Since I’m now going to criticize RealLifeLore’s video (yes, you guessed that right) I should start by giving RealLifeLore his due, and acknowledge that a lot of the context he gives for the Haitian situation is right on point.

What I do have an issue with is his assertion that a major cause of the divergence between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is the fact that the DR has large mineral resources while Haiti doesn’t. You can listen to his argument at the 48 minute mark.

The Dominican Republic has had far more mineral wealth discovered than Haiti has, which includes the location of what’s literally the largest and most profitable gold mine in all of Latin America and the 13th largest gold mine discovered in the entire world1. The Pueblo Viejo mine. This single huuuge gold mine currently represents around 2% of the Dominican Republic’s entire GDP now, and it’s become the country’s single largest corporate tax payer, having paid more than 2.6 billion dollars in taxes just between 2013 and 2020. By contrast, Haiti has exactly zero existing mines currently in operation, and there haven’t ever been any discoveries made in the country that are as significant as Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic.

I turns out Haiti is also sitting on a gold mine, or more precisely two, the Morne Bossa gold deposit and the Grand Bois deposit.

Both of these gold fields, together with several other prospective mineral deposits, are located in the Haitian mountain range known as the Massif du Nord, which is the western extension of the Cordillera Central mountains of the DR, the area were the Pueblo Viejo mine is located.

For context, this is a map of some of the current exploration and prospective mining concessions in Haiti, including Morne Bossa and Grand Bois.

You might object to the comparison between Pueblo Viejo on the one hand with its reserves of 6.55 million ounces of gold, and Morne Bossa and Grand Bois on the other hand which together have approximately 740,000 ounces of gold. It’s an order of magnitude difference to be sure.

Yet that is not the whole extent of Haiti’s mineral wealth. To give a better depiction of the extent of Haiti’s wealth I’ll quote a paper by C.E. Nelson, J.A. Proenza, J.F. Lewis and J. López-Kramer (2011), “The metallogenic evolution of the Greater Antilles”, detailing some of the mineral deposits (Gold, Silver and Copper) found in Haiti. I’m very sorry about the large amount of technical language:

The Cordillera Central in the Dominican Republic and Massif du Nord in Haiti represent the trace of the Greater Antilles volcanic arc across Hispaniola… Early Cretaceous tholeiitic volcanic rocks host the Pueblo Viejo and Bayaguana districts in the Dominican Republic… Epithermal deposits are strongly developed in these Late Cretaceous volcanic arc rocks in the western Cordillera Central (Restauración district) of the Dominican Republic and its extension into the Massif du Nord district in Haiti…Grand Bois is the largest epithermal deposit known to date from the Massif du Nord. Morne Bossa (Milot) located south of Cap-Hatien in the Milot-Grande Rivière area is also a gold oxide deposit…Faille B is a low sulfidation epithermal Au-Ag quartz vein deposit… La Mine prospect refers to three significant occurrences of epithermal gold, silver and base metal mineralization located in the northernmost exposures the Late Cretaceous volcano-sedimentary sequences of the La Mine Series in the Massif du Nord… Porphyry copper mineralization, closely associated with epithermal mineralization of the same Late Cretaceous age, is widespread in the Massif du Nord district of Haiti…The Memé and Casseus copper-gold skarn deposits of Haiti are found in limestone pendants within the Terre Neuve intrusion…. Terre Neuve intrusive rocks lie along a northwest trending structure in the Terre Neuve Massif separate from the Massif du Nord to the north.

I hope that gives a sense of the large mining potential of Haiti. And this mining potential is corroborated by the number of prospects and mines reported by the mining claims site The Diggings.

Though this last piece of information should be taken with a grain of salt. The number of producers listed by The Diggings would seem to imply that Haiti has approximately half as many producers as the DR, but this is not the case since The Diggings lists all producers, former and current.

And Haiti did formerly have a mining industry during the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s profiting not just from the Gold, Silver and Copper deposits that I’ve already mentioned but also from bauxite deposits.

Jamaica produced its first bauxite in 1952 followed by Haiti in 1957 and the Dominican Republic in 1959. The industry thrived and, by 1957, Jamaica was the world’s leading producer of aluminum. Production from Jamaica has continued to increase over the years to current levels of around 15 million metric tonnes (Mt) per year of bauxite and 4Mt of alumina, accounting for roughly 10% of Jamaica’s gross domestic product (GDP)….Bauxite mines in Haiti and the Dominican Republic closed in 1982 and 1991.

If that mining potential is real the obvious question is why is it not being developed, why did mining in Haiti stop and why it has not resumed now, when it’s essential for Haiti’s economic growth.

René Préval

I think it’s very important to examine in some detail the political history of Haiti during former president René Préval’s first and second times in office, from 1996 to 2001 and then from 2006 to 2011, in order to understand what has happened to Haiti’s mining industry, or lack thereof.

I’ll begin by quoting some bits from René Préval’s Wikipedia bio.

[Préval] studied agronomy… also studied geothermal sciences at the University of Pisa in Pisa, Italy. He left Haiti with his family in 1963.

His father Claude Préval, an agronomist also, had risen to the position of Minister of Agriculture in the government of Général Paul Magloire, the predecessor of Duvalier. Leaving Haiti because his political past presented him as a potential opponent,

You might recall from my previous post on Haiti that the emigration of highly skilled Haitians during the 1960’s was a common occurrence. Let’s continue.

Préval returned to Haiti and obtained a position with the National Institute for Mineral Resources. In 1988, he opened a bakery in Port-au-Prince with some business partners. While operating his company, he continued to be active in political circles and charity work, such as providing bread to the orphanage of Salesian Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, with whom he developed a close relationship…Préval served as his Prime Minister from 13 February to 11 October 1991, going into exile following the 30 September 1991 military coup.

The future president studied geothermal sciences and worked in Haiti’s National Institute for Mineral Resources before going into politics. That sounds like someone who might be interested in developing Haiti’s mineral resources if given the chance to do so.

So it comes as no surprise that he encouraged foreign mining companies to explore Haiti’s mountains during his first presidency, granting prospecting and exploration permits in 1997 to the St. Genevieve Mining Company.

And then, in May 2005, during the provisional presidency of Boniface Alexandre, mining company SOMINE signed a convention with the Haitian government taking over from St. Genevieve Mining and started prospecting and then drilling exploration holes in the Blondin-Douvray area.

After completing its drilling holes at the end of Preval’s second presidency, SOMINE announces the discovery of copper and gold deposits in Blondin-Douvray, stating its intention to keep exploring and to eventually start mining in Blondin-Douvray.

Preval’s government not only encouraged mining exploration2 but also completed an important milestone in 2006 by passing a new environmental law for Haiti to ensure that mining will proceed respecting the country’s natural resources.

Slowly but surely Haiti seemed on its way to becoming a mining country again.

Shouting, tears and deadlock

But then in February 2013 this happened:

Outraged that they have not been consulted, this week Haitian senators called for a moratorium on all activities connected with recently granted gold and copper mining permits… In a resolution approved by 15 of 16 senators present, the lawmakers also demanded the establishment of a commission to review all of the current mining contracts and “a national debate on the country’s mineral resources”… The resolution decried “the genocide that accompanied the pillage of our mineral resources in the 15th century”, the foreign mining experiences of the 20th century which caused “trauma”…

The supposed outrage of the Haitian senate3 was triggered by the new president Michel Martelly’s issue of an exploitation permit in December 2012 to SOMINE.

At the time it seemed that Martelly’s government, inaugurated in May 2011, was completing the last steps needed to allow the development of Haiti’s mineral resources, including the issue of another exploration permit in December 2012 to Eurasian Minerals for the Grand Bois gold deposit. But this future was not going to be.

At a special hearing on Jan. 22, senators accused BME director Ludner Remarais of subverting the law.

“In 20 years the parliament has never ratified any mining conventions,” Senator Steven Benoit (West) thundered, while Senator Andris Riché (Grande Anse) shouted: “We must not accept wacky contracts that seek to bury the people.”

“I am sorry the Senate was never contacted,” Remarais responded, tears in his eyes.

This dramatic scene took place more than 10 years ago, and from then until today no mining operation has started in Haiti.

The stated reason for this political deadlock is that Haitian senators want to get paid be consulted before issuing any mining license, so they can make sure their pockets get lined the Haitian state and Haitian people get a fair deal.

As long as the current mining legal framework is in place, the obsolete mining law of 1976, the Haitian Senate can block mining companies indefinitely.

Before assuming the Haitian Senate is a corrupt and petty band of demagogues, let’s take a look at the specific reasons given for blocking new mining permits.

How to be a good Haitian senator

One of the main reasons invoked for asking for a bribe before approving permits not approving permits is that the current law sets the royalties rate to be paid to the Haitian state at 2.5%, which is a low rate.

This is exactly true. And it’s also the reason why Martelly’s prime minister Laurent Lamothe presented a draft for a new mining law in August 2014, based in the mining laws that are currently enacted in most Latin American countries, which includes a proposed royalty of 4% for precious metals such as gold4.

This proposed rate is in line with the rates applied in several Latin American countries: 3.5% in Brazil, 5 to 8% in Ecuador, 3% in Cuba5 and 4% in Colombia. Even taking the charitable view that Haitian senators think a 4% rate is still too low, Lamothe had publicly mentioned higher rates before presenting the law before the Senate and that makes me think he was open to discussing higher rates.

After more than 9 years the new draft law has not been approved by the Haitian Senate. I’m sure the Haitian Senate’s displeasure with the proposed law has nothing to do with it taking the approval of each and every mining permit out of their hands, and into the hands of the technical Bureau of Mining and Energy (BME). That would seem petty.

Another commonly cited reason, particularly raised by NGOs concerned with keeping Haiti in need of charity so they can keep running their charity business the welfare of the Haitian people is the danger of environmental pollution created by the proposed mining operations.

This ignores the fact that, as I’ve already mentioned, Haiti has an environmental protection framework.

It also assumes those criticizing the proposed mining operations possess the power of clairvoyance which allows them to see these future environmental disasters without basing their opinion on any precedent because there hasn’t been any mining in Haiti for more than 40 years. They just know it’s going to happen.

Finally, an additional reason invoked for not allowing mining in Haiti is the weakness of institutions in Haiti, particularly due to their lack of resources, human and budgetary.

The BME had a budget of only one million dollars in 2012 which sounds very inadequate for an agency in charge of supervising a large mining industry, potentially an industry producing hundreds of millions - or billions - in mineral products.

But then, 4% of a billion dollars is 40 million dollars, just in royalties.

That might seem like peanuts for NGOs used to spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars with little to show for it in the long term, but I see no reason to assume that the geologists and engineers of the Bureau of Mines and Energy will be as incompetent as the average Haitian NGO employee.

A conclusion, sort of

Haiti is most definitely not poorer than the Dominican Republic because of a lack of mineral resources. It’s poorer because the majority of its political class see no benefit for themselves in developing a mining industry in Haiti, and because the parallel and unelected power constituted by many Haitian NGOs see no benefit for themselves in developing a mining industry in Haiti.

Certainly Haiti is also poorer for other reasons, unrelated to its mineral wealth, and you can get a good idea of what some of those reasons are by watching RealLifeLore’s video and by reading my previous post on Haiti.

If you want to know more about this issue and you can read French - or maybe you’re really good with Google Translate - I suggest you take a cursory glace at the proposed mining law.

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I tried to illustrate the history of immigration in the DR and Haiti using mostly examples of immigrants, or children of immigrants, who succeeded in politics. Now I want to focus on education, and how education policies have differed between Haiti and the Dominican Republic during their respective histories.

Hispaniola island was the first major island encountered by the Spanish explorers when they reached the Caribbean and so it became the first major Spanish colony in the Americas: Santo Domingo.

Shortly after the conquest of its American colonies the Spanish government realized that ruling half a continent required a vast number of lawyers and administrators, and as a result established several universities for the training and education of its colonial bureaucracy.

In the case of Santo Domingo the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas opened its doors in 1558 in what was then a Dominican convent in the city. This happened just a bit later than the Royal and Pontifical University of the City of the Kings of Lima in Peru and the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico, both founded in 1551.

After more than two centuries of activity the universoty was temporarily closed in 1801 during the French occupation of Santo Domingo, and permanently closed in 1823 during the Haitian occupation of Santo Domingo.

It wasn’t until 1866 that the Dominican Republic again had its own higher education institution, the Professional Institute in Santo Domingo, organized into faculties of medicine, law, theology and the arts. This was six years later than the founding of the first schools of medicine and law in Haiti, both created under the government of Fabre Geffrard.

At that time - the mid-19th century - the population of Haiti was four to five times greater than the population of the Dominican Republic, and the memory of the previous Haitian invasion compounded with the existence of such a big difference in population and resources between both nations made Dominicans justifiably afraid of the possibility of a new Haitian invasion.

As I mentioned in my previous post, by the mid-19th century the Dominican Republic was more open to the world and had a much larger population of immigrant background than Haiti had. In fact the founders of the Professional Institute, José Gabriel García - already co-owner of a book store and a publishing house - and Emiliano Tejera Penson both had an immigrant grandparent (Italian and English) who arrived in Santo Domingo around the turn of the 19th century. García had already founded a book store and a publishing house in 1862.

At this point it might be a good idea to delve further into the administration of Haitian president Fabre Geffrard (1859 – 1867), who not only established the Haitian schools of law and medicine but also a school of music. Although I can’t verify whether the Frenchman Pierre André Frier was a professor at said school, it seems very likely:

Frier [who studied music in the Paris National Conservatory before joining the Zouave’s Corp] was appointed to a military instruction mission for Haiti, by request of president Fabre Geffrard. Due to Frier’s musical knowledge Geffrard selected him for the task of creating several military bands. Frier and the Haitian president developed a close friendship… In early 1864 Frier was granted permission to return to his home country together with his family…remaining there until October 1865 when they set out for Haiti via Curaçao.

This seems to confirm the intention of Fabre Geffrard to open up Haiti - if only a little - to the outside world, employing foreigners with the goal of improving instruction in the country.

Not only that, but it also seems to imply that given the right conditions more foreigners like Frier might have been interested in settling in Haiti, and just like Frier married into a Dominican family - his wife Asuncion Troncoso Perez being the daughter of a Dominican general exiled to Haiti - other foreigners might have married into Haitian families. It is remarkable if not totally unexpected that Frier’s and Troncoso’s descendants include a renowned Dominican painter, the founder of the first modern soda bottling plant in the DR, and the lawyer, diplomat and provost of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (the current successor to the Professional Institute) Julio Ortega Frier.

The activity of the Professional Institute was not without its ups and downs, including a temporary closure from 1891 to 1895 when it reopens with Archbishop Fernando Arturo de Meriño as its provost. And if it seems unusual that a Bishop should be the provost of a secular educational institution, consider the fact that Archbishop Meriño was also president of the Dominican Republic (1880 - 1882). And this wasn’t an isolated occurrence. Meriño’s successor as Archbishop, Adolfo Alejandro Nouel, was also president (though provisional) of the DR (1912 - 1913).

Priests (or former priests) becoming heads of government is not just a Dominican phenomenon, having occurred in several other countries besides the DR such as Paraguay, Congo, Seychelles, Cyprus and Slovakia. Maybe it was a sign of immaturity in a society not yet capable of producing enough competent administrators to govern and manage its own institutions. But if that is the case, what does the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 say about Haiti ?

The law and medicine schools of Haiti also had their ups and downs in the decades following their creation. In fact it appears as if the law school was not functioning properly at the time of president Lysius Salomon’s rule in the 1880’s:

The Law School was organized by [Lysius Salomon] on a practical basis, so that now it is no longer necessary for Haitians to go to Paris in order to study law.

This reminds us that the dates for the start of the various educational institutions should be taken with a grain of salt, including the foundation date for the Veterinary Medicine school of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo which at first sight appears to have been created by law during the 1930’s but actually began its activity in 1955 with the hiring of four Spanish professors, who were followed by a Peruvian professor hired in 1963 to revise the course curriculum of the school.

A similar case occurs with Haiti’s own Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine (Université D’Etat D’Haïti) which starts its activity between 1924 and 1934.

Hostos and secular education

During the last decades of the 19th century the education policies of the Dominican Republic veered towards secularism thanks in no small part to the efforts of a Puerto Rican immigrant.

The Puerto Rican educator, philosopher and intellectual Eugenio María de Hostos lived between the years 1879 to 1888 in the Dominican Republic, and during that time he founded the first normal school of the DR, a school for the training of teachers, in Santiago de los Caballeros. Haiti for its part didn’t get its own normal school until 1947.

Hostos was not a practicing catholic and he was opposed to any religious instruction in the educational process, so it seems only natural that his influence in the DR would push Dominican society towards public secular education. And his influence appears to have been very large, including playing a major role in reforming the Dominican educational system, and not limited just to the DR but also to many other Latin American countries were he taught and published.

It would seem Hostos’ influence combined with the mostly liberal governments that the DR experienced during the last decades of the 19th century had the effect of discouraging the opening of private catholic schools, as can be seen in a table of private catholic schools founded in the DR and Haiti from 1860 to 1970.

A few things you might notice from that table are:

• Not long after Haiti signed a concordat with the Vatican in 1860, religious congregations (Fathers of the Holy Ghost, Sœurs de Saint-Joseph de Cluny, Frères de l'instruction chrétienne de Ploërmel) arrived in Haiti and opened catholic schools. While the Dominican Republic did not have any catholic schools until the 1930’s1.

• As far as I can tell there were no catholic schools opened during the US occupations of the DR and Haiti.

• The beginning of the Trujillo dictatorship in the DR marks the establishment of the first catholic schools that have survived until the present. For what I read this is no coincidence, as Trujillo facilitated2 the opening of some of these schools.

• The start of Duvalier’s dictatorship in Haiti and the end of Trujillo’s don’t seem to have any effect in the opening of catholic schools.

Considering what I mentioned in the previous post about immigration to Haiti, it seems likely the reason Haiti welcomed the priests in charge of those schools was precisely the fact that they were priests, and being celibate (I assume) posed no threat to the commercial and landowning elite of Haiti.

Also, the fact that Trujillo took an interest in the opening of those 15 schools in the DR, when no catholic schools had been opened before in the country, again points to a certain flexibility from the regime when it comes to policies that might create problems for it in the long run - the Dominican bishops published an open letter to Trujillo criticizing human rights abuses in January 1960 - but were good for the Dominican Republic: welcoming qualified immigrants, opening schools, etc, just like I mentioned in the post about immigration.

The US occupations

The fact that no catholic schools were opened during the DR’s and Haiti’s occupation by the United States might be construed as a sign of a lack of concern for education in both countries by the US occupation governments.

But the sources indicate that the US occupation authorities seem to have been particularly concerned with increasing enrollment in primary education - secular and public - and improvements in the finances of both countries helped translate this preoccupation into a real increase in enrollment.

The Haitian budget for education for fiscal year 1914-15, right before the start of the US occupation, was $23,016 dollars. For fiscal year 1919-20 it had increased to close to $400,000 dollars ($360.000 according to other sources). This allowed enrollment to grow from 46,000 in 1912 (before the occupation) to 103,000 in 1929, 14 years into the occupation.

In the case of the Dominican Republic the 1916 (prior to the occupation) education budget was $315,000 dollars. It was increased to $370,000 dollars in 1918 and $962,000 in 1919. Enrollment consequently grew in the DR from 14,000 to 18,000 children to over 100,000 children by 1920.

The larger Dominican budget didn’t result in a larger number of enrolled students due to the higher salaries in the DR than in Haiti, with most of the budget going into teacher salaries and so a lower expenditure per student in Haiti than in the DR. In fact those higher salaries are behind the large migration of poor Haitians to the Dominican Republic that was taking place during those years.

It’s important to remember though that the population of school children in the DR was around half of the Haitian one at the time, and so enrollment as a percentage of population was around half in Haiti than in the DR.

All of this points to Haiti being much less developed than the Dominican Republic at a time, during the 1900’s and 1910’s, when other countries’ involvement with Haiti had been very limited mostly because Haiti wanted them to be very limited. And by less developed I don’t mean just from an educational point of view, with educational institutions being founded at more or less the same time as in the DR despite a much larger population and milestones being achieved later then in the DR, but also an economy that wasn’t capable of producing enough wealth to fund an extensive public education system.

There are two ways to get skilled labor, education and immigration, and Haiti seems to have done very little before the US occupation in terms of educational and immigration policies that would increase the skills of its population.

I would almost go as far as to say that Haiti was caught in a malthusian trap due to this, considering that its population only doubled during the 19th century, while the Dominican Republic’s population increased around fourfold during the same period of time. Even Jamaica which started the 19th century with a higher population density than Haiti increased its population two and a half times.

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In this post I’ll try to shed some light on a topic not often discussed when trying to explain how these two countries have reached such different economic outcomes in the less than two centuries since their splitting apart.

I will not go into too much detail concerning very important events in Haitian and Dominican history unless they have a bearing in the history of immigration for both countries, so you might want to brush-up on the history of both countries if you feel like you need more context.

Arguably the most successful slave rebellion in the history of the world was the Haitian Revolution of 1791. The rebellion ended French rule in what had been until that time the very rich colony of Saint-Domingue, and it’s abolition of slavery was followed by a successful defense of the freedoms the former slaves had won, eventually leading to the massacre of almost the entire remaining population of white French people on Haiti.

I’ll spare you the gory details about the massacre but I will quote a couple of paragraphs from Wikipedia that might help to understand its effect in the long term.

The course of the massacre showed an almost identical pattern in every city [Dessalines] visited. Before his arrival, there were only a few killings, despite his orders. When Dessalines arrived, he first spoke about the atrocities committed by former French authorities, such as Rochambeau and Leclerc, after which he demanded that his orders about mass killings of the area's French population be carried out.

This allowed certain categories of whites to be excluded from massacre… select male Frenchmen; and a group of medical doctors and professionals. Reportedly, also people with connections to Haitian notables were spared. In the 1805 constitution that declared all its citizens as black, it specifically mentions the naturalizations of German and Polish peoples enacted by the government, as being exempt from Article XII that prohibited whites (“non-Haitians;” foreigners) from owning land.

I would dare say that the local population in each Haitian city not only hesitated to kill the local white population owing to their sense of human decency but also knew how useful they might be as medics, administrators, etc…

The effect of the massacre from a demographic point of view was small. Only 3,000 to 5,000 white people were killed out of a total Haitian population of more than half a million. Most of the 40,000 white people living in Haiti before the 1791 rebellion had already left the island, fled to the Spanish side of the island (Santo Domingo), or had been killed during the rebellion and the bloody and ruinous attempts by the French, British and Spanish to reconquer Haiti.

But the effect in terms of how the rest of the world saw Haiti was probably large. Any European or white person who might have considered settling in Haiti to exploit the island’s exceptional conditions for growing coffee and sugar probably thought better of it.

It probably also made legal restrictions in the settling of foreigners in Haiti easier to enforce. Most early Haitian constitutions made it clear that whites were not welcome and could not own property in the island, and even by 1843 long after Haiti had obtained recognition as an independent nation and regularly traded with the rest of the world whites were not allowed to acquire Haitian citizenship or own property in Haiti.

Eventually, some foreigners seem to have tried to settle in Haiti as evinced by this passage from Jacques Nicolas Léger’s Haiti: Her History and Her Detractors.

Until Geffrard's advent the foreigners in Haiti, whilst enjoying the greatest protection, were subjected to many restrictions; thus they were not allowed to marry the natives. On the 18th of October, 1860, a law was enacted authorizing such marriages.

Yet even after obtaining the right to marry Haitians, foreigners still could not become Haitian nationals themselves. The naturalization of foreigners only became possible in 1889 and owning property as a white foreigner only during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915 - 1934).

Meanwhile… east of the border

In the meantime in the Spanish half of the island people were on the move, fleeing from the chaos of the Haitian rebellion and the subsequent European and Haitian invasions. While Haitians were closing off their country not just to the French but other Europeans, Spanish Dominicans were moving to Puerto Rico or to Cuba and then returning to Santo Domingo when things calmed down. A temporary calm that meant the return of the Spanish as nominal rulers of Santo Domingo and so its reintegration into the world economy during the España Boba period.

Also internal migration was a factor in shaping the population of the future Dominican Republic due to the migration of those who lived in the westernmost part of Spanish Santo Domingo, and thus more exposed to the troubles of western Saint-Domingue, to the safer lands to their east.

That area, centered in the town of Hincha (nowadays Hinche) accounted for close to 14% of the population of Santo Domingo at the time and so many descendants of these migrants where among the later generations of Dominicans.

After having dealt with internal migration, welcoming French Saint-Domingue refugees and also Dominican refugees returning from Cuba and Puerto Rico it’s no wonder that when Santo Domingo recovered its independence, after the Haitian occupation of 1821 - 1844, nationality was defined in a very loose way.

The Dominican Constitution of 1844 did not define nationality or citizenship, but rather specified that Dominicans were people born in the territory, Spanish citizens who had Dominican parents and descendants born abroad to ancestors of the territory. All three classifications, required establishing residence in the country. It also allowed foreigners married to Dominican women to become Dominican after a three-year residency period.

Even before Santo Domingo achieved its independence as the Dominican Republic in 1844 a few immigrants had already made it their home and more would come after independence. Some of them were French like general José María Imbert who fought many battles against Haiti or Furcy Fondeur who would went on to fight in the Dominican Restoration War as a colonel.

Many came from small sugar producing Caribbean islands like Curaçao (doctor, politician and educator Francisco Henríquez y Carvajal’s father) and Denmark’s Saint Thomas (future three-time president Ulises_Heureaux’s mother, and future president Carlos Morales Languasco’s father) looking for opportunities in the sparsely populated Dominican Republic where land was plentiful and the sugar industry was in its infancy.

By the 1860’s even Italians were arriving in the DR to try their luck in the sugar industry:

Juan Bautista Vicini Canepa, was born in 1847, in Zoagli, a coastal village near Genoa. Vicini left Italy and went to the Dominican Republic in 1860 at the age of 12 . He was invited to travel to the Dominican Republic as an apprentice to join his countryman Nicole Genevaro who was an exporter of coffee and sugar. After a few years, he purchased the operations belonging to Mr. Genevaro.

Juan Bautista, better known as "Baciccia", was very successful in business. Thanks in part to his hard work and his savings, he managed to acquire land for the cultivation of sugar cane.

Eleven children were born of his marriage to Mercedes Laura Perdomo Santamaría. Seven of them went to live with her to Genoa, Italy. While being married, he had an affair with María Burgos Brito and begat 3 children, among them, President Juan Bautista Vicini Burgos.

Also, immigrants from English speaking Caribbean islands began settling the Dominican Republic’s northern coast in the middle 1800s and were so numerous by the end of the century that they received their own appellation, Cocolos, which also became associated with their culture:

The first Turks and Caicos Islander immigrants began arriving in Puerto Plata after the Dominican War of Restoration, long before the modern sugar industry was established. There were carpenters, blacksmiths and schoolteachers who emigrated due to the economic crisis in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos. Many also came as stevedores on the Clyde Steamship Company boat line, which dominated trade for many years. When the railroad of Puerto Plata-Santiago was built in the late 19th century, many came from these islands to work on the railroad as well as others from Saint Thomas, which was then a Danish colony.

The Dominican War of Restoration by the way was fought at the end of the Spanish re-annexation of 1861–1865 after Dominican president Pedro Santana asked the Spanish back (yes, I’m no longer a colony but I would like to be a colony again is a thing) prompted to a large extent by the fear of new Haitian invasion. Thousands of Spanish citizens arrived into what was then the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo - effectively a part of Spain - either to trade, serve in the Spanish army, serve in the local bureaucracy or just to try their luck in the new world.

And many of those Spaniards remained in the island once it became the Dominican Republic again, among them one José Trujillo Monagas, a sergeant from the Spanish Canary Islands who would be the grandfather of the infamous dictator, ladies’ man and unabashed collector of medals Rafael Leónidas Trujillo.

Some of those immigrants not only were attracted to the sweet wealth that the Dominican Republic was beginning to produce but actively participated in the process of generating that wealth, with sugar exports climbing from 7,000 tonnes in 1880 to 24,352 tonnes in 1905 and 144,911 tonnes in 1916, the first year of the United States’ occupation.

By contrast, Haiti did not export any sugar at the beginning of the 20th century.

From the middle east to the east side

Another source of immigration during the last decades of the 19th century was the Eastern Mediterranean, especially Lebanon which was the birthplace of José Sesin Abinader who after emigrating to the Dominican Republic in 1898 and marrying a Dominican-born daughter of Lebanese immigrants became the father of businessman and three-time presidential candidate José Rafael Abinader Wassaf. And where Abinader Wassaf failed his son Luis Abinader Corona succeeded. Abinader Corona is the current president of the Dominican Republic (elected in 2020).

By contrast on the other side of the border there seems to be little chance that Haiti will join the long list of Latin American countries which have had a president of Arab descent:

But before he can even test his platform, Mourra, a Haitian of Arab descent, will first have to get on the ballot.

“Haiti is a black country and should be led by a black person,“ said Herntz Phanord, a Miami-based Creole-language radio personality who has been raising the issue of race on his popular call-in show on WLQY-AM (1320).

Like many Haitians, Phanord has strong views about Haitian Arabs, believing they have not done enough for Haiti. He said he respects Mourra's right as a Haitian to run for president but hopes “he doesn't make it.“

Mourra said such opinions are divisive and hamper Haiti's progress. Not only does he believe the country is ready for a nonblack leader, but he believes he has the support of public opinion behind him.

And those bad feelings towards Arab Haitians are not new, having a precedent already in the early 1900’s. In fact they seem to have arisen soon after the arrival of Arabs into Haiti.

[President Leconte] pursued a discriminatory policy toward the local Syrian population… Prior to ascending to the presidency, he had promised to rid Haiti of its Syrian population. In 1912 Leconte's foreign minister released a statement stating that it was "necessary to protect nationals against the disloyal competition of the Easterner whose nationality is uncertain." A 1903 law (aimed specifically at Syrians) limiting the immigration levels and commercial activities of foreigners was revived, and the harassment of Syrians that had been prevalent in the first few years of the 1900s was resumed. When Leconte died suddenly in 1912, a number of Syrians celebrated his passing and were imprisoned as a result, while others were deported.

If you want more details on this episode, the New York Times Times Machine is at your service.

Migration into the DR from all those different sources was not massive but it was high enough that a 5.5% share of the Dominican population in the year 1920 was foreign-born, though only 2.4% of the population were non-Haitian immigrants. A share of 2.4% of the population may not seem like much, but it’s comparable to the figures for other Latin American countries at the time: 0.78% for Mexico in 1921; 3.2% for Chile in 1920; 4.7% for Costa Rica in 1927.

By contrast migration into Haiti seems to have been very low. I couldn’t find any data on the foreign-born population of Haiti during the first decades of the 20th century (only a dubious claim of 15,000 Syrians and a less dubious one of 500) but judging by the legal hurdles in place for immigrating to Haiti and the very few notable 19th or 20th century Haitians who have foreign ancestors the numbers were never large.

In fact it’s very telling that the two noteworthy Haitians in politics who descend from immigrants have a black Caribbean ancestor, though in contrast to immigrants to the DR they are immigrants from French speaking or Creole speaking islands. These are president Paul Magloire (1950-56), whose grandfather Jean-Jacques Magloire immigrated from Dominica (the Commonwealth of Dominica, not the DR), and Haiti’s own infamous dictator François Duvalier, whose father Duval Duvalier immigrated from Martinique.

This fact attests to the meager number of immigrants to Haiti, even those of African ancestry that were allowed to settle in Haiti without difficulties, and also to the enormous success those few immigrants achieved in Haiti.

The 20th century

Haiti and the DR were not immune to the decrease in migration flows experienced by most countries in the Americas after the first couple of decades of the 20th century. And in the case of the DR it implemented its first restrictive measure in 1912 by demanding a permit for potential immigrants from Asia, Africa, Oceania and the French and British islands of the Caribbean.

Haiti on the other hand seems to have taken the opposite route and decided to relax some rules regarding naturalization of foreigners, starting with a 1902 treaty with the US on naturalization. This might be related to the fact that the US was becoming the most important and influential foreign power in Haiti eventually occupying Haiti for 19 years (1915 - 1934). Like I mentioned before, it was only during said occupation that owning property as a white foreigner was finally allowed in Haiti.

Does this mean Haiti and the DR were finally converging in their immigration policies during those years?

Hardly.

We must also not forget that policies and regulations do not guarantee the desired results. In 1860 the Haitian government headed by Fabre Geffrard promulgated a law promoting the immigration of persons of African and Indian race into Haiti, but the absence of a population of Indian ancestry in today’s Haiti should make it clear the law failed in its purpose.

Around the same time this law was being published, faced with a lack of labor to develop the sugar industries of its Caribbean and Indic colonies the French government also decided to promote the immigration of Indian laborers to those colonies. Yet France didn’t just enact a law but had to actually sign an agreement with the colonial power controlling India at the time, Britain, and put in place a relatively complex organizational structure in order to reach its objective.

On 25th July 1860, a Franco-British agreement was signed, authorising an initial recruitment of 6,000 Indians destined for Reunion. On 1st August 1861, this agreement was extended to France’s other sugar-producing colonies, with no limit in numbers: these agreements provided the terms and conditions for Anglo-Indians immigrants, all the way from the recruitment process to the details of everyday life. In exchange, a British Consul was appointed in order to ensure that these contracts were respected and to manage any complaints from the indentured workers.

And the results of this organizational structure speak for themselves. Between 15% to 25% of the current population of Reunion descends from Indian immigrants while Indo-Guadeloupeans constitute around 10% of the population of Guadeloupe.

It’s fair to say that the Haitian government did make a serious attempt at organizing a successful immigration scheme in 1824 under president Jean-Pierre Boyer, who coincidentally anticipated many of Geffrard’s policies, by promoting the resettling of thousands of free African Americans to Haiti. In this case the Haitian government recruited the settlers, paid their full passage to Haiti and distributed land for them so settle in.

Ironically even this one successful immigration scheme did not ultimately benefit Haiti but the Dominican Republic. During president Boyer’s rule Santo Domingo was under Haitian occupation, and since the eastern half of the island was sparsely populated compared to the western half it seemed reasonable to give land to the African American settlers in the eastern half, what would become the DR. And so the approximately 6,000 immigrants settled in Samaná, and after the Dominican Republic achieved independence they became citizens of this new nation.

It would seem that at least some of the first heads of government of Haiti did understand the consequences of closing off to the world, including Toussaint Louverture who not only preceded Boyer and Geffrard but is usually considered as the Father of Haiti.

They strongly disagreed about accepting the return of the white planters who had fled Saint-Domingue at the start of the revolution. To the ideologically motivated Sonthonax, they were potential counter-revolutionaries who had fled the liberating force of the French Revolution and were forbidden from returning to the colony under pain of death. Louverture on the other hand saw them as wealth generators who could restore the commercial viability of the colony. The planters political and familial connections to Metropolitan France could also foster better diplomatic and economic ties to Europe.

In summer 1797, Louverture authorized the return of Bayon de Libertat, the former overseer of the Bréda plantation, with whom he had shared a close relationship with ever since he was enslaved. Sonthonax wrote to Louverture threatening him with prosecution and ordering him to get de Libertat off the island. Louverture went over his head and wrote to the French Directoire directly for permission for de Libertat to stay.

Haiti’s closing off to immigration was apparently a gradual process that took several decades to arise.

I’ll take them all

By the 1950’s and 60’s the DR was catching up with Haiti in terms of population density and that meant less opportunities for enterprising immigrants who might want to make a future for themselves in the agricultural sector. Land was not so abundant anymore and even though sugar production was still climbing (300,000 tonnes in 1925, and 550,000 tonnes in the 1950s) that increase mostly hinged on mechanization and cheap labor, not an appealing prospect for most migrants.

Thinking of migration as a push-pull phenomenon, the pull towards the DR was not so strong anymore while the push was also getting weaker in the DR’s traditional sources of immigrants.

But the push was not completely gone. The mid-20th century had a large enough number of wars and genocides that millions of people were pushed to look for a safe haven far away from their home countries.

In 1939, with the end of the Spanish civil war hundreds of thousands of Spanish Republicans went into exile crossing the French border only to be locked in concentration camps at the other side. And with the start of the Second World War the need to find a new home, preferably outside of Europe, reached a new urgency for many of them.

Latin America seemed like a logical destination for these refugees but their ideological bent meant that many Latin American countries - the ones ruled by right leaning governments at the time - did not want them, while those who where receptive (Chile, Mexico) put restrictions in the number of refugees they were willing to accept. But not the Dominican Republic, already headed by Trujillo at the time, who welcomed as many Spanish Republicans as wanted to settle in the DR. And many did take Trujillo up on his offer. Communists, Basque nationalists, Trotskyists, Anarchists, all of them were welcome in the DR.

This openness to migrants was in line with the DR’s attitude towards Jews shown during the 1938 Evian conference when Trujillo offered to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees, offering them land to settle in the town of Sosúa.

Even though less than 1,000 Jewish refugees eventually settled in the DR, it’s estimated that approximately 5,000 Dominican visas were actually issued for Jewish refugees during the Second World War.

Even Hungarians were welcome in the DR (1956).

Even Japanese were welcome in the DR (1956).

And ironically, when Trujillo’s regime finally ended with his assassination in 1961, one of the plotters involved in the assassination was an immigrant recruited by the Trujillo regime due to his skills.

De Ovín Filpo who was born in Spain, arrived in the Dominican Republic in 1954 from Madrid, hired by the Trujillo regime to work in the State Sugar Council (CEA), being named director of said Council on two occasions.

Should we include Manuel De Ovín Filpo in the list of very successful Dominican immigrants?

While Trujillo was trying to attract anyone who would come to the DR, including people who would criticize and oppose his regime, Duvalier in Haiti was doing the opposite1. Between 1957 (the start of the Duvalier regime) and 1963, 6,800 Haitians entered the US with an immigrant visa while another 27,300 entered with a temporary visa. Between 1964 - when Duvalier declares himself president for life - and 1971 the American immigration services record the entry of 140,000 Haitian immigrants. Many of them were not escaping poverty.

When talking about immigrants and descendants of immigrants to Haiti or the Dominican Republic I’ve mostly focused on politicians as a group that is easy to inquire into, and I’ve left aside other groups such as businessmen and artists. I don’t think that omission negates this analysis, and the only comment I would be compelled to make when looking at other groups is to remark on the relatively large Arab Haitian (and Sephardic Haitian) business community. This again proves how enormously successful Haitians of an immigrant background have been, and is a subject that I plan to discuss in a future post comparing the development of the Haitian and Dominican economies.

Just to make sure I wasn’t unintentionally cherry picking the successful Dominican and Haitian politicians I’ve already mentioned, I went through the whole list of Dominican and Haitian heads of government for the 20th and 21th century. 43% of the 28 Dominican heads of government had an immigrant background, meaning at least one immigrant parent or grandparent. While in the case of Haiti only three heads of government (8%) during the same period of time had an immigrant background.

It’s not my place to make policy suggestions for Haiti, but a clear and honest understanding of the roots of Haiti’s problems would go a long way towards improving the lives of average Haitians. Even today Haiti is one of only two sovereign countries in the Americas that does not apply the principle of jus soli in its nationality law2, meaning being born in its territory is not enough to acquire Haitian nationality.

While the DR has seized every opportunity to welcome immigrants who could contribute to its development and prosperity, Haiti has shut its doors to those who could have helped in creating a better present for all Haitians.

To end on a happy note, I focused on heads of government as examples of successful politicians and successful people in general, but I could have widened my criteria by including mayors of Santo Domingo (the DR’s capital), presidential candidates or leaders of major political parties.

José Francisco Peña Gómez was all of those things. From his Wikipedia page:

Born to María Marcelin, a Haitian woman, and Oguís Vincent, a Haitian immigrant, on March 6, 1937, in Mao, Dominican Republic, Peña Gómez was adopted as an infant by Simón Pichardo and Andrea Rodríguez de Pichardo, a Dominican family, when his parents had to flee to Haiti (where they died) in order to save their lives as the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo enacted the Parsley Massacre against Haitians that same year.

Yes, even Haitian immigrants can succeed in the Dominican Republic.

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You can read the follow-up to this post, focusing on education in the DR and Haiti, here.