The same Caribbean island and two worlds apart.
In January 2010, on an emergency trip to cover the devastating earthquake in Port-au-Prince, the pilot of the small plane leaving from the Dominican Republic made a geographical illustration for the correspondents traveling in his aircraft.
“When you see that the green landscape disappears and everything is barren, deforested, that means that we have already entered the space of Haiti,” he commented.
Is one part tropical and the other arid? No, the answer is that those two sovereign states enjoy similar conditions within Hispaniola, the first Spanish territory in the New World. Another thing is the result of human impact.
The second largest island in the Antilles archipelago is shared by Haiti (37% of the surface) and the Dominican Republic (63%). For centuries, that territory has been divided, sometimes bitterly, by language, race, history and culture.
As Haiti, once a refuge for freed slaves, falls further into chaos, in a clear demonstration that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse, to the separation between green and brown another very visible one is added. or more from above.
The Dominican Republic has accelerated the construction work of the wall in the Caribbean – of Trumpist inspiration –, which extends along 402 kilometers crossing the interior of the island.
The spiral of disorder and the humanitarian crisis in Haiti in recent years have coincided with harsh repression by its Dominican neighbor, which yesterday Sunday held presidential and legislative elections marked above all by fear of the Haitian factor. Faced with the wave of violence that is being experienced in Haiti, thousands of its citizens are trying to flee and what is closest to them is the Dominican Republic, which is trying to prevent “an invasion.”
President Luis Abinader, whom polls indicated as the favorite to be re-elected, has gained fame among his compatriots as a promoter of this border wall, while carrying out mass deportations of 175,000 Haitians last year alone.
At a UN Security Council dedicated to the Haiti crisis in mid-February, Abinader sounded the alarm in the organization.
“Let’s prevent Haiti from being devastated by chaos and anarchy. “Let us not allow the crisis there to spread throughout the region,” he stated.
And he left a warning: “Our slogan from now on will be that either we fight together to save Haiti or we will fight alone to protect the Dominican Republic.” She didn’t wait. A few weeks later he started construction of the wall.
Resorting to language that resonates with Trumpism, Abinader maintained that the objective of this construction is to prevent human traffickers or criminals from crossing the border.
As described by the American media, the situation in Haiti is in “a spiral of anarchy” due to the dominance of violent gangs, a circumstance that escalated starting in July 2021 with the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
But the situation worsened even more two months ago, when armed groups attacked and took over prisons, police headquarters and institutions in the capital, Port-au-Prince, and throughout the country. The unrest led unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry to announce his plan to leave office and spurred even greater instability. The United Nations indicated this week that 362,000 people were internally displaced in Haiti. So Abinader’s idea of ??putting obstacles in the way of neighboring immigrants did not come out of nowhere. His wall project is inspired by the one Israel built on the Golan Heights.
As in the United States and Europe, border control has become a driving force in the elections that the Dominican Republic called this Sunday. The current president guaranteed that if he were re-elected, his priority would be to conclude his plan and complete his $120 million barrier project. The main part of his route passes through rural and very porous areas. Surveys showed that security was the main concern of Dominicans. All of these were factors that played in favor of Abinader’s victory.
Except for complaints from human rights and religious groups, opposition to the border wall was rather thin. Even the main rival at the polls, former president Leonel Fernández, maintained that this construction was necessary due to the deterioration in Haiti.
Together but not mixed on the island of Hispaniola.
