Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-x5cpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-30T13:34:40.093Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Hidden Hand to Heavy Hand: Sugar, the State, and Migrant Labor in Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Samuel Martínez
Samuel Martínez*
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

For more than a century, the Dominican sugar industry has hosted seasonal immigrations of neighboring Caribbean islanders as harvest laborers (most recently, Haitians). This migrant labor system is fully comparable to systems of labor control after slavery in other parts of the Caribbean. But the regional historical trend toward more liberal labor relations in commercial agriculture seems largely to have been reversed in the case of Dominican sugar. Between the 1930s and 1960s, the recruitment and employment of harvest labor changed from something resembling free wage labor into a government-managed system of semicoerced exploitation. Processes of state formation in Haiti and the Dominican Republic are crucial in explaining this transformation. Fuller understanding of historical change in the case at hand is afforded by broadening the scope of inquiry beyond the direct confrontation between labor and estate owners and by recognizing that governments and their agents have not always acted in accordance with private agro-industrial interests.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , 1999 , pp. 57 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

The field research for this article was carried out in the Dominican Republic and Haiti from January 1985 to March 1987, under fellowships granted by the Doherty Fellowship Committee and the Social Science Research Council. I presented a preliminary version at the NEH Summer Seminar “Slavery and Freedom in Caribbean History,” University of Wisconsin, 10 June–19 July 1996. The comments by the seminar's participants and preceptor Francisco Scarano are gratefully acknowledged. Michiel Baud, Monica van Beusekom, and two anonymous LARR reviewers also critiqued drafts of this article. I completed revisions of the manuscript during my postdoctoral fellowship at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies, University of Virginia. Unless otherwise noted, all findings and opinions are mine, as is responsibility for any errors, omissions, or distortions.

References

Acosta, Mercedes 1976 “Azúcar e inmigración haitiana.” In André Corten, Carlos María Vilas, Mercedes Acosta, and Isis Duarte, Azúcar y política en la República Dominicana, 115–54. 2d ed. Santo Domingo: Taller.Google Scholar
AMERICAS WATCH 1990 Harvesting Oppression: Forced Haitian Labor in the Dominican Sugar Industry. New York: Americas Watch.Google Scholar
Baez Evertsz, Franc 1978 Azúcar y dependencia en la República Dominicana. Santo Domingo: Editora de la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.Google Scholar
Balaguer, Joaquin 1985 La isla al revés: Haití y el destino dominicano. 3d ed. Santo Domingo: Librería Dominicana.Google Scholar
Baud, Michiel 1992 “Sugar and Unfree Labour: Reflections on Labour Control in the Dominican Republic, 1870–1935.” Journal of Peasant Studies 19, no. 2: 301–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baud, Michiel 1993 “Una frontera-refugio: Dominicanos y haitianos contra el estado (1870–1930).” Estudios Sociales 26, no. 92: 39–64.Google Scholar
Berlin, Ira 1980 “Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America.” American Historical Review 85, no. 1: 44–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Betances, Emelio 1995 State and Society in the Dominican Republic. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.Google Scholar
Bryan, Patrick E. 1985 “The Question of Labor in the Sugar Industry of the Dominican Republic in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” In MORENO FRAGINALS ET AL. 1985, 235–51.Google Scholar
Calder, Bruce J. 1981 “The Dominican Turn toward Sugar.” Caribbean Review 10, no. 3:18–21, 44–45.Google Scholar
Calder, Bruce J. 1984 The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic during the U.S. Occupation of 1916–24. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Caroit, Jean-Michel 1992 “El peso de la economía.” In Ayiti—República Dominicana: En el umbral de los años 90, 71–85. Port-au-Prince: Centro de Investigación y Promoción Social (CIPROS).Google Scholar
Cassa, Roberto 1976 “El racismo en la ideología de la clase dominante dominicana.” Ciencia 3, no. 1: 61–85.Google Scholar
Cassa, Roberto 1982 Capitalismo y dictadura. Santo Domingo: Editora de la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.Google Scholar
Castillo, Jose Del 1978 La inmigración de braceros azucareros en la República Dominicana, 1900–1930. Santo Domingo: Centro Dominicano de Investigaciones Antropológicas (CENDIA), Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.Google Scholar
Castillo, Jose Del 1979 “Las emigraciones y su aporte a la cultura dominicana (Finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX).” eme eme: Estudios Dominicanos 8, no. 45: 1–43.Google Scholar
Castillo, Jose Del 1981 “Azúcar y braceros: Historia de un problema.” INAZUCAR 6, no. 29: 37–48.Google Scholar
Castillo, Jose Del 1985 “The Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry: From Competition to Monopoly, from National Semiproletariat to Foreign Proletariat.” In MORENO FRAGINALS ET AL. 1985, 215–34.Google Scholar
Castor, Suzy 1971 La ocupación norteamericana de Haití y sus consecuencias (1915–1934). Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno.Google Scholar
Castor, Suzy 1974 “El impacto de la ocupación norteamericana en Haití (1915–1934) y en la República Dominicana (1916–1924).” In Política y sociología en Haití y la República Dominicana, edited by the Coloquio Domínico-Haitiano de Ciencias Sociales, 42–64. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Crassweller, Robert D. 1966 Trujillo: The Life and Times of a Caribbean Dictator. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Derby, Lauren 1994 “Haitians, Magic, and Money: Raza and Society in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands, 1900 to 1937.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36, no. 3: 488–526.Google Scholar
Despradel, Lil 1974 “Las etapas del antihaitianismo en la República Dominicana: El papel de los historiadores.” In Política y sociología en Haitíy la República Dominicana, edited by Coloquio Domínico-Haitiano de Ciencias Sociales, México, 83–108. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Dore Cabral, Carlos 1992 “Migración haitiana y trabajo en la República Dominicana: ¿Esclavitud o capitalismo?” In La cuestión haitiana en Santo Domingo: Migración internacional, desarrollo y relaciones inter-estatales entre Haití y República Dominicana, edited by Lozano, Wilfredo, 123–34. Santo Domingo: Programa República Dominicana, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO).Google Scholar
Dorsinville, Max 1953 “Accord sur l'embauchage en Haïti et l'entrée en République Dominicaine des journaliers temporaires haïtiens.” Revue du Travail 3:107–14 (published in Port-au-Prince).Google Scholar
Fennema, Meindert, and Loewenthal, Troetje 1987 La construcción de raza y nación en la República Dominicana. Santo Domingo: Editora Universitaria, Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.Google Scholar
Franco, Franklin J. 1973 “Antihaitianismo e ideología del Trujillato.” In Gérard Pierre-Charles et al., Problemas dominico-haitianos y del Caribe, 83–109. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Grasmuck, Sherri 1982 “Migration within the Periphery: Haitian Labor in the Dominican Sugar and Coffee Industries.” International Migration Review 16, no. 2: 365–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graves, Nancy B., and Graves, Theodore B. 1974 “Adaptive Strategies in Urban Migration.” Annual Review of Anthropology 3: 117–51.Google Scholar
Hoetink, Harry 1970 “The Dominican Republic in the Nineteenth Century: Some Notes on Stratification, Immigration, and Race.” In Race and Class in Latin America, edited by MÖRner, Magnus, 96–121. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hoetink, Harry 1982 The Dominican People, 1850–1900: Notes for a Historical Sociology, translated by Ault, Stephen K. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Inchaustegui Cabral, Hector 1976 “Los negros y las trigueñas en la poesía dominicana.” eme eme: Estudios Dominicanos 4, no. 24: 3–19.Google Scholar
Knight, Melvin M. 1928 The Americans in Santo Domingo. New York: Vanguard.Google Scholar
Le Grand, Catherine 1995 “Informal Resistance on a Dominican Sugar Plantation during the Trujillo Dictatorship.” Hispanic American Historical Review 74, no. 4: 555–96.Google Scholar
Look Lai, Walton 1993 Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Lozano, Wilfredo 1985 Proletarización y campesinado en el capitalismo agroexportador. Santo Domingo: Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC).Google Scholar
Marshall, Woodville K. 1968 “Notes on Peasant Development in the West Indies since 1838.” Social and Economic Studies 17, no. 3: 252–63.Google Scholar
Martinez, Samuel 1995 Peripheral Migrants: Haitians and Dominican Republic Sugar Plantations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Martinez, Samuel 1996 “Indifference within Indignation: Anthropology, Human Rights, and the Haitian Bracero.” American Anthropologist 98, no. 1: 17–25.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney W. 1979 “Slavery and the Rise of Peasantries.” Historical Reflections 6, no. 1: 213–42.Google Scholar
Moral, Paul 1961 Le paysan haïtien (Étude sur la vie rurale en Haïti). Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve and Larose.Google Scholar
Moreno Fraginals, Manuel, Pons, Frank Moya, and Engerman, Stanley L., EDS. 1985 Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Moya Pons, Frank 1984 Manual de historia dominicana. 8th ed. Santiago de los Caballeros, D.R.: Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra.Google Scholar
Moya Pons, Frank, ET AL. 1986 El batey: Estudio socioeconómico de los bateyes del Consejo Estatal del Azúcar. Santo Domingo: Fondo para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales.Google Scholar
Murphy, Martin F. 1991 Dominican Sugar Plantations: Production and Foreign Labor Integration. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Murray, Gerald Francis 1977 “The Evolution of Haitian Peasant Land Tenure: A Case Study in Agrarian Adaptation to Population Growth.” 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., Columbia University.Google Scholar
Nicholls, David 1985 Haiti in Caribbean Context: Ethnicity, Economy, and Revolt. New York: St. Martin's.Google Scholar
ONAPLAN (OFICINA NACIONAL DE PLANIFICACION) 1981 Participación de la mano de obra haitiana en el mercado laboral: Los casos de la caña y el café. Santo Domingo: Secretariado Técnico de la Presidencia, ONAPLAN.Google Scholar
Orbe, Orbe Justino Jose 1981 Mauricio Báez y la clase obrera. Santo Domingo: Taller.Google Scholar
PeÑA Batlle, Manuel Arturo 1954 Política de Trujillo. Ciudad Trujillo: Imprenta Dominicana.Google Scholar
Perez De La Riva, Juan 1979 “Cuba y la migración antillana, 1900–1931.” In Juan Pérez de la Riva et al., Anuario de Estudios Cubanos 2: La república neocolonial, 1–75. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.Google Scholar
Piore, Michael J. 1979 Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plant, Roger 1987 Sugar and Modern Slavery: A Tale of Two Countries. London: Zed.Google Scholar
Portes, Alejandro, and Walton, John 1981 Labor, Class, and the International System. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Price-Mars, Jean 1953 La República de Haití y la República Dominicana: Diversos aspectos de un problema histórico, geográfico y etnológico. 3 vols. Translated by Martín Aldao and José Luis Muñoz Azpiri. Port-au-Prince: Colección del Tercer Cincuentenario de la Independencia de Haití.Google Scholar
Ratekin, Mervyn 1954 “The Early Sugar Industry in Española.” Hispanic American Historical Review 34, no. 1: 1–19.Google Scholar
Richardson, Bonham C. 1983 Caribbean Migrants: Environment and Human Survival on St. Kitts and Nevis. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Richardson, Bonham C. 1992 The Caribbean in the Wider World: A Regional Geography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rotberg, Robert I. 1971 Haiti: The Politics of Squalor. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Scarano, Francisco A. 1989 “Labor and Society in the Nineteenth Century.” In The Modern Caribbean, edited by Knight, Franklin W. and Palmer, Colin A., 51–84. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1995 Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment: The Political Economy of the Caribbean World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 1985 “Nation, State, and Society in Haiti, 1804–1984.” Washington, D.C.: Latin America Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 1990 Haiti, State against the Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Vega, Bernardo 1988 Trujillo y Haití, Volumen I (1930–1937). Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana.Google Scholar
Vidal, L. F. 1926 Apuntes sobre inmigración. Santo Domingo: Imprenta Montalvo.Google Scholar