“Refugees from the massacre… Each of these peasants lost half a dozen kinsmen in the massacre by machete, three-pronged knife, club or, rarely, rifle fire.” Life (6 December 1937).
“Between October 2 and October 8, 1937, between 15,000 and 40,000 Haitians and Black Dominicans were slaughtered by Dominican troops…”
Between October 2 and October 8, 1937, between 15,000 and 40,000 Haitians and Black Dominicans were slaughtered by Dominican troops and citizens in the northeastern border towns on Hispaniola, the island of two nations. Known as the Kout Kouto [“knife chop” or stabbing] in Haiti and El Corto [the “cutting”] in the Dominican Republic, this was among the twentieth century’s most horrific massacres – a genocide in the Western Hemisphere. It was ordered by the racist dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, a mulatto whose grandmother was Haitian, who wanted to rid the country of Black people.
Recent recoveries of archival material and oral history research demonstrate that the massacre lasted weeks and not days. Scholar Edwardo Paulino writes, “the operation lasted several weeks and had been planned at least a year in advance. Men, women, and children who were black and deemed Haitian were arrested and taken to secluded areas of the Dominican countryside and murdered, mostly by machete to evade recriminations of a pre-meditated, large- scale operation by the army.” The cutting. By machete. The dismembered bodies of Haitian and Black Dominican children, women, and men were discarded in the Dajabón River, also known as the “Massacre River.”
On December 17, 1937, two months after the massacre, Haitian communist activist and author Jacques Roumain wrote a dispatch for the World-Wide News Service and Crusader News Agency, which was published in the Black newspaper, the Philadelphia Tribune. Roumain described the brutality massacre in terrible detail: “Hundreds of peasants were…killed and their bodies thrown to the sharks. In the woods …a frightful manhunt was conducted. The cutlasses completed on the women and children the works of the guns.” He also explained the economic reason for the presence of poor Haitians working in slave-like conditions. He argued that US occupation and imperialism had turned Haitians into cheap labor to cut sugar cane for the region (especially in Cuba and the Dominican Republic), describing it as the “Trade in Blacks.”
Yet for decades, there was a silence surrounding the genocide of 1937. The Dominican Republic never apologized for their actions and the comprador Haitian governments during that time – and since – have not memorialized this grisly event, nor demanded reparations, especially for the remaining survivors.
Haiti and its people continue to pay for having gained their freedom from slavery and upending global white supremacy. The country continues to suffer the blows of US imperialism, which are matched by regional racism and anti-Haitianism – even amongst other Black countries whose people benefited from Haiti’s sacrifices.
As we have done in the past, and will continue to do, we memorialize this massacre and commemorate the Haitian people. This year, we do so with a reprint of Jacques Roumain’s report on the massacre. Please read it below.
“Trade in Blacks” Practiced in Haiti; Tension Among Peasants Increases”
Jacques Roumain
(Editor’s note: The writer of the following article is a prominent Haitian writer, well known in international journalistic circles. The following article was written expressly for World-Wide News service and Crusader News Agency, and is being released in the Philadelphia area through The Tribune.)
Haiti – An unimportant incident has occurred, declared the Honorable Senor Pastoriza, Minister of Santo Domingo at Washington, when interviewed about the bloody events which took place at the north-eastern frontier of the Haitian Republic. The investigation of the American State Department established that the number of victims of this “unimportant incident” amounted to thousands.
Let us review the facts: A great number of unemployed Haitians engaged for the zafra (harvest of sugar cane), crossed the frontier. They took along with them their wives and their children.
On the 9th of October, these unfortunate people were attacked by an excited mob. Excited by whom? It would be interesting to know this. The Dominican police intervened but in order to participate in this massacre and direct it. During three days, the Dajabon-Montechristi was the theatre of a bloody orgy. Hundreds of peasants were, for convenience, packed into camps and fortresses, and there killed and their bodies thrown to the sharks. In the woods and the savannahs, a frightful manhunt was conducted. The cutlasses completed on the women and children the works of the guns.
MASSACRE LASTED 3 DAYS
It is necessary to note immediately that the responsibility of the Dominican Government is proved by the fact that this massacre lasted three days. The dictator [Raphael] Trujillo cannot pretend to have been ignorant of a crime perpetrated by the auxiliaries of his regime. For if acts of indiscipline had occurred, they could not have been pursued so long without the Dominican Government, being informed, suppressing them immediately.
And one cannot entertain a single doubt if one recalls that Trujillo and [Stenio] Vincent, the two competitors of dictatorship, tried to hide this grave affair for more than two weeks.
“COMPLICITY OF SILENCE”
This complicity of silence could be explained partly in the following matter: Administrative measures prohibit the recruitment of Haitian workers destined for agricultural enterprises in Cuba and Santo-Domingo – except with authorization of the Haitian Government, which in reality means this latter reserves for its favorites the benefits of the TRADE IN BLACKS – for it is impossible to denounce in more moderate terms the ignoble traffic of which the Haitian peasants are victims.
The Vincent Government, then, ought to be considered as the indirect purveyor of this October butchery. In any case, the coming days will clear up the strange attitude of the Caribbean disciple of Hitler. Already we are informed of the repression which once more has struck against democratic opposition. A wave of indignation has roused the country and the arrests should be considered as the reply of a regime accused of sharing heavy responsibility in the frontier events, having been by its iniquitous policy the organizer of the misery of the masses.
HAITI IS FERTILE
It has been said that the victims of Montechristi fled from barren land in Haiti. Nothing more is inexact. Haiti, except for rare regions, is fertile. Its hills are good for the cultivation of coffee, corn and the [cultivation] of kitchen vegetables and ground provisions. Rich grazing lands cover the plateaux of the Centre and on the plains sugar-cane, bananas, tobacco and cotton grow abundantly. But the earth does not nourish the black peasant anymore.
In the rich plains of the South, I have visited the formerly prosperous plantations. Near the small village of T….., out of 23 sugar-cane distilleries, 21 were closed because of the impossibility to pay the crushing taxes and to struggle against the large industries such as the H.A.S.C.O, (Haitian-American Sugar Company) which destroyed the competition of the small producers.
Not only that the land does not nourish the peasant anymore, but very often the land is expropriated from him. Thousands of peasants of the region of Fort-Liberte-Ouanaminthe, bordering the north-eastern frontier, have been dispossessed by a powerful American company. Some of them resigned themselves to become peons (working for 18 to 20 cents for a 12-hour day) the others have emigrated or are emigrating.
Here, in short, is an analysis, but space does not permit a deeper examination of the principal reasons of the exodus of the Haitian peasants condemned to misery and despair, by Vincent's dictatorship.
Jacques Roumain, “Trade in Blacks” Practiced in Haiti; Tension Among Peasants Increases,” Philadelphia Tribune, 16 December 1937.
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