A batey (plural: bateyes) is a settlement around a sugar mill. They can be found in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

, the Dominican Republic and

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...

. In

and the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...

, 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 refinery A sugar refinery is a refinery which processes raw sugar from cane or beets into white refined sugar. Many cane sugar mills produce raw sugar, which is sugar that still contains molasses, giving it more colour (and impurities) than the ...

, 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 cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame constructi ...

s, trains, tractors, 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 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 natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, ...

s from

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

have arrived to work the sugar

harvest Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. On smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most lab ...

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, 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 "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...

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; however, a number of non-governmental organizations have attempted to address this problem by operating primary schools 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 municipality ('' municipio'') of the Santo Domingo province in the Dominican Republic. Within the municipality there are the following municipal districts A municipal district is an administrative entity comprising a clearl ...

in the Santo Domingo province 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 Unfree labour Labor in the Dominican Republic Labor in Cuba