Dividing Hispaniola: The Dominican Republic’s Border Campaign against Haiti, 1930–1961 by Edward Paulino (review)

Researchers live for the “Aha!” moment of discovery when a tiny clue unearths a mountain of knowledge. In this case it resulted in an island of knowledge. For Edward Paulino, the revelation that started him on the path to exploration and understanding of Hispanola’s conflictive history was a short and innocuous looking memo lurking in the archives of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library at Hyde Park, New York. The diplomatic correspondence from U.S. Ambassador Henry Norweb to President Roosevelt alerted him to the mass murder ordered by Dictator Rafael Trujillo of an estimated 15,000 Haitians on Dominican Republic soil. Norweb’s matter-of-fact statement betrayed the aftermath of a major turning point in the occupation of Haiti by the Dominican Republic: the termination of civil relations and the extermination of thousands of Haitians.

Seldom do we hear the word “Hispaniola” although it is the correct geographical name for the Caribbean island that has seen five centuries of border disputes dating back to the struggle between France and Spain to colonize and gain imperial control. The 360-kilometer borderline extends from the Dajabón River in the north to the Libón and Artibonito Rivers in the south. Hispaniola’s two nations are identified and defined by their political boundaries. Haiti lies on the west side of the island, and the Dominican Republic on the east. Separated by narrow river banks, the two countries are worlds apart. The border between them is one of the three most strategic in the hemisphere for the United States after Mexico and Canada, and has been the site of U.S.-Dominican military training maneuvers. Not only are the two neighboring countries physically separated, they are severed by race, religion, politics and economics. Chronologically ordered, Paulino’s monograph studies the differing history of the two neighbors and explores the reasons for their separation, focusing in particular on the 1937 massacre of Haitians revealed in Norweb’s memo, and its aftermath of anti-Haitian sentiment that resulted in the dominance and domination of the Dominican Republic over Haiti on every measure.

As reflected in the subtitle, the Dominican Republic waged a continuous border campaign against Haiti from 1930 to 1961 and beyond. But the campaign was not just across borders, it took place within the Dominican Republic itself. Haitians living within Dominican borders were not only victimized but demonized, literally, by Dominicans. Haitians were systematically and ideologically portrayed as black, poor, and voudou practitioners, in contrast with white, wealthy, Roman Catholic Dominicans. This pervasive othering of Haitians continued to categorize them as inferior on racial, economic, cultural and religious terms and further tolerated and perpetuated human rights violations against Haitians, particularly women.

Dividing Hispaniola traces the expansion of anti-Haitianism following the 1937 massacre as well as the purposeful physical expansion and control of the border by the Dominican Republic. Economic and social development along the border was declared in 1955 to be of “supreme and permanent national interest for the cultural diffusion and religious tradition of the Dominican people,” justifying the regulation of agricultural and industrial use of the river, and the purification of the borderland provinces not only by reshaping them, but renaming them and supplanting the Kreyol language with Spanish—Benefactor, Liberator, Independencia were not only new names but new ideologies that underscored Dominican dominance and prompted attitudes and policies of Dominican superiority while erasing and excluding Haitian identity. Carefully researched and compellingly written, Edwardo Paulino’s Dividing Hispaniola backgrounds the border identities that have emerged from early colonial conflicts between France and Spain. For those of us who study the language and cultural backgrounds of Caribbean literary works, this illuminating study of border struggles and human rights violations provides a thorough historical and political understanding of the region and the ongoing issues that we must continue to confront, not just as literary constructs or historical events, but as enduring political realities.