haitians are touchy subjects for the Dominican national conscience. Tejada, a political scientist and lawyer, says that before it was easy: Dominicans hated Haitians, from whom the nation had become independent and “we used Haitians to scare little children.”
With the development of people’s consciences, the country began to recognize the Haitians as a hard working people and worthy of better luck. Many such people express their feelings with gifts to poor children, evidently Haitian, that are begging in the streets as well as the many that live and work together with Dominicans.
Tejada goes on to say that the increase in the Haitian immigration due to the internal problems of that nation, their disposition to work for less pay than Dominicans at the hardest jobs, causes their presence among Dominicans to become a problem for many people. Added to that reality is the fact that there are many higher class Haitians that compete in the bars for the favors of women, plus the undeniable influence of drug trafficking from Haiti, that, itself, had become a sort of narco-state, and the increase in delinquency, and we have all the ingredients for an explosive situation.
Tejada calls for Dominicans to stay calm, saying that the country needs the Haitians and the Dominican Republic is certainly not going to invade Haiti and bring all of those problems upon itself. What needs to be done is to define clearly the national policy towards Haiti, without the abuses that do more harm to Dominicans than to Haitians, and with the same charity that other nations show our own poor.