Border Patrol Nation : Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security

Author:Miller, Todd [Miller, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Perseus Book Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When the couple and the colonel return to the front of the station, I stay. On the bridge itself, the international boundary is controlled by a metal gate, solid on the bottom and with rusty bars on top. It takes about one minute for two Haitian boys to prop themselves up so that their faces appear between the bars. One of the kids doesn’t speak much Spanish but tries anyhow. He waves me over.

“Dominicanos,” he says. I nod.

“Haitianos,” he says. I nod again. He makes the figure of a gun with his fingers. He acts like he is shooting himself with his finger.

The Dominican Republic’s new border guards have committed plenty of abuses against Haitians on the border, including killings. Earlier that day Father Regino Martínez of Solidaridad Fronteriza showed me a photograph of a dead Haitian child who had a bandage taped to his chest where a bullet had hit. According to the Catholic priest, this was just one incident in a long history of violence by the border guard against Haitians, including abuse such as threats, physical violence, illegal detention, and sexual harassment. CESFRONT shot the child on the brown banks of the Massacre River, where I stood with these two kids.

But, the thing is, the kids could be also referring to the slaughter of 1937, as vividly depicted to them by their families and relatives. Or maybe they are mixing them together. Maybe the present is but a logical continuation of the past.

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