2 - The End of the Old Border

Summary

This chapter reconstructs Haitian and Dominican life along the border in the years before the 1937 Genocide. It addresses the history of the old border by studying new laws and new forms of enforcement that changed border life during the 1920s and 1930s. It draws from records of migratory and non-migratory arrests of ethnic Haitians. Offenses included contraband, illegal border-crossing, sanitary laws, theft, and failure to produce national identity documents. It argues that ethnic Haitians were disproportionately targeted for the enforcement of these laws and the pattern of enforcement reflected a rising tide of official persecution. Far from being a harmonious, open, bicultural border, the chapter shows that border and migratory enforcement grew over the course of the 1920s and 1930s and the new patterns of enforcement were changing everyday life in places where people had once crossed freely. Struggles over claims to land, livestock, and crops are recorded in the remarkable testimonies from ethnic Haitians who spoke boldly against their persecution in Dominican courts. Through an analysis of excuse-making, the chapter also details the strategies ethnic Haitians employed as they struggled to maintain old ways of life amidst news legal forms of ethnic and racial discrimination.