1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic

“Haitian men were hacked to death, women killed with three-pointed daggers, and babies tossed on bayonets in the hands of drunken Dominican rural police” writes an American neutral observer in Haiti. The observer files a series of reports which depict the events leading up to the massacre and the horrendous events that followed. 

The first report, dated October 6th, 1937, foretold the events leading up to the slaughter. “Serious trouble” was brewing in Dajabon as “quite a number of Haitians at the hands of Dominican Police” were slaughtered. Eight days later he writes of Dominican authorities trying to “hush up matters” and that the number of murders “runs into the hundreds.” No explanation had been offered for the cruel actions of the Dominican police. Days pass and the observer corrects the number of deaths to “thousands”. Haitians were rounded up and escorted to a large prison in Monti Christi where they stood until the order was given to assassinate them and “No one escaped.”

Most of the murders took place near the northern part of the Haitian-Dominican border. However, Haitians also were rounded up and killed as far away as the city of Santiago, about 60 miles east of the border. 

The killers mostly used crude weapons such as clubs and machetes, though some victims were shot. The decision to use these weapons was likely intended to make outside observers think that private citizens, not government forces, were responsible for the genocide.

There are several reasons for the events that transpired in 1937. Chiefly, the two nations share the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea. Long strained Haitian-Dominican relations caused by territorial disputes and competition for the resources of Hispaniola. In addition to the territorial disputes, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was a rather large migration of Haitians to their neighboring countries of the Dominican Republic in search of economic opportunities.

It is for these reasons that historians have attributed the massacre to Rafael Trujillo, the former president of the Dominican Republic, and his desire to “cleanse” the Dominican borderlands of Haitian migrants, to enforce the rule of the Dominican state, and to deal with Haitian cattle rustlers and crop thieves. 

This bloody chapter in Haiti’s history is no outlier in the larger scope of Latin American history. It serves as a reminder that even in relatively modern times, the legacies of colonial conflicts live on.

Works cited

Louis Jay Heath. “Slaughter of Haitians Described by Observer: Men, Women and Babies Slain by ‘Thousands’ in Dominican Purge. Observer Describes Horrors in Mass Slaughter of Haitians Men, Women and Children Led to Death by Dominicans, He Says; Few Who Escaped Relate Tales of Jungle Brutality.” The Washington Post (1923-1954), Nov 10, 1937. https://wooster.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/slaughter-haitians-described-observer/docview/150935171/se-2?accountid=15131.

Chasteen, John Charles. Born in Blood and Fire. 4rd edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2016.

García-Peña, Lorgia. The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nations and Archives of Contradiction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.

Sagás, Ernesto. “Haitian Massacre of 1937.” World Book Advanced, World Book, 2021, www.worldbookonline.com/advanced/article?id=ar756197. Accessed 12 Feb. 2021.