Blanqueamiento+(Aspen)

Dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo was the orchestrated product of the U.S. Military Invasion and Occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1916-24. A year earlier, 1915, United States military forces had invaded neighboring Haiti ¾ remaining there until 1934. The United States had put into place a highly efficient military machine and named Trujillo its commander-in-chief. **In terms of his socio-personal character, Trujillo was relentless in his attempts to gain acceptance into the select inner circles of the White Dominican bourgeois elite. He had never been regarded as "//one of them.//" He possessed neither the prerequisite family genealogy nor the racial stock that traditionally typified the composition of this exclusive sector of Dominican society: Trujillo’s maternal grandmother was actually Haitian! Quite early in his career he had learned to manipulate to his best advantage a given situation or event that had potentially explosive elements if ignited. Haiti would provide the Trujillo Machine the handy excuse needed to execute its agenda. One such project was the campaign of //blanqueamiento//: a scheme to whiten or bleach a nation that he personally felt was simply "//too dark in complexion//".** Since the era of the First Republic (1844-61) Haitian immigration into Dominican territory went unchecked. Not engaged in just agriculture, these Haitians became heavily involved in commerce as traders and merchants. Intermingling in every sense, as well as intermarriage became commonplace. When President Trujillo traveled to the border town of Dajabón in 1937, he is reported to have used the occasion to launch a venomous tirade against the growing presence and influence of Haitians now settled throughout the border zones. "//Los haitianos. Su presencia en nuestro territorio no puede más que deteriorar las condiciones de vida de nuestros nacionales. Esa ocupación de los haitianos de las tierras fronterizas no debía continuer. Está ordenado que todos los haitianos que hubiera en el país fuesen exterminados."// 4 [Haitians! Their presence in our territory can’t do anything else but worsen the living conditions of our own people. The Haitian occupation of the border zones must not continue. It is so ordered that all Haitians that are in the country be exterminated.]
 * Enter Trujillo and His Haïtian Phobia (1930-61)**

The Massacre A few days later, Trujillo gave the order literally to kill Haitians wherever they might be found throughout La República Dominicana. Thus began the campaign of genocide against thousands of Blacks ¾ both Haitian and Dominican alike. The River Dajabón after the indiscriminate butchering became known as the //Rio Masacre//. The macabre and sinister //operacion perijil// (the parsley test) was concocted as one supposedly foolproof method of detecting whether an individual was actually Haitian or not among the Black population residing on Dominican soil. Trujillo’s nefarious scheme was to have the Dominican soldier simply hold up in front of the "//suspected Haitian//" a leaf of parsley and ask the individual, "//What is this?//" Haitians living among Dominicans, although quite fluent in Spanish, often still have difficulty pronouncing the Spanish //"r"// and //"j"// ¾ which is indeed troublesome for speakers of French or Kreyòl. Thus, a person would be killed on the spot for not rolling the //"r"// fast enough or without satisfactory "//authenticity//". What had truly provoked this Caribbean holocaust? Was Trujillo seriously uneasy about the widening sociopolitical influence of the Haitians residing in the border zones? Was he motivated, perhaps, by the already evident racism that was a traditionally persistent element in the psyche of the dominant social stratum into which the dictator himself fought so obsessively to penetrate? Or perhaps there was an element of severe self-hatred because of his grandmother’s being Haitian? In the aftermath of the massacre, the Haitian government itself acted without shame in accepting the offer of $750,000 from Trujillo as compensation for damages and wrongs resulting from what officially began known in Dominican history as "//border conflicts.//"

Conclusions The hotly contested presidential elections of 1990, 1994, and 1996 in República Dominicana witnessed the frightening ugliness of ethnic and racial phobias resurface with the successive candidacy of the late Dr. José Francisco Peña Gómez (who died of cancer in the spring of 1998). This internationally renown, Harvard University-trained economic and social activist ¾ although born on Dominican soil ¾ was proclaimed by the Dominican press and by his political adversaries to be Haitian! And correspondingly, his ultimate political agenda, as was widely rumored, was //"to reunite the two republics"//. Peña Gómez lost each time, even though the 1994 and 1996 elections were found to be fraudulent by international election observers, showing //"el haitiano"// (as this candidate was referred to in the Island’s leading newspaper //Listin Diario//) the easy victor. So then, we see how this indeed sad situation remains to haunt present-day relations between the two societies that share this island. It is a situation whose origins can be traced back to a distant historical past shrouded in gross suspicions and distrust. Fortunately for future generations on both sides of the Artibonito, there are committed women and men of good will and positive faith who are laboring arduously to improve relations and understanding, ultimately to remove altogether the smoldering animosities and ill will that have long plagued //Haytí-Quisqueya// ž []