Dominicans Vote After a Whisper Campaign

Dominicans turned out in large numbers Thursday to vote in a presidential election that follows a campaign notable for its racist undertones.

Long lines formed at the polls as women voted during the morning, men in the afternoon. Results are expected today in the elections, which open the way for a new generation of leadership. Neither President Joaquin Balaguer, who has governed the country for 22 of the past 30 years, nor his lifelong rival, 86-year-old Juan Bosch, is on the ballot.

Campaign speeches have focused on that change in leadership. But advertising and whisper campaigns in this mostly mixed-race country by opponents of the dark-skinned leading candidate, Jose Francisco Pena Gomez, have called attention to race. Most polls predict that Pena Gomez of the Dominican Revolutionary Party will receive slightly less than the 50% vote needed to win outright and avoid a runoff.

Because the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with largely black, Creole-speaking Haiti, racism here is often disguised as nationalist, anti-Haitian sentiment.

“There has been an idea that being more anti-Haitian makes you more Dominican,” said Hugo Tolentino, a leading Dominican academic. “But behind the anti-Haiti [attitude] is the question of race. It is the synonym for black.”

That has forced the 59-year-old Pena Gomez, a former mayor of this capital, to overcome daunting prejudice to become a successful politician.

Pena Gomez says he is the offspring of black Dominicans who were mistaken for Haitians, but false rumors that he is of Haitian descent have dogged his 25-year career nevertheless. And because he draws most of his support from the poor neighborhoods of Santo Domingo, military leaders routinely refer to him as “that Haitian Communist,” analysts say.

In the days leading up to the election, Pena Gomez’s opponents claimed that his party gave voter credentials to thousands of Haitians and threatened to challenge at the polls voters they suspected of being Haitian.

In the single reported incident of serious violence, a Dominican man of Haitian descent was shot to death in an argument at a polling station, police said. Witnesses told police that the man’s nationality, and thus his right to vote, was questioned before the shooting.

“These are the same racist practices that have been used against Pena Gomez for the past 25 years,” said Abraham Lowenthal, director of the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Appearing to press that point, the government in recent weeks has rounded up and deported hundreds of Haitians.

“This bothers me because the people being deported are practically my relatives,” said Ramon Cheli, 23, an aspiring singer who lives in an agricultural workers’ camp about 15 miles outside of the capital. “My mother and father are Haitian, but I was born here.

“Leonel is behind this,” Cheli said of the other leading presidential candidate, Leonel Fernandez.

Fernandez, 42, of Bosch’s Dominican Liberation Party, has denied responsibility for the government’s actions, noting that the ruling party candidate is not he but Jacinto Peynado, who has been trailing a distant third in the polls.

The tactics used against Pena Gomez reflect the depth of resentment that has existed here since Haiti’s 22-year occupation of the Dominican Republic more than a century ago. Over several days in 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo massacred 18,000 black people presumed to be Haitians.

Even now, the bickering between the two nations has made it impossible for them to coordinate control of their common border, leaving the area to bandits and hoodlums. The neighbors do not even have a trade agreement, said Maria Elena Munoz, former head of the Haitian affairs office in the Dominican Foreign Ministry.

“The two cultures are different,” one foreign diplomat said. “The Dominicans regard themselves as almost developed compared to the Haitians.” The Dominican Republic’s annual per capita production is $3,070--more than three times that of Haiti, the hemisphere’s poorest country, with an average annual per capita production of $870.

The two nations’ differences have been exacerbated by illegal immigration from Haiti. Immigration has been a sensitive issue for both countries.

“It is true that we have exploited Haitians, but no worse than they are exploited” in their own country, Tolentino said. “Historically, Haitian and Dominican military leaders sold Haitians across the border.”

Now that both countries have civilian governments--Haiti’s three-year military dictatorship ended in 1994 when U.S. troops restored the democratically elected government to power--there are signs of improved relations. Haitian President Rene Garcia Preval visited Santo Domingo in March, the first time in recent memory that a leader of one country has crossed the island to confer with his counterpart.

Both Pena Gomez and Fernandez say they would put improved relations with Haiti high on their agendas, if elected. But Pena Gomez’s opponents have twisted even that simple position to say that he advocates uniting the two countries.

“That is a lie,” Tolentino said. “If this is explained to people clearly, they will understand” the need for cooperation.