Parsley massacre

The Parsley massacre (Spanish: el corte "the cutting"; Creole: kout kouto-a "the stabbing") (French: Massacre du Persil; Spanish: Masacre del Perejil; Haitian Creole: Masak nan Pèsil) was a mass killing of Haitians living in illegal settlements and occupied land in the Dominican Republic's northwestern frontier and in certain parts of the contiguous Cibao region in October 1937. Dominican Army troops from different areas of the country carried out the massacre on the orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

As a result of the massacre, virtually the entire Haitian population in the Dominican frontier was either killed or forced to flee across the border. Many died while trying to flee to Haiti across the Dajabón River that divides the two countries on the island; the troops followed them into the river to cut them down, causing the river to run with blood and corpses for several days. The massacre claimed the lives of an estimated 14,000 to 40,000 Haitian men, women, and children, out of 60,517 "foreign" members of the black population in 1935 meaning one to three fifths of the Haitian population of the country or more may have been killed in the massacre. The name of the massacre comes from reports that Dominican troops interrogated thousands of civilians demanding that each victim say the word "parsley" (perejil) as a shibboleth. According to the stories, if the accused could not pronounce the word to the interrogators' satisfaction, they were deemed to be Haitians and killed. However, most scholars believe this aspect of the massacre to be mythical.