Samuel Martínez.
Samuel Martínez is a Cuban-born ethnologist who brings some highly interesting views and research on the DR-Haitian relations to Oslo this fall. This includes the changing issue framings from human rights activists and lawyers, from contemporary slavery to statelessness and migrant rights. One of his key arguments is that the human rights situation in the DR and Haiti isn’t just a local matter, but rather a global issue. What needs to be added to the binational framing of the issues, according to Martinez, is consideration of not only an antecedent history of violent colonial and neocolonial exchanges but of the on-going engagements of international human rights actors with both frontline human rights defenders and Dominican officialdom; positions staked out today are in part responses to international pressure exerted over a span of more than three decades.
His talk at our conference is something we are very much looking forward to, and has been titled Tracking the Trajectory of International Solidarity with Haitian Rights Struggles in the Dominican Republic, 1978-2013
In his current research and writing, he brings critical scrutiny to the writings of northern human rights monitors, journalists and social scientists about Haitian-ancestry people in the Dominican Republic. He is also doing background research on antislavery narratives of the late 20th & early 21st centuries.
Hispaniola 2014: justice, nationality and migration 