An excerpt from “Border Patrol Nation,” Chapter 7: “America’s Back Yard.”
The first thing that I want to do when I arrive in Dajabón, one of the Dominican Republic’s border towns with Haiti, is find a good place to eat. After all, it is a five-hour bus ride from the capital of Santo Domingo, through a lush, mountainous landscape with many small towns, all with baseball fields on their edges. As soon as I get off the bus it’s obvious that I’m in borderlands again. There is the roar of a cumbersome green helicopter that will circle the town for hours. A mere three blocks away is Haiti, a nation where more than nine million people earn less than a dollar per day. Between the spot where I step off the bus and Haiti is the Massacre River, representing the border that divides the island of Hispaniola into two countries.
Read the rest here on Mint Press News.