Please dont go to the Dominican Republic!

Its Mothers Day and I finally got the chance to write about a subject that has been troubling me for years. If you are thinking about a trip to the Caribbean please don’t go to the Dominican Republic. I know the rock bottom pricing is amazing and tempting but you should understand that your tourist dollar is promoting modern day slavery. I do not intend to get into a long dissertation on the subject but hopefully it will stimulate your interest to read about the subject some more. All the hard back breaking work of construction and sugar cane harvesting in the Dominican Republic is done by people of Haitian descent. There is a documentary called “Black Sugar” you may wish to watch. I haven’t watched it myself because I know it will just upset me and besides, I have been there, many times both as a tourist and as a Health Care Volunteer. On my last visit a gentleman who was the administrator for ILAC, a center run for US students by the Catholic church, proudly took us to his farm and showed off his farm workers. “Haitians are like dogs” he said. He certainly housed them as if they were. He happily told my husband to demonstrate the point that since Dominican girls are not allowed to sleep with Haitians and there is a relative shortage of Haitian women he hires a Haitian prostitute to ‘service’ his workers. He said they would form a line outside the hut and you could hear the person inside shouting ”Next!”. I didnt think this was a particularly appropriate story to tell in front of a lady but then again perhaps he did not view me as such. If you are of Haitian descent no matter how many generations before you cannot obtain Dominican citizenship. This means you have no passport and are trapped inside the country with no opportunity for an education or health care. I offered to pay for a Health Canter for the people in a batey (ghetto for Haitians) in Santo Domingo and the staff of ILAC told me it would be a waste of time because all doctors are paid by the government and they would not send a doctor there regularly. They told me instead to use the money to build a school for Dominican children because “Haitians don’t appreciate an education”. Even the United Nations has not been able to convince the Dominicans to change. Last year the Dominican High Court stripped more than 200,000 Haitians of any claim to citizenship making them legally stateless and denying their children the right to receive education, health care or any basic human rights. Many Haitians were actually kidnapped and taken to the Dominican Republic to work, if they run away they are beaten and returned. Sound familiar? It is convenient for those of us who are comfortable and free, to ignore the plight of those human beings who are basically slaves. Can you really lounge on the beach and raise that Pina Colada with a clear conscience, pretending you don’t know just because you got a deal?