How the US Militarized the Haiti-Dominican Republic Border

[Judi Lynn]

How the US Militarized the Haiti-Dominican Republic Border

As part of the Global War on Terror, the US has exported its border patrol model to the Caribbean.

—By Todd Miller

| Tue Nov. 19, 2013 1:40 PM PST

It isn't exactly the towering 20-foot wall that runs like a scar through significant parts of the US-Mexican borderlands. Imagine instead the sort of metal police barricades you see at protests. These are unevenly lined up like so many crooked teeth on the Dominican Republic's side of the river that acts as its border with Haiti. Like dazed versions of US Border Patrol agents, the armed Dominican border guards sit at their assigned posts, staring at the opposite shore. There, on Haitian territory, children splash in the water and women wash clothes on rocks.

One of those CESFRONT (Specialized Border Security Corps) guards, carrying an assault rifle, is walking six young Haitian men back to the main base in Dajabon, which is painted desert camouflage as if it were in a Middle Eastern war zone.

If the scene looks like a five-and-dime version of what happens on the US southern border, that's because it is. The enforcement model the Dominican Republic uses to police its boundary with Haiti is an import from the United States.

CESFRONT itself is, in fact, an outgrowth of a US effort to promote "strong borders" abroad as part of its Global War on Terror. So US Consul-General Michael Schimmel told a group from the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic in the Dominican Republic back in 2008, according to an internal report written by the law students along with the Dominican immigrant solidarity organization Solidaridad Fronteriza. The US military, he added, was training the Dominican border patrol in "professionalism."

Schimmel was explaining an overlooked manifestation of US imperial policy in the post-9/11 era. Militarized borders are becoming ever more common throughout the world, especially in areas of US influence.

More:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/border-patrol-us-haiti-dominican-republic

[Bacchus4.0]

1. when hasn't the Haiti-DR border been militarized??

not that you would no. Its pretty common to have soldiers and border patrol at borders. duh!

[MisterP]

2. pé-ré-híl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley_Massacre

[Judi Lynn]

3. Thanks for the painless education!

Very glad to have read the information. Thank you.

[center]

Vice President Richard Nixon & Rafael Trujillo, BFF.[/center]

[MisterP]

4. he also spent I think $1M a year on Congressmen who'd unquestioningly support him

(like the Somozas would) and on propaganda on how DR was the victim of smear campaigns; he had Jesús Galíndez disappeared from NYC, then disappeared the US-citizen pilot; eventually the CIA got sick of him (as with all erstwhile allies)

he also offered to bring 100,000 Jews to Sosúa 1938, but Chasbara came way later (and Israel likes El Salvador more than DR, giving us the Soccer War when ORDEN decided to ape the Six-Day War)