A/HRC/7/19/Add.5 A/HRC/7/23/Add.3 Page 25 Domingo revolt of August 1791, which profoundly shook the slavery system, and the independence of Haiti from France in 1804, which created an extreme and enduring fear and the cultural and political demonization of Haitians in the whole hemisphere. Following Haitian independence, the Spanish ruling elites in Santo Domingo continued to foster the Hispanic identity that had been promoted against the western part of the island by presenting the colony as white, Catholic and of Hispanic roots vis-à-vis Haiti, presented as black, voodoo practitioners and with an African culture with French influence. These dichotomies are fundamental in the analysis of the depth of the rejection of the African heritage in Dominican society. 92. A major historical episode in the analysis of anti-Haitianism is the political unification of the island, by Haiti, from 1822 to 1844, following which the Dominican Republic gained its independence. The Special Rapporteur observes that this period in history has remained profoundly present in the collective consciousness of the Dominicans, to the point that nationalist political parties with racist and xenophobic platforms consistently refer to it in order to create a sense of fear of “peaceful invasion from Haiti” among the population, in particular, in the light of the current situation in Haiti and the significant migration flows into the Dominican Republic. 2. The modern political expression of racism and racial discrimination 93. During the regime of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, from 1930 until 1961, the combination of the ideology of racial prejudice and anti-Haitianism in the construction of the national identity of the Dominican Republic reached its strongest expression. Two key developments of violence of both a physical and symbolic nature enshrined the racial paradigm in the Dominican Republic and the psyche of Dominican society: the killing of thousands of Haitians around the border in 1937, and the implementation of an ideology of national identity built around the denial and rejection of the black African roots of Dominican society and the worship of the country’s mainly Hispanic and symbolically Amerindian roots. The Amerindian roots were a convenient ideological construct - given the almost total disappearance, long before, of the Taino people directly legitimizing the multiculturalism of the society and indirectly but profoundly delegitimizing its African roots. Several official programmes, mechanisms and practices materialized this ideology, including the promotion of immigration from Europe and other regions as a means of “whitening” the population; the omission in history books of references regarding the contributions of the enslaved Africans and their descendents in the country; or the creation of an official registration system that classified Dominicans according to their Hispanic and Amerindian roots and negated any colour reference that could link them to blackness and to Haiti. The classification of many Dominicans under the term “Indian” or its many variants “light Indian”, “dark Indian” amongst others - implicitly created a construct of national identity in which most Dominicans could fit. 94. In that context, with the support of influential intellectual and religious figures, Trujillo, himself of clearly mixed racial origin, developed a comprehensive anti-Haitian ideology that indistinctly used the terms "race" and "nation" in order to show that Haitians and Dominicans not only belonged to different nations, but also to different races. With Haitians considered as a threat to the culture and to the social and ethnic identity of Dominican society, measures were implemented to legitimize and institutionalize this racist ideology, including legislation imposing fines, jail terms and sometimes deportation for those practicing voodoo.