Exodus in Cabarete?

[Chris]

Originally Posted by jackieboo

My contention has and always will be that as long as Cabarete and Sosua promote sex tourism there can not be a solution to the problem of crime.

I wanted to reply to a similar comment that came up in another thread. We had many years of limited crime, mainly theft, and very seldom violent crime as we are seeing now.

Sex tourism has been alive and well for a long time. We lived peaceful lives. I don't condone it, but cannot link the current crime wave and sex tourism without a disclaimer. The disclaimer is that we are seeing these violent crimes more because of drugs (the recent influx), than sex tourism.

Originally Posted by jackieboo

I've also suggested openly on the board that if the expat community is that concerned about crime then they need to a) hire their own police force or b) pay the police more than the drug lords. Of course everyone will say that they'll just take the money and still do nothing. I say, how do you know if you haven't tried.

Some have tried. The unwritten societal norms and rules are strong. So, even if one hires your own police force, you still have to deal with the outside world.

[jackieboo]

Originally Posted by Chris

I wanted to reply to a similar comment that came up in another thread. We had many years of limited crime, mainly theft, and very seldom violent crime as we are seeing now.

Sex tourism has been alive and well for a long time. We lived peaceful lives. I don't condone it, but cannot link the current crime wave and sex tourism without a disclaimer. The disclaimer is that we are seeing these violent crimes more because of drugs (the recent influx), than sex tourism.



Some have tried. The unwritten societal norms and rules are strong. So, even if one hires your own police force, you still have to deal with the outside world.

Chris, do you really think that drugs and prostitution are unrelated? How do you think that the prostitutes are able to have sex with these disgusting piglets that call themselves men? It certainly isn't with the help of Dr. Phil.

Until a society comes to terms with legalization of prostitution and drugs then there really is no solution. Look at the war on drugs in America, boy that really worked.

I don't understand the reasoning behind the support of prostitution on this board. It seems that it's a cardinal sin to say the 'f' word, but it's just fine to promote and even blatantly brag about hookers. What's up with that? Could it be that many of the important members of the board are in the sex trade and one must tread lightly?

Answers Chris, as I'm a little confused about the moral attitude of DR1.

[El_Uruguayo]

I don't know how the DR was years ago, but I can say that prostitution and violent crime do not share a positive correlation, in fact part of the purpose of legalizing prostitution is to decrease violent crime against women (i.e. a man can go to a prostitute rather than rape a woman), another purpose is to control disease - in the ideal situation, where prostition is legal, prostitutes would requirea a liscense and periodic testing to ensure that they are disease free.
Where am I getting this from? I lived in Uruguay for many years, where prostitution is legal. There are few pimps, few underage girls in the "profession", and few rapes - and there WASN'T much violent crime. I say wasn't, because now there is crime, it has increased. Prostitution has always been a constant, the element which is new, and does have a positive correlation, is the introduction of crack cocaine, or methamphetine, which did not exist only a few years ago.

So yeah, there have it, prostition does not increase crime, it's illegallity might. Dangerous drugs do.

[El_Uruguayo]

The other reason I say this, is that it is often mentioned how before "the d word was forbidden", and now it is not, and now there is more crime.

[Chris]

Originally Posted by jackieboo

Chris, do you really think that drugs and prostitution are unrelated?

No, surely I don't think that. But I do know that prostitution did not bring drugs or overt crime to the North Coast. Let me try to state my thoughts clearly. For many years sex tourism flourished without serious influence from a drug culture, and without the levels of crime that we are seeing today. (The Caribbean as an area is highly affected by crime currently .. all the islands are struggling).

If you look at old threads on the board, you will see clearly that new visitors were warned consistently not to touch drugs, attempt to buy drugs or even ask about drugs. We had zero tolerance in the DR for many years; people were jailed for the suspicion alone. We did not have a drug problem for many years. Sex tourism flourished during this period, without drugs and with mostly non-violent type crimes - theft, snatch and grab and burglaries in less protected houses. Now and again we heard of an expat living in an isolated place being killed. This usually (but of course, not always..) turned out to be someone who did not get along with the community around and had a history to mistreating local folks.

The situation has changed in the last three years, with the drug culture taking root and literally wiping out small communities either by rampant crime, or by drug related killings or whatever. Of course the sex trade is affected by this. But the sex trade came first and functioned for many years without drugs. The drugs followed recently. Someone more clued up than I can perhaps draw parallels between the arrival of masses of drugs and the crime spike. I don't know how that works.

I became aware of cocaine on the beaches of Cabarete a scant three years ago. Before that, I had never even seen anyone smoke marijuana on that beach. From that time onwards, it was like a snowball rolling downhill. Don't underestimate the demand coming from the nuevo riche wanting to build a development, but have some snortin' fun while they're doing it.

Originally Posted by jackieboo

I don't understand the reasoning behind the support of prostitution on this board. It seems that it's a cardinal sin to say the 'f' word, but it's just fine to promote and even blatantly brag about hookers. What's up with that? Could it be that many of the important members of the board are in the sex trade and one must tread lightly?

Answers Chris, as I'm a little confused about the moral attitude of DR1.

I can't talk about the moral attitude of the board - that is too abstract for me. My own attitude is liberal - kinda each to his/her own. If someone wants to brag about their putas, many of us just yawn. That does not make me blind to the craziness and I did not want my granddaughter to grow up on the North Coast, see this stuff daily and consider it normal. What I consider much more serious is the societal factors that make young women take up the trade, or force families into putting their children to work in the trade. A sankie is just a prostitute as well. But denying its existence and its importance to some is just putting one's head in the sand. The North Coast was known as a sex vacation destination long before drugs or crime was a problem. I saw a male prostitute openly soliciting on the island of Dominica, perhaps 15 years ago... the first time I saw this and I was flabbergasted. I thought gigolos were only in the movies and the seedy type of novel, you know.

It is a fact that the sex trade is alive and well in the DR and in the Caribbean as a whole. It is there, it is open, it is flagrant and in your face. Unless I can feed every prostitute or give them alternatives, it is better for me not to be judgemental. As for the customers, because I am in essense a monogamous person, does not mean that everyone else is that.

The Cabarete situation is different. There was a real estate feeding frenzy and much greed, coupled with real estate agents with no ethics, and with zero balance or context in the rampant development. Think of the time that the small community between Cabarete and Sosua was simply wiped flat with bulldozers and many guys with guns pushed people out of their homes ... You may not have been in the DR when this happened. I had some insider information as to who claimed the land there at the time, and wrote the person to tell them of the disgrace that was done so that they could claim their piece of the Caribbean - of course they probably burnt the mail.

The crime in Cabarete currently has not been fully reported on this board . But, there is more than what has been reported here - as there is more in Las Terrenas than what is being reported here. I don't think it is sex tourism or prostitution that encourages this level of crime, I think it is a combination of drugs, living in an area where the people next door are poor, living in a country with the poorest or 2nd poorest country in the world next door, repatriation of young trainee criminals from the US, trying to make an essentially fishing/rural local population 'servers' to the new tourism demand, and simply too many people trying to grab a slice of the Caribbean Island Dream Pie with no brakes put on indiscriminate development. The mix makes for bad juju.

My thoughts fwiw. If the business owners want to leave as these reports state, and withdraw their investment, I have no sympathy for them.

[Victor Laszlo]

Awesome post, Chris. I wish I were as articulate as you. Can we now assume that in-country dr1ers are out of denial and ready to acknowledge that there has been a significant rise in crime lately, mostly fueled by drugs?

For what its worth, a Dominican friend who is in a position to know tells me that drug use is increasing rapidly among the working girls in Sosua.

[Tor]

As I understand, the DR has become a transit country for drugs which is more or less openly transported to Haiti with destination US and other countries. The people who handles the transportation through the DR, does not get paid in dollars, but in Cocaine, and has to sell their share in the domestic market. The result of this is that a user doze only cost 50 pesos in Charamicos. A small presidente is 100 pesos at the disco...

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Victor Laszlo

Can we now assume that in-country dr1ers are out of denial and ready to acknowledge that there has been a significant rise in crime lately, mostly fueled by drugs?

I cannot say that unequivocally. What goes up on the one side, could be going down on the other side - good results are being reported from other programs running in the barios. I think for the expat community, there could have been an increase - or, are we simply seeing more expats? What is also not clear to me, is how much of this kind of crime has had this kind of visibility before. Most other in-country long-timers will probably give you the same or similar type answers and we have no numbers that we can trust.

What I can say unequivocally, is that the nature of crime has changed in my view.

[Lambada]

Originally Posted by Victor Laszlo

Can we now assume that in-country dr1ers are out of denial and ready to acknowledge that there has been a significant rise in crime lately, mostly fueled by drugs?

Some of us have been commenting on the rise in crime, fuelled by drugs and ignited (for want of a better simile) by institutional complicity (both law enforcement, justice and Government) for some time. And we've been pointing out that where the institutions are not overtly complicit they are laissez-faire or 'looking the other way'. But getting back to the thought which started this thread I think there is a difference between resident foreign business owners packing up and leaving and foreign property owners wanting to sell. I have no interest in foreign property owners who don't live here, who merely want to buy property to rent out or as an investment. Mostly the profits from such activity have little impact on Dominicans other than some temporary employment and many such foreign owners bypass the taxation system by renting out to other foreign tourists. They eventually sell to other foreigners (& I would agree, harder for them to bypass taxation at the point of sale). What does interest me is the long term foreign residents who are selling businesses and/or homes and moving on. Those people have earned my attention because they have actually lived here, some for long periods. Does anyone have any figures or baseline data? (Yeah, I know, where would one look for that!)

[Victor Laszlo]

Originally Posted by Lambada

Some of us have been commenting on the rise in crime, fuelled by drugs and ignited (for want of a better simile) by institutional complicity (both law enforcement, justice and Government) for some time. And we've been pointing out that where the institutions are not overtly complicit they are laissez-faire or 'looking the other way'.)

This is true, but when the subject was extensively discussed previously (six months ago, a year ago) there seemed (to my addled mind, anyway) to be a sort of unofficial policy on the board to downplay the matter. That stance seems to be getting harder to maintain.

As for Dominican on Dominican crime, yes, there are no reliable statistics, so no one can "prove" anything. But the Dominican people I know are much more concerned about crime today than they were, say, two years ago, and that's a reliable enough source for me.