During the 2000s, one of the most recurrent themes in Puerto Rican newspapers has been the Dominican immigration to Puerto Rico.
History
Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain to the United States, along with Cuba, Guam and the Philippines in the 1898 Treaty of Paris. Although an independence movement has existed in Puerto Rico throughout its rule by the United States, it has yet to gain mainstream acceptance. Puerto Rico and Guam remain the only two of those four areas not to gain independence from the United States. Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917 and are allowed to move to the mainland without restriction.
By being, at least on paper, a part of the United States, Puerto Rico has enjoyed the richest per capita economy in all of Latin America, aided by substantial investment from American businesses.
When Luis Munoz Marin became governor of Puerto Rico, one of his principal endeavors was to give Puerto Rico certain independent privileges, such as self rule and individual sports citizenship, so it was during his governance that Puerto Rico became a free associated state of the United States, under which the island has a fair (though not complete) degree of autonomy.
The Dominican Republic, meanwhile, has suffered from persistent poverty since that nation gained independence from Haiti. Numerous dictatorships, particularly that of Leonidas Trujillo , have led the country's economy into chaos. Though the country benefits from a profitable Tourism industry each year, this is not sufficient to sustain the population. Most of the Dominican Republic is marked by extreme poverty, which has lead to the steady increase of attempts by Dominican citizens to migrate to Puerto Rico over recent decades.
Overview
While the majority Puerto Ricans do not view Dominican immigrants as a problem to society, a segment of the population, perhaps motivated by Racism, sees the Dominican presence as a nuisance; among those who do not like Dominicans, who are of largely of Black ancestry, there are some who are Black Puerto Ricans themselves. Generally speaking, however, Puerto Ricans do not mind the presence of Dominicans, or other Latin Americans for that matter, on their island.
What most Puerto Ricans are opposed to, however, is the way in which Dominicans travel to the island. Although there have been multiple daily commercial airline flights between both countries for decades, many Dominicans who try to travel to Puerto Rico for work are afraid that they will be detained at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport by American agencies or by Puerto Rican police. Therefore, many Dominicans choose to pay much higher (when compared to airplane tickets) prices to board a small boat, nicknamed "yola" on the area, to try to get to Puerto Rico undetected by the Puerto Rican police, the American Coast Guard or others.
Many "yolas" are commandeered by people, either Puerto Ricans or Dominicans, who are somehow connected to the mafia and benefit from the prices imposed on travelers. Some people have paid up to 5,000 US dollars to be transported on a boat from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico.
Dominicans who pay so much money to get to Puerto Rico through a ship hope that, if they reach Puerto Rico, they will not be caught and re-patriated by the correspondent agencies. Basically, that would be the only benefit of travelling by "yola" from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico: shall the "yola" make it to Puerto Rican territory, many passengers can escape without being detected by the police, the FBI or others. Many Dominicans who survive these trips and are not caught after arriving in Puerto Rico, either choose to go to Mayaguez, the largest city in western Puerto Rico, or to San Juan, where a considerable number of Dominicans reside.
Many of those "yola" travellers who get to Mayaguez, San Juan or any other area in Puerto Rico find it hard to get jobs, both because of their immigration problems and because of the competition for jobs with Puerto Rican workers. Therefore, some have turned into underworld jobs such as drug trafficking and others, increasing the presence of the Dominican mafia in Puerto Rico and creating some mafia wars with Puerto Rican mafia groups.
Dominican immigration to Puerto Rico by sea has increased steadily since the 1940s.
Danger
Travelling illegally from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico can be as dangerous, if not more dangerous, as travelling from Mexico to the United States through the Sonora desert, for example.
"Yolas" are extremely small boats made of wood, and sometimes, in order to make more profit, trip planners and ship captains put hundreds of people together in boats that are very unfit for such large amounts of travellers.
Most illegal trips to Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic begin in cities located at the Eastern coast of the latter country, particularly in the city of Nagua .
Boats travelling from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico navigate directly over the Puerto Rico trench underwater crater area. The Puerto Rico trench is an active seismic area that has been calculated to be larger than the San Andreas Fault in California. The activity there makes sea waves much stronger, which, combined with the amounts of passengers on "yolas", makes it likely that a "yola" will suffer some type of incident during any moment of the trip. Another considerable fact is that most boat captains use the Isla Mona as a point of referrence, and the Isla Mona area is surrounded by a large number of sharks.
Survivor stories about illegal trips from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico can be horrifying: tales of people being forced to jump to the sea, for example, are common. Passengers are usually forced off the ships when there is danger of sinking. Others tell of seeing their loved ones left behind, to their deaths, after a heavy wave has overturned one of these "yolas". Yet many others also tell of corpses left on board; people also die of starvation or dehydration. Because of the hunger that these travellers suffer, many cases of cannibalism have also been reported, that being the main purpose for which some bodies are not thrown to the water after death. Also, upon seeing the Puerto Rican coasts, some Dominicans rush their way out of boats before the "yola" reaches land; this practice, led by emotional state, has led to many cases where the "yola" overturns, and many Dominicans make it to the coast safely, yet others lose their lives and have their bodies show up ashore hours later.
Illegal immigrant traffickers and ship captains are not exempt to some of these dangers either, as, many times, some of the ships travelling from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico have sunk and left everybody on the ship dead.
Famous tragedies in such trips include a 1989 sinking near Isla Mona where as many as 500 perished, and other, comparatively small, tragedies where groups of 30 or more passengers have died. Perhaps the most famous of these tragic trips was the Nagua tragedy , named like that because the "yola" heading to Puerto Rico that time sunk while trying to make its way out of a beach in Nagua. More than one hundred died, including the ship's captain and the trip planner.
It shall be pointed out that not all illegal trips to Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic end in tragedy: these trips are massively scheduled by traffickers, who sometimes travel up to three times each week from Puerto Rico to illegally bring Dominicans. But, because of the large amount of lives lost during these trips, both the goverments of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic have launched massive media campaigns to try to minimize them. In the Dominican Republic, videos of dead bodies on the water are shown on television, to try to deter people from travelling to Puerto Rico on "yolas".
Law
Those who traffic illegals to Puerto Rico face large periods in jail if caught. Dominicans who get caught get flown back to their country, where they do not face criminal charges.
Government agencies usually depend on the services of commercial airlines such as American, Fina Air or Iberia to return illegal immigrants from Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic.
Last updated: 05-11-2005 07:02:44
