The 1937 massacre a point of tension between Haitian filmmaker and Dominican actors

The disagreement between the Haitian director and the Dominican professionals opens up an entire debate on the memory narrative linked to the 1937 massacre

In his latest documentary entitled “Forgetting kills twice”, Haitian director Pierre Michel Jean offers to revisit, through the history of the last survivors, the 1937 massacre which occurred on the Haitian-Dominican border, during which more than 20,000 people were killed.

Finalized in 2022, the film could not be released on the agreed upon date because, according to Pierre Michel Jean, two Dominican actors who participated in the project – feminist activist Isabel Spencer, and Amin Dominguez – expressed reservations regarding part of the narrative presented in the 70-minute documentary on this unfortunate historical event.

“I was waiting to have more in-depth discussions with them in order to find an agreement, but it didn’t work,” Jean explains to AyiboPost.

A source involved in the project told AyiboPost that “the demands of the Dominican actors do not explain the delay of the film,” since they signed for the use of their images.

“The two actors, notably Isabel Spencer, LGBTQ and Afrofeminist activist, maintain that they [as Dominicans] still carry the weight of a legacy marked by the dark and racist past of the Trujillo dictatorship,” continues the source.

The Dominican feminist activist Isabel Spencer, an actress in the film « Forgetting Kills Twice » by the Haitian director Pierre Michel Jean. | © Central Noticias

This disagreement between the Haitian director Pierre Michel Jean and the Dominican professionals opens up an entire debate on the memorial narrative linked to the 1937 massacre. According to specialists contacted by AyiboPost, this little-known historical episode also raises the need for a better understanding of relations between the two countries.

Amin Dominguez, a Dominican actor participating in the documentary « Forgetting Kills Twice » by Haitian director Pierre Michel Jean. | © Le Montro

“The 1937 massacre is shrouded in a double silence, both on the Haitian and the Dominican side,” Professor Jean Marie Théodat explains to AyiboPost.

For the geographer, on the Dominican side, this silence can be explained by the fact that the Dominicans have difficulty evoking this odious event from their past. For many of them, once the Haitian state accepted compensation from the Dominican government, “it was a closed case.”

And on the Haitian side, especially the survivors, the massacre constitutes “an infamy they don’t tell their descendants about.”

“As a result, dialogue becomes impossible between the two peoples which leaves a shadow over relations between the two countries,” explains the author of the book “Haiti, Dominican Republic: An Island for Two.”

In recent years, commemorative murals dedicated to the victims of the massacre have been attacked by Haitian and Dominican individuals. For Jésula Blanc, lawyer and coordinator of the North-East Gender Platform, this illustrates the tension that exists between Haitians and Dominicans around the memory of this massacre.

These commemorative murals, not far from Ouanaminthe, dedicated to the victims of the Perejil massacre, have been erased by Haitian individuals in recent years. | © Laurent Coutite

In September 2023, echoing the conflict over the construction of the canal on the Massacre river in Ouanaminthe, Haitian citizens destroyed the mural erected in 2019 by the North-East Gender Platform (PGNE) in Dosmond, not far from Ouanaminthe.

[metaslider id=55044]

“This situation, although tense, did not prevent the traditional activities commemorating the massacre from taking place in October 2023,” explains Jésula Blanc, who worked for the Support Group for Returnees and Refugees (GARR).

A similar case was recorded in the Dominican Republic in 2017.

A Dominican citizen described as an “ultranationalist” destroyed another mural built by the binational organization Azuei, in Dajabón, shortly after its construction.

After Haitian individuals erased the commemorative murals, not far from Ouanaminthe, dedicated to the victims of the 1937 massacre. | © Jesula Blanc

In October 1937, the Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, then president of the country, ordered the massacre of peasants who lived in the border areas of Dajabón and Monte Cristi. More than 20,000 people were killed.

What was initially presented in official Dominican speeches as a simple conflict between Dominican and Haitian peasants quickly rose to the level of genocide as the scale of the horror was revealed.

On this massacre, watch this video from AyiboPost: Masak “Kout Kouto” sou Ayisyen nan Sendomeng !

87 years later, the event is not the subject of any official commemoration in either of the neighboring states.

The Perejil massacre was the largest mass killing of people of African descent on the American continent in the 20th century.

As early as November 1937, the American newspaper The New York Times reported 8,000 people murdered on the border by Trujillo’s henchmen.

Some accounts go as high as 35,000 dead at the end of the massacre. While part of the Haitian intellectual class speaks of a killing ordered by Trujillo against Haitians, other “moderate” researchers maintain that Dominican peasants were also killed.

For Rachèle Magloire, filmmaker and president of the Haitian branch of the Azuei organization, one of the fundamental problems that arouses so much controversy when addressing the issue of the massacre is the fact that there is a lack of knowledge in Haiti of the event.

87 years later, the event is not the subject of any official commemoration on the part of either of the neighboring states.

For Magloire, we cannot speak of Perejil as a massacre perpetrated only against Haitians.

“It was in fact a massacre against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, orchestrated by Trujillo as part of his macabre ethnic cleansing project,” explains the director of the Simityè Kamoken documentary.

Other works insist on the use of the word Perejil (parsley in English) to show that there was indeed a concern to differentiate Haitians and Dominicans during the massacre.

According to historians, before the massacre, friendly and commercial relationships between the two peoples took place on the border without much incident. But Trujillo’s anti-Haitian propaganda and his desire to “whitewash” the Dominican nation would change everything.

“The history of relations between the two countries consists of ups and downs,” explains Magloire.

In 1937, an agreement was reached between the Haitian and Dominican governments.

In this agreement, the Dominican government agreed to pay the Haitian state $750,000 US dollars to compensate the families of the victims.

Of this sum, only $525,000 was actually disbursed. But the Haitian state never paid this money to the victims’ families, and on the Dominican side, no official from Trujillo’s government was convicted.

Sténio Vincent’s decision to accept this « derisory » compensation on behalf of the victims has been described by some as a shameful deal.

It was in fact a massacre against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian ancestry, orchestrated by Trujillo as part of his macabre ethnic cleansing project.

Stenio Vincent, president at the time, went so far as to ban any demonstrations aimed at demanding justice for the victims.

The former Haitian ambassador to the Dominican Republic (2020-2022), Smith Augustin, also recognizes the delicacy surrounding the evocation, between Haitians and Dominicans, of this massacre.

But for the sociologist, the question of silence around 1937 is found mainly on the Haitian side.

“It is a subject rarely mentioned in Haitian school textbooks, yet very present in the minds of Dominicans. Even in universities in Haiti, we only talk about it vaguely,” explains Augustin who says he observes “an academic void” which would make it possible to clearly identify the complexity of the relationships between Haiti and the Dominican Republic from Haiti, particularly with regard to the massacre and other more recent events.

Haitian essayists like Jean Price Mars, Suzy Castor, Leslie F. Manigat and in fiction, Jacques S. Alexis, René Philoctète, Edwidge Danticat are among the Haitian authors who have been interested in the question.

This is a subject rarely mentioned in Haitian school textbooks, yet very present in the minds of Dominicans. Even in universities in Haiti, we only vaguely talk about it.

On the Dominican side, there is Bernardo Vega, Freddy Prestor Castillo, Elissa L. Lister, Hayden Carrón, etc.

“We need a chair of history at universities in Haiti on relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This is how we will manage to address these complex subjects,” suggests Augustin.

For the Belgian anthropologist Catherine Bourgeois, who did her thesis on Haitian-Dominican relations, there is a memory of the events of 1937 in the Dominican Republic, but for her, it is a “very fragmented” memory.

Bourgeois talks about the difficulties encountered in 2008 in completing her thesis.

“It is very difficult to construct a complete picture of the events given that the people who directly witnessed them are already dead. And their descendants don’t talk about it much,” explains Bourgeois.

There is a memory of the events of 1937 in the Dominican Republic, but for her, it is “very fragmented”.

However, for the anthropologist who spent four years in the country conducting her research, although the Dominicans have difficulty talking about the 1937 massacre, they have no difficulty talking about other atrocities committed by Trujillo’s dictatorial regime, such as the execution of political opponents, etc.

“For the 1937 massacre, it is a memory manipulated and repressed by the dictatorship established by Trujillo,” explains Bourgeois.

Simply talking about the Perejil massacre sometimes creates discord in binational meetings.

“It is so recurring that I am less and less interested in taking part in bilateral meetings. I no longer believe in it,” declares Jésula Blanc, lawyer and coordinator of the North-East Gender Platform.

Dominican public opinion is divided on the events that took place in 1937.

In October 2007, during a solemn mass in the parish of Dajabón, the bishop of the diocese of Mao-Montecristi, Diómedes Espinal de León, aroused strong reactions in the Dominican Republic when he asked forgiveness from the Haitian people for the atrocities committed by Trujillo in 1937.

Dominican figures, including Cardinal Jesús Lopez Rodriguez, reacted by affirming that it is not up to the Dominicans to ask forgiveness from the Haitian people, because “it is a crime for which only Trujillo is responsible and not the Dominican people.”

Dominican public opinion is divided on the events that took place in 1937.

In the history of relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, there is also the killing known as the Beheadings of Moca, described by some as one of the deadliest and bloodiest Haitian invasions led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1805.

For Dominicans, we cannot talk about the massacre of 1937 without remembering the massacre of Moca, perpetrated by troops led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe in April 1805 in the small town of Moca located in the Cibao Valley, in the Dominican Republic. This massacre, for them, testifies to the atrocity they suffered at the hands of the Haitians in 1805.

In 1804, after having chased the French from Haiti, the latter, led by General Jean-Louis Ferrand, took refuge in the eastern part of the Island. At the head of his troops, Dessalines undertook an offensive against these French forces. But this offensive ended in failure.

Returning home, Dessalines’ troops massacred hundreds of civilians in the town of Moca.

For Dominicans, we cannot talk about the massacre of 1937 without remembering the Beheadings of Moca, perpetrated by troops led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe in April 1805.

For certain intellectuals, like Jean-Marie Théodat, the two events are not equivalent.

“For the first in 1805, we found ourselves in a dynamic of decolonization of the entire island undertaken by Dessalines, while for the second in 1937, was an ethnic cleansing. These are therefore two distinct events,” maintains the professor.

No historical fact should be taboo, historians argue.

“On both sides of the island, we need leaders who are aware of the complexity of relationships in order to manage them,” suggests Théodat.

Regarding the conflict surrounding his latest film, Pierre Michel Jean declares that he trusted the historical data available on the 1937 massacre.

Photo of Pierre Michel Jean

“I believe I have produced a film which allows us to revisit this dark and thorny episode in the history of relations between the two countries,” maintains Jean. “It is now up to historians and politicians to advance the debate on the issue,” he concludes to AyiboPost, promising that his film will eventually be released this year.

By Wethzer Piercin

English translation by Sarah Jean.

Watch our special report published in January 2022 on the beginning of the initiative to build the canal at Rivière Massacre: