This dissertation considers the workings and displays of nationalism and negrophobia as necessary components of Dominican state formation and social disciplining in defense of national sovereignty. Embedded in this triangulation of ideologies is a sustained antiblackness that is elided at every turn and instead reformulated through anti-Haitianism as a matter of self-defense against an imminent Haitian invasion and takeover of the Dominican Republic. As such, I pay attention to the ways in which these ideologies are circulated in routine, everyday discourse, practices, and interactions, and also how they manifest across semi-private institutions. The study draws upon fourteen months of observant participation in place, at Batey Libertad, and in motion, traveling by public transportation across the Dominican Republic. I gathered ethnographic data from sites and spaces in which modes of ethnoracial profiling, selective solidarity, and survival mechanisms were employed to either uphold or disrupt state mandates calling for the removal of people of Haitian descent. This is complemented by an analysis of newspaper media and museum curations. First, I argue that Dominican nationalism is most aggressive when its impetus is framed as a necessary condition for cultural self-preservation and political sovereignty that is undergirded by the negation of a de-facto apartheid state fueled by negrophobia and antiblackness. Secondly, I maintain that conceptualizations about Haitians are enmeshed in a process of dehumanization that renders their bodies as exceptional, thus outside of comprehension of the Human. As other-than-human, Haitians can never be categorized as citizens. Thirdly, I assert that the batey (historically state-sponsored settlement designed to house sugarcane migrant laborers) is a space for rich productions of creative and collaborative actions that defy state policies and propaganda, which in turn presents people of Haitian descent with possibilities for other ways of being and belonging in the Dominican Republic. Though complicated and incomplete, I attempt to show the intricacies and intimacies of life in the Dominican Republic, wherein all constituents are entangled in a hostile yet wanting environment where survival, with its myriad configurations and meanings, is the ultimate goal.