It’s interesting to see how someone can hate a certain race or ethnicity so much to try and exterminate him or her. Dominican president and dictator, Raphael Trujillo, ordered the Haitian Massacre of 1937 to kill close to 20,000 Haitian immigrants living in the Dominican Republic. At first, it was believed to only kill those not working on the sugar plantations, but then learned to be the death to any Haitians living in the DR. The determinant for life was the pronunciation of the word prejeli, the Spanish word for parsley.  

            Occurring around the same time period, Raphael Trujillo had similar intentions as Hitler did in the Holocaust. The whole purpose was to exterminate a certain race, because people simply did not believe they belonged in society. Still, I found that the most interesting part of this massacre to be the justification many of the Dominican elites used to justify this massacre. They claimed that the Haitian migrant workers were taking poor Dominican jobs and space that should be “theirs” as Dominicans. This massacre was used as a promotion of Dominican national identity.

            I find it astounding that because of the intertwined history of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the construction of race is completely different. Haitians view Africa as their “homeland” while the DR tries to reject most of their African heritage, choosing to relate to European ideals and characters from “their” ancestors of Spain. As we’ve learned the past few weeks, those whose skin tone held more whiteness were given more opportunities and held more power and prestige because of their class status. Colonization helped create the elite classes after the countries gained independence. But you can’t talk about class without talking about race because the two are closely tied to each other. The internalized racism constructed during colonization has been ingrained in post-colonial culture and continues to be persistent today. This massacre stands out because it is an example of how complicated race relations are and how colonial influence still has legacy in many societies. Its especially interesting in regard to understanding what it means to be African American, not just in the United States, but in Latin America, Central America, and South America.