Racism In Trujillo

The Dominican Republic is divided culturally between the French Haitians and the Spanish Dominicans, which started in the colonial times and continues thereafter. The racism became more intensified under the regime of Rafael Trujillo in 1930. Due to Trujillo’s racism against Haitians, he made it so any person who is Haitian in the Dominican Republic from 1929 and forward has no nationality in the Dominican. He did this by taking their birth papers and considering them to be “in transit”, this means they have just traveled to the Dominican Republic for work. He also enforced the border dispute, by not allowing anyone without birth papers to pass the border; Haitians could only stay on one side of the island. Lastly, he knew that the Haitians had a hard time speaking Spanish, due to their French background therefore, another test he would allow soldiers to perform is the rolling of the “r” in the Spanish word for parsley. According to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Trujillo has violated several articles that include nationality, legal standing, freedom to move within the borders of each states, and

This event is known as the Parsley Massacre. The killing was the result of a new policy which banned the practicing of voodoo, quotas on the percentage of foreign workers that companies could hire were enforced, and lastly Haitian workers were not allowed to stay on the island after the sugar harvest. In Edwidge Danticats novel, The Farming of the Bones, she is able to portray a story of a young woman during the time of Trujillo’s reign and the struggles she faces with her human rights being violated. “Tradition shows as a fatal fact,” “keeping the nation in fear and menacing stability” (Danticat 97). In other words, Trujillo and his military had Haitians living in fear for their lives every