River Massacre

The waterway forms the northern route of the border between the two countries after leaving its source. It then runs through Haiti along the border into the North-East Department, before emptying into the Caribbean Sea to the west of Pepillo Salcedo, a city in the Dominican Republic.

Its former name, Dajabon River, comes from the border town by the same name found in the Dominican Republic, separating it from Ouanaminthe, the border town on the Haitian side of the island. Its current name is popularly said to have come from the 1937 massacre of Haitians by the army of the Dominican Republic along the banks of the river. The massacre, in which some 20,000 seasonal plantation workers were murdered, was done on the orders of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, a Dominican Republic dictator.

The River Massacre was mentioned many times in the 1797 edition of the description of Saint-Domingue médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Mery. The river, with a basin of 380 km2, has an average flow of 2.84 m3/s.

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