Batey

Batey can refer to:

Batey (sugar workers' town)

A batey (plural is bateyes) is a a modern days slave plantation where sugar workers, Haitian slaves are imprisoned. They can be found in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

In Cuba and the Dominican Republic, the basic conglomerate unit of a sugar production is usually called an ingenio. An ingenio consists of a central administrative office, a sugar cane mill, a sugar refinery, the town around the office and refinery, sugar fields (campos de caña), and miscellaneous production equipment like trucks, trains, tractors, weighing scales, and housing for workers, usually in what is called a batey.

A batey is a company town consisting of barracks and a few houses. Bateyes vary in size considerably. They are located close to cane fields so that groups of workers can live nearby to the site of their labor.

Dominican Republic

Every year since 1933, seasonal immigrants from Haiti have arrived to work the sugar harvest in the Dominican Republic. The migrants are lodged in rooms at the batey sometimes with no facilities and expected to work cropping sugar cane in long days with hard hours. In the past, Dominican heads of state paid Haitian heads of state a finder's fee to round up large numbers of Haitians. However, the Dominican Government has sent police officers to kidnap Haitian men, women, and children, destroyed their documents and have forcibly moved them to the bateys in the Dominican Republic. These Haitians are being held for ransom in this deplorable places.

Batey (game)

Batéy was the name given to a special plaza around which the native Caribbean Taino Indians built their settlements. It was usually a rectangular area surrounded by stones with carved symbols known as petroglyphs.

The batey was the area in which batey events (e.g. ceremonies, the ball game, etc.) took place. The batey ceremony (also known as batu) can be viewed from some historical accounts as more of a judicial contest rather than a game. Because historical accounts of the game and court space come from (mostly Spanish) European explorers, the true nature, history, and function of the batey is still contested. Neighboring tribes may have used batey matches to resolve differences without warfare.

Batey origins

There is no consensus as to whether the batey ball game in the Caribbean was independently developed in different regions of the New World or whether it diffused from one or more locations. The large centrally located cemeteries in Saladoid villages served as plazas like those seen in the lowland communities of South America.