A recent violent and destructive march calling for the expulsion of Haitians in Punta Cana demonstrates the vehement anti-Haitianism and rising fascism prevalent in the Dominican Republic.
construction worker observes and records a protest from the top of a building under development. About 30 workers walking along a dirt road surround a vehicle, which soon takes off, leaving the frame. A shot is heard, and the workers run away from the shooter. A second shot is fired. A worker lies motionless, face down on the hot earth, shot in the back. Another video shows the workers around their dying comrade. A third video brings us face-to-face with death: we see Haitian construction worker Fritzner Pierre Presnor, known affectionately as Sonson, lifeless, with his yellow safety vest bloodied at the left shoulder. The National Police later claimed that a machete was found near Presnor’s body, but the videos show that he was not armed and that he was wounded at a considerable distance from the vehicle where foreman Héctor Ramírez Pérez shot at the Haitian workers.
Presnor was killed in broad daylight on March 22 during a protest with fellow Haitian workers demanding their back wages. His death is one example of anti-Haitian violence in the Dominican Republic, which is systematically sanctioned and even promoted by the Dominican state, with the recent authorization of a violent march led by the Antigua Dominican Order (AOD) paramilitary group on March 30 in Friusa, a popular neighborhood of Punta Cana. Another Haitian man would also fall victim to anti-Haitian state violence, a few weeks later. Less than a month after the AOD march, all dwellers of the Mata Mosquito sector of Friusa were expelled and more than five hundred homes were demolished.
The Dominican “Economic Miracle”
On March 22, Presnor and his fellow workers demanded payment of their back wages from Soto, who tried to flee the scene. His aide, Ramírez Pérez, fired shots in the direction of the workers, killing Presnor.The Dominican Labor Code, imposed in the 1990s by former president Joaquín Balaguer, contains a Trujillo-inspired clause, which dictates that no more than 20 percent of a company’s workforce can comprise foreign employees. To circumvent this regulation, companies do not directly hire Haitian workers but turn to informal subcontractors, a mechanism journalist Altagracia Salazar has suggested is even used by president Abinader’s family businesses in the construction sector. Construye Capital turns to Guillermo Filpo Soto—who in his Linkedin profile appears as a representative of a surveying and topography company—for supplying the Haitian workers to build the hotel without an employment contract, being formally in the company’s payroll, or having access to social security. As such, the subcontractors handle enormous amounts of cash without any control and, from time to time, disappear with their employees’ wages.
Presnor’s relatives noted that he worked for Construye Capital, a Spanish company contracted to build the five-star FUNEEQ Hotel Resort in the Uvero Alto sector of Punta Cana. The resort is an ambitious project spanning more than 70,000 square meters (about 750,000 square feet) of construction and twice as much urbanization. The videos of Presnor’s death confirm that he was murdered at the hotel construction site. Construye Capital builds for Fiesta Americana, a company owned by the powerful Mexican Grupo Posadas, owner of more than 150 hotels with 20,000 rooms worldwide. Ramírez Pérez’s shooting against the construction workers at Uvero Alto, as per a National Police report and the account offered by members of Presnor’s family, represents the rupture of the weakest link in the great chain of the so-called Dominican “economic miracle.”
Simón Rodríguez is a journalist and researcher based in the Dominican Republic.