Tonight we are breaking the silence,” said Regino Martínez, the Jesuit priest who is head of Solidaridad Fronteriza, a human rights and immigration organization in the Dominican Republic. “Tonight, we lose the fear.” On Oct. 4 he led a candlelight procession to the aptly named Massacre River on the border with Haiti in a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Parsley Massacre. During a five day period in early October 1937, Dominican soldiers slaughtered thousands of Haitians, many of them born in the Dominican Republic, under orders from the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Between 9,000 and 30,000 people died in the violence, a slaughter now largely forgotten. Haitians call it kout kouto-a, “the stabbing. “Dominicans refer to it as el corte, “the cutting.” It earned the nickname Parsley Massacre because some soldiers are said to have carried parsley sprigs. When they showed the parsley, victims were told to say the word. If people could not pronounce it in the Spanish way, they were killed.
'Parsley Massacre' Remembered
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Pope Francis, on his first visit to Corsica, praised the island people's deep faith and tradition of popular piety. On December 5, thousands of Corsicans gathered in Ajaccio to welcome the first pope ever to visit the island.
While “What Child Is This?” is an explicitly Christmas song, the tune speaks to the mystery of identity and purpose—questions that transcend religious boundaries and appeal to the human experience.
For the first time, women will serve on the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod.
Catholic LGBTQ+ group “La Tenda di Gionata” (”Jonathan’s Tent”) is among the many groups to register a pilgrimage to St. Peter's Basilica for the Holy Year. They are among the hundreds of groups not part of the Vatican’s 35 official, special jubilees.