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The Tale of Two Nations -the social creation of a racial state

Often when discussing Haiti, it is easy to forget that it shares an island with another nation-Santo, Domingo.  In 1802 when Leclerc was sent to reestablish French rule, they were partially successful as Toussaint was forced to flee Santo Domingo.  As the Republic of Haiti celebrated its first year of independence, JJ Dessalines led a Haitian force to expel the remaining French occupiers in Santo Domingo.  The attempts to remove the Europeans resulted in a bloody trail of destruction as hundreds of residents were slaughtered and dozens of towns destroyed.  When Haiti finally gained independence in 1804, it took control and ruled over Santo Dominico for 22 years.  It was not until 1844 that the Dominican Republic was formed, but not until 1865, before it finally gained its independence from Spain.  Coincidently, it was Haiti that helped the Dominican Republic defeat Spain.  (Bishop and Fernandez 2017) From the beginning, the Dominican Republic was primarily a light-skinned population that espoused Eurocentric ideologies, whereas Haiti was a nation of formerly enslaved people and considered black.  Dominican leaders often presented the Haitians as racially inferior and institutionalized whiteness.  Anti'Haitian sentiments resulted in "ethnic cleansing" as thousands of Haitians were slaughtered under the dictator Rafael Trujillo in the 1930s.  In what would be known as the Parsley Massacre, those persons that mispronounced the word "perjil" (meaning parsley) or did not have the proper Spanish inflection were marked for death.  Under Trujillo, a government plan to "lighten" the Dominican population was instituted as Jewish exiles from the Spanish Civil war were encouraged to immigrate.  Dominicans were encouraged to marry only white persons to lighten the population further.  These policies are ironic given that the first enslaved Africans imported into America were destined to land in the Dominican Republic, and over 85% of the population had some African ancestry.  To be Dominican was to be anything but black and certainly not Haitian.  Consequently, as espoused by the elites, the Dominican nationality viewed themselves as a mixture of indigenous and Spanish.  Haitians were viewed as morally inferior, while the Dominicans represented a more cosmopolitan, superior group akin to the white Europeans.    (San Miguel  ([1997]2005))

From these myths, a whole set of realities were created.  The Haitians spoke a broken French known as Creole, they practiced Vodou and witchcraft, and their failures were a consequence of their actions.  The Dominicans, alternatively speaking proper Spanish, were Roman Catholics, and their failures resulted from tragic victimization.  (Shaw 2021)

 

 Source: Two countries, one island, life-and-death differences | CNN

Before 1960, the Dominican Republic and Haiti were almost equal in terms of GDP and capital incomes.  But now, the Dominican Republic is nearly 800% higher.  And so today, Haiti, once the jewel of the Caribbean, is now the pariah as the US and other world powers orchestrated the demise of this Black-led Nation.  As we have seen, over the last two centuries, continuing up to this day, Haiti has been targeted, occupied, marginalized, ostracized, and exploited to this present day.  As a result, Haiti is the poorest Nation in our hemisphere.  The same policies, practices, and intentional strategies that created such a nation, would be duplicated, refined, and reinvented as our Nation discovered Jim Crow, redlining, the cradle-to-prison pipeline, and the resulting ghettos.