Azua
Established in 1504 by the future conqueror of Cuba Diego Velázquez, AZUA is among the oldest cities in the New World. In the early sixteenth century, Mexico conquistador Hernán Cortes served as its mayor, but despite this lofty history there’s nothing left of the original city, which was demolished by an earthquake in 1751. On top of that, Haitian armies occupied Azua multiple different times in the nineteenth century and, despite being repelled in the El Número mountain passes to the east, left the village virtually sacked. Although a celebration is held on 19 March every year to commemorate an 1844 battle that resulted in victory over the Haitians, the town’s Pueblo Viejo holds no colonial ruins, and Puerto Viejo – the old port – is merely an industrial site for the extraction of natural gas. If you are travelling between Lago Enriquillo and San Juan de la Managua, you will have to change guaguas here. Although most travellers rush through, Azua does boast a couple of decent beaches.
Bahía de las Águilas
From Cabo Rojo the road devolves into dirt past a series of meagre Haitian beach shacks to the tiny seaside cave settlement known as Las Cuevas. Rancho Cueva (753-8058) is a shaded beachfront restaurant and bar that also runs boat trips (RD$2000 for return boat, up to six people) direct to Bahía de las Águilas, the crown jewel of beaches on the Jaragua peninsula, which is the easiest way to get out there. Even if you don’t want to head out that far the beach here is pretty magnificent itself, and away from the restaurant you’re unlikely to find a single other soul.
Bahía de las Águilas is spectacular, unspoiled and seemingly endless, in large part because it’s smack-bang in the middle of the most inaccessible national park in the country. As there’s very little shade it’s advisable to bring an umbrella or something comparable. Pure white sand with the consistency of flour rings the rocky karst landscape for over 20km, and even with the new boat service there are typically no more than ten people for each of those kilometres. There’s a small national park outpost 2km before the beach where you’re required to pay a RD$50 park entrance fee, and it’s possible to camp out here, although there are no facilities to speak of so bring your own food and supplies from Pedernales.
Just off the water is Isla Beata, a large uninhabited island that has a good variety of birdlife along it and some amazing beaches. There’s no way to get here on your own, but Eco-Tour Barahona does regular day-trips out here, and can be convinced to arrange overnight camping.
Baní
Thirty-five kilometres west of San Cristóbal, coastal BANÍ is relatively prosperous thanks to a nearby naval base and the saltpans that lie to the south of the city – an upswing that has spurred much population growth, if not exactly prettified the place. There are few diversions within town – the Parque Central is nice enough for people watching, and you can stop off at Botánica Chango on Duvergé and Carretera Las Calderas for a look at the wares used in the local folk religion. There’s also a unique fiesta patronal held from June 15 to 24 in honour of San Juan Bautista, with dozens of musicians performing a distinctive Afro-Latin music called sarandunga, which has heavy rhythmic influences from Senegal but is unique to Baní.
Barahona
Founded by Haitian General Touissant L’Ouverture in 1802 as an alternate port to Santo Domingo and once the informal capital of Trujillo’s multimillion-dollar sugar industry, BARAHONA has fallen on hard times due to the low price of sugar globally and the transition in the US from sugar to corn syrup in all manner of sweetened products. Evidence of this downturn abounds in the uncared-for roads rutted to the point of near impassability. Nevertheless, the town itself is a convenient base and the Malecón boasts some good nightlife, to be enjoyed after a day’s exploring.
Haitian bateyes
For most of the twentieth century, sugar was the crop around which the Dominican economy revolved. Though tourism recently replaced it as the top source of foreign currency, sugar plantations still exist all along the southern half of the island, their vast expanses of cane harvested by migrant Haitian labourers who live in meagre company barracks known as bateyes.
As early as the late nineteenth century, depressed sugar prices made Dominican labour too expensive for the sugar companies, and masses of migrant workers were imported from the British Antilles to fill the void. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, even this labour became too expensive, and formal agreements were reached that paid the Haitian government to recruit and export tens of thousands of cane cutters each year. The batey workers came from the poorest rural parts of Haiti, encouraged by the opportunity to save US$30–50 over the course of a season – in four or five years that would be enough to build a modest house and work a small subsistence farm back in their home country. Many, however, have come back empty-handed or, worse, never left at all.
The formal agreement has dissolved, and Haitians who cross into the Dominican Republic to work in the sugar fields do so aba fil (under the fence). Since the earthquake in 2010, thousands more Haitians have poured over the border in desperation for work, making the bateyes more crowded and wages even lower.
Batey life involves horribly substandard conditions. Manually cutting cane with machetes is backbreaking work, and the labourers are paid as little as RD$3 per tonne. They have to work at least fourteen hours a day in order to feed themselves, pay a baroque system of bribes to police officers and company officials and save a few pesos for the return to Haiti. Most bateyes have no bathrooms or running water, and workers must walk a kilometre or more for water and sleep five or six to a small room. Every year thousands of Haitians fail to earn enough for the journey home, and are forced to stay in the batey during the dead season, when there’s little work available. The inhuman conditions have led various international human rights groups to declare the situation tantamount to slavery, but there has been little in the way of reform to date.