The ‘Parsley Massacre’ Is a Chilling Example of How Quickly a Genocide Can Unfold

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Mispronouncing a single word may have cost thousands their lives. 

In 1937, social and economic tensions within the Dominican Republic were redirected at its neighbor to the west, Haiti. Events quickly escalated into a genocidal rampage.

Under the direct order of Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, soldiers and civilian conscripts targeted those suspected of being illegal Haitian immigrants throughout the Dominican Republic.

It’s impossible to distinguish people from different nations based on physical appearance alone. Haitians often have a darker complexion than Dominicans, but of course that is not always the case. If there was any doubt as to whether someone was Dominican or Haitian, soldiers supposedly put their potential victims to a test.

A soldier would pull a sprig of parsley from a pocket and ask what it was. Those who answered correctly in Spanish were presumed to be Dominican and were released. Those who mispronounced it were summarily executed or tortured and then executed.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the two nations that comprise the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, shared a bloody past prior to the massacre of 1937.

The entire island was a former slave colony, first under Spanish rule and then divided more or less in half between French rule on the western side of the island — then known as Saint-Domingue — and Spanish rule on the eastern side, then known as Santo Domingo.

Fighting and border disputes between the two European rivals continued on the island for hundreds of years, with France controlling all of Hispaniola from 1795–1804.

In 1804, rebel forces led by former slaves declared Saint-Domingue’s independence from France and renamed the territory Haiti, marking the first successful slave revolt in the Western Hemisphere.

France later abandoned Santo Domingo, leaving it to Spain once again.

Santo Domingo then seceded from Spain in 1821, and named itself Spanish Haiti. Only months later, Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer invaded the new nation in an attempt to unify the island, consolidate power against the threat of European attack and abolish slavery once and for all in Hispaniola.

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