A batey (plural: bateyes) is a settlement around a

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecul ...

mill. They can be found in

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

the Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

and

Puerto Rico ; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...

. In

and the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...

, the basic conglomerate unit of a sugar production is usually called an ''ingenio.'' An ingenio consists of a central administrative office, a

sugar cane mill A sugar cane mill is a factory that processes sugar cane to produce raw sugar or plantation white sugar. Some sugar mills are situated next to a back-end refinery, that turns raw sugar into (refined) white sugar. The term is also used to refer ...

, a

sugar refinery A sugar refinery is a refinery which processes raw sugar from cane or sugar extracted from beets into white refined sugar. Cane sugar mills traditionally produce raw sugar, which is sugar that still contains molasses, giving it color ...

, the town around the office and refinery, sugar fields (''campos de caña''), and miscellaneous production equipment like

truck A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport freight, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame construct ...

train A train (from Old French , from Latin">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles th ...

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a Trailer (vehicle), trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or constructio ...

s, weighing scales, and housing for workers, usually in what is called a ''batey.'' A batey is a company town consisting of barracks and a few houses. Bateyes vary in size considerably. They are located close to

cane Cane or caning may refer to: *Walking stick, or walking cane, a device used primarily to aid walking * Assistive cane, a walking stick used as a mobility aid for better balance * White cane, a mobility or safety device used by blind or visually i ...

fields so that groups of workers can live nearby their labor site.

Dominican Republic

Every year since 1933, seasonal

immigrant Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

s from

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

have arrived to work the sugar

harvest Harvesting is the process of collecting plants, animals, or fish (as well as fungi) as food, especially the process of gathering mature crops, and "the harvest" also refers to the collected crops. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulses fo ...

in the

. The migrants are lodged in rooms at the batey, sometimes with no facilities, and expected to work cropping sugar cane in long days with hard hours. These days, individual ingenios and land owners (''colonos'') pay headhunters (''buscones''), a fee for each cane cutter (''picador'') the headhunter provides. A headhunter may entice the prospective labourer with promises of a

work permit A work permit or work visa is the permission to take a job within a foreign country. The foreign country where someone seeks to obtain a work permit for is also known as the "country of work", as opposed to the "country of origin" where someone ho ...

, and often requires a large fee from the prospective immigrant. When immigrants arrive, they may find that they are not free to leave the batey until they finish the labor. Over time, some of these migrants have stayed through the six months that follow the cane harvest (''zafra''), called "dead time" (''tiempo muerto''), and have started families with Haitian women that have migrated as well. Bateys are unique in culture and language in their mix of which is Haitian and which is Dominican. The Dominican government has historically provided fewer public services to bateys than to similarly sized communities in the rest of the country mainly due to Bateyes being seen as illegal settlements. The bateys were regarded as exceptions to the country's governance system. It was often left to the State Sugar Council (CEA: Consejo Estatal de Azúcar) or private companies to provide basic services, a responsibility that all too often they did not fulfill. Bateys were often still regarded as places where only Haitians (non-citizens) live. Since the Haitians who originally filled the bateys were not legal immigrants, their children have often been denied

citizenship Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state. Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationalit ...

papers because they are considered to have been born while in transit. Without citizenship papers from Haiti either, these children of Haitian immigrants cannot go to school nor can they receive the benefits of other

public services A public service or service of general (economic) interest is any service (economics), service intended to address the needs of aggregate members of a community, whether provided directly by a public sector agency, via public financing availab ...

; however, a number of non-governmental organizations have attempted to address this problem by operating

primary schools A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

on bateys trying to get them Dominican citizenship. In the past, sugar was a profitable industry. However, the Dominican sugar industry is no longer competitive, and when combined with the historical lack of educational and health services to these communities, the low wages have tended to make bateys some of the poorest communities in the country. The current trend in the Dominican Republic is for the ingenios to stop production, and thus the only source of income for the community and for the bateys to very slowly transform themselves into new sorts of communities.

Los Alcarrizos Los Alcarrizos is a Municipalities of the Dominican Republic, municipality (''municipio'') of the Santo Domingo Province, Santo Domingo province in the Dominican Republic. Within the municipality there are the following municipal districts (''distr ...

in the

Santo Domingo province Santo Domingo () is a province of the Dominican Republic. It was split from the Distrito Nacional on October 16, 2001. Municipalities and municipal districts As of June 20, 2006, the province is divided into the following municipalities (''mu ...

is a good example of something that used to be a batey but now is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

which survives through jobs in the area and in Santo Domingo. The Batey is a modern form of slavery where Haitians are paid less than $2.00 American dollars for 12–14 hours of labor. They are forced to sleep on foam boards and live without electricity or running water.

External links

Beyond the Bateyes
a 1996 report by th
National Coalition for Haitian RightsBatey Relief AllianceThe Batey Foundation
{{Sugar Economy of the Dominican Republic Economy of Cuba Company towns Agricultural labor Sugar Forced labour Labor in the Dominican Republic Labor in Cuba