“I got a soft spot for Haiti and its peo­ple. They are my cousins. I pray for Haiti they go thru soo much. God, please cov­er that land and its peo­ple.” (Car­di B, Do­mini­can-Amer­i­can rap icon, Au­gust 2021)

The foot­ball gods de­creed that the His­pan­io­la Der­by be­tween Haiti and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic should be played in the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League this year, and cen­turies of tor­tured his­to­ry and volatile race re­la­tions cas­cad­ed in­to nine­ty min­utes of foot­ball at the Es­ta­dio Olímpi­co in San­to Domin­go last week. Haiti put their noisy neigh­bours firm­ly in their place with an em­phat­ic 4:1 beat­down in a sta­di­um filled with Haitians, the first match be­tween the two coun­tries on Do­mini­can soil since 2013.

The vic­to­ry ex­tend­ed Haiti’s lop­sided ad­van­tage in the se­ries to ten wins, three draws and one loss. And the emo­tion­al post-match af­ter­math cre­at­ed an in­ter­na­tion­al in­ci­dent, bit­ter cross-bor­der re­crim­i­na­tion, and so­cial me­dia in­ter­ven­tion from two hip hop icons with roots on the is­land. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two na­tions that oc­cu­py His­pan­io­la has al­ways been frac­tured by deep po­lit­i­cal ten­sions, mil­i­tary con­flict, race and colour. Who says foot­ball is just a game?

The is­land was of­fi­cial­ly di­vid­ed be­tween the French and Span­ish em­pires in 1697. A cen­tu­ry lat­er, led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, French slaves eject­ed France from His­pan­io­la and the in­de­pen­dent Re­pub­lic of Haiti was of­fi­cial­ly de­clared on 1 Jan­u­ary 1804 — a nod to the in­dige­nous Taíno peo­ple, who called the is­land Ay­i­ti. Span­ish con­trol of San­to Domin­go (the east­ern side, now the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic) end­ed per­ma­nent­ly in 1865 af­ter decades of con­flict in­volv­ing the in­de­pen­dent black re­pub­lic, France and Spain. More decades of con­tin­u­ous con­flict would en­sue. In the af­ter­math of France’s ex­pul­sion, Haiti was forced to ac­cept pay­ment of a war in­dem­ni­ty of one hun­dred and fifty mil­lion gold francs to France (lat­er re­duced to nine­ty mil­lion). The le­gal premise was com­pen­sa­tion for French plan­ta­tion own­ers for their “lost prop­er­ty”, that is, ex­pro­pri­at­ed land and freed slaves.

Hav­ing won its free­dom with blood, Haiti was po­lit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ed. Ma­jor slave-hold­ing pow­ers, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States and the Eu­ro­pean em­pires, re­fused to of­fi­cial­ly rec­og­nize Haiti’s sov­er­eign­ty or trade open­ly with it, fear­ing the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion would spark slave re­volts in their own lands.

Hait­ian Pres­i­dent Jean-Pierre Boy­er saw the in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment as the on­ly way to se­cure glob­al recog­ni­tion and lift eco­nom­ic block­ades — not un­like to­day’s geopol­i­tics. Haiti took one hun­dred and twen­ty-two years to pay off the pri­ma­ry in­dem­ni­ty loans and their sub­se­quent re­fi­nanc­ing (1825 to 1947). This op­pres­sive arrange­ment drained na­tion­al rev­enue, with as much as 80% of gov­ern­ment in­come go­ing to debt re­pay­ment. It sti­fled pub­lic in­vest­ment, with ze­ro funds re­main­ing for schools, hos­pi­tals or in­fra­struc­ture. And it sus­tained pover­ty, cost­ing bil­lions in lost eco­nom­ic growth and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for gen­er­a­tions of po­lit­i­cal in­sta­bil­i­ty, il­lit­er­a­cy, hunger and dis­ease.

Haiti crossed the bor­der in­to what is now the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic sev­er­al times dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry. In 1801, dur­ing the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, Tou­s­saint Lou­ver­ture in­vad­ed and cap­tured San­to Domin­go to abol­ish slav­ery and bring the en­tire is­land un­der uni­fied con­trol. He was forced to re­treat. In 1805, Em­per­or Jean-Jacques Dessalines in­vad­ed the east again, be­sieg­ing San­to Domin­go. He too re­treat­ed. But the most sig­nif­i­cant in­va­sion and oc­cu­pa­tion be­gan in 1822, when Pres­i­dent Jean-Pierre Boy­er en­tered San­to Domin­go with a mil­i­tary force seek­ing to pre­vent a re­turn of slav­ery and to block Eu­ro­pean pow­ers from re-col­o­niz­ing the east. This be­gan twen­ty-two years of uni­fied rule un­der cen­tralised Hait­ian gov­ern­ment.

While Haiti suf­fered un­der the crush­ing weight of the French in­dem­ni­ty, pover­ty, in­ternecine con­flict and dic­ta­tor­ship, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic al­so spent the 19th cen­tu­ry mired in se­vere pover­ty, po­lit­i­cal chaos, civ­il wars and dic­ta­tor­ship. How­ev­er, it di­verged dra­mat­i­cal­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry, build­ing a foun­da­tion that trans­formed it in­to one of the largest and most pros­per­ous economies in mod­ern Latin Amer­i­ca. To­day, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic is po­lit­i­cal­ly sta­ble and sig­nif­i­cant­ly wealth­i­er, with an econ­o­my rough­ly ten times larg­er than Haiti’s. While Hait­ian labour­ers are es­sen­tial to Do­mini­can agri­cul­ture, con­struc­tion and tourism, they face sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion, so­cial mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and pe­ri­od­ic im­mi­gra­tion crack­downs.

Racism — specif­i­cal­ly in­sti­tu­tion­alised “An­ti-Haitian­ism” (“An­ti­haitian­is­mo”) — has al­ways been a po­lit­i­cal and so­cial wedge be­tween the two na­tions. Rather than be­ing an or­gan­ic byprod­uct of his­tor­i­cal con­flict, racial ide­ol­o­gy was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly weaponised by Do­mini­can elites to con­struct a na­tion­al iden­ti­ty de­fined in di­rect op­po­si­tion to Haiti. Most Do­mini­cans pride them­selves on the fact that their roots are more “Eu­ro­pean” than those of their neigh­bours, and Haitians are looked down up­on and mis­treat­ed be­cause of their African roots. In pop­u­lar cul­ture, Do­mini­cans are jok­ing­ly quot­ed as say­ing, “I Do­mini­can. I no black.” This has pro­found­ly an­tag­o­nized the re­la­tion­ship.

Now back to the foot­ball. The match came one day be­fore the 2 Oc­to­ber an­niver­sary of the 1937 mas­sacre or­dered by Do­mini­can dic­ta­tor Rafael Tru­jil­lo, which saw the mass ex­e­cu­tion of as many as 20,000 Haitians and dark-skinned Do­mini­cans liv­ing along the bor­der in an ef­fort to “whiten” the coun­try and se­cure ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­trol. This was one of the most trau­mat­ic episodes in the his­to­ry of re­la­tions be­tween the two coun­tries. The tim­ing made it a top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion dur­ing the build-up. More was at stake than three points. For Haiti, foot­ball is not just a game.

It is an in­tense­ly po­lit­i­cal act of na­tion­al re­sis­tance. The ide­ol­o­gy of Hait­ian foot­ball is a com­bi­na­tion of rev­o­lu­tion­ary de­fi­ance, an­ces­tral pride and transna­tion­al con­nec­tion be­tween the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion and its glob­al di­as­po­ra. For that rea­son Haiti’s na­tion­al team is known as “Les Grenadiers”, tak­ing its name from the elite grenadier sol­diers who played a piv­otal role in the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1804. And in San­to Domin­go last week they de­liv­ered the vic­to­ry that Haiti’s na­tion­al dig­ni­ty de­mand­ed. In post-match cel­e­bra­tion, star for­ward and scor­er of two goals on the night, Wil­son Isidor, shout­ed in­to a cam­era: “His­pan­io­la is Haiti! This is Haiti!” In a lat­er in­ter­view he said the play­ers un­der­stood the sig­nif­i­cance for Hait­ian sup­port­ers: “We had our hearts set on win­ning this game, for all Haitians in the world.” Well, who tell he say that?

The Do­mini­can sports min­istry im­me­di­ate­ly banned the Haiti na­tion­al team from play­ing in Do­mini­can venues, claim­ing dam­age to the sta­di­um by Hait­ian sup­port­ers. Haiti’s em­bassy in San­to Domin­go re­spond­ed with a diplo­mat­ic state­ment say­ing, “sport­ing ri­val­ries must not call in­to ques­tion re­la­tions of good neigh­bourli­ness and mu­tu­al re­spect that must pre­vail be­tween the two states,” and thank­ing the Do­mini­can au­thor­i­ties for the event. Then, en­ter hip hop su­per­star Car­di B.

Now, Car­di di­vides pub­lic opin­ion. Some love her raw per­son­al­i­ty and lyrics. Crit­ics ar­gue she re­lies more on raunch­i­ness, brand­ing, and ghost­writ­ers than re­al tal­ent. But she dis­plays so­cial con­scious­ness in her mu­sic, usu­al­ly ref­er­enc­ing fe­male em­pow­er­ment and class strug­gle. But her most overt po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary hap­pens on so­cial me­dia and in in­ter­views. Car­di has adopt­ed a strong pro-Haiti stance for many years, say­ing Do­mini­cans need to “treat Haitians like peo­ple too.”

Stand­ing on her Do­mini­can roots, she jumped feet first in­to the cur­rent fra­cas on In­sta­gram, say­ing: “I know my his­to­ry very well! I know that Haiti in­vad­ed the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic for years. But you know who else in­vad­ed our coun­try? SPAIN! And you guys treat Spaniards very good but Haitians you treat like s#%!.” Take that! Hait­ian-Amer­i­can hip hop icon Wyclef Jean threw in, post­ing a cere­bral video mes­sage cel­e­brat­ing Haiti’s big win and em­pha­siz­ing that the match was about much more than foot­ball, serv­ing as a deep­er re­minder of Hait­ian re­silience, hope, and the de­sire to see the peo­ple suc­ceed de­spite his­tor­i­cal hard­ships.

Haitians and Do­mini­cans are beau­ti­ful peo­ple. Two decades ago I worked close­ly with the fed­er­a­tions of both coun­tries. Haiti has al­ways been a Caribbean pow­er­house and the grad­ual progress of am­bi­tious Do­mini­cana is not sur­pris­ing to me — re­mem­ber, they al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 2023 FI­FA Men’s U20 World Cup. But Haiti’s con­sis­ten­cy in the van­guard of Caribbean foot­ball, de­spite all ad­ver­si­ty, is root­ed in the peo­ple’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary ethos — re­sist, en­dure, ad­vance. The open­ing lyrics of their na­tion­al an­them “La Dessalin­i­enne” (“The Song of Dessalines”) em­body that: “For the coun­try, for the an­ces­tors, let us march unit­ed... In our ranks, no trai­tors! Let us alone be mas­ters of the soil...” If they are rid­ing a wave right now they de­serve it, and I am hap­py for them. They have lit­tle else.

So, Haiti — I’m not sor­ry!