Despite threats by the government of President Luis Abinader and provocations by pro-government right-wing groups, over 1,000 people marched in Santo Domingo April 27 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the popular upsurge that fought to restore a constitutional government in the Dominican Republic and against the U.S. military invasion launched to quell it. That event had a significant impact on politics there and across Latin America.
The action was organized by a coalition of left political parties, unions and community organizations. In addition to marking the 1965 uprising, participants voiced their grievances against soaring prices for food and medications, the impact of U.S.- and Canadian-owned mining operations that force small farmers off their land and contaminate water resources, and other demands.
A flash point of the protest was marchers’ opposition to the government’s campaign of deporting thousands of Haitian immigrants, part of attempts by the capitalist rulers to deepen divisions between Dominican and Haitian workers.
In the days leading up to the march, the interior and police minister stoked anti-Haitian nationalism, saying that “foreigners” were not authorized to carry out political or other activities that affect “social peace, national security, and public order.”
The announcement was directed at Haitian immigrants and workers of Haitian descent organized by the Sugarcane Workers Union (UTC). The union, which organized a special contingent in the protest, has led a struggle for pensions for retired workers and better working and living conditions in sugar and agricultural fields, where the workforce is majority Haitian.
The day of the march, the government deployed a large number of police and army forces — along with the notorious immigration police trucks used to cart Haitian immigrants to be dumped over the border — leading to the Pantheon of the Fatherland monument where the march was scheduled to end. The right-wing paramilitary Antigua Orden Dominicana also held a rally nearby.
As the marchers gathered, police officers set off tear gas grenades near the sugarcane workers contingent, forcing them to disperse and regroup in a nearby hall of one of the march sponsors.
Abinader’s government, other capitalist politicians and the big-business media have been waging a systematic campaign to blame workers of Haitian descent for the country’s social crisis.
The latest move to prohibit political activity by Haitians, including those who have lived and worked in the Dominican Republic for their entire life, is aimed at deepening divisions among working people.
This is not the first time the sugarcane workers have faced police repression. In 2017, UTC leader David Michel, 67 years old at the time, was badly injured when a gas canister fired by the police hit his face. Michel joined the cane workers contingent at the April 27 protest.
A history of common struggle
On April 28, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the deployment of some 42,000 troops to crush a popular uprising against the U.S.-backed military junta. The upsurge began in 1963, after military officers overthrew President Juan Bosch, who had been elected after the 30-year dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo came to an end.
As working people took to the streets demanding the restoration of President Bosch, a group of military officers led by Col. Francisco Caamaño, known as the “Constitutionalists,” removed the pro-imperialist junta. Johnson ordered the invasion to prevent the rise of what he called “a second Cuba,” fearful that the Dominican popular masses would emulate working people in Cuba in overthrowing capitalist rule.
Thousands of armed citizens held off the U.S. invasion for five months. Among them were Haitians who had found refuge in the Dominican Republic from the brutal repression of the Papa Doc Duvalier regime in Haiti after Trujillo’s fall.
The Haitian fighters, the Comando Haitiano, constituted themselves into a special unit taking charge of fixing damaged weapons. Many also fought and died in battle fighting Washington’s invasion, earning the recognition of Caamaño himself and of other leaders of the revolt.
Their participation became a symbol of the solidarity between the peoples of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And it’s a refutation of the racist anti-Haitian poison spread by the Dominican capitalist and U.S. imperialist rulers