This volume explores the significance of racial theorizing in Dominican society and its manifestation in everyday life. The author examines how ideas of skin colour and racial identity influence a wide spectrum of Dominicans in how they view themselves and their Haitian neighbours.

"Peripheral Migrants examines the circulation of labor from rural Haiti to the sugar estates of the Dominican Republic and its impact on the lives of migrants and their kin. The first such study to draw on community-based fieldwork in both countries, the book also shows how ethnographic and historical approaches can be combined to reconstruct patterns of seasonal and repeat migration." "Samuel Martinez pays close attention to the economic maneuvers Haitians adopt on both sides of the border as they use Dominican money to meet their present needs and to assure future subsistence at home in Haiti. The emigrants who adapt best, he finds, are those who maintain close ties to their home areas. Yet, in addition to showing how rural Haitians survive under severe poverty and oppression, Martinez reveals the risks they incur by crossing the border as cane workers: divided families, increased short-term deprivation and economic insecurity, and, all too often, early death. He further notes that labor circulation is not part of an unchanging cycle in rural Haiti but a source of income that is vulnerable to the downturns in the global economy." "Acknowledging various theoretical perspectives, the author compares the Haitian migrations with similar population displacements worldwide. As he shows, the Haitian workers exemplify an important, if seldom studied, category of migrants - those who neither move to the cities nor emigrate to countries of the North but circulate between rural areas of the Third World. Thus, this book serves to broaden our understanding of this "lower tier" of the world's migrants."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"There is no other study of the Dominican ideology and practice of anti-haitianismo (anti-Haitian prejudice) of greater breadth and comprehensiveness. . . . Cogently written and suitable for introducing consideration of the anti-haitianismo phenomenon into introductory and advanced-undergraduate courses."--Samuel Martínez, University of Connecticut Ernesto Sagás examines the historical development and political use of antihaitianismo, a set of racist and xenophobic attitudes prevalent today in the Dominican Republic that broadly portray Dominican people as white Catholics, while Haitians are viewed as spirit-worshipping black Africans. More than just a ploy to generate patriotism and rally against a neighboring country, the ideology also is used by Dominican leaders to divide their own lower classes. Sagás looks at the notions of race held by Dominican elites in their creation of an imaginary "white" nation, particularly as the ideas were developed throughout the colonial era, then intellectually refined in the late 19th century, and later exalted to a state ideology during the Trujillo era. Finally, he examines how race and nationalist anti-Haitian feelings still are manipulated by conservative politicians and elites who seek to maintain the status quo, drawing on examples from recent political rhetoric and cartoons, campaign advertisements, and public school history textbooks. The first book-length study of antihaitianismo, this work offers important lessons for studying racial and ethnic conflict as well as nationalism and comparative politics. Ernesto Sagás teaches in the Department of Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. Recently he was guest editor of a special issue of the Latino Studies Journal devoted to Dominicans in the United States.

Like two roosters in a fighting arena, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are encircled by barriers of geography and poverty. They co-inhabit the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but their histories are as deeply divided as their cultures: one French-speaking and black, one Spanish-speaking and mulatto. Yet, despite their antagonism, the two countries share a national symbol in the rooster--and a fundamental activity and favorite sport in the cockfight. In this book, Michele Wucker asks: "If the symbols that dominate a culture accurately express a nation's character, what kind of a country draws so heavily on images of cockfighting and roosters, birds bred to be aggressive? What does it mean when not one but two countries that are neighbors choose these symbols? Why do the cocks fight, and why do humans watch and glorify them?" Wucker studies the cockfight ritual in considerable detail, focusing as much on the customs and histories of these two nations as on their contemporary lifestyles and politics. Her well-cited and comprehensive volume also explores the relations of each nation toward the United States, which twice invaded both Haiti (in 1915 and 1994) and the Dominican Republic (in 1916 and 1965) during the twentieth century. Just as the owners of gamecocks contrive battles between their birds as a way of playing out human conflicts, Wucker argues, Haitian and Dominican leaders often stir up nationalist disputes and exaggerate their cultural and racial differences as a way of deflecting other kinds of turmoil. Thus Why the Cocks Fight highlights the factors in Caribbean history that still affect Hispaniola today, including the often contradictory policies of the U.S.