Friday, February 24th, 2012
Luis Barrios and David Brotherton on Desperation in the Dominican Republic
“Once again we are face to face with what dependency feels like in an area of the world almost completely dominated and controlled by US and European foreign interests.”—Luis Barrios and David Brotheron on the Dominican Republic
In a recent essay in the English version of Le Monde Diplomatique, Luis Barrios and David Brotherton, the co-authors of Banished to the Homeland: Dominican Deportees and Their Stories of Exile, examine the current economic and political situation in the Dominican Republic.
Their essay, “Dominicans’ dance with want,” was written in the aftermath of the recent tragedy in which a boat capsized off the Northern Dominican coast, leaving at least 12 dead and 39 still missing. The Dominicans who died were looking to escape the desperate conditions facing the nation, whose already fragile economy had been severely hurt by the global recession. As Brotherton and Barrios point out, about 50% of the country is either unemployed or underemployed. The authors write, “Further, about one third of the country’s population live in poverty, i.e., exist on less than 7 US dollars per day, while the top 12 percent continue to own almost 60 percent of the nation’s wealth, although again these figures are misleading since they do not include wealth owned abroad by the Dominican elite. Moreover, the government spends less than 2% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health, almost the lowest in the region.”
“Once again we are face to face with what dependency feels like in an area of the world almost completely dominated and controlled by US and European foreign interests.”—Luis Barrios and David Brotheron on the Dominican Republic
In a recent essay in the English version of Le Monde Diplomatique, Luis Barrios and David Brotherton, the co-authors of Banished to the Homeland: Dominican Deportees and Their Stories of Exile, examine the current economic and political situation in the Dominican Republic.
Their essay, “Dominicans’ dance with want,” was written in the aftermath of the recent tragedy in which a boat capsized off the Northern Dominican coast, leaving at least 12 dead and 39 still missing. The Dominicans who died were looking to escape the desperate conditions facing the nation, whose already fragile economy had been severely hurt by the global recession. As Brotherton and Barrios point out, about 50% of the country is either unemployed or underemployed. The authors write, “Further, about one third of the country’s population live in poverty, i.e., exist on less than 7 US dollars per day, while the top 12 percent continue to own almost 60 percent of the nation’s wealth, although again these figures are misleading since they do not include wealth owned abroad by the Dominican elite. Moreover, the government spends less than 2% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health, almost the lowest in the region.”