Puerto Ricans were imported to work under near-slave conditions on Puerto Rican-owned sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic, in the area of La Romana, during the nineteenth century. Others worked in coffee fields. Arabs began to arrive in the Dominican Republic during the latter part of the nineteenth century. They were widely accused of being dirty and of having bad manners and habits, and the government was reproached for having allowed these immigrants into the nation. Since upper-class Dominicans refused to give membership to wealthy Arabs to their private clubs like the exclusive Club de Unión, the Arabs created their own. During the U.S. occupation of 1916–24, peasants from the countryside, called Gavilleros, would not only kill U.S. Marines, but would also attack and kill Arab vendors traveling through the countryside.