Will Washington Repsond to this Humanitarian Crisis?

[JustAnotherGen]

3. Coming back with an overview link

http://prospect.org/article/culture-fear-fueling-dominican-deportation-crisis

These stateless people at at severe risk.

There is a long history in the Dominican Republic of racism against Haitians, who generally have darker skin than Dominicans. Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic during part of the 19th century and, as Michele Wucker describes in her book, Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola, the Dominican liberation from Haiti plays an important role in the Dominican consciousness.

“Dominican townspeople told us they wanted what happened in 1937 to happen again to Haitians,” camp resident Amboise Henri, 47, said outside a shelter made of cardboard and branches that houses his wife and three children.

What happened in 1937 was a massacre of thousands of Haitians living along the border ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Dominican soldiers were ordered to use machetes and knives to carry out the massacre. Trujillo wanted it to appear that Dominican peasants perpetrated the killings to protect their land and livestock. This was not to appear to be the systematic massacre that it was.

As Wucker describes in her book, Trujillo's successor Joaquín Balaguer also downplayed the events and claimed they were the product of a popular uprising. “The events of 1937, which enemies of the Dominican government have tried to depict as a massacre of innocent Haitians, were instead the crystallization of the heart of our country,” Wucker quotes Balaguer as saying.