A/HRC/7/19/Add.5 A/HRC/7/23/Add.3 Page 24 87. Workers in the bateyes visited by the experts live in pitiable conditions with no access to running water, sanitation or electricity. They live far from health-care facilities or schools and lack transportation of any kind. They live in informally constructed shelters with dirt floors. They can find work only in dirty, dangerous and degrading jobs for substandard pay and without contracts. All social and legal forces, private and public, converge to lock them in a status of inescapable illegality which generates extreme vulnerability and social exclusion. They are a permanently exploitable underclass. V. ANALYSES AND CONCLUSIONS OF THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF RACISM, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, XENOPHOBIA AND RELATED INTOLERANCE AND THE INDEPENDENT EXPERT ON MINORITY ISSUES A. Analysis of the Special Rapporteur 88. The analysis of the views and information provided by all the parties concerned led the Special Rapporteur to conclude that racism and racial discrimination do exist in the Dominican society. The vehement denial of the existence of these phenomena, as manifested in the reactions of Government officials, the Dominican Senate and the Archbishop of Santo Domingo, is in itself a clear illustration of the depth and sensitivity of the issue in the Dominican Republic and constitutes a fundamental obstacle for the implementation of effective measures to prevent and eliminate racism and racial discrimination. 1. The historical and cultural depth of the racial paradigm in the construction of the national identity of the Dominican Republic 89. As is the case for all countries in the region, the Dominican Republic is deeply marked by the legacy of racial prejudice that has structured the northern hemisphere during the last five centuries. The founding system of colonization and slavery is based on an intellectual and ideological construction of racism by the European intellectual and religious elites. This construction, which has profoundly impacted the mentality and societal structures of the country, is anchored in the concept of the ethnic and cultural inferiority of the enslaved Africans as the basis and legitimation of slavery. 90. Since the colonial period, the factors of race and colour have been a central paradigm in the construction of the national identity and the development of all societies in the hemisphere, including Dominican society. The northern hemisphere is the region where the racial paradigm has been most profoundly and enduringly implemented. Nowhere in the world has language and vocabulary so richly and creatively expressed the nuances and distinctions of racial colour. The communities that have historically and lastingly been victims of the racial paradigm are chronologically the indigenous people and the enslaved Africans. The historical and cultural depth of this legacy of racism and racial discrimination in the Dominican Republic needs to be analysed in light of the developments that have marked the country’s history over the last five centuries. 91. Anti-Haitianism, which has a strong but not exclusively racial component, has played a very important role in this process. Anti-Haitian feelings can already be traced back to the Santo