Whether or not Rafaël Trujillo’s government was the main proponent that escalated the racial divide between the countries can be debated. What is not up for questioning is the fact that this ethnic division exists. Following the end of the slave trade, the Dominican Republic was one of many nations to attempt to exclude those people with darker skin pigmentation “as a way to Whiten” their country (Sawyer and Paschel 304). Even at its foundation, the Dominican Republic was set racially apart from Haiti. (Sawyer and Paschel 306) On that little island of Hispaniola “[t]he Dominican Republic was established… emphasizing its Hispanic and Mestizo… populace and defining itself as racially distinct from its Black neighbor” (Sawyer and Paschel 306).