The Parsley Massacre (Trancript)

In the first week of October in 1937, one of the most brutal events in the 20th century Caribbean occurred where an estimated 15,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitians descent were murdered under the orders of Dominican Republic president, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.

In the Beginning 

Both Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola and as such, have always been connected in their history. Both were first colonised by the Spanish in 1492 before 1697 when Haiti became colonised by the French. It would remained this way until the 1804, where in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the country achieved independence. Thus becoming the world’s first black republic. But DR had a different route in the 1800’s where between the years of 1822 and 1844, the DR was occupied and governed by the Haitian government. By the 1860’s, DR was then re-annexed by Spain for several years. 

But then in the early 1900’s, the US military invaded and occupied the entire island. In Haiti, this occupation lasted from 1915 to 1934 while for the DR, they controlled the island from 1916 to 1924. 

Specifically to Haiti, the US stated that invading the country was necessary, for Haiti was poor and unstable and if they did not take over, some other power would. The secretary of state at the time, Robert Lansing, backed the occupation as it allowed for an end of “anarchy, savagery and oppression” in Haiti, for according to him “the African race are devoid of any capacity for political organisation”

A few months before the invasion, American Marines stoled $500,000 worth of gold, packed in wooden boxes, from the headquarters of Haiti’s national bank. The gold was then brought to Wall Street. But this incident, the theft of Haiti’s gold, we will explore on another episode.  

But US occupation in the early 20th century Caribbean was not only limited to Haiti and DR. In the region, the US also occupied Cuba, over three different periods: 1898 to 1902, 1906 to 1909 and 1917 to 1922. In the 1940’s Trinidad and Tobago was occupied by the US Navy. And it is through these occupation that the US extended their own economic and military interests in the Caribbean in the early and to mids 20th century. It is also during this period, that the person of interest in this episode would come to power in the DR. His name was Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. 

El Jeje, Rafael Trujillo

During the US occupation of DR, the Dominican National Guard was formed and Trujillo with limited formal schooling would joined in 1919. Trujillo is of Haitian descent actually and his time in the national guards saw him been trained by the US Marines and gradually, his military career progressed. By 1927, he was named commander in chief of the National Army. 

But in 1930, a rebellion, under the leadership of Rafael Estrella Urena, took place where the rebels main goal was to overthrow Dominican President Horacio Vasquez who was going against the constitution by extending his presidential term. However, during the rebellion, Trujillo took no sides, per an agreement he had made previously made with Urena. Soon after, Vasquez was in exile and no one was in control of the government. Seeing an opportunity, Trujillo ran and eventually won the 1930 election.

But by the mid 1930’s, Trujillo true nature as a dictator was taking form. Even so, he would often celebrate himself in the form of statues and parades and in some cases, rituals. In fact, he eventually entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the head of any country who built the most statues in their honour. Then in 1936, Trujillo renamed the capital city of Santo Domingo to Ciudad Trujillo - the City of Trujillo. A year later, Trujillo took it a step further - this time, by setting his sights on reshaping the national identity of the country.

To do this, he set his sights on a particular area in the country which marked the border between Haiti and Dominica. In that area, was the Massacre River. The river got its named after an incident that occurred in 1728 where around thirty buccaneers were killed by Spanish authorities near the banks of the river . Now, in 1937, the river would earned it name once more.

Apart & Together

It key to note that from as early as 1933, Trujillo was engaged in discussions with Haitian president, Sténio Joseph Vincent, who came to rise in 1930. This discussion between both men involved a land dispute where land included in Haitian communities were incorporated into Dominican territory by a 1929 border treaty, which was suppose to calm the dispute which was birth from the days of European conquests in Hispaniola in the 1700’s and 1800’s. But in 1936, the discussion between both men came to an end with an agreement to redesigned the land to Haiti.

Also at this time in the 1930’s, the Haitian presence at the border was in two groups. The first was agricultural workers who were under contract to work on the sugar plantation. These persons, mostly men, were termed “braceros”. 

Richard Lee Turits in his paper, ‘A World Destroyed, A Nation Imposed: The 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic’ states the following: 

“In the pre-1937 Dominican frontier, particularly the northern frontier areas, a bicultural Haitian-Dominican world evolved over several generations of Haitian immigration and interaction with Dominican residents… From the start, the society was a bilingual, bicultural and transactional one spanning the Haitian and Dominican sides of the border”

Likewise, one of Dr. Turits’ interviewees, Percivio Diaz, who resided in the Dominican town of Santiago de la Cruz, states: 

“This place was made of amalgam of people, of Haitian men marrying Dominican women and Dominican men marrying Haitian women. Many here are the products of Dominican-Haitian unions” 

And this union between the Dominicans and Haitian was not only at the border of the countries but throughout the DR. In fact, Trujillo himself, was of Haitian descent. Another of Dr. Turits’ interviewers - a Dominican man from Monte Grande also stated: 

“In those days, we crossed the border without problems. We went over there as much as they came here. Papa had many friends over there. And he would drop us off with his compadres and they would take care of me”

Isil Nicolas Cour, a Haitian Dominican, also interviewed by Dr. Turits and documented in the historical compilation, The Haitian Reader, states: 

“I went to Dominican dances. We participated in the same ways Dominican did. And there were never any disagreements. I never saw any fighting, insulting, swearing”

Then as we mentioned before, the community along the border was bilingual where residents understood both Haitian Creole and Spanish and even a fusion of the two languages. Having experience this growing up at the border, Isil states that as a child: 

“You’d speak two languages there, you speak Kreyol, you speak Dominican. That is, when you are amid your countrymen, you’d speak Kreyol. But when you are amid Dominicans, you’d speak Spanish… we speak all languages, we speak Haitian, they speak Haitian too. Those who come to see you here they speak Haitian with you. When it’s to your country they come, they speak your country’s language.”

The community labour was also shared where they was no competitions among the different residents at the border. Turtis states that theHaitians who lived in the area cultivated coffee and subsistence crops alongside Dominicans who took part in hunting and raising animals. The cohabitation of the people in areas such as Dajabon and Monte Cristi were so that many Haitians worked as tailors, tinsmiths and other skilled workers; and others as domestic workers, and some as farm workers on lands owned by ethic Dominicans. To this relationship among the residents at the border communities, Dr. Turtis states: 

“In short, ethnic Haitians did not occupy an inferior position in the overall rural economy and society in the frontier. And Dominican frontier denizens had generally viewed Haitians neither as a poorer and subordinate group nor as outsiders. Nor was Haiti seen then as being less modern than the Dominican Republic.”

As one of Dr. Turtis interviewees sum up the relationship like this: 

“Although there were two sides, the people were one, united.” 

But the Trujillo and his government presented this relationship in another matter and by doing this, they propelled anti-Haitian rhetoric that has existed in the Dominican Republic for ages. Beginning in the 19th century, many Haitians and other West Indians came to DR to work on the country’s vast sugar canes fields. It was here that elites in the country demonised Haitians where they administer a campaign that frame them as a threat to the Dominican identity and a hindrance to the country’s plan to be modern and civilised. This campaign by the DR elites continued the 20th century and when he came to power, Trujillo surrounded himself with these elites who saw themselves as white. Most notably of these advisors were: Joaquin Balaguer, Julio Ortega Frier and Manuel Arturo Pena Batlle. And so, Trujillo called the presence of Haitians in DR an “invasion” who were supposedly “Africanising” the norther frontier of the country. In his effort to rid the country of Haitian presence, Trujillo attempted to recruit white immigrants from Puerto Rico. He wrote to the US president at this time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, offering to take some of the excess population of Puerto Rico.

As his presidency went on, this anti-Haitian rhetoric became a major feature of his tenure where he even speak on his efforts to “whiten” the Dominican Republic. As he once stated: 

“Haitians are foreigners in our land. They are dirty, rustlers of cattle, and practitioners of voodoo. Their presence within the territory of the Dominican Republic cannot but led to the deterioration of the living conditions of our citizens”.

In her 1998 fictional book about the event, ‘The Farming of Bones’, Edwidge Danticat sums up this ideology pushed by Trujillo. In the book, a priest was forced to say the following words by authorities during the Parsley Massacre, 

“Our motherland is Spain; theirs is darkest Africa, you understand? They once came here only to cut sugarcane, but now there are more of them than there will be cane to cut, you understand? Our problem is one of dominion. Tell me, does anyone like to have their house flooded with visitors, to the point that the visitors replace their own children? How can a country be ours if we are in smaller numbers than the outsiders? Those of us who love our country are taking measures to keep it our own… Sometimes I cannot believe that this one island produced two such different peoples. We, as Dominicans, must have our separate traditions and our own ways of living. If not, in less than three generations, we will all be Haitians. In three generations, our children and grandchildren will have their blood completely tainted unless we defend ourselves now, you understand?”

The Test