R.Delugan StrangeAndFamiliar

Reimagining the Strange and
Familiar in National Belonging

Memory, Heritage, and Exclusion
in the Dominican Republic
R O B I N M A R I A D E L U G A N , School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Arts, University

of California, 5200 N. Lake Road, Merced, CA 95343, USA. Email: rdelugan@ucmerced.edu
Recent constitutional reforms and high court decisions in the Dominican Republic made an
estimated 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent stateless when rulings retroactive to 1929
invalidated their birthright citizenship. Some social actors—including diasporic Dominicans
and Haitians—connect the crisis of exclusion to the nation’s difficult heritage—namely, the 1937
massacre of thousands of Haitians and other black bodies in the Dominican Republic border-
lands dividing the two nations, and the subsequent decades of authoritarianism that constructed
Haitians and blackness as the nation’s strange “other.” A new museum in Santo Domingo, and an
annual binational commemoration at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic about
the 1937 massacre bring attention to the historicity of present-day understandings of Dominicanidad
(being Dominican), reminding the public that such definitions are rooted in state violence. This
research examines how memory activism strives to transform familiar, though exclusionary, under-
standings of national belonging in the Dominican Republic.
Key words: Dominican Republic, anti-Haitianism, diaspora and (trans)national belonging,
heritage, nation-building
In the Dominican Republic, recent constitutional reforms and high court decisions
made an estimated 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent stateless as rulings retro-
active to 1929 invalidated their jus soli birthright citizenship. These judicial decisions
follow years-long legal procedures and debates, and they are accompanied by intensi-
fying xenophobia against Haitian migrants, whose presence in the neighboring Do-
minican Republic has steadily increased in the aftermath of the devastating 2005 earth-
quake in Haiti. This paper examines two historical memory sites in the Dominican
Republic that connect the nation’s past to the current crisis of exclusion. The memory
sites focus on the 1937 massacre of thousands of Haitians and other black bodies in the
Dominican Republic at the border between the two nations, an atrocity which some call
genocide (Paulino 2006). The Museo Memorial de la Resistencia Dominicana (MMRD:
Submitted March 11, 2017; accepted December 1, 2017; published online October 10, 2018.
Journal of Anthropological Research (Winter 2018). © 2018 by The University of New Mexico.
All rights reserved. 0091-7710/2018/7404-0003$10.00
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REIMAGINING THE STRANGE AND FAMILIAR IN NATIONAL BELONGING | 451
Memorial Museum of Dominican Resistance) opened in May 2011 in Santo Domingo

with a permanent exhibition on “The 1937 Haitian Genocide” and separately, in Octo-
ber 2012, the first annual commemoration of the 1937 event was organized by Border of
Lights (BOL), a collective composed primarily of US-based Dominicans and Haitians.
The commemoration took place simultaneously in Dajabón, Dominican Republic, and
Ouanaminthe, Haiti, neighboring towns on either side of the border at the epicenter of
the 1937 massacre. I argue that the memory sites bring attention to the historicity of
Dominican national identity to illustrate that Dominicanidad (being Dominican) is a
product of nation-building, state violence, and exclusion. One aim of the memory activ-
ism is the transformation of the “familiar” understanding of Dominicanidad, which as-
signs “strange otherness” to Haitians and blackness. Chronologically speaking, the two
newly inaugurated historical memory sites barely preceded the recent constitutional
changes that exclude Dominicans of Haitian descent from citizenship. The sites’ references
to xenophobic and racist constructions of national belonging are more urgent than ever.
In recent years, the presence of Haitians in the Dominican Republic has expanded.
Although Haitians have long migrated to the Dominican Republic, especially for sea-
sonal sugarcane plantation work, general migration increased following the 12 Janu-
ary 2010 earthquake in Haiti.1 The natural disaster caused 200,000 deaths and left
1.5 million Haitians homeless. In 2012, the Dominican Republic’s Instituto Nacional de
Estadística conducted the First National Survey of Immigrants (Primera Encuesta Na-
cional de Inmigrantes). The survey counted 668,145 registered immigrants from Haiti
and 209,912 children born of Haitian parents. Although we can be skeptical about of-
ficial statistics in a context of anti-Haitianism, compared with the 2010 national census
that counted 10.65 million residents including 311,969 individuals reportedly from Haiti,
the study suggests the Haitian population has increased of late. This population growth
is one factor driving the constitutional reforms, but national identity and belonging in
the Dominican Republic have long been constructed against the otherness of Haiti (e.g.,
Franco Pichardo 2003).
My ethnographic research examines how civil society and other non-state actors are
addressing the nation’s difficult heritage through collective “memory interventions”
(MacDonald 2009:94) and “memory activism” (e.g., Billingsley 2014; Gutman 2017).
With renewed public attention to 1937, a chapter of the nation’s past that escapes tour-
ism’s more positive representations of history, culture, and society is also a focus for
imagining a more just and inclusive nation.2 Pedagogically speaking, the memory sites
and activities endeavor to bring attention to the historical processes that construct ideas
about the nation and the nation’s “others,” illustrating how meanings about the nation
and national belonging, as with so many cultural elements, may appear timeless, natu-
ral, unchanging, and familiar. By bringing attention to the power dynamics of nation-
state formation and the inherent project of constructing boundaries of difference, I ar-
gue that the memory work makes “the familiar, strange” and “the strange, familiar.”
This activity parallels foundational efforts in anthropology to increase human under-
standing and to address biases against “otherness.”

452 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH WINTER 2018
THE CURRENT CRISIS OF EXCLUSION

In the Dominican Republic, recent high court decisions and constitutional reforms
stripped citizenship from an estimated 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent. On
23 September 2013, the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling TC/0168/13, popularly re-
ferred to as La Sentencia (the Sentence), expanded the earlier national constitutional
reform that withdrew birthright citizenship. It redefined what is meant by those who
are “in transit” and thereby excluded from birthright citizenship.3 Previously, “in tran-
sit” was understood as applying to diplomats and tourists who were in the country for
fewer than 10 days. The new court ruling expanded “in transit” to apply to Haitian
migrant workers who for decades have worked in the Dominican Republic sugar plan-
tations. Over time, some migrant workers stayed in the Dominican Republic when the
seasonal plantation work ended, particularly when their employer did not pay the costs
of their travel back to Haiti. Some of these individuals established families and had
children born in the Dominican Republic. Dominican society has long been composed
of Dominicans of Haitian descent as well as newer migrants from Haiti. With Haitians
making up 87.3% of all immigration to the Dominican Republic, there is little doubt
that the high court’s revision of “in transit” status was intended to address the increased
presence of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. The court made its ruling retroactive
to 1929. With the controversial ruling, Dominicans of Haitian descent such as Juliana
Deguis Pierre, who previously held Dominican citizenship, had their citizenship re-
voked.
Juliana Deguis Pierre was born in the Dominican Republic of Haitian parents who
migrated there in the 1960s when they contracted to work in the sugarcane fields. Her
birth was entered in the civil registry, and she received a Dominican birth certificate. In
the 1990s, the Junta Central Electoral (JCE), the government office that authorizes birth
certificates, marriage certificates, and national identification cards (cédulas), ruled against
providing birth certificates and cédulas to people “suspected of being Haitian.” Cédulas
are required to work legally, marry, register for high school or university, open a bank
account, obtain a Dominican Republic driver’s license, or vote. The JCE and many
(but not all) branch offices refused to issue identity documents. In 2008 when Deguis
Pierre attempted to apply for a cédula, she was informed that she was ineligible. Her birth
certificate was confiscated. Deguis Pierre and other plaintiffs sued the government of the
Dominican Republic. The case reached the Constitutional Tribunal, the nation’s highest
court. The ruling TC/0168/13 revoked Deguis Pierre’s citizenship, declaring that at the
time of her birth her undocumented parents were “in transit” and therefore she was not
entitled to receive birthright citizenship. The court’s decision was estimated to impact
200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent who overnight became classified as “foreign-
ers” rather than “nationals.” Accompanying the constitutional reforms in the Domin-
ican Republic are negative public attitudes toward the growing population of Haitian
migrants.
These actions that exclude Dominicans of Haitian descent from citizenship, which
the court made retroactive to 1929, are receiving international attention and criticism

(e.g., Comisión Interamericano de Derechos Humanos 2015; Sala 2013). Samuel Mar-
tínez (2014) examines the failure of the international community to bring the Domin-
ican state into conformity with international norms. Some citizens defend the state’s
sovereign right to determine immigration and citizenship policy, while others—in-
cluding members of the Dominican diaspora—urge a more plural view of society in
a world where migration and blending can generate hyphenated collective identities.
As international and transnational migrants, Dominicans in new lands seek inclusion
for themselves and their families (Torres-Saillant 1999). What if they were to experi-
ence the same legal exclusions being imposed on Haitian migrants and on Dominicans
of Haitian descent? Civil society actors, the international community, and diasporic
Dominicans and Haitians in the United States are among those who have condemned
the Dominican Republic’s exclusionary state policies. In response to heightened anti-
Haitianism, some have turned attention to the Dominican Republic’s difficult heritage.
HISPANIOLA: AN ISLAND DIVIDED

Anti-Haitianism and anti-black racism in the Dominican Republic have deep histor-
ical roots that precede and influence the modern nation-state.4 In the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries, Spain began colonizing the Caribbean island that the native
Tainos called Quisqueya, renaming it Hispaniola. Though indigenous populations
were decimated early on, for hundreds of years, indigenous populations, African slaves,
and Spanish colonizers intermixed. Mestizos (indigenous and Spanish), mulatos (Span-
ish and Africans), and other admixtures generated a racially blended population that
was Spanish-speaking in a society where Catholicism was prominent (Franco Pichardo
2009). Much later, in the mid-seventeenth century, France colonized the western end
of the island. As a slave-based, sugar plantation economy declined in the east, by the
late eighteenth century, one had fully emerged on the western side of the island under
French control. With a majority population of African slaves relegated to labor in the
plantation economy that developed, the interactions here did not result in a predom-
inantly racially blended population. The two colonies sharing one island were differ-
entiated by the extent and degree of the plantation economy, the demographic differ-
ences in terms of the enslaved population, and laws that governed each.
Scholars note that despite a majority Afro-descendant population, Dominicans tend
to have more affinity for their Spanish and Taino heritage than their African roots, and
that this is tied to the prevailing notion that neighboring Haiti is black, but Domin-
icans are not (e.g., Candelario 2007; Howard 2001; Torres-Saillant 1998a, 1998b).
This deeply rooted racial logic informs meanings of Dominicanidad and national be-
longing. Following 1937, state projects reinforced these exclusionary ideas about Do-
minican identity while also promoting narratives that informed a uniquely Dominican
“Indio” (Indian) identity and at the same time privileging Hispanic culture and white-
ness (García-Peña 2016). For example, Ginetta Candelario (2007) discusses how the
national Museo del Hombre Dominicano in Santo Domingo favors precolumbian Taino
artifacts and Spanish culture and denies blackness (2007:112–27). She explores the dy-

namism of race and nation by studying how diasporic Dominicans in the United States
confront their racialization as black through museum exhibitions and everyday encoun-
ters. With a similar emphasis, Kimberly Simmons (2011) finds that although the state
has actively denied Dominicans a way to access and validate their African ancestry, pur-
suant to migration to and contact with the United States, some Dominicans are increas-
ingly identifying as black. Acknowledging the sites and practices that represent and rein-
force hegemonic views of identity, Candelario and Simmons also rethink interpretations
of Dominicans’ denial of blackness by noting how the value system that maintains bound-
aries between Haiti and the Dominican Republic also marginalizes dark-skinned bodies
in Dominican society and elsewhere, and by illustrating how Dominicanidad is informed
by globally circulating discourses about blackness.
Political tensions, but also cooperation, have existed between Haiti and the Dominican
Republic prior to and following the establishment of the island’s two modern nation-states
(Eller 2017).5 Still, in the Dominican Republic, nation-building in the early twentieth
century, underpinned by authoritarianism, reinforced an idea that static and deep dif-
ferences existed among the peoples of the island, exacerbating notions about the strange-
ness of Haiti in contrast with the familiar of the Dominican Republic.6 The 1937 mas-
sacre in the Dominican Republic of up to twenty thousand Haitians and other black
bodies illustrates the extremes of nation-building fueled by racism and xenophobia.
From late September to mid October 1937, then-dictator Rafael Leonel Trujillo
ordered the military to massacre by machete thousands of Haitians who, along with
Dominicans, inhabited the borderlands between the two nations, a culturally hybrid
and fluid region where the residents were known foremost as rayanos (border dwellers).
The violence is known as El Corte (The Cutting, in Spanish), Kout Kouto a (the Knife
Blow, in Kreyol), and more recently, Masacre Perejil (Parsley Massacre, in Spanish, re-
ferring to a possibly true account that it was the Haitians’ difficulty with pronouncing
perejil that identified them for slaughter; see Castillo 1973; Crassweller 1966; Dan-
ticat 1998; Derby 1994; Fiehrer 1990; Roorda 1998; Turits 2002; Wucker 1999).
Bernardo Vega (1988, 1995) presents various estimates of the total number of deaths,
ranging from as few as 547 to as many as 20,000 victims. The 1937 violence was cen-
tral to the demarcation and consolidation of the political border between Haiti and the
Dominican Republic (Fumagalli 2015; Paulino 2015), and historians argue that 1937
marks the beginning of state-sanctioned anti-Haitianism (e.g., Turits 2002). Decades
of authoritarianism followed in the Dominican Republic, reinforcing national borders
and boundaries, with blackness and Haiti marking the nation’s “strange other” in con-
trast to the “familiar” of Dominican identity that privileged Hispanic culture and white-
ness.7 The aftermath of the 1937 violence fortified official, hegemonic ideas among
a predominantly African-descendent Dominican population that to be Dominican
meant not to be Haitian or black (Franco 2015; Franco Pichardo 2009; Torres-Saillant
1998b).
Cautioning us from thinking too narrowly about the construction of national iden-
tity, April Mayes (2014) reminds us that in the nineteenth century and even through-

out the US military occupation (1916–1924), there were different ways to imagine
Dominicanidad, and not all of them were anti-black or anti-Haitian. Still, by seeing
connections among today’s crisis of exclusions in the Dominican Republic, the mas-
sacre of 1937, and historical processes of nation-building, memory activists aim to in-
crease awareness about how taken-for-granted ideas about national identity and be-
longing are power-laden products of history.
Long-distance and transnational connections bring members of the Dominican and
Haitian diaspora to Hispaniola to commemorate the 1937 violence that was so influ-
ential in reinforcing the boundaries separating the two countries. Transnational Do-
minicans and Haitians have joined in the protests against Dominican Republic court
decisions and policies of exclusion. Their key participation in 1937 memory activism is
illustrated by the Border of Lights annual commemoration (discussed in detail below).8
For members of the diaspora, coming to terms with the Dominican Republic’s past is
essential to their own sense of identity and belonging (e.g., Candelario 2007; García-
Peña 2016; Paulino and García 2013).
FIELDWORK
From 2013 to 2016 I made four separate fieldwork visits to the Dominican Republic
to understand why and how the infamous 1937 state violence is receiving new pub-
lic attention today, more than 75 years later. My ethnographic fieldwork included
participant-observation in the third (2014) and fifth (2016) annual Border of Lights
commemorations and visits in 2013 and 2015 to the Museo Memorial de la Resis-
tencia Dominicana (MMRD) in the capital, Santo Domingo.
On my first visit in May 2013 to the island of Hispaniola, people were generous with
their time. I met with local government officials in the Ministry of Culture and with
staff at nongovernmental organizations working on behalf of Haitian-Dominicans and/
or Haitian migrants. Each organization had a specific mission regarding the nationality
question. For example, Centro Bonó is a Jesuit organization that offers social-justice-
oriented courses and workshops. While I was visiting, they had a campaign focused on
the human right to a nationality. Another NGO, MUDHA (Movimiento de Mujeres
Dominico-Haitianas), focuses attention on the vulnerable women and children of the
bateyes (sugar plantation communities). Solidaridad Fronteriza, a Jesuit-run organiza-
tion in Dajabón, promotes solidarity among the communities at the border between
Dominican Republic and Haiti and denounces human rights abuses against Haitian
migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent. Each of these organizations also facili-
tates reflection, research, and information exchange that deepens cultural awareness
about historical and contemporary dynamics.9 I also met with regional migration mon-
itors, and with activists organizing protests and other actions directed against growing
anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic.
Dominican anthropologists (e.g., Juan Rodriguez, Carlos Andujar, Jose Guerrero,
and Dario Tejeda) and other scholars at the Archivo General de la Nación, the Acade-
mia de la Historia, and local universities shared their insights. By monitoring the local

print, television, and web-based media, I followed debates, commentaries, and public
sentiment regarding what some pejoratively referred to as a “Haitian invasion.” I stud-
ied how a museum, activists, academics, and other civil society actors, including di-
asporic Haitians and Dominicans in the United States, referenced 1937 to challenge
dominant meanings that make Dominicans of Haitian descent, Haitian migrants, and
other black bodies “strangers” to “familiar” understandings of national belonging in
the Dominican Republic. By engaging with a range of social actors who are knowledge-
able about and concerned with the present situation, I was better able to situate the
social memory sites and practices that focus on the 1937 massacre.
Anthropology, 1937 Public Memory Sites, and National Belonging

This article focuses on two memory sites that endeavor to generate new meanings in
the Dominican Republic: the annual Border of Lights 1937 commemoration and the
Museo Memorial de la Resistencia Dominicana. To challenge hegemonic narratives of
national history, culture, and identity, these memory sites examine a difficult heritage
of dictatorship, authoritarianism, and citizens’ acts of resistance. They also illuminate
the link between the political and the ontological as they engage social memory to cri-
tique and to generate collective understandings and shared experiences. Tom Boell-
storff (2016) examines the ontological turn in anthropology (e.g., Carrithers et al. 2010;
Holbraad et al. 2014; Pedersen 2012) to remind us that “highlighting how similitude,
as much as difference (indeed, in generative conjunction with difference), is at the core
of being and worlding” (2016:393), an apt analysis for this exploration of the dynam-
ics of national belonging. The silences and exclusions that accounts of historical events
can produce engage bodies in space and time in experiences that can profoundly in-
fluence one’s sense of being and belonging (Connerton 2011; Passerini 2003; Ricoeur
2004; see Heidegger 1962). When collective memory challenges historical narratives,
the power dynamics of nation-building can be revealed. What once was a commonsense
and familiar understanding about the nation may now look different, even strange.
Political anthropology with its emphasis on power and society also guides this re-
search about historical memory and national belonging. Specifically, I draw on schol-
ars who analyze the nation-state and its margins (e.g., Das and Poole 2004; Nugent
and Vincent 2008; Sharma and Gupta 2006; Shore et al. 2011; Vincent et al. 2002).
How the state promotes a nation’s past is a powerful way to shape a population’s sense
of unity and belonging, and acts of commemoration can uphold the core values of a
people (e.g., Gillis 1996; Nora 1989; Spillman 1997; Turner 2006). However, official
history can also be silent about and even suppress accounts of episodes of state violence
(Trouillot 1995). How does the nation-state influence our sense of being and belong-
ing? How is one’s positioning as “familiar” or “strange” experienced and understood?
How is the status quo reinforced by policy, structural violence, and entrenched hege-
monic meanings about the nation? Today the Dominican Republic continues to de-
mocratize. Grappling with its difficult heritage is part of the process of reimagining
state-society dynamics and addressing national exclusions. Anthropological research

can highlight the historical dimensions as well as the ongoing dynamics that solidify
and reproduce, but also transform meanings and experiences of national belonging.
Museo Memorial de la Resistencia Dominicana (MMRD)

The MMRD, located in the historic colonial center of Santo Domingo, opened in 2011
to examine the impact of authoritarianism on national society and to acknowledge val-
iant citizen struggles against repression. It is a gem. The fully remodeled building’s floor
plan, exhibition design, and messages promoting democracy and human rights reflect
the extensive museum experience and international engagements of the museum’s di-
rector, Luisa De Peña Díaz. The permanent exhibition begins with an explanation of
dictatorship and authoritarianism. It also challenges a series of myths that were created
by the Trujillo regime that still influence Dominican society. The museum challenges
commonly held myths about Trujillo and the nation’s past. For example, the belief that
economic stability was created is countered by pointing out fraud in his government
and that Trujillo held a majority financial stake in national industries. Information is
displayed chronologically to illustrate antecedents to the Trujillo dictatorship, begin-
ning in 1916 with the US occupation of the Dominican Republic and continuing
through 1978 and the end of Joaquín Balaguer’s second of three presidential adminis-
trations. Exhibitions emphasize the many heroes who intervened against dictatorship,
including Manuel Tavárez, Leandro Guzman, and the three Mirabal sisters: Minerva,
Maria Teresa, and Patria. There is a replica of “La 40,” a well-known torture center dur-
ing the Trujillo era. The museum also has diverse temporary exhibits, a museum store,
and a registry of victims in which it is still possible to register a victim of crimes from
the nation’s dictatorial past.
In part because of an agreement with the national Ministry of Education, most who
visit the MMRD are high school juniors and seniors from throughout the Dominican
Republic, whose museum visit is connected to their required coursework on Domin-
ican history. Of 89,000 total visitors in 2016, 72,000 were students. MMRD is the
second-most-visited museum in the Dominican Republic, behind the national Museo
del Hombre Dominicano. The museum expected an overall increase in the number of
visitors in 2017 (Luisa De Peña Díaz, personal communication 2017).
Included in the MMRD’s permanent exhibition space is a small but centrally situ-
ated exhibit on the “1937 Haitian Genocide” (Figure 1). The exhibition is composed of
a two-sided panel that visitors can walk around. On one side is a larger-than-life news-
paper photo from 1937 of a wide-eyed, terror-stricken youth. Other documentation
from 1937 include a newspaper headline about the violence, a US diplomat’s message
about the atrocity, and information about payments later made by Trujillo to Haiti for
causing the loss of Haitian lives. The museum is in the process of installing a mural
about 1937 that was rescued from a house in Santo Domingo recently slated for demo-
lition. The al fresco mural was painted in the early 1970s by the renowned Dominican
artist José Ramirez Conde, who is recognized for his resistance to dictatorship in the
Dominican Republic. Once installed, the mural will greet entering museum visitors.

Figure 1. 1937 Haitian Genocide Exhibition, Museo Memorial de la Resistencia Domini-

cana (Photo by the author, June 2015).
It adds another high-profile reference for 1937 historical memory. The museum is plan-
ning activities to inaugurate the mural. Although the museum’s truth-telling about the
nation’s difficult past is perhaps a subtle intervention in challenging historical con-
structions and familiar understandings about Dominican identity vis-à-vis Haitians,
it is still powerful.
To date, MMRD has not conducted visitor studies to gauge the impact of specific
exhibitions. The museum’s director and I are currently discussing how we might col-
laborate to conduct such research.
The MMRD illustrates the important role of museums to tackle difficult histories
and heritage, and to promote justice, human rights, and inclusive societies. In their dis-
cussion of museum exhibitions that take on difficult topics, Bonnell and Simon (2007)
ask what can be achieved by making painful memories public when difficult exhibi-
tions can bring forward feelings of grief, anger, shame, horror, frustration, guilt, and
even complicity. Despite arguments for not bringing troublesome pasts into the pres-
ent, all reflection on the past is also about the present moment and future aspirations.
Museums that confront a nation’s history of state violence can thereby demonstrate
what the United Nations refers to as the moral obligation to improve both state and so-
ciety in the aftermath of atrocity (Walker 2017).
[There are] ways which public history might animate a critical consciousness,
a way of living with and within history as a never-ending question that con-

stantly probes the adequacy of the ethical character and social arrangements of
daily life (Bonnell and Simon 2007:65)
It also reaffirms the argument of Benedict Anderson (1983) and others of the im-
portant role that museums have in the ongoing process of imagining and reimagin-
ing national belonging. Through the new museum, the Dominican Republic joins
other Latin American nations that today are grappling with the effects of repressive
twentieth-century dictatorships and state violence (e.g., Atencio 2014; Billingsley 2014;
De Brito et al. 2001; DeLugan 2013; Gómez-Barris 2008; Gould 2008; Jelin 2007;
Kaiser 2005).
MMRD’s inclusion in the International Committee of Memorial Museums
(ICMEMO) and membership in Sites of Consciousness, a global network of historic
sites, museums, and memory initiatives, gives MMRD crucial legitimacy and recogni-
tion. The MMRD has an important role in the ongoing memory activism that offers
public reflection that can reshape ideas about the nation. As a new site of historical
memory, MMRD reminds the public that while Dominicans are conditioned to reject
Haitians (and other black bodies) as a product of modern nation-building and author-
itarianism, it is something that can change.
Border of Lights
In October 2012, in Dajabón, at the border between the Dominican Republic and
Haiti, a location considered the epicenter of the 1937 massacre, occurred the first pub-
lic commemoration of the victims of that violence. The commemoration was bina-
tional, with simultaneous activities planned in the two neighboring border towns of
Dajabón, Dominican Republic, and Ouanaminthe, Haiti. It was also transnational
because of the participation of diasporic Dominican-American and Haitian-American
activists, who, through the collective Border of Lights (BOL), organized the commem-
oration. In October 2014 and October 2016, I participated in the third and fifth annual
commemorations.
In early October 2014, I traveled to the Dominican Republic to attend the annual
1937 commemoration. As in past years, binational activities were planned. I joined the
events taking place on the Dominican Republic side of the Massacre River, which sep-
arates the two towns.10 My flight into Santiago, the nation’s second-largest city, was
followed by a two-hour bus ride through the countryside to Dajabón. I had been in
Dajabón twice before, in 2013 and 2014, to visit the Jesuit-run Solidaridad Fronteriza,
mentioned above, an organization well-known for advocating on behalf of Haitian mi-
grants and a partner organization in the annual BOL commemoration. I saw the com-
memorative mural commissioned by BOL and painted on a wall outside the Nuestra
Señora de Rosario Catholic Church after the first commemoration in 2012.11 Rather
than representing the 1937 violence, the mural instead emphasizes the desire for bina-
tional friendship and cooperation. I also experienced Dajabón’s well-known market.
On Mondays and Fridays, the border is open from morning to dusk, permitting Hai-

tians to attend the bustling, if not chaotic, market without the necessity of a visa. The
market is a boon to the Dominican Republic economy since Haitians are the primary
consumers of goods ranging from fresh produce to housewares and clothing; I saw
mountains of used clothes, bootleg CDs, tools and building supplies, live chickens,
and more. Between my visits in 2013 and 2016, the guarding of the border region had
noticeably intensified. For example, in the summer of 2014, we were stopped no less
than six times at checkpoints as we drove out of Dajabón on the long journey back to
Santo Domingo. The military guards at the checkpoints were looking for Haitians who
may have stowed away or were otherwise unauthorized to be in the Dominican Repub-
lic. At each checkpoint, I observed groups of detained young men, presumably Hai-
tian, huddled together on the side of the road. I was told that at the end of the day they
would be returned to the border and ordered back into Haiti. The border region em-
bodied a strong contradiction between the sociality and cooperation of the binational
market exchange and the policy of anti-Haitian migration.
Dajabón feels very much like a frontier town, with lots of activity in the streets.
Many genres of Island music blare from passing cars and open shops. The heat is con-
siderable, as is the humidity. Arriving to attend the 2014 commemoration, I made my
way to the recommended, though not fancy, downtown hotel where most of the BOL
crew were staying. They were busy coordinating with the team in Ounaminthe while
also taking care of last-minute details in Dajabón. The following day, Saturday, was the
main event. Art and culture activities took place all day in the central park across the
street from Nuestra Señora de Rosario Church, where a special evening mass would be
celebrated in the name of the victims of 1937. The energy in the park was raised with
the arrival of busloads of young people involved with nonprofits dedicated to educat-
ing and empowering young people on the island, especially young women.12 Art proj-
ects in the park focused on positive affirmations of binational cooperation, peace, and
understanding. Throughout the day, people joined in: folks from the Peace Corps,
others from the United States, and yet others from Haiti, while many locals looked
on with curiosity from nearby sidewalks. Later in the day, a local restaurant provided
dinner for the hundred or so people participating in the pre-commemoration activi-
ties. Following dinner, we headed to the church for mass, during which the parishion-
ers received a history lesson on 1937 and how, in the years that followed, Dominicans
were encouraged to see a divide, not unity, with Haitians. The sermon concluded with
a message about the importance of solidarity with Haitians. As we left the church, we
formed a procession of perhaps 100 people with hand-held candles and wound our
way through the mostly dark streets of Dajabón to the closed border gate while we
chanted and sang songs of faith, protest, and liberation. At the border, there were brief
speeches and testimonials about the impact of 1937 on Dominican and Haitian so-
ciety and identity and the message about how being Dominican has come to mean be-
ing against Haitians. We placed our candles on the ledge of the steel border gate while
peering into the darkness, trying to discern the same activity occurring simultaneously
in Haiti, on the other side of the river (Figure 2). The activities of the commemoration

Figure 2. Border of Lights annual commemoration, Dajabón, Dominican Republic (Photo

by the author, October 8, 2016).
were poignant, and there was a powerful sense of comunitas as awareness grew about
how we understand the nation and national belonging, including the difficult heritage
of the 1937 state violence.
In October 2016, I returned to Dajabón to participate in the annual commem-
oration. Over three days I learned more about the BOL collective, about the local ef-
forts associated with the commemoration, and about the ongoing crisis of statelessness
and xenophobia affecting Dominicans of Haitian descent and Haitian immigrants. The
commemoration took place just days after a fierce hurricane that, while sparing the
area near Dajabón, had devastated parts of Haiti and was also threatening the south-
eastern seaboard of the United States. The storm interrupted the travel plans of some
of the BOL organizers, resulting in modification of planned activities. Still, there were
familiar faces from 2014 and similar activities that focused on public education and
dialogue and historical memory. The ritual candlelit commemorative march from
the church to the border capped the activities.
The following day the BOL crew moved to the city of Santiago. From the comfort
of a restaurant, the online “global vigil” took place during the evening. The next morn-
ing, I felt privileged to be invited to the debriefing meeting in which activists from Cen-
tro Bonó and the social movement Reconoci.do came from Santo Domingo to update
the group about the ongoing conditions of statelessness of Dominicans of Haitian de-
scent, despite efforts of the Dominican Republic government to spin a public message
that the situation had improved.13 Plans for 2017 were already getting underway with

a desire to make the eightieth-anniversary activities even more memorable and impact-
ful. More could be done to motivate Dominican civil society organizations to actively
participate in the annual commemoration. Further, more could be done to cross-reference
MMRD and BOL, two historical memory sites that have overlapping goals. Discussions
about collaboration are ongoing. Among the challenges is that, as a grassroots dias-
poric collective, BOL is not accustomed to the advance planning that MMRD requires
for any joint effort.
CONCLUSION
In the Dominican Republic today, memory sites newly focus attention on the 1937
massacre of up to 20,000 Haitians ordered by the dictator Rafael Leonel Trujillo. The
historical memory projects take on a new urgency because of the current crisis of Do-
minicans of Haitian descent being made stateless by recent changes in the national con-
stitution. In 2016, many thousands of people were forcibly or voluntarily deported
from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Amnesty International estimates that of the
100,000 deported, 15% claim to have been born in the Dominican Republic.14 Some
of the displaced are currently living in makeshift camps in the southern Haitian border
town of Anse-à-Pitre. They are refugees, stateless and nation-less.
In this paper, I have explored how new historical memory projects in the Domin-
ican Republic strive to make “familiar” the historic process of the Dominican Republic
nation-building that constructs Haitians and other black bodies as the nation’s “other,”
rendering them “strange.” Although it is the work of nation-building to establish mean-
ings about collective identity, and such meanings are often contrasted with definitions
of internal and external “others,” in our increasingly globalizing world, factors such as
migration, decolonization, and international expectations challenge such historically
constructed borders of difference. What role can a new museum and annual commem-
orations at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic have in bringing at-
tention to the nation’s difficult heritage of state violence and in illuminating how his-
torical nation-building constructs the “other”? With the current crisis against Haitians
and Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic, and the increase in
anti-Haitianism, there is a concern not to repeat the violence of the past (Paulino
2006).
I am interested in what ethnography can reveal about how societies imagine and
reimagine what it means to belong to the nation and how that illuminates the his-
torical and ongoing project of constructing boundaries between “us” and “them,” and
between the “familiar” and the “strange.” As I link my research to current anthropo-
logical debates about the political and the ontological, the lesson is that anthropologists
can study not only the processes whereby ideas of the nation and national belonging are
naturalized and reproduced, but also the unfolding ways in which they are challenged.
More than a theoretical concern, in the Dominican Republic today, the safety and
well-being of many thousands of people is at stake and thus should be a concern for
us all.

NOTES
Special thanks to Edward Paulino, Luisa De Peña Díaz, Juan Rodriguez, Jose Guerrero
and many others connected with the Dominican Republic who continue to inform and
inspire my research. Many thanks to the reviewers who generously offered time and at-
tention to this manuscript. This research has been funded by the University of Cal-
ifornia Center for New Racial Studies and the University of California-Merced’s Cen-
ter for the Humanities.
1. See Kiran Jayaram (2010) for analysis of how global capitalism and other struc-
tural factors motivate Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic.
2. The national Museo del Hombre Dominicano (Museum of Dominican Man)
in Santo Domingo is the tourist site most frequently visited to learn about Domin-
ican history and culture. Visitors to the museum will not learn about 1937. Although
the museum has endeavored to balance positive representations of the indigenous
Taino, Spanish, and black African roots of Dominican identity, more needs to be
done to challenge the heritage of anti-blackness and anti-Haitianism.
3. Article 18 of the new constitution states that Dominicans are “people born in
the national territory, with the exception of the sons and daughters . . . of foreigners
who are in transit or reside illegally in Dominican territory” (my translation).
4. Deborah Thomas (2004, 2011) examines Jamaica to offer a comparable study
of the historicity of Jamaican identity and Caribbean and global blackness.
5. Modern nation-building in the Dominican Republic begins with either the
First Republic (1844–1861) or the Second Republic (1865–1916), when separation
from Haiti occurred.
6. To counter dominant messages about conflict and antagonism, scholars today
are producing scholarship that illustrates cooperation, especially in the everyday inter-
actions of Dominicans and Haitians (e.g., Eller 2017; Fumagalli 2015). Samuel Mar-
tinez (2003) complicates the “fatal-conflict model” that represents Haiti and the Do-
minican Republic as locked in intractable polarization: “the people of the two nations
do not confront each other in unmitigated enmity but are bound together in a more
complex weave of mutual fascination and repulsion, attraction and dislike, respect and
fear” (2003:84). Amaury Rodriguéz and Jesse Pérez (2016) provide an extensive bib-
liography on the Dominican-Haitian conflict.
7. Trujillo was assassinated in 1961. His policies of anti-Haitianism, Negropho-
bia, and Hispanophilia continued to be institutionalized through the authoritarian
regime of Joaquín Balaguer. Balaguer had influenced many of Trujillo’s repressive pol-
icies. Following Trujillo’s assassination, Balaguer became president three times: 1960–
1962, 1966–1978, and 1986–1996. The third term of his presidency was more liberal
than the previous ones.
8. According to historian Edward Paulino, co-founder of Border of Lights (BOL),
the BOL collective was formed following the death in 2011 of Sonia Pierre, a respected
Dominican activist who through her organization MUDHA (Movimiento de Mujeres
Dominicana-Haitianas) fought against anti-Haitianism. BOL was inspired by noted

Dominican-American novelist Julia Alvarez, who participates in each annual com-

memoration. Writers Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, 2007) and
Edwidge Danticat (The Farming of Bones, 1998) are among the high-profile BOL col-
laborators from the Dominican and Haitian diaspora. Other founding members in-
clude Cynthia Carrión, Rana Dotson, DeAndra Beard, Ana Ozuna, Megan Myers,
Sady Díaz, Michelle Wucker, Scherezade García, Nehanda Loiseau, Miguel Díaz, and
Lesly Manigat. Some key members of BOL from the United States do not have ances-
tral roots in Hispaniola but are committed to improving conditions on the island. For
more information see http://www.borderoflights.org. Accessed 10 July 2017.
9. More information can be found at the websites for each organization: Centro
Bonó http://bono.org.do; MUDHA http://mudhaong.org/en/; Solidaridad Fronte-
riza http://www.solidaridadfronteriza.org. All accessed 1 July 2017.
10. Massacre River was named not for the 1937 violence, but for an earlier, co-
lonial struggle with French troops.
11. For a description of the first annual BOL commemoration, see Paulino and
García 2013. The Nuestra Señora de Rosario Church is a collaborator with the Bor-
der of Lights annual commemoration.
12. The participating organizations included Yspaniola (http://yspaniola.org); the
Mariposa DR Foundation (http://www.mariposaDRfoundation.org), and the Espe-
ranza Project. http://www.esperanzaproject.ca). All accessed 1 July 2017.
13. Reconoci.do is an independent national civic network principally involving
Dominicans of Haitian descent. Their web presence, including bilingual English and
Spanish videos posted to YouTube, illustrates transnational audiences and civil society
engagements. Reconoci.do, Border of Lights, and other transnational efforts frame
the Dominican Republic’s exclusionary policies as part of the larger War against the
Immigrant and the global war against blackness.
14. Amnesty International, “Dominican Republic: Reckless deportation to Haiti
leaving thousands in limbo” (14 June 2016). https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press
-releases/dominican-republic-reckless-deportations-haiti-leaving-thousands-limbo-new
-report. Accessed 20 August 2017.
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R.Delugan StrangeAndFamiliar

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Reimagining the Strange and

Familiar in National Belonging

R O B I N M A R I A D E L U G A N , School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Arts, University

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Memorial Museum of Dominican Resistance) opened in May 2011 in Santo Domingo

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THE CURRENT CRISIS OF EXCLUSION

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HISPANIOLA: AN ISLAND DIVIDED

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Anthropology, 1937 Public Memory Sites, and National Belonging

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Museo Memorial de la Resistencia Dominicana (MMRD)

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Figure 1. 1937 Haitian Genocide Exhibition, Museo Memorial de la Resistencia Domini-

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Figure 2. Border of Lights annual commemoration, Dajabón, Dominican Republic (Photo

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Dominican-American novelist Julia Alvarez, who participates in each annual com-

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