Searching Out the Boundary, 1986–2003

Abstract

In an address before the United Nations General Assembly on 27 September 1991, Haitian president-in-exile Jean-Bertrand Aristide, speaking in Spanish, denounced the violation of Haitians’ rights in the Dominican Republic. On 14 June of that year, said Aristide, Haitians in the Dominican Republic were subjected to a brutal campaign of repatriations: mass arrests, detentions, and deportations were unilaterally mobilized against them without due regard for identity verification. No such treatment can be tolerated between neighbors, asserted the Haitian president; Haiti and the Dominican Republic should respect one another, for they are “two wings of the same bird, two nations that share the beautiful island of Hispaniola.” He concluded his speech with the message,

Hearing the voice of all the victims whose rights are trampled, engaged in respecting human rights despite the social problems and financial difficulties created by this forceful repatriation, we must respect both wings of the bird.³

So if anti-Haitianism and anti-Dominicanism have in good measure been the result of past colonialist activity and present imperialist activity, both peoples should bury all the prejudices that have kept them divided for the sake of foreign interests, in order to begin to confer on establishing a real and effective peaceful coexistence on which they could concert positive and beneficial bilateral relations.

—María Elena Muñoz, Las Relaciones Domínico–Haitianas¹

Krèyon pèp pa gen gonm (The people’s pencil has no eraser).

—Haitian proverb²