The Dominican Republic and the Question of Diversity

Many associate Caribbean islands like the Dominican Republic as tropical paradises filled with diverse languages, rich cultures, and people with various ethnic backgrounds. While part of this is true, there is another side to the story that the masses are unaware of. The history of the Dominican Republic reveals an ugly side of racism, oppression, and unchecked violence spill into its modern-day society and affect its relationship with its neighbor, Haiti, and even its citizens. In October 1937, the Parsley Massacre, one of the most horrific extermination attempts, occurred on the island of Hispaniola. Dominican citizens refer to it as “El Corte,” or the cutting, while Haitians remember it as “Kout Kouto,” or the knife blow. Under the orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, soldiers conducted several raids on the countryside, tested dark-skinned civilians, and killed them if they were suspected of being Haitian. Even those who proved to be Dominican were murdered for harboring Haitian fugitives. The justification was that “Dominicans [were] complaining of the…thefts of cattle, provisions, and fruits…and were thus prevented from enjoying the products of their labor”. Yet, even with such harsh treatment, and thousands of people killed in cold blood, this massacre is widely unknown to the modern world and even the residents of Hispaniola.

This ignorance, inaction, and the hateful ideas it continues to carry have been left to fester in the Dominican Republic’s way of life. And as a direct result, Haitians and darker-skinned citizens living in the DR have to suffer the consequences. The obvious example is the recent deportations of Haitians seeking refuge and Dominicans of Haitian descent. According to Amnesty International, “the Dominican Republic has unlawfully expelled hundreds of Dominicans to Haiti who have been caught in the middle of a wave of returns and deportations of more than 100,000 people”. Many have been forcefully ejected from their homes and have lived in refugee camps across the border, with unstable shelters and no running water or sanitation. Others have been marginalized in their communities and threatened by local soldiers to leave under the threat of violence. Even children born to such parents who lived their whole lives not knowing about their ancestry were suddenly caught in legal limbo. 

However, this oppression of the minority or the “other” in Dominican society does not only affect those in danger of imminent deportation. Citizens who contribute to the mistreatment of these people by remaining silent are doomed to live in a hateful, isolationist culture with a government that stifles their freedoms as well. If Dominicans choose to remain complicit in such immoral actions, they are doomed to repeat an appalling history. No amount of claiming to embrace diversity will change that. Action will.

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