Parsley massacre

The latter nickname sprang from his love of pinning hundreds of medals to his chest, regardless of whether it earned them or not.

He was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Haitians during the Parsley Massacre of October 1937, and he killed an unknown number of his opponents.

But if the CIA were involved in his assassination, this still represented an unlawful act on the part of the Americans.

And thanks to the latest documents to be released from the JFK files, we can now know that the CIA definitely was involved, at least to some extent.

As the island entered the twentieth century, both sides faced profound challenges.

Those challenges were compounded by conflicts between the two countries, including the Parsley Massacre of 1937.

The Parsley Massacre was orchestrated by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ordered the systematic slaughter of ethnic Haitians living in the northwest border region, creating an intense anti-Haitian environment in the Dominican Republic.

For much of the twentieth century, the two nations had nearly identical populations, yet economic conditions in the two countries have radically diverged.

Both nations had a similar GDP throughout the pre-World War II period.

Supposedly, they asked those with dark skin to pronounce the Spanish word for parsley, perayil, knowing the Haitians said it differently.

And so began the Parsley Massacre, one of the biggest acts of peace-dyed bloodletting the continent had ever seen.

Over a handful of days, somewhere in the region of 17,000 Haitians were hacked to death with machetes.

This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT.

Nor did the regime put a halt to its whitening policies.

For observers at the time, the flinging open of the Dominican Republic's doors to refugees from the Spanish Civil War and Jews escaping Nazi persecution was puzzling, especially as Trillo was cosy with Europe's fascists.

But it was simply the soft flipside to the Parsley Massacre.

Trujillo wanted to drive black people out of his nation while also inviting whites in.

The other thing that Trujillo is, is profoundly racist against Haitians in particular.

And in 1937, his regime had carried out this vicious massacre of Haitians along the Dominican-Haitian borderlands known as the Parsley Massacre.

And so Trujillo, he was looking for a way to sort of repair his reputation on the international scene and also to continue his ongoing project of trying to whiten the Dominican population.

And so the idea of being able to bring in an infusion of proper Spaniards, even if they were leftists, was worth it to him.