From Labor's Champion
March, 1987

The Origins of the Dominican National Minority in the U.S.

U.S. Imperialist Plunder Forces Dominican Workers From Their Homeland

Contributed by a Dominican Worker In New York

Dominican longshore workers load sugar in the port of San Pedro de Macoris.

The immigration of large numbers of people from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. began in 1965. In April of that year there was a large-scale uprising in Santo Domingo to overthrow a pro-U.S. dictatorship. The U.S. sent 42,000 marines to crush the uprising, and the following year installed a dictatorship under Joaquin Balaguer, who is currently the president again. After the uprising was crushed, a reign of terror followed. Revolutionaries and political activists in general were picked up off the streets, arrested and often murdered. At the same time, the route to the U.S. was opened. The U.S. government allowed anyone to get a tourist visa. (Now to get a tourist visa, you must prove that you own property or earn a lot of money - that you are a member of the bourgeoisie or upper petty bourgeoisie.) People were even offered visas to ease tensions within the Dominican Republic. Some people were given the choice - either get out of the country or go to jail. As a result, many people who were involved in the uprising, political leaders and other participants, came to the U.S. as exiles. Others, those just sympathizers, also took the opportunity to come to the U.S,

Many people also left the country because the economic conditions were so bad that they felt that was their only way to earn a living. There is a food shortage in the Dominican Republic. After 1965, there was an increasing amount of land taken out of cultivation for food and turned over to raising livestock. The large landowners found it more profitable to raise cattle for export than to grow food. Military officers were given much of the best land. And the U.S. monopoly corporations took over much of the land. All restrictions on foreign ownership of land were dropped. Gulf & Western bought cheap a large am6unt of state land, land that had been used for food production, and converted it into huge sugar plantations. They took over a large part of the eastern part of the country, including La Romana, the largest sugar refinery, in about 1967. Foreign mining companies, mostly owned by U.S. capitalists, evicted peasants from their land to explore for minerals. Falconbridge, jointly owned by U.S., Canadian and Swiss capitalists and the Dominican government, owns nickel and iron mines, mostly in the northern part of the country. ALCOA, which has existed in the Dominican Republic for a long time, greatly expanded its investments after 1965, mainly in bauxite mining. Of course, most of the profit from these operations goes out of the country to the monopolists in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The result of the concentration of land in the hands of the large landowners and the foreign capitalists is the displacement of the peasantry. They come to the capital and from there often to the U.S. The majority of the population in the Dominican Republic now lives in the cities. The unemployment rate is very high. There is also a lot of underemployment, peddlers and semi-proletarians. People don't earn enough to live on, especially when often only one person in a large extended family is working and supporting the rest. (There are no social service benefits in the Dominican Republic - no unemployment compensation, social security, welfare, etc.) Even a skilled worker may make only about $100 a month, about $4.00 a day. And this is for the higher paid jobs. A sugar cane cutter in the Dominican Republic may earn only $0.50 a day, and cane cutting is one of the hardest jobs.

Most of the money people earn must go to buy food, which is increasingly expensive. This is particularly true since so much food is now imported. What is produced is mainly for export, such as coffee, cocoa, milk, etc. Now we buy Nescafe, Carnation evaporated milk, etc. imported from the U.S. It is difficult to get fresh milk and then it is very expensive. We are exploited by the foreign monopolies from both sides: what we produce is for export and what we consume is imported. This is true in general for the dependent capitalist countries. And of course this is true not only for foodstuffs. For example, the bauxite that ALCOA mines in the Dominican Republic we buy back from the U.S. in the form of aluminum.

These economic conditions continue to force Dominicans to leave their country in search of work. In the last few years there have been many cases of people getting killed trying to come to the U.S. This is the result of desperation, of people who can't find jobs, or even food to eat. About two years ago 28 Dominicans suffocated in the hold of a ship coming to the U.S. Another time a boat going from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico was hit by a high wave that tore the boat apart just before it could land. About 30 people drowned. People are packed into containers on freight ships, locked inside with salt pills for days until they reach the U.S. Many people have died this way. It happens every day but you don't read about it in the capitalist press unless many people are killed.

From Labor's Champion
April, 1987

Super-Exploitation and Discrimination

Conditions of the Dominican National Minority in the U.S.

Contributed by a Dominican worker in New York.

The economic and political conditions in the Dominican Republic have forced many Dominicans to come to the U.S. to earn a living. Many came in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but they are still coming now. There are maybe about a million Dominicans living in the U.S. compared to a population of about 6 million in the Dominican Republic. The majority live in New York and the surrounding area, but some live in Boston, Providence and Florida. Most come with the idea that they will work here for a few years, save some money and buy a house in the Dominican Republic and go back.

But for the great majority of us, this dream is an illusion. As for any other oppressed nationality suffering under conditions of super-exploitation, it is difficult to save money. Most Dominicans here get low paying factory jobs. The undocumented workers get the worst jobs, working for minimum wages in sweatshops. They have no rights, and have to accept what the capitalists give them. They are constantly afraid that the immigration authorities will come. The garment industry in New York is a dying industry, but most of the workers are Latin, many from the Dominican Republic. Many have to take a second job at night to pay high rent and transportation costs. And we send money back to our families in the Dominican Republic. So it is difficult for most Dominicans to save money to go back, and if they do, they will face the same conditions that made them leave before, and will often come back to the U.S.

The social conditions for the large majority of Dominicans in the U.S. are very poor. Most Dominicans in New York live in the Washington Heights section of upper Manhattan. Gentrification, as in much of the city, is driving rents sky-high, despite legal limits on rent increases. The real estate interests and banks are pushing the poor people out to turn their apartments into cooperatives. Often they use drug dealers to help drive people out, and when they are done using them they call in the police to drive the dealers out.

There is only one hospital in the Washington Heights section. The hospital's regulations prohibit hiring translators, and they forbid Spanish-speaking workers from talking to the patients in Spanish. So many Dominicans are forced to go to private rip-off medical clinics or hospitals outside of the neighborhood.

The education in the area is terrible. It is the most overcrowded school district in the city. Cutbacks in recent years in funds for bilingual education have made these classes even more crowded. A new elementary school has been promised in the area, but for 3 years there has only been a sign at the site - nothing has been built.

Over the last decade, the U.S. government has made it much harder for Dominicans to get legal papers to live in the U.S. This is part of the chauvinist campaign to blame foreign-born workers, especially from the neo-colonies and dependent countries, for the high unemployment rates in the U.S. But it is the U.S. monopolists who control the economies on these countries that force people to come to the U.S. to find work. And it is the capitalist system that causes unemployment, not foreign workers. The new immigration law will make it even more difficult for undocumented workers. They are already kept in limbo - their cheap labor is needed, but they are in danger of deportation. Now they will be even more fearful. The capitalists tell them – you either accept this job and take what I am going to pay you or go back to your country. They have no rights at all. The undocumented workers are also set upon by a whole layer of parasites - people who will arrange marriages to U.S. citizens and lawyers to "legalize" their status, all of course, for a lot of money.

The immigrant workers are forced by the capitalists into one of the lowest paid strata of the working class. As with other workers from the oppressed nationalities, (Afro-Americans, Chicanos, Native Americans, etc.), they are a source of super-profits for the capitalists. The stepped-up attacks against immigrant workers are a result of the intensified economic crisis since the mid-1970s. All the imperialist countries are doing this. France is increasing its attacks against North African immigrants, West Germany against Turkish workers, Britain against workers from the West Indies, India and Pakistan. The immigrants generally come from the ex-colonies and neo-colonies of the imperialist countries.

All workers must fight against the capitalists' attempt to split the U.S.-born workers and immigrant workers. We must fight against the chauvinist attempts to blame the immigrant workers for unemployment. At the same time Immigrant workers must also oppose national exclusiveness - the tendency to look only to events in one's home country and to stay apart from the struggles of other U.S.-born workers and immigrant workers. For only through the revolutionary unity of the whole multinational working class can we finally defeat U.S. imperialism.

From Labor's Champion
October 1-15, 1990

Crisis in the Dominican Republic

By a Dominican worker in New York

Demonstrators and strikers blocked streets in Santo Domingo.

Recently two general strikes have shaken the Dominican Republic. The first, in August, was organized by the trade unions and popular organizations. The second did not obtain the support of various unions and popular organizations, but still made itself felt in the hearts of the people. These strikes are the result of the immense crisis that exists.

Fraudulent elections, certified as legitimate by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, were held in May. The president, Joaquin Balaguer, in his second term in a row, today confronts a diverse legislature in which his party, the Reformist Party, is a minority. Today for the first time in the history of the Dominican Republic, the governing party does not control the legislature.

Strikes are and have always been an instrument of struggle of the popular sectors. But in this Caribbean country they are also an instrument for the parties to measure their forces. These strikes served as a message, in which the people as well as the opposition parties sounded their campaign to demonstrate to Balaguer that he could not count on any sector in the Dominican Republic. The first strike shut down all daily activities for two days in a row. The people went into the streets. There were acts of violence, mainly provoked by the military forces, in which about 20 people died. Hundreds of workers and students were arrested and beaten. The second strike had similar consequences.

The crisis that today prevails in the Dominican Republic is the worst in the history of this country. In the Dominican Republic there is a shortage of even the traditional products of our economy. The Dominican Republic for the first time in its history is importing sugar, its principal product. Its production has reached such a low level that the little that is produced has to be sold abroad for dollars to be able to pay the interest on the foreign debt and to pay for imports. In the country there is a shortage of everything: electricity, water, milk, cooking oil, gas, gasoline, flour, beans, rice, sugar, etc., etc. That is, of everything that a person needs to survive.

With a 70% inflation rate, Balaguer has piled austerity plan on top of austerity plan, plans drawn up for the most part by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Despite the level of inflation, wages have been frozen for decades. The president and the banking institutions keep telling the people that they have to tighten their belts another notch in order to make the economy healthy "for a better future." But as the saying goes, "if the Dominicans tighten their belts any more, they will cut themselves in two."

* $1 U.S. is currently about 10.50 Dominican pesos.

To all this the answer of the people has been an emphatic rejection of Joaquin Balaguer and his government, both in the last elections as in the recent general strikes. Unfortunately this struggle does not yet have a political direction which would channel it along the road of liberation and a new political economic order. The misnamed progressive parties (leftist and liberal) are tailing behind the people instead of leading them. They keep on with endless discussions in competition for a leadership that none of them provide. Although they have a majority in the legislature they have not been able, nor will they be able, to form an opposition bloc against an illegal government representing a bourgeoisie that is devastating the people.

The irony of the case is that they have been able to form a bloc to raise their own salaries, which is taking place at this time. The present salary of a legislator is almost 3,000 pesos monthly (about $300), while the salary of a skilled worker varies between 240 pesos ($24) and 500 pesos ($50) monthly. This is without mentioning that a third of the population has an income of less than 200 pesos ($20).

Soldiers trying to arrest a youth in Santiago, in connection with the August strike.

After the general strike of August, the trade union federations and popular organizations signed an agreement with the government to increase the minimum wage to 700 pesos (less than $70) monthly. Though Balaguer has decreed this it has not been carried out.

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