José Emperador © Graham Freer/ Progressio

Speaking up for Haitian rights

Trying to imagine one of the world’s poorest places is an unsettling thought. For José Emperador, it’s fairly easy. He has just spent two years there.

Working on the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, not far from the tourist beaches of the Dominican capital Santo Domingo, José says he has seen poverty at its worst.

“The border area is by far the poorest place I have ever seen, the poorest place I have ever been to,” he says. “On the Haitian side, entire families live very badly. There are zero public services. There is no water, no light, no rubbish collection. There is absolutely nothing.”

José Emperador is a Progressio development worker who recently spent two years working with Solidaridad Fronteriza, a grassroots organisation working to strengthen the links between the Haitian and Dominican people, and to defend the rights of the mainly Haitian refugees who are obliged to move across the Dominican-Haitian border in search of work.

It’s a difficult task. Many of the Haitians who make the daily pilgrimage across the border work in the shadow of their Dominican neighbours, without fixed salaries or contracts, with little reward for their back-breaking efforts and with no promise of long-term employment.

Solidaridad Fronteriza is one of the few organisations which stands up for these people – the banana pickers, the construction workers, the domestic cleaners and others – urging the Dominican government to give them a fair deal.

“These guys get paid once a week and this money is never enough to get a good house, not even enough to buy food,” says José. “If these guys lose their jobs, they will end up selling what they can on the streets. It’s called chiripear – they take whatever work they can get, building roads one day, selling things the next.

“Life is really very hard for them. They live in the worst houses. In the DR, the Haitians live in the worst areas and it is really truly shocking. In many rural areas they have no basic services at all, their houses are made of wood or tin and entire families live in a single, tiny room.
 
“They have major health problems too. Haitians living in the DR have no papers so they can’t get health care, their kids can’t go to school. If you don’t have papers you don’t get anything – and you certainly don’t have any rights.
 
“Without papers people don’t exist. They are not Haitian and they are not Dominican. People have got used to it – they have had to deal with this situation their whole lives. Shoe-shiners, young boys, who work on the streets – they don’t know what ‘papers’ are or why they would need them. We need to tell people that they do have rights!”

Effective advocacy and communications expertise is crucial to Solidaridad Fronteriza’s work – and that’s why José was just the man for the job. A communications and advocacy specialist originally from Madrid, José successfully trained the organisation to be media savvy and to hone its communications skills. “The impact that has had on its ability to work with and for the local community has been beyond measure,” says José.

Today, the plight of Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic is firmly on the political agenda in the corridors of power in Santo Domingo – thanks, in part, to Solidaridad’s and José’s hard work.

Where next?

José Emperador has returned to the Dominican Republic to embark on his second placement with Progressio. After two years working with some of the world’s poorest people on the Haitian-Dominican border, José took a short break, and is now raring to go in his new role as an Advocacy and Communications specialist with the Jesuit Refugee Migrant Service, based in Santo Domingo.

There is still so much work to be done on the DR / Haitian border. If José Emperador had his way, he would ensure better legislation to protect migrant workers – or at least some degree of recognition from the DR government that Haitian workers exist.

When he’s not at work, or pondering how he can make a difference to the lives of Dominican and Haitians, José can be found with his ears plugged into classical music, or jazz. He’s also an avid reader. Who’s his fave author then? Mario Vargas Llosa, apparently. “I don’t like him as a person but he is talented as a writer,” he says.