| Transcript |
| 0:01 | · | Let's pause here. |
| 0:03 | · | I'm driving on the road that separates Haiti from the Dominican Republic. |
| 0:07 | · | Right here. |
| 0:08 | · | It's the border that divides two very different countries. |
| 0:17 | · | If you're born in Haiti, you're 2.5 times more likely to die |
| 0:19 | · | as a baby than if you're born in the DR. |
| 0:22 | · | You'll be almost ten times poorer and |
| 0:24 | · | you can expect to have a much shorter life. |
| 0:30 | · | I came here to find out how the two |
| 0:32 | · | countries that share this one island can be so different, with a politically |
| 0:36 | · | volatile and impoverished Haiti on one side and the stable and relatively rich |
| 0:41 | · | Dominican Republic on the other. |
| 0:49 | · | How did this line produce two totally different worlds? |
| 1:04 | · | My journey starts here, at this beach village in southern Haiti, where Haitian |
| 1:09 | · | merchants, most of them women, are preparing for a nighttime boat ride. |
| 1:17 | · | The women boarding this boat have one goal: to make it to the border where they will |
| 1:21 | · | be let into a Dominican market, to buy and sell goods before returning to their villages. |
| 1:26 | · | It's international trade at its most informal. We're taking these boats |
| 1:30 | · | because the next door mountain range makes the land journey almost impossible. |
| 1:35 | · | These worn-out wooden boats have been making this exact journey twice per week |
| 1:39 | · | for decades and yet the process remains chaotic and unorganized as if it's |
| 1:44 | · | happening for the first time. |
| 1:52 | · | All of this energy, time, and effort all to transport |
| 1:55 | · | a handful of goods that, in most countries, would be shipped in bulk |
| 1:58 | · | inside one of these. |
| 2:09 | · | We make this seven-hour journey to the border town arriving around, 4 am. |
| 2:17 | · | The sun rises and we walk to the border market. This market was established right on the border |
| 2:22 | · | as a partnership between the two nations, to give vendors from both sides |
| 2:26 | · | a place to buy and sell on equal footing. |
| 2:28 | · | As we approach the border I quickly realize that's not what's happening here. |
| 2:33 | · | So I'm looking across the border right now, |
| 2:35 | · | into the market and you can see that Dominicans are already setting up. |
| 2:38 | · | This is one of the big complaints of the Haitians: they're stuck on this side |
| 2:42 | · | waiting to cross the border and the border guards are just delaying it and |
| 2:47 | · | meanwhile the Dominicans are able to set up and get the best spots. |
| 2:56 | · | These Haitians come from miles away on this grueling boat journey, that I know now firsthand |
| 3:01 | · | is very grueling, and they get to the border and the guards stop them for no reason. |
| 3:07 | · | They're supposed to open it up for everyone at the same time. |
| 3:13 | · | The guards keep the Haitian women from crossing, not letting anyone know how |
| 3:17 | · | long it will be. The tension grows and then finally, hours after the Dominicans |
| 3:22 | · | were allowed to enter, the guards open up the bridge. |
| 3:40 | · | They buy and sell for the day, before returning to the boats to make the journey home. |
| 3:46 | · | The grueling boat journey, the senseless discrimination, it embodies |
| 3:50 | · | the asymmetry that exists on this island. Watching it happen, it's impossible not |
| 3:55 | · | to ask how it got like this. |
| 3:58 | · | There are a few key things that explain how this |
| 4:00 | · | island produced two very different countries, but if you want to get at the |
| 4:03 | · | very root of it you have to go back to when this island was owned by two |
| 4:08 | · | European powers: France and Spain. This island is actually the first place that |
| 4:13 | · | Christopher Columbus set up a colony in the new world on his first voyage back |
| 4:17 | · | in like 1490. France wanted a piece of this island because it was rich in |
| 4:22 | · | resources like sugar and coffee, so they fought a war with the Spanish and they |
| 4:25 | · | ended up splitting the island in two: one side would be the Spanish colony of |
| 4:29 | · | Santo Domingo and the other side would be the French colony, with the same name, |
| 4:33 | · | Saint-Domingue, just in French. And that is the most important part of understanding |
| 4:37 | · | this whole thing, is how these imperial powers treated their colonial posessions. |
| 4:42 | · | The French exploited the land. They brought in tons of slaves and |
| 4:46 | · | they were interested in making Saint-Domingue solely an economic producer. |
| 4:51 | · | They destroyed the soil from aggressively harvesting the same crop year after |
| 4:55 | · | year, and they created a group of very resentful, overworked, and abused slaves |
| 5:01 | · | that eventually rebelled. |
| 5:05 | · | The Spanish had a different approach. After establishing |
| 5:07 | · | domination on this island by massacring the indigenous population, they didn't |
| 5:12 | · | exploit it like the French did. |
| 5:13 | · | Instead they went to places like Mexico and Peru, to look for gold. |
| 5:17 | · | So they didn't bring nearly as many slaves onto this island, |
| 5:20 | · | and as a result they weren't nearly as profitable a colony. |
| 5:22 | · | Instead, the Spanish integrated with the remaining indigenous population, |
| 5:26 | · | by recognizing the native leader's authority and intermarrying with the locals. |
| 5:31 | · | The result was a smaller and more racially mixed population, |
| 5:34 | · | with a sustainable economy and a political system, |
| 5:37 | · | something totally absent from France's colony. |
| 5:41 | · | This becomes really important in the early 1800s, when independence comes around. |
| 5:46 | · | Haiti declares independence, fights off the French, and basically |
| 5:49 | · | declares itself the first black, former slave republic in the world. |
| 5:54 | · | They do so with very little framework for a society and for a government and they also do so |
| 6:00 | · | with land that has been exploited, year after year, with the same crop which |
| 6:05 | · | basically destroys the fertility of the land. |
| 6:08 | · | And to add to all of that, because |
| 6:10 | · | they were this first black Republic, the world essentially isolated them. |
| 6:14 | · | The United States didn't want to recognize the independence of a black nation. |
| 6:19 | · | They thought it might become a slave empire and seek revenge. |
| 6:22 | · | The French showed up on Haitian shores soon after independence, and said you owe |
| 6:26 | · | us a debt for all of the assets that you stole from us when you became independent, |
| 6:31 | · | all these economic assets, you owe us that debt and you have to pay |
| 6:34 | · | it over the next thirty years. This crippling debt Haiti did pay back over |
| 6:38 | · | years, but it really hampered their development. |
| 6:40 | · | This history doesn't exonerate the dictators and corrupt politicians that have plagued Haiti's |
| 6:45 | · | development since its independence, but it helps explain them. |
| 6:49 | · | Suffocating embargoes and the independence debt, as well as the lack of any tradition or |
| 6:54 | · | investment in governmental institutions, guaranteed Haiti's failure from the |
| 6:58 | · | moment it was born, and a racist world made sure of it. |
| 7:02 | · | That racism isn't just |
| 7:03 | · | embedded into Haiti's history, it is in fact very alive today. |
| 7:12 | · | As I drive up the border, by coincidence my driver is also a Dominican border patrol official. |
| 7:17 | · | We have hours in the car, where he slowly and cautiously tells me about how |
| 7:21 | · | immigration policy has changed in the Dominican Republic in recent years. |
| 7:54 | · | "Regularization Program". |
| 7:56 | · | That's a euphemism. He's talking about a |
| 7:58 | · | policy of targeting anyone of Haitian descent, even citizens, rounding them up |
| 8:03 | · | and deporting them. There's always been anti-Haitian |
| 8:05 | · | sentiment in the Dominican Republic, usually resulting in racist violence, |
| 8:16 | · | but since 2010, that sentiment has been seeping into legislation. The Dominican |
| 8:20 | · | Constitution that was drafted in 1929, says that anyone born in the country is |
| 8:24 | · | automatically a citizen, even if your parents were undocumented immigrants. |
| 8:28 | · | This is the same in places like the United States, but the DR rewrote its |
| 8:32 | · | constitution in 2010, to only give citizenship to those born on DR soil, to legal residents. |
| 8:38 | · | Then, in 2013 the high court in the DR ruled that this new |
| 8:42 | · | definition would be applied retroactively. All the way back to |
| 8:46 | · | 1929, meaning any citizen who had been born in the DR to undocumented parents |
| 8:50 | · | would have their citizenship revoked. |
| 8:53 | · | More than 200,000 Dominican citizens, |
| 8:57 | · | were suddenly stateless. |
| 9:03 | · | It is clearly an illegal act, it is an immoral act, it is a racist act by the |
| 9:09 | · | Dominican government. And it's happening because these people are black. |
| 9:25 | · | Dominican law said that if these stateless people wanted to stay in the |
| 9:28 | · | DR, they would have to go to a government office and put their name on this |
| 9:32 | · | foreigner registry. The government gave these people one year to either get |
| 9:37 | · | their name on the registry or face deportation. |
| 9:40 | · | Over 55,000 have been officially deported since the June 2015 deadline. |
| 9:45 | · | The UN estimates that 128,000 people have voluntarily fled to Haiti, |
| 9:49 | · | a country many of them have never lived in. Some came here to this camp on the |
| 9:54 | · | border, where they've been living in limbo for years. |
| 10:48 | · | The moment I cross into the DR, I start to see what this crackdown looks like. |
| 10:53 | · | On a 75km bus ride, we pass eight security checkpoints in which security |
| 10:57 | · | personnel board the bus, to eye who was on it, and in some cases check papers. |
| 11:02 | · | But each time we stop, they seem to only check the papers of the same few passengers. |
| 11:18 | · | That's my translator, Pascale. |
| 11:20 | · | He's an American citizen, but everywhere we go in the DR, |
| 11:23 | · | security forces keep asking him for his passport. |
| 11:27 | · | Halfway through the journey, we pull off the road |
| 11:29 | · | into a facility where a few young military guys |
| 11:32 | · | are sitting around. And our driver brings this woman and her two children over to |
| 11:36 | · | the military guys. She's speaking in perfect Dominican Spanish to them, |
| 11:39 | · | claiming that her children are Dominican and that the driver brought us to this |
| 11:43 | · | checkpoint to turn her in because she's black. |
| 11:46 | · | None of this seems to matter, |
| 11:48 | · | she doesn't have her papers and her skin color seems to be all the guards need to see. |
| 11:57 | · | Haiti's land and people were abused when it was a colony of slaves. |
| 12:01 | · | The world then shunned it, with embargoes and independence debts when it was a new |
| 12:05 | · | nation, and today Haitians in the DR experience racism that is overt enough |
| 12:10 | · | to be enshrined in law. |
| 12:17 | · | As we drive up this very curvy road, I have the DR to my right and Haiti to my left. |
| 12:23 | · | Back when the French were here, this was the richest colony on earth, |
| 12:26 | · | but that came at a price. |
| 12:28 | · | Not only to abused slaves, but also to the |
| 12:30 | · | land that they worked. Clear cutting and single crop planting continued after the |
| 12:35 | · | French left, but instead of being used to make fancy French furniture, the trees |
| 12:40 | · | were burned to cook food. |
| 12:42 | · | This explains what I'm seeing when |
| 12:44 | · | on my right there's lush jungle. |
| 12:46 | · | and on my left there's bare and eroding hillsides. |
| 12:53 | · | Zoom out a little bit and it's very clear. |
| 13:00 | · | I follow the border road all the way north, until I hit another market town. I wanted |
| 13:04 | · | to see if the same discriminatory dynamics played out up here as they did down south. |
| 13:10 | · | This market was built with money from the European Union, |
| 13:13 | · | and the UN development program, |
| 13:14 | · | with the specific intention of creating a space where communities |
| 13:17 | · | from both sides could come and buy and sell on equal footing. |
| 13:23 | · | Rolling through the market, and once again like we saw in the southern market, |
| 13:28 | · | the Dominicans are first setting up. |
| 13:31 | · | I walk to the border and find this |
| 13:32 | · | huge group of people at this gap in the fence, paying a border guard to get in early. |
| 13:37 | · | The dynamic is the same as down south, only with a few more overt bribes |
| 13:41 | · | and border guards who seem to have no problem hitting Haitians with a stick. |
| 13:49 | · | After hours of waiting for guards to open the gate for everyone, |
| 13:52 | · | the Haitians are finally let in. |
| 14:33 | · | This is a story about a border that separates two vastly different countries, |
| 14:38 | · | but it's moreso a story about policy: |
| 14:41 | · | how centuries of racist policies, from |
| 14:43 | · | the French, from the U.S., from the world, from the DR, can hold a nation back from progressing. |
| 14:49 | · | Haiti, this first black republic, has experienced some of the most |
| 14:52 | · | predatory and racist policy from outside forces. |
| 14:56 | · | For Haitians this story isn't just their history. |
| 14:59 | · | It's their present. |
| 15:00 | · | It's the stage on which they live their lives. |
| 15:16 | · | So, I want to say a big thank you to lululemon, |
| 15:18 | · | who is a sponsor for Borders. |
| 15:19 | · | They sent me these ABC pants, |
| 15:21 | · | which are these really versatile, flexible pants. |
| 15:24 | · | They're super sturdy, |
| 15:26 | · | and they're meant to be basically used for hiking and for activewear, |
| 15:29 | · | but also around the house when I'm kind of just hanging out, |
| 15:32 | · | I've been using them for both as I've been making Borders. |
| 15:35 | · | I love them. |
| 15:35 | · | Thank you lululemon for sending me these pants, |
| 15:37 | · | but more importantly thank you for sponsoring Borders |
| 15:40 | · | and making this happen. |
| 15:41 | · | If you want to try out some lululemon ABC pants, |
| 15:44 | · | You could get a pair of your own. |
| 15:45 | · | You should definitely check that out. |
