The Dominican Genocide

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When the word Genocide is mentioned The Holocaust is immediately pictured, but what many fail to realize is that hundreds of genocides have targeted many different people throughout history. Genocide has occurred and continues to occur in the world today, no matter how modern times have become. Over in the western hemisphere, the year 1937 was marked by terror, dread and death in the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. During this year for five days Haitians were massacred like animals throughout the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, this is now recognized as genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. The island suffered massive life losses under the brutal regime …show more content…
This was enough to fuel Trujillo’s biased speeches that he delivered to hundreds of Dominicans, who were looking for something to blame their problems on; in this case, that something was the Haitian population. During one of his speeches at the border town of Dajabon, Trujillo declared, “I have seen, investigated and inquired about the needs of the population. To the Dominicans who were complaining of the depredations by Haitians living among them, thefts of cattle, provisions, fruits, etc., and were thus prevented from enjoying in peace the products of their labor, I have responded ‘I will fix this’”(Ghosh). Trujillo was gifted at making his followers believe he would take care of all of their problems, which made his plan the ideal route to follow, although it was morally wrong. His true motives for perpetrating the bloodletting are still questioned today. Many claim he wanted to expand the Dominican territory into Haitian lands, others say he was paranoid of being overthrown by exile groups, and many blame it on pure racism. The genocide gets it’s name, “The Parsley Massacre” by how the killings were executed. To identify the Haitians, soldiers forced them to pronounce the Spanish word perejil, meaning parsley. The Dominicans typically spoke Spanish and were able to roll the r, but Haitians who spoke a mix of …show more content…
His wrongdoings were largely forgotten about because he opened the Dominican Republic to Jewish immigrants who were fleeing from Europe at the time that the Nazi Party and Hitler were gaining popularity. Trujillo only did this in hopes that these Jewish immigrants would settle and integrate with the local citizens and make the race lighter, which had been his goal for a long time and the motive for the killings. “His humanitarian actions gained favor with the United States. Although he was ordered to pay $525,000 in damages,in reality families only actually received about two cents per survivor, as the rest of the money was stolen by corrupt Dominican bureaucrats”(Girand). His discriminations continued to take place as he banned Haitians and continued to kill them away from the public eye. Today the island is still plagued by prejudice that is believed to have started in 1937. Julia Alvarez, a Dominican-American novelist who grew up unaware of the massacre says, “I am filled with revulsion for something that had happened that had never been addressed or redressed for me.” After attempting to redeem himself by building hospitals, schools, political headquarters, and housing projects Rafael Trujillo was ambushed in his car and assassinated by seven men , some of these were members of his own armed forces. The border is now open, but tension still lingers between citizens of both
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