The Dominican Republic’s President has stated that all borders with neighboring Haiti will be closed beginning Friday due to a dispute over a canal on the Haitian side that would take water from a river along their border.
President Luis Abinader stated Friday that air, sea, and land borders would close at 6 a.m. local time and would remain closed “until necessary,” indicating that last-minute talks between the countries had failed to avert the shutdown.
It is a rare move for the Dominican Republic, and could hit economies in both Countries, though it will be most acutely felt in Haiti.
The dam is being shut down in retaliation for a farming organization on the Haitian side digging a canal that aims to divert water from the Massacre River, which flows along the common border between the two nations on the island of Hispaniola.
Work on the canal had been put on hold following President Jovenel Moise’s murder in July 2021, according to the International Crisis Group, but it was only recently that it was restarted due to inaction on the part of the Haitian government, which had “failed to address the problems created by the drought in the agricultural area of the Maribaroux plain.”
According to Latin American and Caribbean analyst Diego Da Rin, the group has found no evidence “that suggests there are any major politicians or powerful businesspeople behind it, as the Dominican Government has claimed.”
President Abinader accused Haiti of attempting to divert water from the Massacre River, claiming that it would have a negative impact on Dominican farmers and the environment. The river was named after a deadly fight between French and Spanish invaders in the 1700s, as well as a mass massacre of Haitians by the Dominican Army in 1937.
