The Desperate Afterlives Of a Dominican Resort

CABARETE, Dominican Republic — Just a few kilometers down the road, in the center of Cabarete, the tourism industry pulses with life: Beachfront restaurants dish up offerings as varied as ceviche and pizza, tourists cart surfboards and sport fanny packs, and combed white sand as clean as crisp bed linen beckons sunbathers.

But here, in this abject corner of the island, fear and loathing are the more common fare. Jardín Deportivo, once a fancy place for tourists seeking an alternative to the all-inclusive Caribbean resort, stands as a relic twice abandoned — and as a testament to the profound change underway in the Dominican Republic.

Built beyond the outer edge of the tourist zone, the Jardín was developed in a spot that seemed, in the early 2000s, destined to be along the path of the booming industry. But momentum stalled, tourists stopped drifting this way and the owners, of whom little is remembered, vanished.

Flora and fauna claimed the courtyard. The bright pastel walls dimmed. The bar, fashioned as a nerve center for patrons, fell dormant. Wiring, lighting, even doors were all stripped for sale.

At least until around 2010, when the Jardín got an unexpected shot of life. After the earthquake in Haiti, a flood of new residents turned up at the Jardín: migrant workers fleeing the desperation of their homeland.

The resort brimmed with energy once more, marked by a cheery disrepair. Haitian squatters transformed offices into bodegas with snacks and beer. Residents bought new doors and filled the hotel rooms with furniture and family photos. The old tennis shop became a discothèque.

In recent weeks, though, after a government deadline passed for all undocumented immigrants in the Dominican Republic to register with the authorities, the Jardín Deportivo once again became a wasteland. The largely Haitian tenants fled, leaving behind clothes, furniture and personal belongings.

Ahead of a presidential election in which the incumbent, Danilo Medina, is running again, the government’s plan could eject tens of thousands of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic, some of whom were born here but have no documentation to prove it.

More than 40,000 people have left the country on their own since the deadline to register passed on June 17, the government says. By late June, just a few Haitians remained at the resort, mostly those who could not afford to move. But they were joined, suddenly, by a cadre of Dominican residents.

Residents exuded an abiding wariness of visitors, refusing to answer questions, firing back with questions of their own and demanding the more amiable among them to be silent.

Julissa, who refused to give her last name, said there was tension between the remaining Haitians and the Dominicans. A Dominican lawyer, she lamented, had been renting out the rooms, despite having no obvious ownership of the property. He had been the first to stir the fears of his Haitian “tenants,” whom he was charging usurious rates.

Camilo, a Dominican, defended the lawyer. “If you want to talk to anyone here, you need to talk to the lawyer,” he said. “He’s the only one who defends us here.”

The lawyer, it turned out, was something of a phantom. No one would even whisper his first name, never mind his last. The only trace of him was the word “abogado,” Spanish for lawyer, scrawled over the doors of more than half the rooms in the Jardín.

Haitian squatters claimed that the lawyer extorted them, and tried to sell his services to them to help them naturalize. Most opted to leave instead.

Other oddities were afoot. Haitian residents who remained said that days earlier, men had come to their doors in the middle of the night, yelling threats and urging them to leave.

In July, the fears of the community were vindicated: The police ejected everyone from the resort.