Rights Groups File Emergancy Petition to Stop Imminent Deportations to Haiti

Washington, D.C. (UCTP Taino News) - Today six civil and human rights groups filed an emergency petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to halt the roundups, detention, and imminent deportations of hundreds of Haitian nationals by the United States government. The precautionary measures petition argues that deporting people at this moment to Haiti will result in serious human rights violations, including deprivations of the rights to life, family, and due process, and freedom from cruel or unusual punishment.

One year later, Haiti is still reeling from the devastating January 2010 earthquake and is burdened with a massive cholera epidemic, political unrest, and rampant street violence. Deportations from the U.S. to Haiti have been stayed on humanitarian grounds since the January 12, 2010.

Advocates and community members were shocked when, on December 9, 2010, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unexpectedly announced that it was lifting the ban on deportations to Haiti and that it would resume deportations in January 2011, the one-year anniversary of the earthquake.

Romy Lerner, Supervising Attorney at the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center said,”We are deeply concerned that this policy is tearing apart the Haitian community. Our petition alleges that the United States has violated the human rights of the Haitians who are at risk of imminent deportations by separating them from their families without considering their ties to the United States or the welfare of their U.S. citizen children. In Miami, the community is terrified of what is about to happen.”

The petition was submitted by University of Miami School of Law Human Rights and Immigration Clinics, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Alternative Chance, and the Loyola Law Clinic and Center for Social Justice.

A letter supporting the petition to the IACHR was also submitted with 285 signatures from organizations and individuals around the country. The International Indian Treaty Council and the United Confederation of Taino People are among the signatories on the letter, which was also sent to the U.S. State Department.

The petitioning organizations and supporters are urging calls to elected officials and the media today to urge that the US government reverse course, and stop its plan to commence deportations of Haitians this month.

UCTPTN 01.12.2011

CUNY-TV to Focus on Taíno Revival

New York, NY (UCTP Taino News) – CUNY-TV’s weekly series “Independent Sources” will air a segment on the ‘Taino Revival’ tonight at 8:30pm (EST) on Time Warner Cable’s Channel 75. Along with the debate over Taínos claiming their ethnic identity, this edition of Independent Sources will also address what's next for Haiti after protesters recent election results and the growing movement in New York to save endangered languages. The program will repeat on Thursday, December 16th at 7am, 1pm, 11pm and again on Saturday, the 18th at 9am. Outside of the New York metropolitan area, check your local cable listings for CUNY-TV.

UCTPTN 12.15.2010

Earthquake Devastates Haiti

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (UCTP Taino News) – An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 struck outside of Haiti’s capital yesterday causing mass devastation, injury and death. Aftershocks continued today while a tsunami warning issued for countries with Caribbean coast has been canceled.

Government officials from Mexico, Venezuela, Panama, and the United States have already pledged assistance. Celebrities such as musician Wyclef Jean are urging fans to donate to earthquake relief efforts. “We must think ahead for the aftershock, the people will need food, medicine, shelter, etc." said Jean.

International and Regional aid organizations as well as grassroots efforts from Haiti’s Caribbean neighbors have begun to mobilize. The American Red Cross has already released $200,000 in aid and is working directly with the Haitian Red Cross in response.

Commenting on the disaster Roger Hernandez, a representative of the United Confederation of Taino People in Boriken stated “We have heard reports that hospitals are full and thousands have lost their homes.” He continued stating that “Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti.”

The UCTP has posted links on its website directly to the American Red Cross International Response Fund for donations.

The earthquake, reported to be its worst in 200 years, affects a country that is one of most impoverished in the hemisphere. Eighty percent of Haiti's population lives under the poverty line, according to the CIA World Factbook.

UCTPTN 01.13.2010

Major damage from Haiti quake

Breaking News - The 7.0-magnitude earthquake has damaged the presidential palace and a hospital. Major casualties expected

International Mother Earth Day Adopted at the United Nations

Celebrating the adoption of International Mother Earth Day at United Nations Headquarters, Tonya Gonnella Frichner, Josephine Tarrant, Muriel Borst, and Roberto Borrero. (Photo: Miguel Ibanez, Habitat Pro)

UNITED NATIONS (UCTP Taino News) -- In a resolution adopted Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly officially designated April 22nd as International Mother Earth Day. The assembly recognized that “Mother Earth” is a common expression for the planet earth in a number of countries and regions, and invited all member states, international and regional organizations and civil society to observe the day annually.

Acting in consensus, the assembly proclaimed that the “Earth and its ecosystems are our home” and stressed that in order to achieve a just balance economically, socially, and environmentally it is necessary to promote “harmony with nature and Earth.”

In a special event celebrating the adoption of International Mother Earth Day, the gathering was called to order with the sounding of the Guamo (conch shell) by Roberto Borrero, a Boriken Taino representing the United Confederation of Taino People. The call to order was followed by a welcome address on behalf of the Onondaga Nation presented by Tonya Gonnella Frichner, the North American Regional Representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

In his presentation at the event, United Nations General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann thanked President Evo Morales Ayma of the Plurinational State of Bolivia for initiating International Mother Earth Day and for attending the meeting. He noted that President Morales has “proven himself to be fully committed to the transmission of the great spiritual and moral values of our South and Central American and Caribbean ancestors.”

The 63rd GA president further noted that these “values are greatly need to help our world out of the neo-liberal quagmire of greed and social irresponsibility in which we find ourselves.”

Addressing the gathering, President Evo Morales Ayma who is of indigenous Aymara origin thanked all those who supported the Declaration and noted that western thought has long viewed the Earth as a commodity and not as a “living being that has rights”. President Morales also took the opportunity to request that those gathered support a call for the development of an additional declaration on the “Rights of Mother Earth.”

The event continued with a special performance by the Silver Cloud Singers, an intertribal Native American singing and dancing troupe and an expert panel including Leonardo Boff (Brazil), Tariq Banuri (UNDSA), Juanita Castano (UNEP), Thanh Xuan Nguyen (WEDO), Jan McAlpine (UNFFS), and Maude Barlow (Canada).

The International Mother Earth Day resolution was co-sponsored by 50 states, including several Caribbean countries - Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Saint Lucia.

UCTPTN 04.22.2009

Museum Recognizes Caribbean Heritage

Photo: Several works by Arawak artist Foster Simon of Pakuri Territory in Guyana will be exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History’s Caribbean Festival.

New York, NY (UCTP Taino News) - The American Museum of Natural History will host a Caribbean Heritage Festival in recognition of the region’s cultural legacy and diversity on Sunday, June 22, 2008 from 12 noon – 5:00 p.m. The celebration will highlight the region's contributions and cultures through family friendly programs with guest presenters, performers and films. A Caribbean art display will be featured in the Museum’s Grand Gallery with artists representing Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Caribbean indigenous artists Aguilar Marrero and Reina Miranda of Taino Spirit as well as acclaimed Lokono Arawak artist Foster Simon of Guyana will have works exhibited. The program is presented in collaboration with the Haitian Centers Council, Inc. and is free with suggested Museum admission.

UCTPTN 06.20.2008

Native Representatives Invited for Historic Haitian Ceremony

Haiti - In an historic first since the earliest European trafficking of Africans to the Western Hemisphere for enslavement, the African derived Indigenous religions in Haiti have been united under one Spiritual leader. On March 7, 2008, Max Beauvoir, an internationally acclaimed bio-chemist, plant physiologist and traditional healer will be elevated to the new office of Spiritual Leader of the National Assembly of Vodouizan (KNVA) in Haiti. Vodou is a monotheistic, Creator-based, religion born out of a mixing of African and Native American spiritual practices with adherents numbering several million worshipers in the Western Hemisphere.

The move to form KNVA was decided among the leaders of the major branches of traditional practice in Haiti to better inform the world community about the ancient foundations of their spiritual presence in the Western Hemisphere. The position of the National Assembly is that, over time, uninformed sensationalist motivations of various conversion-driven religions have harmed the people of Haiti and have done great injustice to the character and diverse beauty of all Indigenous spiritual communities. A new spirit of tolerance and acceptance will foster religious freedom within the Haitian cultural context and serve as a positive influence for national and international progress.

On February 6, 2008 Beauvoir stated the following in a special Council with the National Assembly, "We honor the similarities and the cooperative nature of the Indigenous Native American and African spiritual communities in the New World reaching back hundreds of years. There is encouraging evidence of a new era dawning that can lead to a better understanding of the nature and patterns of worship which had sustained a thousand generations of the Original People from Africa and Native America. When colonial Europeans arrived the religious, political and economic balance was lost".

The National Assembly will convene on March 7, 2008 near the capital city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti to honor the past and close the 516-year circle of destruction. Haiti will, then, look forward to a future of respect among the world community of sovereign nations. Sovereign Native representatives and Indigenous Spiritual Elders from throughout the Americas are gratefully invited to attend this historic ceremony.

Tropical storm flooding kills 9 in Caribbean

By Manuel Jimenez

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Reuters) - Flash flooding from Tropical Storm Olga's torrential rains killed at least eight people in the Dominican Republic and forced tens of thousands out of their homes, government officials said on Wednesday.

The storm weakened on Wednesday to a tropical depression after it exited Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. But flooding remained a deadly threat as the remnants of Olga moved west across the Caribbean, forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

By late afternoon, Olga was just a broad mass of thunderstorms centered 65 miles north of Kingston, Jamaica. It was moving rapidly west on a course that would keep the center south of Cuba and take it over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula by Saturday.

Olga's top sustained winds dropped to 35 mph (55 kph), below the threshold to be called a tropical storm, and forecasters expected it to dissipate further on Thursday.

See full story at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071212/wl_nm/storm_olga_dc

Photo: Subtropical storm Olga is seen in the Caribbean in a satellite image taken December 11, 2007. (NOAA/Handout/Reuters)

Noel’s Devastation Still Affecting Caribbean

UCTP Taino News – Last month, Tropical Storm Noel devastated parts of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and the Bahamas, with incessant rains and massive flooding that took the lives of several dozen people and destroyed thousands of homes, crops and infrastructure. According to preliminary assessments conducted by the U.N. and other international agencies, the Dominican Republic was the hardest hit, with close to 85 persons dead, 48 missing, and an estimated 66,568 displaced.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) reports that as a result of the storm the potential for an outbreak of dengue fever in the Dominican Republic is high. Mosquito nets and water purification and collection material are critical focus of relief work. As of November 15th CRS also reported that many roads are still impassible in the Dominican Republic and Haiti and communication infrastructure is severely damaged “leaving thousands stranded.”

The organization - CRS - has committed $500,000 dollars to the relief effort and is seeking additional donations at http://crs.org/haiti/noel-floods/

Photo: The Madre Vieja Bridge over the Nigua River in San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic. Photo by José Luis Guigni/CRS

Some western countries endorsing obscuring of UN Indigenous Rights declaration -GOIP

The Guyana Organisation of Indigenous Peoples (GOIP) says, in a letter to President Bharrat Jagdeo, that interpretations of sections of the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as distinct from the whole is leading to negative interpretations in some African and Caribbean states.

According to the letter, signed by GOIP secretary Percy Peneux, the declaration, adopted by the UN Human Rights council in June 2006, is "a long-overdue affirmation of the minimum international standards needed to uphold the human rights of Indigenous Peoples" in Guyana. It is based on core international principles and values that embraces tolerance, peace and respect for the dignity of all cultures and peoples and, consistent with the UN Charter, it requires that the "human rights and freedoms of all shall be respected." The organisation said it has been alerted that a small number of African and Caribbean states have been encouraged by a few Western States: Aotearoa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States, to interpret the declaration in an erroneous way. Each provision of the declaration cannot be read as a separate fragment but should be interpreted in a holistic manner as to do otherwise could lead to extremist and absolute interpretations that could not be justified under the declaration or international human rights law as a whole.

The GOIP said the negative interpretations have recently led to a General Assembly resolution to defer action on the adoption of the declaration which authorises "time for further consultations." In response to this resolution, the GOIP said, "It is our sincere desire that your Administration recommend that these "consultations" should not be converted into a working group or any other process that fails to preserve the text of the Declaration" as adopted by the council in 2006.

The GOIP said the declaration is described as a "standard of achievement to be pursued in a spirit of partnership and mutual respect". It does not create new rights but elaborates on existing human rights and standards as they apply to indigenous peoples. The organisation said it agrees with the Indigenous People's Caucus which in a recent statement submitted to the president of the General Assembly, said the key purpose of "consultations" is to bridge understanding, especially for those countries who chose not to participate in the "standard-setting process" that took place over 20 years.

The organisation said in the Indigenous global context, the declaration is an essential complement to the survival, dignity and well-being of the world's indigenous peoples and to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. GOIP calls on the government to join with sister Caricom states Dominica and Haiti and in urging the General Assembly to adopt the declaration as soon as possible.

Source: Starbroek News, 15 February

LATIN AMERICA: Kids Pay Dearly for Lack of Clean Water

Diego Cevallos* - Tierramérica

MEXICO CITY, Nov 16 (IPS) - In Latin America and the Caribbean, one-third of childhood deaths are the result of diarrhoea. The problem could be resolved with clean water and appropriate sanitation systems, but millions of people, especially the indigenous and Afro-descendant populations, lack access to either.

Statistics for the region show that coverage of water and sanitation services is among the best in the world. But the figures can be misleading.

Although 91 percent of the region's population does have access to potable water, there are still 50 million people who don't, and 34 million live in rural areas. As for sanitation, coverage reaches 77 percent, but 103 million people lack access to that service.

Those shortfalls are behind the majority of diarrhoea-based illnesses, which today are the second leading cause of infant mortality in Latin America and the Caribbean, after respiratory infections.

Worldwide, 1.8 million children die each year from diarrhoea, which proves more deadly than tuberculosis, malaria or HIV/AIDS.

"For the children who don't have water and sanitation, the future is poverty and illness, and will probably follow them the rest of their lives," Liliana Carvajal, one of the authors of the 2006 Human Development Report, presented Nov. 9 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), told Tierramérica.

The report states that "clean water and sanitation are among the most powerful preventative measures for child mortality." And that investment in this area "is to killer diseases like diarrhoea what immunisation is to measles -- a lifesaver."

Halving the proportion of people without access to potable water and basic sanitation is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations, with the deadline of 2015.

Latin America and the Caribbean are well on their way to meeting that goal. But it will only be in terms of averages, because millions of people will still lack access to those services.

"We can't be shouting victory, because there are specific cases that are very complicated," said Carvajal.

"It is no longer ethically or politically acceptable to use averages as indicators of the level of compliance with the MDGs, because they hide very difficult realities," says Nils Katsberg, Latin America and Caribbean director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The fact is that the people who live in rural areas and are indigenous or of African descent -- in other words, some 200 million of the approximately 523 million people in the region -- face serious obstacles in achieving the levels of development set by the MDGs, Katsberg told Tierramérica.

"There is still much to be done, especially with the children," he added.

One-third of Latin America's rural residents do not have safe sources of drinking water, and more than half do not have adequate sanitation facilities, according to UNDP studies.

In Bolivia, 95 percent of the urban population utilise potable water sources, but in the countryside the proportion is just 68 percent. As for sanitation services, access is 58 percent for the urban dwellers and 23 percent for rural residents, according to the agency's figures.

Only 54 percent of Bolivian children under age five who suffer diarrhoea receive oral rehydration treatment. In neighbouring Brazil, where there is greater coverage of both sanitation services (75 percent) and potable water services (90 percent), such treatment reaches just 28 percent of young children with diarrhoea.

In Guatemala, where 95 percent of the population has access to sources of clean or treated water, just 22 percent of children with diarrhoea receive rehydration treatment.

The reverse is true in Haiti. There, only 54 percent of the population has access to potable water and just 30 percent have sanitation services, but 41 percent of children under five with diarrhoea receive treatment.

"A child born without access to water and sanitation is going to have constant cases of diarrhoea, which will affect the immune system. The child will have anemia, which will affect schooling, and the child will learn less," said development expert Carvajal.

"It is a cycle of poverty that will follow the child for the rest of her life," she added.

The Human Development Report, which the UNDP has published annually since 1990, emphasises that investment in water and sanitation would save millions of lives, but also stresses that improved services would be of great economic benefit.

Universal access to potable water and sanitation services would reduce the financial burden of the health systems in developing countries by an estimated 1.6 billion dollars annually.

In countries like Nicaragua, clean water would cut diarrhoea cases by more than 20 percent; in Peru 15 percent; and in Guatemala nearly 40 percent, according to UNDP.

Latin America and the Caribbean "must make a much greater effort in everything related to water and sanitation in the rural sectors, and put a stop to discrimination against indigenous and Afro-descendant communities in access to those services," said UNICEF's Katsberg.

(*Originally published Nov. 11 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)

(FIN/2006)

Historians work to set record straight on Cuba's Taino Indians

BY GARY MARX
Chicago Tribune

YARA, Cuba - (KRT) - In a sweltering coastal settlement, Alejandro Hartmann pulled out a spiral notebook and jotted notes as a local peasant described his family's ties to a long forgotten indigenous group that is witnessing a modest resurgence.

"What is the name of your mother and father?" Hartmann asked Julio Fuentes, a wisp of a man parked on a wooden bench. "Where do they live? How old are they?"

Hartmann fired off a dozen more questions as part of his effort to complete the first census of the descendants of the Taino Indians, an indigenous group that once thrived in this remote region of eastern Cuba and later were thought to be extinct.

"Julio is a mixture of Spanish and Indian like many people," explained Hartmann, a historian and Taino expert. "I want to eliminate the myth once and for all that the Indians were extinguished in Cuba."

For years, anthropologists widely believed this island's once-powerful Taino Indians were exterminated shortly after Christopher Columbus sailed into a pristine bay and walked the steep, thickly forested terrain more than 500 years ago.

The explorer spent only a week in the area in 1492 but described the Taino as gentle, hard-working people growing crops and navigating the crystalline waters in huge dug-out canoes.

But, in a familiar story throughout the Americas, war and disease decimated the Taino, whose sense of identity was further razed over the centuries by racism and by generations of intermixing with whites, blacks and others who settled here.

Today, it's difficult to differentiate Taino descendents from the average Cuban peasant, or guajiro, as they are called.

Yet, Hartmann and a group of experts continue to press ahead, rewriting the tale of the Taino's demise in an effort to set the historical record straight and foster recognition among the island's 11 million residents of the group's contribution to Cuban life.

With a new museum, academic conferences and other projects, they also are trying to nurture a nascent sense of identity among the hundreds - perhaps thousands - of Taino descendents who are scattered along Cuba's impoverished eastern tip.

"We are recovering knowledge that was forgotten, knowledge that my parents and grandparents had," said Fuentes, 51. "A lot of people had knowledge but lived and died without knowing its Indian origin."

Experts say Taino influences are everywhere.

The palm-thatched huts common in the region are similar to those built centuries ago by the indigenous group. Some farmers till the soil using a long, sharpened pole known to the Taino as a coa.

Fuentes said he uses a coa to remove old plantain trees and dig latrines, while harvesting beans, sweet potatoes and other crops according to the four lunar phases - a belief system of indigenous origin.

Some coastal residents fish with small nets in the Taino style and crabs are trapped using a crude, box-shaped device that has changed little over the centuries, experts say.

Although the Taino language, Arawak, has all but died in Cuba, hundreds of indigenous words are peppered throughout the local Spanish. Many of the names of the island's most well-known places - from Havana to Camaguey to Baracoa - come from the Arawak language.

"The Taino culture permeates the culture of Cuba in a fundamental way," explained Jose Barreiro, a Cuban-American scholar of Taino history. "It's the base culture of the country along with Spanish and African influences."

Experts say the Taino migrated north from South America's Amazon basin centuries ago, populating much of what is now Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba.

The Taino arrived in Cuba about 300 years before Columbus and eventually numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Organized in villages under the authority of caciques or chiefs, the Taino cultivated beans, yucca, corn and other crops, along with something they called cohiba, or tobacco.

They hunted turtles, snakes, iguanas and a giant rodent called a jutia, while also adhering to a complex set of spiritual beliefs whose primary deity, Yucahuguama, represented agriculture and the ocean.

Roberto Ordunez, an anthropologist and director of the Taino museum in Baracoa, a picturesque colonial town of 50,000, said Columbus described a large, thriving agricultural community.

"I climbed up a mountain and found the flat lands planted with many things," Ordunez said Columbus observed in his journal in 1492. "It was a pleasure to see it and in the middle of it was a large population."

Although the Taino left no large monuments, they built canals for channeling water, caves for storing food during drought and a network of stone footpaths for travel and to escape their enemies, a raiding tribe known as the Carib.

But the Taino had no chance against the Spanish, who brought malaria, smallpox and other deadly diseases, along with modern weapons.

Still, some put up a fight.

An indigenous leader named Hatuey traveled from the island of Hispaniola to Baracoa to warn the Tainos about the conquistadores. He was captured, refused to convert to Christianity and was burned at the stake.

Hatuey remains a revered figure in Cuba, where his story is among the first lessons taught to schoolchildren.

"Hatuey is considered the first rebel in America because he was the first to understand the abuses of the colonialists and rebel against them," explained Noel Cautin, a guide at the Taino museum.

A second indigenous leader, Guama, launched hit-and-run attacks against the conquistadores for a decade before he was killed, perhaps by his own brother, in 1532. By then, the Taino numbered only a few thousand, a figure that continued to plummet. Historians in the 19th century declared there were no indigenous left on the island.

"Those who remained were in remote areas and the historians were primarily in the cities," Barriero said. "The Taino also had adopted Spanish technology and language."

Barriero and others say that not a single Taino community remains intact, though the group's culture is best preserved in La Caridad de los Indios and a handful of other remote villages in the mountains southwest of Baracoa.

In a sign of growing international recognition, the Smithsonian Institution last year returned bone fragments from seven Taino Indians to the La Caridad community for a sacred reburial.

The human remains along with thousands of indigenous artifacts were taken almost a century ago by American archaeologist Mark Harrington and later fell into the possession of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

Another source of pride is Baracoa's modest Taino museum, which opened last year in a hillside cave and displays pendants, necklaces and other pre-Columbian artifacts made of shells and other materials.

Fuentes has visited the museum twice.

"I felt pride because I hadn't see these things before and because I'm part of this culture," he said.

Keeping them in our Prayers…

The UCTP pauses to offer our sincere condolences to all the families in Haiti and the Dominican Republic who have lost loved ones during the recent devastating flooding that has taken place. The tragic death toll from flooding in the Dominican Republic and Haiti rose to at least 363.

Our condolences all go out to the families in Borikén (Puerto Rico) who have also experienced a similar tragedy as flooding on May 24 in killed at least four people on the island.

Dominican, Haiti Floods Kill at Least 363

Ta'kahi Guaitiao (Greetings relatives):

It is with a heavy heart that we forward the stories below. Please keep these families from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico and Guyana in your prayers as they deal with these tragedies.

Oma'bahari (With respect),
Roberto Mucaro Borrero,
President, UCTP
U.S. Regional Coordinating Office
http://www.uctp.org/

------------------------------------

Dominican, Haiti Floods Kill at Least 363
By PETER PRENGAMAN, Associated Press Writer

JIMANI, Dominican Republic - Sobbing villagers tore through heaps of mud with their bare hands Tuesday, searching for loved ones as the death toll from flooding in the Dominican Republic and Haiti rose to at least 363. Trucks dumped scores of corpses into a mass grave.

An Associated Press reporter counted at least 180 bodies on the Dominican side of Hispaniola island by Tuesday afternoon. Another 100 or so had been dumped in the mass grave, according to Lt. Virgilio Mejia with the Dominican National Rescue Commission.

There were 83 confirmed deaths on the Haitian side, but the toll in both countries was steadily rising.

"I've looked at the bodies in the morgue and couldn't recognize any of them," said Jude Joseph, 30, who came to Jimani from Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince to sell rice at a border market and visit family members in Bobmita, La Cuarenta and Barrio El Tanque, neighborhoods that were swept away in Monday's floods.

"I don't know what to do. I've been left with nothing," said Joseph, whose nine relatives were missing late Tuesday.

They were among the more than 250 unaccounted for in the Dominican Republic. In addition, 62 were missing in Haiti, mostly in the town of Fond Verrette.

U.S. Marines, who are leading a 3,600-member multinational task force sent to stabilize Haiti since the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29, headed to Fond Verrette help in the emergency.

Rain has pelted the region for weeks, but a weekend downpour caused the Solie River to burst its banks, sweeping away the three neighborhoods of wooden shacks built mostly by Haitian migrants working in this impoverished Dominican town. At least 50 of the dead on the Dominican side were Haitians.

"I found them this morning," said Shela Lena, 24, who lost her sister-in-law and 3-year-old nephew Tuesday. She came from Port-au-Prince to work as a maid.

About six miles outside of Jimani, emergency workers in surgical masks and white gloves watched as trucks dumped scores of corpses into a 15-foot ditch.

By late Tuesday, more than scores of bodies filled the grave. No relatives were present for the mass burial. Some on the Dominican side were believed to be Haitian workers living there illegally and therefore afraid to claim the bodies of family
members.

The Dominican government had issued an alert Sunday, warning people that rivers may swell with the rains. But Jimani — more than 100 miles west of the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo — has only limited access to radio broadcasts.

People whose houses still stood on Tuesday scooped water from their living rooms. Chairs and mattresses floated in deep pools of water as dark clouds threatened more rain. Hundreds of houses had been destroyed on both sides of the border.

As rescue workers and families pulled bodies from the mud, medical teams draped work areas with mosquito netting. The insects can carry parasites that cause malaria and dengue fever. Some people were also being given tetanus shots.

"We can't find her anywhere," cried Norma Cuevas, 32, as she desperately searched for her 63-year-old mother among dozens of other families reaching their hands through mud.

Many roads on both countries were still impassable.

Elena Diaz, 42, who lost her daughter in the floods, sobbed as she waited in a long line outside the morgue where she went to look for her son-in-law and three grandchildren.

"They found my daughter. Now I have to see if I have some family left," she said.

The raging water carried some victims away. Bodies were found as far away as six miles downstream, said Maximo Noves Espinal, an emergency official in Jimani.

Haitian officials were struggling to determine the full extent of the tragedy. Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue was expected to visit the scene.

Since a three-week armed rebellion pushed Aristide from power, Haiti's interim leaders have struggled to provide basic services to its 8 million people. Left nearly bankrupt, the government has scant resources to deal with natural disasters.

The rains left at least three others dead in other parts of the Dominican Republic while one man was also killed in Puerto Rico. Another man was killed aboard a Guyanese-registered freighter that sank Monday in rough seas.

The floods were some of the deadliest in a decade.

In 1994, Tropical Storm Gordon caused mudslides that buried at least 829 Haitians. More recently, nearly 30 people died in September during floods caused by heavy rain in St. Marc, about 45 miles northwest of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

----------------------
Associated Press writers Amy Bracken and Jose P. Monegro contributed
to this report.

-----------------------

In related news:

Flooding on Monday in Puerto Rico killed at least four people.

Searchers in the capital of San Juan found the body of a 24-year-old man who disappeared Sunday in a flooded lagoon, officials said.

Parts of the island got up to 8 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service. More than 60 Puerto Ricans were in emergency shelters in schools.

At sea, the rough weather contributed to the sinking of a Guyanese-registered freighter off the north coast early Monday, killing one man, officials said.