Ugly history: The 1937 Haitian Massacre - Edward Paulino
When historians talk about
the atrocities of the 20th century,
we often think of those that took place
during and between the two World Wars.
Along with the Armenian genocide
in modern-day Turkey,
the Rape of Nanking in China,
and Kristallnacht in Germany,
another horrific ethnic cleansing campaign
occurred on an island between
the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
The roots of this conflict
go back to 1492,
when Christopher Columbus stumbled
onto the Caribbean island
that would come to be named Hispaniola,
launching a wave of European colonization.
The island’s Taíno natives were decimated
by violence and disease
and the Europeans imported large numbers
of enslaved Africans
to toil in profitable sugar plantations.
By 1777, the island had become divided
between a French-controlled West
and a Spanish-controlled East.
A mass slave revolt won Haiti
its independence from France in 1804
and it became the world’s
first Black republic.
But the new nation paid dearly,
shut out of the world economy and
saddled with debt by its former masters.
Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic
would declare independence
by first overthrowing Haitian rule
of eastern Hispaniola
and later Spanish
and American colonialism.
Despite the long and collaborative history
shared by these two countries,
many Dominican elites saw Haiti
as a racial threat
that imperiled political and commercial
relations with white western nations.
In the years following World War I,
the United States occupied
both parts of the island.
It did so to secure its power
in the Western hemisphere
by destroying local opposition
and installing US-friendly governments.
The brutal and racist nature
of the US occupation,
particularly along the remote
Dominican-Haitian border,
laid the foundation for bigger atrocities
after its withdrawal.
In 1930, liberal Dominican president
Horacio Vásquez
was overthrown by the chief of his army,
Rafael Trujillo.
Despite being a quarter Haitian himself,
Trujillo saw the presence of a bicultural
Haitian and Dominican borderland
as both a threat to his power
and an escape route
for political revolutionaries.
In a chilling speech on October 2, 1937,
he left no doubt about his intentions
for the region.
Claiming to be protecting Dominican
farmers from theft and incursion,
Trujillo announced the killing
of 300 Haitians along the border
and promised that this so-called "remedy"
would continue.
Over the next few weeks,
the Dominican military,
acting on Trujillo’s orders,
murdered thousands of Haitian men
and women,
and even their Dominican-born children.
The military targeted Black Haitians,
even though many Dominicans themselves
were also dark-skinned.
Some accounts say that to distinguish
the residents
of one country from the other,
the killers forced their victims
to say the Spanish word for parsley.
Dominicans pronounce it perejil,
with a trilled Spanish "r."
The primary Haitian language, however,
is Kreyol, which doesn’t use a trilled r.
So if people struggled to say perejil,
they were judged to be Haitian
and immediately killed.
Yet recent scholarship suggests
that tests like this
weren’t the sole factor used to determine
who would be murdered,
especially because many of the border
residents were bilingual.
The Dominican government censored
any news of the massacre,
while bodies were thrown in ravines,
dumped in rivers,
or burned to dispose of the evidence.
This is why no one knows exactly
how many people were murdered,
though contemporary estimates
range from about 4,000 to 15,000.
Yet the extent of the carnage
was clear to many observers.
As the US Ambassador to
the Dominican Republic at the time noted,
“The entire northwest of the frontier
on the Dajabón side
is absolutely devoid of Haitians.
Those not slain either fled across the
frontier or are still hiding in the bush.”
The government tried
to disclaim responsibility
and blame the killings
on vigilante civilians,
but Trujillo was condemned
internationally.
Eventually, the Dominican government
was forced to pay only $525,000
in reparations to Haiti,
but due to corrupt bureaucracy,
barely any of these funds reached
survivors or their families.
Neither Trujillo nor anyone
in his government
was ever punished for this crime
against humanity.
The legacy of the massacre remains
a source of tension
between the two countries.
Activists on both sides of the border
have tried to heal the wounds of the past.
But the Dominican state has done little,
if anything,
to officially commemorate
the massacre or its victims.
Meanwhile, the memory of the Haitian
massacre remains a chilling reminder
of how power-hungry leaders
can manipulate people
into turning against
their lifelong neighbors.
