By ESENDOM
July 3, 2020
Clarivel Ruiz of Dominicans Love Haitians Movement./Photo courtesy of Clarivel Ruiz.
When Dominican far-right, anti-Haitian groups engaged in an online fake news campaign to silence Clarivel Ruiz, an artist and activist of Dominican descent who leads Dominicans Love Haitians Movement, progressive activists immediately spurred to action.
Ruiz’s outspoken public defense of Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent who suffer discrimination and racism in the Dominican Republic as well as her unwavering stance on the erasure of Dominican Blackness and collective memory irked fascists and xenophobic groups in New York City.
“Ruiz’s uncompromising stance is part of a broader movement in the Dominican Republic and Dominican immigrant communities abroad, mainly those residing in the US, where people are less hesitant to reassess the colonial past, founding myths, sexism, paternalism, xenophobia and racism. ”
As shook troops of the white, European-descended Dominican elite, fascist Dominican groups, a reflection of the worldwide resurgence of the populist right, see Haitian immigrants as a threat, accusing workers of Haitian origin of stealing jobs from Dominican workers. But the Dominican community in the United States is far from homogeneous: at play there are class interests, with middle and lower class sectors of every skin color who have been impoverished by the ongoing crisis of capitalism expressing long-held grievances by embracing anti-immigrant, xenophobic and nativist views.
For Dominican right-wingers and fascists, any attempt at revising, rewriting or reimagining the Dominican past by confronting chauvinism, traditionalism, colonial violence and racism is anathema to their worldview. A traitor, in this line of thinking influenced in part by traditional Catholicism and Christian Fundamentalism, is anyone who dares speak truth to power. Ruiz’s uncompromising stance is part of a broader movement in the Dominican Republic and Dominican immigrant communities abroad, mainly those residing in the US, where people are less hesitant to reassess the colonial past, founding myths, sexism, paternalism, xenophobia and racism.
“For Dominican right-wingers and fascists, any attempt at revising, rewriting or reimagining the Dominican past by confronting chauvinism, traditionalism, colonial violence and racism is anathema to their worldview. ”
Although Dominican fascist groups are small in numbers, their members have mastered the art of trolling anti-racist activists and other political and cultural dissidents on social media. On June 12, fascists hacked Ruiz’s social media account. According to an email she sent three days later:
There is an incident that occurred on our Instagram page this past Friday. We sent out a message initiated with the idea since Columbus statues were being dismantled here in the States, why not ask or propose the statue of Juan Pablo Duarte in Washington Heights, should be replaced with a statue of Mamá Tingó.
The post was engaging people to ask questions and dialogue with each other on the pages.
Well, we got hit with a Dominican Nationalist taking our post and posting our image side by side, saying we are a Haitian (code word: Black, Foreign, Intruder) activists. They are attempting to take down a beloved statue of the founding father and replace it with Mamá Tingó.
Since Friday, we have been dealing with people who are threatening us, insulting us, and reposting our page to watch out if we come to Washington Heights and saying inflammatory things.
Clarivel Ruiz of Dominicans Love Haitians Movement./Photo courtesy of Clarivel Ruiz.
We take a picture of each person and their comments; we block them, we made the Instagram page private for now because it was like a swarm of locusts and the demeaning messages were too much. Fortunately, unfortunately, the FB page has not been hit in the same way, but comments come through there as well.
People on both pages are great, responding to the vitriol.
As soon as word spread about the threats Ruiz was receiving, activists began to strategize how to respond. On July 1, The US-based anti-racist collective We Are All Dominican (WAAD) issued a statement condemning the right-wing attacks against Ruiz:
As Dominicans, Dominican-Americans, and allies committed to the struggle for justice, inclusion, and rights for all people, we denounce the recent targeting of Clarivel Ruiz of the Dominicans Love Haitians Movement, including threats and false accusations published in cdn.com.do. CDN, which claims to be a news outlet, published Clarivel's photo, along with false statements and sensationalist language about a supposed campaign to remove the statue of Juan Pablo Duarte in Duarte Square in Lower Manhattan. CDN, despite pretending to be a journalistic news outlet, fails to do the basic work of journalism, neglecting its duty to investigate, providing accurate and fair information, instead of reproducing the false accusations and threats of Dominican ultranationalists.
Dominican activists in the United States are also drawing parallels between the harassment facing anti-racist activists in the US and activists in the Dominican Republic where the state and far right-groups coincide in their animosity toward pro-immigrant and anti-racist activists:
The targeting of Clarivel Ruiz is just the latest example of hate speech and threats against activists who fight for human rights and equality in the Dominican Republic, and for all people in the African and Indigenous diaspora. Recently, human rights activist Ana María Belique of the Reconocido Movement received death threats and was arrested, alongside long-time Afro-Dominican activist Maribel Núñez, simply for organizing a vigil in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement here in the US and to denounce racism in the DR.
Read the full statement by We Are All Dominican here
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