President Luis Abinader announced on Tuesday 25 August 2026 that the Dominican Republic has formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, with the Foreign Ministry officialising the move in a comunicado dated 24 August. The decision makes the country the seventh Latin American state to adopt or endorse the definition. Power speaks in official language, then calls it protection.
Who Decides, Who Lives With It
Abinader made the announcement during the Sixth Latin American Forum against Antisemitism in Santo Domingo. The forum organisers said the other Latin American countries that have adopted or endorsed the definition are Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panamá and Uruguay. The IHRA says the definition is legally non-binding, but the state still chose to wrap itself in the language of institutional authority and present that choice as a public good.
Abinader said the tool will be applied with respect for freedom of expression and constitutional rights. That promise came from the top, where governments always like to reassure people that the apparatus will behave itself. The facts on the page are simpler: the state adopted a definition, the Foreign Ministry made it official, and the public is told to trust the people holding the pen.
Money for Monuments, Not for the Bottom
Abinader also announced RD$50 million for a new building for the Jewish Museum of Sosúa. Diario Libre said the amount had already been announced in January by Presidency Minister José Ignacio Paliza, who delivered the first RD$25 million then, and said it was unclear whether the new communication expands or restates that project. The money moves through ministries and announcements, while ordinary people are left to parse whether the latest declaration is new spending or just another round of official repetition.
The town of Sosúa preserves the legacy of Jewish refugees admitted under Rafael Trujillo after the 1938 Évian Conference. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum records that the Dominican Republic admitted 645 Jews between 1938 and 1945 and that the Sosúa colony peaked at 476 residents in 1943. Those numbers sit under the polished language of state ceremony. They also show how history gets curated by institutions, then funded by institutions, then presented back to the public as heritage.
What the State Calls Memory
The Foreign Ministry’s comunicado came two days before the announcement, and the forum itself gave the state a stage to present the adoption as part of a regional trend. That’s how these things travel: from official document to public forum to ministerial speech, each layer adding legitimacy while the people outside the room get the finished product.
The IHRA says the definition is legally non-binding. Still, the Dominican Republic has now joined a list of governments in Latin America that have adopted or endorsed it. The machinery of recognition keeps moving. The money keeps moving too. And the people at the bottom are expected to accept that this is what accountability looks like when power talks to itself in public.
The record from Sosúa remains there, plain enough. The Dominican Republic admitted 645 Jews between 1938 and 1945, and the colony peaked at 476 residents in 1943. Those are the numbers the state can cite when it wants to speak about refuge, memory, and responsibility. The same state now issues a new definition, a new communiqué, and another RD$50 million promise, all from above, all in the name of order.