[This is a repost of a May 16, 2023, post, which seems more relevant now because of the huge influx of Haitian immigrants, many into small rural towns]
This is a funny video to watch simply because the host dances around the real difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Basically, he notes that although the two countries share the same island in the Caribbean and have similarly sized populations, Haiti is very poor, corrupt, and violent, while the Dominican Republic is relatively wealthy and a much safer, more pleasant country. He starts his presentation on the right track, noting that as a French sugar colony, Haiti wound up with a black African slave population many times the size of the non-black population; whereas, as a Spanish colony, the Dominican side had a much smaller population of black African slaves which were outnumbered by the number of Europeans and non-blacks in the colony.
The host of the video tries to come up with other reasons--political, historical, geographical--to explain the current disparity, but even he has to concede that they are not satisfactory explanations, falling back on Haiti never being able to form a functional government as had the Dominican Republic. But that, in my mind at least, is a product of the actual difference between the two countries and not the result of chance or accident.
It's because the Dominican Republic won't let Haitians in.
ReplyDeleteHeh!
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