Bearing Witness to Genocide: The 1937 Haitian Massacre and Border of Lights
2013; Volume: 32; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2327-9648
AutoresEdward Paulino, Scherezade Garcia,
Tópico(s)Cuban History and Society
ResumoHow does one bear witness to legacy of genocide? To crimes against humanity perpetrated by and against people of African descent? And, how do you bear witness when it is your ethnic group, perpetrators, that carried out mass murder decades before you were born, in your ancestral homeland? Each of these questions is interconnected but for us it took many years before they could be answered. The genocide in question is 1937 Haitian Massacre. During late September and October 1937 Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo ordered killings of an estimated 15,000 Haitian men, women, and children in Dominican Republic. Many Haitians killed in Massacre were in fact Dominicans of Haitian descent, a group that comprised a vibrant bi-cultural community throughout borderlands (See Derby and Turtis for more on cultural hybridity of Dominican-Haitian border pre-Massacre).This mass murder was concentrated throughout Dominican-Haitian border but extended to many non-border Dominican cities and towns. The operation was conducted by Dominican military and conscripted civilians and volunteers. The weapon of choice: machete. The machete was used so as to falsely project a spontaneous uprising by Dominican peasants defending their livestock rather than a government sponsored and methodical plan and was prepared at least a year in advance. Some of victims were shot but most were macheted-to-death, not unlike Rwanda almost sixty years later. Many of corpses were burned and buried in unmarked graves; forensic evidence to remain forever hidden. To be black and Haitian in those several weeks in late 1937 must have been as if gates of hell had been swung opened unleashing its demons upon defenseless bodies.At time, Trujillo's denial of complicity in pre-meditated mass murder was rebuffed confidentially in Henry R. Norweb's, who was then US Ambassador to Santo Domingo, cable to Preseident Roosevelt: Apparently with approval of President Trujillo a systematic campaign of was directed against all Haitian residents . . . drive was conducted with ruthless efficiency by National Police and Army (FDR Presidentital Library). Here was a US Ambassador, not unlike his counterpart, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, who twenty years earlier sent diplomatic communiques to Washington DC warning about race extermination and what would become Armenian Genocide. In annals of twentieth century genocides 1937 Haitian Massacre does not often come to mind. Traditionally, genocides tend to be seen as cataclysmic events with casualty rates in millions. Armenia, Holocaust, Cambodia and Rwanda are remembered on a much larger, more frequent scale. Smaller massacres like Haitian Massacre or mass murders under colonial occupations such as Belgians in Congo or Germans against Herrero population (in what is today Namibia) are generally not considered to form part of humanity's genocidal legacy and until very recently have remained outside of scholarly and popular conceptualization of genocide.We believe that Massacre should be seen as part of a genocidal continuum that easily satisfies remarkable but limited definition of United Nations Convention on Genocide describing mass murder as a crime with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a group of people based on race, national origin, [and] religion (Statue of International Criminal Court N.p.). The need for Dominican nation to remember this event in genocidal terms is especially important because despite overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that show a crime did take place, no one in Trujillo's government or military was punished for their participation in 1937 Haitian Massacre. No Nuremburg Trials. No government-sponsored Truth and Reconciliation Committee to document mass murder. However, this is not a case of outright denial like in Turkey where there is a refusal to recognize Armenian genocide as such under Ottoman Empire. …
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