Eleven years later, he is still eking out a living on the same batey, or labour encampment, where he arrived, with no money, nine fingers, and a foot-long vertical gash on his chest that has been sewn up like a mailbag.
“Can you help me get a cédula?” he asks,
Cafta threatened to remove that competitive advantage and bestow it on countries such as Nicaragua and Honduras, where poverty levels are so severe that they could undercut even the wages paid to Dominicans.
Hugo Guiliani Cury, who had recently headed the Dominican Republic’s mission to the World Trade Organisation’s talks
“We sometimes pay the bill, but then they usually end up charging us for electricity we’ve not used, so then we go on strike,” says Ms Miranda, a scrum of three children lurking round her feet waiting for supper.
At the other end of the social spectrum, in Santo Domingo’s
“It’s very important for me,” she says. “I pay for the kids, I pay for the telephone and the light and the water and the cellphone and collective buses and food with it. Everything. It pays for us completely.”
Julio does not enjoy living in the US, she says, and
Tobacco, in the form of premium hand-rolled cigars with an aroma certain to mellow any mood, and cocoa beans processed into velvety chocolate guaranteed to liberate endorphins galore, are giving the Dominican Republic a new reputation.
Amid gently swaying royal palms and green rolling hills 80km northwest of Santo Domingo,