Part 3 - Border Market at Elias Pina

As soon as we left the funeral we came upon cement block houses, the only ones we've seen on the entire trip and undoubtedly built by an international relief agency.

We finally arrive at Elias Pina, a small border city that rests in atop a fertile mountain valley. Three times a week a border market transforms the city's streets into seemingly bustling activity. The goods were similar to the ones in Dajabon: enriched imported pasta, cheap imitation perfume, toilet paper, powder soap, socks, plantains, etc.

But Elias Pina was marked by a pervading feeling of apathy and hopelessness. It looked like I was the only foreigner there and yet no one tried to hawk me their wares. Merchants fell asleep atop their goods or left their stands unattended (most of the merchants are women, and they pay a small fee for a slice of sidewalk.)

Part 2 - Evangelical Funeral on the International Road

Our second day of travels we came upon an Evangelical funeral taking up the whole road. Quite a sight to see on this dusty and desolate mountain road: close to a hundred people all bouncing to the same rhythm while passing around a coffin.

Thanks to our connections with Padre Regino Martinez at Solaridad Fronteriza (a prominent, outspoken critic of Haitian's working/living conditions in the Dominican Republic), we were allowed to take photographs, record music, and take part in the celebration.

(The third picture down is of a man jumped onto the coffin and started vibrating on it.)

Part 1 - International Road between Haiti+ D.R.

Along the Dominican-Haitian border is a road referred to simply as "la carreterra internacional." It's a mountainous and serpentine stretch of fallen roads and forgotten people. Built by the Dominican government in 1929 (and not cared for since), it is dotted with dilapidated army barracks that house disgruntled and weary soldiers who roll off their list of complaints to anyone willing to listen. You could just smell the colonial era ruin.

I didn't know what to expect. Dominicans very rarely travel the road - you need a permit from an agency that works along the border and signed by the military just for access. Most people I spoke with weren't even aware there was an international road and if they did, they would spin tales of the violence and danger the Haitians are waiting to perpetrate on foreigners like me.

No Dominicans live on the international road, not even the poorest of the poor. The bleak terrain is inhabited solely by Haitians who move from other parts of the country. Their sustenance is dependent mainly on hand outs from cars passing and the occasional relief agency. They rejected their homes to be constantly rejected on the border.

Chicana author and poet Gloria Anzaldua says, a border "es una herida abierta (is an open wound) where the third world grates against the first and bleeds; (when it) hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country, a border culture."

I wondered if life along the Haitian-D.R. border would be similar, a bizarre hybrid of both cultures. Not so. Here the culture is imperviously suspended above both, as if following it's own space-time continuum. Everything except their desires are antiquated - the clothes seem to be fashioned by 19th century Puritans, they live in simple one room mud houses with tin roofs, and the only form of transportation is by horse. Every so often their lives are punctuated with the glint of modernity when they hear the thrum of a car. Young and old alike run down from all sides of the mountain, shouting, "Dame Algo!"

What's it like to live on the extreme peripheries of both nation's consciousnesses for fifty years?

En route to the international road:

Please note the vintage merengue records being used as decoration in the background....agh!

Along the border is pretty much the only place you'll find pine forests still left in the D.R.

International Road Begins: