TIMES FOR DECISIONS: LET’S FOUND A MOVEMENT OF DOMINICAN-AMERICANS N SOLIDARITY WITH HAITIAN-DOMINICANS By Anthony Stevens-Acevedo, Bogota, New Jersey September 27, 2013 The decision by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court announced by the Dominican media on Thursday September 26 stripping of their right to the Dominican nationality (and therefore of the right to all protections by the Dominican State) all individuals born within Dominican territory to parents born outside the Dominican Republic and defined as “illegal” residents in the country, or descendants of foreign-born “illegal” individuals residing in the Dominican Republic since as long ago as 1929, represents the culmination of a long effort by the most reactionary segments of the most ultranationalist Dominican right wing, and deserves a firm, vigorous, systematic and sustained response by all of us who are the children or descendants of Dominicans born in the United States or any other nation of the world outside the Dominican Republic. It is a bold legal and political initiative that will put in a social and civic limbo of unpredictable consequences hundreds of thousands of Haitian-Dominicans, introducing levels of legalized human segregation not seen in Dominican society possibly since before the first abolition of slavery in the country. As Dominican-American offspring of Dominican immigrants in the United States enjoying, by virtue of birth within U.S. territory, the right to at least the basic forms of protection by a state and government, we should not remain indifferent and unresponsive vis a vis to what amounts to a national or collective tragedy that shatters the notion some of us have of what Dominicanness as an inclusive ethnic shelter and network of solidarity is and should be. Haitian-Dominicans are the human and civic mirror of Dominican-Americans, the collective alter-ego of us Dominican-Americans in the midst of the globalized planet of massive migrations at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Within the Dominican national family, this attack on Haitian-Dominicans should be seen and responded to as an attack on Dominican-Americans. It is a deeply xenophobic, inhumane, indignant and illegitimate legal decision promoted on the Dominican side by the type of political groups and people that share the same intolerance, fear and hatred against impoverished people that is practiced on the Haitian side by the rich Haitian national elite that has controlled Haiti for decades and proven incapable and unwilling to help their poorest fellow-citizens access any kind of improvement in their quality of life, pushing them to migrate desperately to the Dominican Republic hoping to find any kind of opportunity less oppressive than the conditions promoted within Haiti by their privileged fellow Haitians at the top of Haitian society. Most of the subsequent United States Administrations for decades and decades, with their narrow-minded and biased foreign policy towards the Republic of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, including several U.S. military interventions, have been either incapable or unwilling to invest the kinds of efforts and resources necessary to assist these two countries (and their peoples) effectively in their struggle to improve their quality of life, and these failed policies in part are a factor in the whole context that has lead to the colossal crisis experienced in Haiti, on the one hand, and to the equally colossal constitutional disaster sealed this week by the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic, which has come to ratify the regressive changes introduced by the Dominican right wing in the Dominican constitution of 2010 in regards to nationality and citizenship. While it is going to require a lot of work by new type of movement, with wider vision, ideas and attitudes to restrict the power of both right wings in the Republic of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, there is something we Dominican-Americans can do on our own to begin mitigating the destructive impact the new regressive decision on nationality by the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court is going to have upon thousands and thousands of Haitian-Dominicans of second, third, and fourth generations. We need to coalesce around a few ethically-founded notions of universal human rights and on a few definitions of what we conceive as the core values of dignity contained in the Dominican national ethnicity, and get ready to put them into action supporting all the legal initiatives we may activate to counter the self-feeding and self-justifying locked reasoning behind this Constitutional Court’s decision. As offspring or descendants born in the United States and other countries to Dominican parents and ancestors, we have to be ready, among other things, for all the illegitimate attacks and accusations that will come upon us from the most ultranationalist Dominicans who will try to deny us the right to have an opinion on this matter and the right to consider ourselves part of the Dominican people. But this should not discourage any of us any more than the attacks and bigotry many of us have experienced as the children of foreign immigrants in the United States, precisely because it is something that, at different places and in different circumstances, we have learned to survive and overcome. Actually it may be an opportunity for all of us to reconfigure in a much more inclusive and democratic way the entire notion of Dominicanness. There are moments in life when we need to stand up and wage a fight for dignity that will help us walk the rest of our lives with a sense of moral accomplishment. For progressive Dominicans in the Dominican Republic and in the United States, and in particular for Dominican-Americans, this may well be that kind of moment. Achieving justice in this case is going to be a long journey that will require a lot of legal minds and a lot of funding and a lot of civic mobilizing. But the case is so blatant that it might be easier to win than what we may initially think. And at the same time, if we succeed, we may be setting an example that may help many other millions of human beings around the world achieve a political and moral improvement of their human dignity. I humbly propose that we begin by founding a MOVEMENT OF DOMINICAN-AMERICANS IN SOLIDARITY WITH HAITIAN-DOMINICANS to get the ball rolling, with the central goal of eliminating or containing the illegitimate, immoral, and discriminatory restrictions introduced in the Dominican constitutional and legal definitions of nationality and citizenship. And I therefore call for at least a fellow Dominican-American to second the motion. You can reach me preferably by email at: [email protected].
Posted on: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 07:31:45 +0000
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