The Mexican

Schoolwork has kept me busy lately. One of the papers I have to hand in at the end of the semester is on a novel that tells the story of something I had absolutely no knowledge about. I thought I knew quite a few facts about the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo who ruled ruthlessly from 1930 to 1952, but today I found out there was one fact I didn't know.

He was really hard on Dominicans but he was even harder among a group: Haitians. Trujillo, compared in another novel to Sauron from The Lord of the Rings - that big eye that follows you everywhere you go, ordered the massacre of Haitians living along the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti in 1937. It is estimated that the number of Haitians who were killed was between 20,000 and 30,000. Haiti used to be a French colony, while the Dominican Republic was a Spanish one. So the Haitian communities spoke their language, French Haitian Creole. In order to find out who was Haitian and who was Dominican, the soldiers sent by Trujillo had some parsley with them. They held up a few leaves and asked "what is this?". If they answered perejil, the Spanish word for parsley, they survived. If they answered pèsi, the word in Haitian Creole, they were killed instantly.

This massacre is now known as The Parsley Massacre.