Professor Edward Paulino donates his latest publication to the Library

Paulino, Edward. Dividing Hispaniola: the Dominican Republic’s Border Campaign against Haiti, 1930-1961. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. Print.

This book focuses on the campaign against Haiti through the “Dominicanization” of the Dominican border including a least-remembered act of genocide in 1937 ordered by the Dominican dictator Rafael L. Trujillo – a mass murder that saw an estimated 15,000 Haitian men, women, and children slaughtered. Furthermore, he analyses the massacre and the ensuing ideological assault on the Dominican border manifesting into an ideology known as anti-Haitianism. He explains the roots of Anti-Haitianism that take form in the nineteenth century and how systemically it has been used as a tool of exclusion for today’s largest ethnic and racial minority, Haitians and their descendants, struggling to be included into the state as complete cultural political Dominican citizens. Paulino also reassess the narrative of Dominicans self-hatred, negrophobia, and anti-Haitianism by acknowledging the historical legacy of cooperation and collaboration on the border and how the border markets played an important part in the development of the economy on the island since colonial times and continue to be a valuable economic destination.

This book is recommended for students, scholars, and the public at large interested in understanding the history of Dominican Republic’s border campaign against Haiti and the problematics that exist with narratives emphasizing Dominican attitudes of animosity towards Haitians rather than attitudes of admiration and solidarity with Haiti on the border.

Jhensen Ortiz

Assistant Librarian