Dominican President Luis Abinader is doubling down on his decision to seal off the border with Haiti by banning Haitians indefinitely in retaliation for Haitian farmers building a canal on the Massacre River. But don’t be fooled. It is merely a ploy. Abinader is running for re-election and using the same playbook Dominican politicians have used for decades — stoking fear and hatred of Haitians. By scapegoating us, Dominican politicians appear to be taking strong decisive action to “protect” their side of Hispaniola, the island we share.
Just days ago, Abinader bowed to pressure from Dominican businessowners to allow trade again. The closure was costing them dollars. In Haiti however, it is costing lives. The ongoing crisis here is growing worse by the day. Gang violence is rampant in the vacuum left by ineffective and illegitimate leadership. Acting President Ariel Henry has refused public demands to step down, instead appealing to the international community for military intervention (Kenya is poised to dispatch 1,000 troops to our homeland with the endorsement of the United Nations and the United States.)
Haiti has been down this road before, and it has never ended well; the UN peacekeeping mission from 2004-2017 was marked by rampant sexual abuse allegations and a cholera outbreak. What Haiti needs from the international community is technical assistance for our police and our education, health and environmental sectors, similar to the Marshall Plan after World War II. And what Haitian farmers need is access to lifesaving water.
When I was growing up, there was plenty of rain, and the plains were naturally irrigated. Back then, there were more than 24,000 acres of land producing food. By 2013 however, the rains had stopped, drought came, and farmers struggled to produce their own food. To find relief, farmers in Maribaroux turned to the Massacre River, which gets its grim name from a battle between Spanish and French settlers in 1728. It is also where Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo murdered thousands of Haitians in 1937.
Despite its bloody past, the river has the potential to give us life. The Massacre River is fed by the watershed that runs from Mont-Organisé in Haiti to Loma de Cabrera in the Dominican Republic. Three rivers on the Haiti side flow into it, augmenting the water available for irrigation. This canal would irrigate the Maribaroux Plain, a very fertile zone capable of growing rice, sugar cane, beans, plantain and corn. And these waters would bring more than 7,000 acres of drought-affected land back into production to feed our communities.
Farmers initially began working together to build a canal in 2013. Work continued in fits and starts until efforts were hampered by the Dominican government, which asserted that the farmers were in violation of the 1929 treaty that governs the use of the waters. In May 2021, both sides signed an agreement that would have allowed work to resume on the canal. But two months later, Haitian President Jovenel Moisë was assassinated, and the project again went dormant.
Since taking office, Henry has shown little interest in the canal. That’s why fed-up farmers took matters into their own hands — literally — and started digging the canal themselves last month. The Haitian government only started signaling support for the project after the peasant farmers became local celebrities. Haitians from all over the country have been flocking to the Maribaroux Plain, digging trenches and laying cement blocks 24/7. Work on the canal has gone viral on social media. And people across the diaspora have been fundraising to help purchase supplies. What started as a humble search for water has turned into a true konbit — a team effort.
Abinader recently defended his unilateral decision to close the border and cut off the water at the World Leaders Forum in New York.
“We have to realize the situation in Haiti is not a normal situation,” he said. “The government of Haiti cannot control, let’s say, 70% of the territory, so you don’t have even a person to speak to that you can relay and say, ‘We have this disagreement. We have this development.’”
There is indeed a lack of governance. Henry was not elected but rather appointed, in essence via tweet. Other world leaders recognize that he not only lacks legitimacy but is wildly unpopular in Haiti, which explains in part their reluctance to intervene militarily and prop up an unelected leader. Consequently, we are left unable to defend and protect ourselves against aggression, including this latest salvo from the Dominican Republic.
Our peasant farmers are simply trying to get water so they can survive. Without the canal, thousands of families will suffer. Abinader conceded that shuttering the border was a “drastic” move, but he refuses to back down. Neither will we. Already, we are discussing how to equitably distribute the water across the region. We will continue to build because we must. And we will not ask permission to exist.
Milostène Castin is a human rights activist and coordinator with Action pour la Reforestation et la Défense de l’Environnement (AREDE) in northeast Haiti.
