1 - From Natives to Foreigners

Summary

This chapter examines life along the border from the era of the American Occupation through the rise of the Trujillo regime in 1930. It reconstructs the period from the testimonies of ethnic Haitian detainees. Analysis of court and police records from the period demonstrate a stark difference between enforcement in the decades of the 1920s and the 1930s. The year 1930 was a watershed. In 1930 Dominican-born ethnic Haitians were first systematically deported to Haiti and forced to pay for immigration permits. Executive Order 372, a racialized migration law introduced during the US occupation, played a crucial role in the process by which all ethnic Haitians became classified as foreigners. Through the evolving use of this law, ethnic Haitians who had previously been recognized as citizens, property owners and legal residents in Dominican territory were deported to Haiti. Others remained in Dominican territory, but in 1930, for the first time, people born on Dominican territory were reclassified as foreigners and they were forced to pay immigration tax. Far from a harmonious, bicultural border, the chapter illuminates the increasingly vulnerable legal status of ethnic Haitians through exploring systematic deportation, imprisonment, punitive taxation, lost citizenship, lost property, and displacement prior to the genocide.