“A Veil of Legality”

Amelia Hintzen

doi:10.1163/22134360-09001053

Abstract

This article explores the history of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo’s anti-Haitian policies by examining two unstudied dimensions of the government’s campaign against Haitian migrants. Archival records reveal that Trujillo attempted to implement a clandestine plan to deport Haitians prior to the 1937 massacre on the border. However, this plan failed because local officials resisted government attempts to supersede their authority. I contend this led Trujillo to order the massacre in order to compel obedience from rural authorities and to destroy Haitian-Dominican networks. While in the border region these goals were accomplished with violence, Trujillo pursued a different strategy in sugar-producing areas. Because of the economic importance of sugar, the Trujillo regime began to employ extralegal coercion to force Haitians in the country onto sugar plantations, and to inextricably link Haitian identity with cutting sugarcane. In implementing such policies, government officials again faced resistance from local communities.

Highlights

In 1920 the governor of the Dominican province of Monte Cristi wrote to the national Department of Interior and Police to complain about the deportation of Haitian residents living in his province
The governor finished by demanding “better application of the law, in order to avoid unjust abuses.”1 At the time, the Dominican Republic was home to large Haitian-Dominican communities both in border regions and on sugar plantations across the country, where Haitian migrants were an important source of labor
The central government based in the capital city of Santo Domingo had limited authority over national territory, and when American occupation forces took control in 1916 they worried about the fluid nature of the border and the seemingly unhindered mobility of Haitian immigrants

Summary

The Rise of Trujillo

In 1927 a former member of the private security force on the Boca Chica sugar plantation named Rafael Leonidas Trujillo secured the title of commander-inchief of the u.s. organized and trained army. Some of the elite intellectuals who joined Trujillo’s government blamed “Haitianization” for the Dominican Republic’s lack of progress, and hoped that the dictator could address the problem (Turits 2002:599) In response to these already circulating ideologies, in 1932 Trujillo attempted to prevent sugar plantations from using Haitian labor by requiring that sugar workers be Dominican. In the early 1930s when local officials found Haitians without cédulas on or around sugar plantations they usually sided with the immigrants and blamed the company for their lack of documentation. The independence of rural authorities limited the ability of the government to better control the country’s immigrant population These archival documents demonstrate that rural residents did not view the Haitian presence in the country in the same way as the urban elite did. Unhindered mobility was a potent tool of resistance against state forces, and Dominicans and Haitians alike were loath to give it up

Immigration Policy and State Authority

The Massacre and Aftermath

Findings

Conclusion