Emancipation Day Sees New Triumph as Haitian-Born Dominican is Declared a National · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Emancipation Day, 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 quoted Marcus Garvey on the importance of emancipating the mind, while her compatriot, Jean Lowrie-Chin, 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 to everyone born in the country to illegal immigrants as far back as 1929.