Parsley Massacre of Rafael Trujillo, one of the least-known genocides

When, in 1937, the Dominican Republic despot, Rafael Trujillo ordered the execution of somewhere between 9,000 and 20,000 Haitian immigrants, the world took scant notice, and the country, Haiti's closest neighbor, continued to fester in its anti-Haiti doctrines and practices. This wrong, not punished for what it was, helped shaped the minds that today, in 2013, have passed a cruel piece of legislature that would strip Haitians, born in or out of the Dominican Republic of the right of citizenship.

The new act, which would retroactively strip a person of naturalization, found its footing into judicial, legislative and executive law because of the deep seated prejudice against Haitians accepted widely in the Dominican Republic. Trujillo set about the infamously un-famous Parsley Massacre of migrants from Haiti along the border shared by both countries over a five day period 76 years ago. Notoriously, the normally darker skinned Haitians, with their more African features were targeted, with the distinction only drawn between them and those of Dominican Republic birth through a litmus test of who could pronounce parsley with the correct 'r' sound.

While the extent of this 76 year old cruelty reached the ears of the U.S. Government through the then U.S. Ambassador stationed in Santo Domingo, nothing came of it in way of protest from an international front. Today, we would like to think that people and times have changed. However, since the circumstances today don't include any actual bloodshed, can Haitians in the Dominican Republic hold any hope of redress for this wrong?

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Read more: Dominican Republic, massacre, Antihaitianismo, Rafael Trujillo, Parsley Massacre, Perejil, Security Crime Law and Order

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