Latinos in U.S. Politics

The Parsley Massacre, also known as "El Corte" (The Cutting), was a brutal campaign of violence ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in October 1937. It targeted Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent living near the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Dominican soldiers and militias killed an estimated 12,000 to 35,000 people, using machetes to make the killings appear like the work of civilians. The massacre is infamously named after a linguistic test: victims were asked to pronounce the Spanish word "perejil" (parsley); those unable to say it correctly in the Dominican accent, due to their Haitian Creole background, were executed. Trujillo claimed the massacre was a nationalist act to secure the border, but it was rooted in deep-seated racism and xenophobia, leaving a lasting scar on Haitian-Dominican relations.