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Emancipation Day Sees New Triumph as Haitian-Born Dominican is Declared a National

Categories: Caribbean, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Citizen Media, Ethnicity & Race, History, Politics

Emancipation Day [1], the anniversary of which is marked in several Caribbean territories on August 1, inspired two Jamaican bloggers to consider the occasion more closely. Nadine Tomlinson [2] quoted Marcus Garvey on the importance of emancipating the mind, while her compatriot, Jean Lowrie-Chin [3], thought it significant that August 1 also marked the day that Juliana Deguis, a Dominican of Haitian descent, was finally declared a citizen of the Dominican Republic. There was widespread outrage across the region last year after the Dominican Constitutional Court made a controversial decision to deny citizenship [4] to everyone born in the country to illegal immigrants as far back as 1929.