POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS
IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
by
ESTHER LANGSTON
HIS 250 I SEC 051, PROFESSOR
SEENARINE, May 16th, 2000
Introduction
The Dominican Republic is a significant and influential
member of the Latin American community of nations. However, there are political, economic,
and social problems in the country, which contribute to high levels of poverty, violence,
and debt. The reason for these problems is due to government manipulation and corruption,
which affect the economic growth and social reform of the country.
This paper will discuss the political, economic, and social
situations in the Dominican Republic and how they affect the people and the country’s
way of life. The paper will show how politics play an important role in society, and how
the wealthy, white elite determines the economic and social outcome of the country.
Politics
Politics in the Dominican Republic is often defined as an
unrelenting quest for power and the privileges that accrue from it, or as an effort by
those who have power and privileges to hang on to them at all cost. Party politics in the
Dominican Republic are aroused by deep passion and power. For instance, rival party
activists supporting different factions will at times go to any length to win power, even
fighting and killing. In the Dominican Republic clientilism and it’s my party consist
of rival party activists who support different political points of view, where political
power is in the hands of the politicians, instead of the people. Clientilism and it’s
my party describes the political climate in the Dominican Republics (Ferguson, 1992).
During election time the entire country becomes highly
politicized and tense, with every rival party campaigning, having huge meetings,
cavalcades and constant barrage party propaganda. Every wall, tree or lamppost is adorned
with the name and colors of a political party. Using dirty tricks are also a conrnon
practice, and are aimed at undermining the credibility of a candidate. For example, during
a presidential election, a rival opponent circulated a false fax claiming that Juan Bosch,
a presidential candidate, was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease (Ferguson, 1992).
The Dominican parties will go to any length in order to win
an election, and to also gain control of the country, as well as, wealth and power. The
government controls a large proportion of the economy. The Dominican political system has
been described as a winner takes all arrangement. where the huge power invested in the
presidency is hardly counterbalanced by the legislature. That is, the president can do
what ever he feels without effective opposition from his cabinet members. Every president
of the Dominican Republic has dominated the parties, and has chosen his political advisers
and cabinet members, instead of adhering to the democratic system. The president normally
has his own private agenda and does not commit to the parties’ choice. Presidential
control keeps the opponent parties from accumulating too much power (Ferguson, 1992).
Personalization of political power in the Dominican
Republic has tended to weaken both government institutions and political parties. The
parties’ constant struggle with each other and the interference from the politicians
keep the parties from representing the people. Since the government also controls the
economy, there is a dictatorship centralism economy controlled on a personal basis. In the
Dominican Republic government ownership include the State Sugar Council, Dominican
Electricity Corp., Institute for Price and stabilization of all state sector jobs, which
are politically appointed from the highest to the lowest. The employees are expected to
show allegiance to the ruling party and the president (Ferguson, 1992).
Economics
The governmental and economic policies of the Dominican
Republic takes wealth away from the poor, enlarging the gap between the poor and the rich.
Furthermore, the gradual switch from sugar has not improved conditions for the poorest in
the Dominican Republic countryside. The government transferred ownership of land and
resources to foreign businessmen and agribusiness’s, depriving the poor people of the
land needed for food production, and low cost housing (Ferguson, 1992).
Diversification is the switch from one productive product
to a wider range of products. The worldwide sugar crises have prompted a move to produce
other nontraditional, agricultural exports to the U.S. and the European markets, for
example, melons, vegetables, citrus fruit, tobacco, and coffee. The government of the
Dominican Republic is seeking to lessen their dependence on sugar and strengthen their
dependency on other resources and export sectors. The push for diversification and
economic independents has not improved conditions for the majority of the lower class
people (Ferguson, 1992).
The gradual switch away from sugar has not improved
conditions for the poorest people in the Dominican Republic countryside. Instead of using
the unlivable sugar land for agrarian reform, the govermnent decided to transfer ownership
and resources to foreign agribusiness and Dominican partners. For instance, Dole and the
state agency in charge of the land reform, owns a tiny fraction of the land. As a result,
landlessness remains a pressing problem, and landlessness is not addressed because of the
domestic food production decline (Ferguson, 1992).
Labor
As a result unemployment, poverty is at its highest level.
For example on May 5, 2000, Eyewitness News gave a report about a Dominican woman trying
to escape from poverty in the Dominican Republic. She was found floating on a piece of
wood off the shore of Puerto Rico. When the woman returned to the Dominican Republic, she
agreed to be interviewed by Eyewitness News. She stated that this was her second attempt
to try and make it to Puerto Rico and then to New York. She stated that in the Dominican
Republic poverty is still very real and that was why she was trying to escape to a better
life.
She tried to make a living in the Dominican Republic, but
no matter how hard she tried, life seemed to get more difficult, and it became a no win
situation. She decided to go with a group of people in a boat and sail to Puerto Rico. She
is now recovering from her ordeal, and has decided not to try and escape again because of
her narrow escape from death. She will try again to make a living in the Dominican
Republic, and she knows that it will not be easy, especially in a country that turns a
blind eye to poverty and the life and death struggle of the poor.
The growing scale of export agriculture estimated that
about 400,000 people depended on coffee production for an income and livelihood.
Traditionally, coffee is cultivated on smallholdings by family units with occasional
employment given to migrant Haitian workers. These smallholdings are often situated in a
remote rural area and receive little assistance in terms of infrastmcture and credit from
the state. Presently eight Dominican family firms dominate the export of coffee. The
producers of this coffee are regularly exploited by a structure of middlemen who pay them
as little as a fifth of the price that they receive from the export houses in other
countries. The state also takes a large cut in the form of high export taxes (Black,
1986).
The agricultural census revealed that two percent of the
owners control 55 percent of the land, while 82 percent of farmers own only 12 percent.
The countryside offers the poor farmers shrinking options, which means badly paid work.
The farmer’s therefore, leave their villages and move towards the cities in search of
work. Other Dominicans look to emigration, legal or illegal, as their only chances of
economic survival (Black, 1986).
Industrial Free Zones (IFZs)
The companies situated in the urban areas are low-cost
assembly plants, which are called Industrial Free Zones (IFZ). These companies
manufacture, textiles, footwear, sporting goods, electronics, and pharmaceuticals.
Approximately 90 percent of the capital investment in the IFZ are foreign, mainly from the
U.S. Each morning hundreds and often thousands of local workers, mostly women, stream into
the plants to start a 10-hour day of a repetitive and poorly paid laborjob. Their earnings
consist of 700 or 800 pesos per month, which is equivalent to a monthly salary ranging
between $62.50 and $71.50 U.S. dollars. A daily wage in the Dominican Republic is
therefore less than a very poor hourly rate in the U.S. (Black, 1986).
The IFZ workers work from 7:30 AM. to 5:00 or 6:00 P.M.
with a 10-minute morning break and a half-hour lunch break. The work is intense and
tedious, and the workers must meet the hourly production targets under heat and noise
conditions. The majority of the workers are women ranging from 18-25 years of age, and
some are newly arrived from the countryside. The workers themselves must meet
transportation cost from the town to the IFZ. There are no prospects for promotion;
instead women are usually released after three or four years in order to make way for
younger workers (Black, 1986).
There are no trade unions in the IFZ, because they are
banned. The government, however, assured the workers in the free zone that they would have
the right to organize and bargain collectively. However, workers who attempted to organize
unions were fired. With a weak labor code and judicial system, there is little expectation
that the workers fired would get their jobs back (Black, 1986).
The IFZs clalm that they bring jobs and foreign exchange to
the Dominican Republic. The companies pointed out for instance, that the IFZ’s around
the country generate regional employment to deter workers from migrating to Santo Domingo
to look for work. The government also stress that the contribution to foreign-exchange
earnings made by the IFZ’S put dollars into the central bank and generate pesos in
order to pay wages and other overheads. The IFZ, however, is exploiting the workers by
paying low-wages for assembly work, which bring few long-term benefits to the economy. Low
wages do not enable workers to consume more locally produced goods and hence create fewer
connections with other sectors of the economy (Black, 1986).
The foreign companies do not invest in the Dominican
Republic economy, and tax concessions prevent the Dominican Republic from collecting badly
needed revenue from these companies. The end result is the creation of foot loose
companies with fewer long-term commitments to the Dominican Republic. These companies move
easily to new host countries in the event of political instability or raising labor cost
in the Dominican Republic, thereby producing economic instability in the Dominican
Republic (Black, 1986).
The Dominican Republic is caught between the desire for
greater economic independence and its reliance on foreign capital, markets, resources,
investment, and technology in order to develop. The transition from an undeveloped
dependent single crop economy to a more independent and diversified one, has adversely
affected the poor and under privileged in the Dominican Republic (Black, 1986).
Society
The Dominican Republic is a nation deeply fragmented along
class and racial lines. The inequality that exist between the 5 percent of the
population who enjoy wealth, status, and power, and the 80 percent who live in abject
poverty is perhaps the most important and obvious feature in the Dominican social
structure. But sandwiched between these two groups is the rising middle class, about 15 to
20 percent of the population. The Dominican Republic class system is a deeply divided and
unequal society, which contributes to poverty and violence, where the rich becomes richer
and the poor poorer (Howard, 1969, Wiarda, 1982).
In the Dominican Republic, the social and racial problems
are caused by the separation of people through the class system. The rigidities of the
social structure of the two class system and the emergence of the middle class, and the
growing potential for warfare, are all essential factors that describe the Dominican
Republic social system (Howard, 1969, Wiarda, 1982).
The class system separates the poor from the rich. The
reality of class separation is evident every where, in clothes, housing, language,
opportunities, and jobs. With many racially complex diversions in the Dominican Republic,
these differences produce both socioeconomic and racial problems (Howard, 1969, Wiarda,
1982).
At the top of the Dominican social elite is mostly whites
of European background. The lower class are not only poor, they also tend to be black
descendants of the original slaves or more recent arrivals fiom Haiti hired to work on the
sugarcane plantation. In between the elite and blacks is the mulatto. Most of the new
middle class is from the mulatto, which are offspring’s of black and white parents
(Howard, 1969, Wiarda, 1982).
The upper class dominate the nations’ social,
political, and economic life. From a statistical viewpoint the class differences in the
Dominican Republic consist of the bottom 50 percent of income earners who receive 18.5
percent of the national income, while the top 10 percent receive 38.5 percent of the
national income. Whenever new wealth is generated in the Dominican Republic, the business
and the professionals profit from it, and the urban poor see little change in their income
or their lives. It is clear that poverty is the situation of life for most of the
Dominican black population (Howard, 1969, Wiarda, 1982).
Life for the poor is a real and constant struggle to
provide the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing. Poverty is visible in the
bloated bellies of many of the children, and the inadequate housing, and the constant
search for employment by young men. It is in the cities where the poverty seems most
stark, particularly when contrasted against the most visible signs of modernity, for
instance new skyscrapers, and building projects that display the wealth. Such contrasts
serve as a reminder of how much need to be done in the Dominican Republic, and how
unevenly modernity has come (Howard, 1969. Wiarda, 1982).
The recent thrust toward development and economic growth
have largely passed by the urban poor, turning them into a vast army of disadvantaged
people, who may pose a major threat to the elite-dominated social and political structure.
The middle and upper classes reveal a much different situation. They have done quite well
even in the midst of an economic downturn. The upper class worries about different things
than those who are in the lower class. The upper class concern themselves with world
market prices for sugar which is critical to the country’s wealth and their own.
Trading and investments, and tourism, and family ties are also critical to this
group’s survival. The lower classes worry about surviving (Howard, 1969, Wiarda,
1982).
The gap between rich and poor in the Dominican Republic
involves more than money or economic statistics. It is a gap between persons inhabiting
entirely different worlds. In the lower class the needs are basic and tied to
life-sustaining activities. For the upper-class group concerns are wider and larger
involving broadened worlds. These gaps not only imply a vast separation between the social
classes, hut also mean perhaps inevitably the potential for class conflict. With little in
common and so much distance between them, the upper and lower classes both know that one
day there will be a war between them. If class conflict does come about it will be because
of the lack of equality and lack ofjustice allowed by the system in the Dominican Republic
(Howard, 1969, Wiarda, 1982).
Conclusion
Power in the Dominican Republic remains unbalanced and is
concentrated in the hands of the few, not the many, which is clear in both the class,
social structure and the power of the social and interest groups. The inequality of wealth
and political strength persists. Even today the most important groups in internal
Dominican politics are the armed forces, economic elite, and the Americans. Secondary
importance is the church, students and the organized labor movement. The other groups are
the urban slum dwellers, and the peasants. The poverty of most of the population is to the
visitor the single most striking and immediate feature of the Dominican Republic.
Nevertheless, the poverty is stark, real and plainly visible to all who care to see.
To the poor urban dwellers, a normal day includes the
usually fruitless search for employment, and the continuous struggle to manage an insecure
household with a shortage of basic food and a climate of despair and rising violence.
Although. the foundation for a more pluralistic and democratic system in the Dominican
Republic have been laid, the process of democratization is still in its early stages and
remains incomplete. The Dominican Republic is still searching for its unique identity, its
place in the sun, and although it has made great strides, much remains to be done to
improve the conditions of the majority of its people.
REFERENCES
Black, J.K., 1986. The Dominican Republic: Politics and
Development in an Unsovereign State. Winchester, M.A. Allen and Unwin, Inc.
Ferguson, J., 1992. The Dominican Republic: Beyond The
Lighthouse. London. Latin American Bureau.
Howard, D., 1969. Dominican Republic: Politics and
Culture. London. Latin American Bureau.
Wiarda, HI., Kryzanek, M.J., 1982. The Dominican
Republic: a Caribbean Crucible. Boulder, Colorado. Westview Press Inc.
