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Theories of Haitian Mobility and their 
Relationship to the Dominican Sugar Industry  

Juliana Ramirez 

 
Juliana Ramirez is a fourth-year student and a Jackman Humanities Institute 
Undergraduate Fellow doing a specialist in Art History and a minor in Spanish. She 
is interested in the representation of the 'Other' in Western art during the two 
centuries following the encounter between Western Europe and the Americas. More 
specifically, in how depictions of 'racial' differences in Renaissance paintings and 
prints helped to shape European identity. Geographically, her research focuses on 
Mexico, the Caribbean, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. 
 
 In this paper I will study the emergence and evolution of the 
Dominican sugar plantations—and their employment of migrant 
labor—in order to delineate the reasons that led to Haitian migration 
to the Dominican Republic. Firstly, I will investigate different 
scholarly explanations on migration in the Caribbean; secondly, I 
will describe how the Dominican ingenio evolved; and finally, I will 
compare the migration theories with the economic development of 
the Dominican sugar industry in order to discern the possible causes 
of Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic during the early 
Twentieth century. 

Many different scholars explain the reasons why Haitians 
migrate. Glenn Perusek, for instance, believes that “it is Haiti’s 
position as the most backward country in the Western hemisphere 
that leads to immutable outflow from the country.”1 In other words, 
Haiti, and its situation of extreme poverty, pushes its citizens out of 
the country. Perusek takes this argument so far as to claim that the 
situation in Haiti is so dire that the frequency of Haitian migration is 
unaffected by labor demand.2 According to Perusek, for Haitians, 
migration is a choice of life or death: “migrate or starve.”3 
 Other scholars, however, assume less radical positions. 
Andrés Cortén and Michiel Baud, for example, believe that what 

                                            
1 Glenn Perusek, “Haitian Emigration in the Early Twentieth Century,” 

International Migration Review 18, no. 1 (Spring, 1984): 6. 
2 “The reason changes in labor demand in receiving countries play little or no 

part in determining the level of migration from Haiti—once migration flows are 

established—stems from the fact that the situation for most Haitians at home is 

not ‘normal’. The situation—absolute poverty—is the fundamental cause of 

migration from Haiti.” Ibid, 7. 
3 Ibid, 14. 



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44 
 

impels Haitians to migrate is the possibility of “monetary savings.”4 
Cortén argues that because of “the succession regime [in Haiti, which 
led] to the parceling of land,”5 the Haitian economy remained 
‘backward’ and devoted to small agricultural production.6 
Mercantilism, then, could not—and did not—emerge in Haiti; 
instead, the majority of financial transactions were conducted 
through systems of exchange and bartering.7 In other words, the 
cause of Haitian emigration, according to Cortén and Baud, is not 
Haiti’s extreme poverty, but the desire to save hard currency to bring 
(or send) back home in order to buy consumer goods without having 
to exchange the food that they grow.8 
 Dennis Conway takes on a more historical approach. He 
argues that people from the Caribbean see “mobility options…as an 
appropriate response to their situations” because “their predecessors 
had emigrated away from the plantations.”9 Put differently, 
migration in the Caribbean emerges as a historical strategy to 
ameliorate one’s situation. Samuel Martínez, elaborates on this idea 
and argues that “given the Caribbean region's long history of forced 
immigration and bonded labor, it is not surprising that geographical 
mobility was one of the first ways that Afro-Caribbean peoples 
asserted their freedom after emancipation.”10 Migration, from this 
viewpoint, is not simply a necessity but also a choice.  
 Martínez, furthermore, comments that when larger 
migrations occur there usually is an “active inducement by 
government or host employers,”11 and therefore, in the case of mass 
migrations, the individual’s desire to ‘escape poverty’ or improve 

                                            
4 Michiel Baud, “Sugar and Unfree Labour: Reflections on Labour Control in the 

Dominican Republic, 1870-1935,” Journal of Peasant Studies 19, no. 2 (1992): 

312. And, Andrés Cortén et al, “Haití: estructura agraria y migración de 

trabajadores a los centrales azucareros dominicanos”, in Azúcar y política en la 

República Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Ediciones de Taller, 1976), 106. 
5 “La tenencia de la tierra es aquella de la pequeña propiedad que da lugar, en 

razón del régimen sucesorio, al parcelamiento” [All translations from Spanish to 

English are mine]. Cortén et al, 102.  
6 Franc Báez Evertsz, Braceros haitianos en la República Dominicana (Santo 

Domingo: Ediciones de Taller, 1984), 40. 
7 Corte et al, 100.  
8 Ibid.  
9 Dennis Conway, “Caribbean International Mobility Traditions,” Boletín de 

Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 46 (June, 1989): 22. 
10 Samuel Martínez, “From Hidden Hand to heavy Hand: Sugar, the State, and 

Migrant labor in Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” Latin American Research 

Review 34, no. 1 (1999): 60. 
11 Ibid, 59. 



JULIANA RAMIREZ 
THEORIES OF HAITIAN MOBILITY  

45 
 

their situation is less significant than the migration programs 
promoted by governments or employers.  

Frans Báez Evertsz agrees with Martínez, and argues that 
“Haitian citizens emigrate because of extreme poverty and 
unemployment [but also] because in [the receiving] country there 
are: a constant demand for labour, and a recruiting system that 
stimulates, facilitates, and regulates the incorporation of Haitian 
workers into the host country.”12 In other words, both the receiving 
and sending government must cooperate in the sponsorship of 
migrants. 

Of these theories concerning migration in the Caribbean, 
which one best explains the mass migration of Haitians to the 
Dominican Republic in the early twentieth century? Since most of 
these migrants work in the sugar plantations, an analysis of the 
development of the ingenios will be necessary to answer this 
question. 

The Dominican Republic was the last Caribbean country to 
develop large-scale sugar production.13 Nonetheless, Dominican 
sugar production emerged and one could argue, at the opportune 
moment. Its development in 1870 coincides with “the outbreak of the 
first Cuban war of independence (1868-78)…[that] affected the 
production of the world’s major producer-exporter [of cane sugar, 
and] the war between France and Germany in 1870…[that] affected 
the major producers of beet sugar [in Europe].”14  

The Dominican Republic, however, did not replace Germany 
or Cuba as the world’s major producer of sugar. As a matter of fact, 
many years passed before the incipient Dominican plantations 
transformed into large, modern, profitable ingenios. Del Castillo 
describes this process in three phases: (1) the competitive phase 

                                            
12 “Los ciudadanos haitianos emigran de su país debido a los altos niveles de 

pobreza y desocupación imperantes; y se dirigen a [otro país] porque existe en 

este país una oferta predeterminada de empleos para ellos y un sistema de 

reclutamiento que estimula, regula y facilita su incorporación”. Báez Evertsz, 

121. 
13 Harmannus Hoetink, “Labour ‘Scarcity’ and Immigration in the Dominican 

Republic c.1875-c.1930,” in Labour in the Caribbean, ed. Malcolm Cross and 

Gad Heuman (London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 1988), 160. 
14 José del Castillo, “The Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry: From 

Competition to Monopoly, from National Semiproletariat to Foreign Proletariat,” 

in Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the 

Nineteenth Century, ed. Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Frank Moya Pons, and 

Stanley L. Engerman (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 

215. 



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46 
 

(early 1870s-1884 crisis), (2) the transition phase (1884 crisis-US 
occupation), and (3) the phase of importation of Haitian labor (US 
occupation-1920s crisis).15 These three moments will help us 
understand the evolution of the plantations, and the reasons why the 
importation of Haitian labour became imperative in this process. 

The competitive phase “was characterized by the 
predominance of individual businesses, a semi-mechanized 
technology, a predominantly national (Dominican) labor force, and 
the existence of attractive salary levels.”16 However, with the crisis of 
1884,17 prices plummeted, and producers “were forced to cut their 
expenditure.”18 Dominican workers refused to perform the same job 
for less money, and since they had other sources of income, as the 
terrenos comuneros,19 they simply abandoned the plantations and 
returned to their communal lands. Both the government and 
planters proved unable to control local labour because most workers 
had access to land through which they could earn a living.20 
Dominican workers, in other words, did not need wage labour to 
survive; they had other options. 

In the transition phase the main objective was the economic 
recovery of the industry, and thus the “concentration of capital.”21 
Since Dominican workers were not willing to work in the plantations 
for the wages offered, a need for foreign labour emerged.22  This need 
was first satisfied by cocolos, West Indian workers coming from 
British territories.23 As Patrick E. Bryan points out, “it was not the 

                                            
15 Ibid, 217-220. 
16 Ibid, 217. 
17 “The beet industry had undergone extraordinary technological development 

during the second half of the Nineteenth century…In this regard the sugar cane 

industry had been lagging. The gap reached such proportions that for world 

sugar production in the 1899-1900 harvest…31 percent was cane sugar and 69 

percent was beet.” Ibid., 224. 
18 Baud, 309. 
19 Hoetink, 166. 
20 “The durable ‘scarcity’ of local labour for the sugar sector may be attributed to 

a mixture, varying over time, of such factors as low population density in 

combination with easy access to land.” Ibid., 169. And “The Dominican 

Republic’s sparse population and easy availability of land caused the country to 

resemble an open frontier in 1875…If left free, rural Dominicans could easily 

earn a living as independent agricultural producers without needing to sell their 

labor to large proprietors.” Martínez, 62. 
21 Del Castillo, 217. 
22 “By the 1910s, Dominicans had mostly abandoned labor in the cane fields to 

immigrant workers.” Martínez, 65. 
23 Del Castillo, 238-242. 



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THEORIES OF HAITIAN MOBILITY  

47 
 

welfare of labour that mattered, or the color of the labour, but the 
maximization of profit,”24 and cocolos worked for far less money 
than Dominicans: they were “a source of cheap labor [and] could be 
subjected to harsh discipline with less hesitation than Dominican 
national.”25 Because West Indians did not speak Spanish, and did not 
have strong community ties in the Dominican Republic they lacked 
the power to organize effectively.26  

However, there was a paradox. While planters encouraged 
the importation of foreign labor “in 1912, the Dominican government 
passed a law that declared in part that ‘natives of European colonies 
in America, those of Asia or Africa and of Oceania, as also laborers of 
any race except the Caucasian, need prior permission to immigrate 
into the country.’” 27 In other words, the Dominican government 
became stricter on its migration policies, and outright favoured the 
migration of whites. It was a racist policy that allowed sugar planters 
to import and exploit foreign, non-white labor: these non-white 
migrants were not welcomed in the Dominican Republic, and thus, 
working on the plantations became their only key to immigrate into 
the Dominican. Planters, in other words, saw an effective solution to 
lower wages (and thus optimize profit) in the implementation of 
foreign non-white labour, for these workers were more vulnerable.  

Furthermore, the Dominican government was “financially 
weaker than some of the sugar companies,”28 and “import/export 
taxes were [the government’s] only source of income.”29 Therefore, 
sugar planters exerted a lot of power on the government’s policy 
making. What ensued from this power dynamic was a “process of 
‘illegalisation’ of [the] labor force.”30 Put differently, planters took 
advantage of the racist “national rhetoric [which] provided [them] 
with a lever to increase their exploitation of…workers.”31 With the 
illegalization of non-white labour, planters had more power over 

                                            
24 Patrick E. Bryan, “The question of Labor in the Sugar Industry of the 

Dominican Republic in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in 

Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the 

Nineteenth Century, ed. Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Frank Moya Pons, and 

Stanley L. Engerman (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 

238.  
25 Martínez, 65. 
26 Ibid. 
27 Bryan, 242. 
28 Martínez, 69. 
29 Baud, 311. 
30 Ibid, 314 
31 Ibid. 



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their employees: planters, who financed the Dominican government 
through their payment of import/export taxes, also allowed for 
illegal non-white labour to migrate to the Dominican Republic to 
work in the plantations. These workers, however, could not exit the 
plantation, for they were illegal in the country. Planters had 
manipulated the government’s policy in order to make their workers 
more vulnerable and exploitable.   

Furthermore, in 1916, when the US occupied the Dominican 
Republic, “a Land Registration Law was promulgated which 
effectively put an end to the terrenos comuneros.”32 As Báez Evertsz 
mentions, “the installation of foreign agricultural companies granted 
with huge land concessions, was one of the most direct and 
important mechanisms for the dismantlement of the traditional 
agricultural system [in the Dominican Republic].”33 This 
reorganization of land, consequently, led to the conversion of sugar 
plantations into "well-protected bastions of (foreign) capital with 
practical sovereignty on their premises,"34 in which sugar planters 
had absolute control over workers.35 

Haitian immigration to the Dominican Republic emerges—
as a major phenomenon—during the period of the U.S. occupation.36 
Firstly, in the 1920s West Indians were finding other job possibilities 
in Curaçao and Aruba;37 and secondly, the Haitian U.S. occupation 
coincides with the Dominican U.S. occupation: “the U.S. military 
governments of Haiti (1915-1934) and the Dominican Republic 
(1916-1924) began to set up conditions for the state to take an 
increasingly active hand in bracero recruitment and resettlement.”38 
As Hoetink comments, efforts to regulate immigration “were…never 

                                            
32 Hoetink, 169. 
33 “La instalación de empresas agrícolas extranjeras, concesionarias de amplias 

porciones de tierra, fue uno de los principales y más directos mecanismos de 

desestructuración del sistema agrícola tradicional”. Báez Evertsz, 42. 
34 Baud, 311. 
35 One of the most evident forms of control over workers is the fact that 

“Dominican sugar companies minted their own money, which could only be used 

on the plantation…Employees of the plantation were obliged to buy their daily 

necessities in the bodegas of the company, where prices were invariably higher 

than in other stores. [Furthermore] as long as [employees] did not have official 

‘Dominican’ money they were prevented from leaving the plantation. The 

companies were often prepared to exchange the vales only at the end of the 

harvest to retain maximum control of their labourers.” Baud, 313-14.  
36 Perusek, 12; Hoetink, 173. 
37 Bryan, 245. 
38 Martínez, 67. 



JULIANA RAMIREZ 
THEORIES OF HAITIAN MOBILITY  

49 
 

at variance with the interests of the large sugar estates, by now 
[1920s] mostly US owned.”39 In other words, Haitian mass migration 
to the Dominican Republic emerges during the U.S. military 
occupations, for both government and employers (both under the 
control of the U.S.) deliberately create the conditions for the mobility 
of labour.40 

Of all the theories on migration in the Caribbean explained 
at the outset of this paper, Martínez’s theory best represents the 
relationship between the Dominican sugar plantations and Haitian 
mobility. Albeit the extreme levels of poverty and Haiti’s weak 
economy, the cause of Haitian migration to the Dominican Republic 
need to be understood not only as a personal decision of the migrant, 
but also as a system implemented by governments and 
entrepreneurs to exert control over workers and to lower wages. In 
fact, according to Martínez, “for a time, emigration fees and 
recruiting permits became the Haitian government's largest internal 
source of revenue.”41 Thus, migration is profitable, not only for the 
receiver country in the form of cheap labour, but also for the sender 
country in the form of permits and fees (and, of course, in the 
avoidance of social policy reform by the displacement of people that 
were likely to demand reform had they stayed). Moreover, the 
creation of anti-migratory laws should be understood as a way to 
racially “isolate [the] labor force [in order] to maintain strict control 
over it.”42  

The paradox is then unraveled: in spite of its apparent 
contradiction, migratory laws, as Hoetink argues, are never opposed 
to entrepreneurs’ interests. The fact that mass Haitian migration 
occurred at the same time as the U.S. occupation—in which U.S. 
interests infiltrated both government and host employers—
demonstrates how an “active inducement”43 by governing bodies, 
more powerful than the individual interest, induced mass Haitian 
migration to the Dominican Republic in the early Twentieth century 
to be used as a source of cheap and pliable labour. 
 
 
 

 

                                            
39 Hoetink, 172. 
40 Martínez, 59. 
41 Ibid, 68. 
42 Baud, 302. 
43 Martínez, 59. 



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Works Cited 

 

Báez Evertsz, Franc. Braceros haitianos en la República Dominicana.  

Santo Domingo: Ediciones de Taller, 1984. 

 

Baud, Michiel. “Sugar and Unfree labour: Reflections on Labour Control in 

the Dominican Republic, 1870-1935.” Journal of Peasant Studies 19, no.2 

(1992): 301-325. 

 

Bryan, Patrick E. “The Question of Labor in the Sugar Industry of the 

Dominican Republic in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” 

In Between Slavery and Free Labour: The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in 

the Nineteenth Century, edited by Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Frank Moya 

Pons, and Stanley L. Engerman, 235-251. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins 

University Press, 1985. 

 

Conway, Dennis. “Caribbean International Mobility Traditions.” Boletín de 

Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 46 (June, 1989): 17-47. 

Cortén, Andrés, Carlos Ma. Vilas, Mercedes Acosta, and Isis Duarte. “Haití: 

estructura agraria y migración de trabajadores a los centrales azucareros 

dominicanos.” In Azúcar y política en la República Dominicana, 87-114. 

Santo Domingo: Ediciones de Taller, 1976. 

 

Del Castillo, José. “The Formation of the Dominican Sugar Industry: from 

Competition to Monopoly, from National Semiproletariat to Foreign 

Proletariat.” In Between Slavery and Free Labour: The Spanish-Speaking 

Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Manuel Moreno Fraginals, 

Frank Moya Pons, and Stanley L. Engerman, 215-234. Baltimore: The Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 1985. 

 

Gorden, Michelle E. “Haitian Forced Labor in the Dominican Republic.” 

Comparative labor Law and Policy Journal 15 (January, 1994): 206-249. 

 

Hoetink, Harmannus. “Labour ‘Scarcity’ and immigration in the Dominican 

Republic c.1875-c.1930.” In Labour in the Caribbean, edited by Malcolm 

Cross and Gad Heuman, 160-175. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 

1988. 

 

Martínez, Samuel. “From Hidden Hand to Heavy Hand: Sugar, the State, and 

Migrant Labor in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.” Latin American 

Research Review 34, no. 1 (1999): 57-84. 

 

Perusek, Glenn. “Haitian Emigration in the Early Twentieth Century.” 

International Migration Review 18, no.1 (Spring, 1984): 4-18. 

 


