Dajabon

As Hotel names go ‘Massacre’ doesn’t that enticing but it’s the best in Dajabon, a market town in the Dominican Republic on the border with Haiti, and speaks directly to the complex and often bloody history between the two states^. The Masacar river originally took it’s name from a colonial era slaughter of French pirates by the then ruling Spanish but will go down in legend as the dumping ground for the corpses of many of the estimated 30,000 Haitians hacked to death with Machetes by Dominican Troops in 1937 under the orders of the racist dictator Rafael Trujillo*. This water, tainted by so much innocent blood in the past, is now crossed on Mondays and Fridays by thousands of Haitian citizens permitted across the border to participate in the twice weekly market that transforms Dajabon from a sleepy country town into a hub of activity. Last Monday I rose early to watch the border open as these intrepid travelers walked ten abreast across an ageing bridge, monitored by UN Peacekeepers at one end and Dominican Border Guards at the other to pass through the arch that officially marks ‘La Frontiera’. Hundreds more traders waded across the river itself illegally, carrying embargoed goods such as garlic, which might have fetched them a higher return, once the obligatory bribes for the guards to turn a blind eye were counted into the equation.

Despite the obvious hardship of many of those crossing back and forth and the endemic corruption of the local authorities, the market itself was as a revelation for me, and it obviously proves a draw to both Haitians and Dominicans alike as a source of potential bargains given the amount of customers I saw engaging in market life. Full of barter and laughter, of sights, sounds and smells that I’ve rarely encountered across the rest of the Dominican Republic the streets in the designated market zone are laid out with blankets covered with various vegetables, clothes from disaster relief packages and counterfeiters and essentials like toiletries and kitchenware. As I wandered through the crowds I brushed shoulders with traders carrying piles of boxed underwear or with scuffed trainers dangling from their necks, trying to entice me to stop and take a look, and took evasive action between stalls as motorbike couriers forced their way through the narrow lanes, exhausts smoking and horns blaring. The pots of curried goat and rice bubbling away on corners eventually proved too tempting to resist and my breakfast proved a highlight of my visit.

After numerous circuits of the market, each giving me a new memory; an attempted negotiation in mutually broken Spanish with trader whose first language is Kreyol, finding a classic USA 94 World Cup T-Shirt for the price of a newspaper at home or simply taking a moment to pause from ducking under the hanging tarpaulin shades as the midday Caribbean sun blazed away overhead, to truly appreciate the organized chaos around me, I set out to make the journey back to my hotel room. The hustle of the day had begun to die down and as I walked back through the emptying streets, past children playing amongst the discarded cardboard and plastic and the goats used to dispose of more edible waste I reflected on the gap between second hand and direct experience. Haiti is one of the world’s forgotten crisis’s and it’s depiction in the global arena is all too often the same superficial tale of a state and a people crippled helplessness and senselessness conflict. The people I saw in Dajabon are striving to earn a living and despite, or perhaps because of, their circumstances, to do so with dignity and vitality. It’s a humbling experience I can’t help but recommend and one that communicates not an attachment to a tragic past, but a hope for a brighter future.




^Following the 1804 ousting of the Spanish by slaves and the birth of the first post colonial state Haitian military advance eventually led them to dominate the whole of Hispaniola (the name of the island the two countries share) for 22 years. Now even the possibility of such a situation is absurd to many Dominicans, given the perpetual political turmoil in Haiti and the lowly position of most Haitian migrant, legal and illegal in Dominican society. Dominicans celebrate their independence not from their Spanish Colonial occupiers but from Haiti and prejudice and persecution prevail in attitudes toward Haitian migrants and workers.

*Tensions between Dominicans and Haitians characterize the region to this day. As recently as last week 500 Haitians were repatriated by the authorities from a nearby settlement officially for their own protection, after a Dominican was murdered in an attempted robbery.