Perejil (Parsley) Massacre Began - Oct. 2, 1937

The Perejil, or Parsley, Massacre began on this day in 1937.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's October two.

(00:22):
The Pehiel Massacre, also known as the Parsley Massacre, began
on this day in ninety seven. The name of this
massacre comes from a shibalith, and if you're not familiar
with that term, it has a lot of different meanings today,
but its origins are from the Biblical Book of Judges.
From the New International Version quote, the Gileadites captured the

(00:44):
fords of the Jordan's, leading to I free a m.
And whenever a survivor of the free m said let
me cross over, the men of Gilead asked him, are
you and I free might? If he replied no, they said,
all right, say shibalis. If he said sybilith, because he
could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and
killed him. At the fords of the Jordan's. Forty two

(01:06):
thousand Framites were killed at that time, so the word
shible was being used to distinguish the Gileadites from the Eremites,
because i Framites couldn't pronounce the sound and sibbles and
the Parsley massacre of this word that was used in
this way was pet heel, which is the Spanish word
for parsley. In some accounts, it was being used to

(01:28):
distinguish the Dominicans, who mainly spoke Spanish, from the Haitians,
who mainly spoke Creole and French and who couldn't easily
make that rolled are in peahel Here's how it happened.
Today Haiti and the Dominican Republic are both on the
island of Hispaniola. This island was first colonized by Europeans
after Christopher Columbus landed there on his first voyage in

(01:51):
four so at first it was established as Santo Domingo
under Spanish control. Spain later seated the western portion of
it to France. The French side of the island became
independent after the Haitian Revolution, and then Haiti annexed the
Spanish side of the island, so the whole island was unified.
From eight eighteen forty four. What's now the Dominican Republic

(02:15):
first declared its independence from Haiti in eighteen forty four,
and then became independent from Spain in eighteen sixty five.
After World War Two, the United States occupied both Haiti
and the Dominican Republic. The United States was trying to
install pro US governments and to make the island more
friendly to US policy. The US withdrew from the Dominican

(02:37):
Republic in nineteen twenty four and from Haiti in nineteen
thirty four. But between these two withdrawals, in nineteen thirty
General Raphael Triquillo overthrew Dominican President Haracio Vasquez, and he
established a dictatorship. The general had been part of the
National Guard, and he had actually been trained by US marines.
During the occupation, he saw the whole Haiti an In

(03:00):
Republic border region, which in a lot of ways was bicultural,
as a threat. There was a threat to his regime.
It was a potential way for rebels against his regime
to escape. He was also motivated by racism and by
anti immigrant sentiment along the border, and by nationalism and
a flat out desire for power. First, he ordered the

(03:21):
killing of three d Haitians along this border, and he
announced that he had done so, saying that it was
a solution to the problem of reported thefts and other
depredations supposedly being committed by Haitians. He said this was
a remedy, and he promised that this remedy was going
to continue. A horrifying and brutal massacre followed, with that

(03:43):
word pet heel being used in some accounts to distinguish
between dark skinned Dominicans and dark skinned Haitians. This test
probably wasn't used for everyone, and it may not have
been very effective because a lot of people in the
border region did actually speak Spanish regardless, though the military
was targeting the people with the darkest skin, and that

(04:05):
included the Dominican born children of Haitian descent. Most of
the killings were committed with machetes. The total death toll
of this massacre is unknown because there were mass burials,
huge dumping of bodies, and cover ups and censorship. Most
estimates put it in the range of twenty thou people
and possibly many more. Afterward, the Dominican Republic and its

(04:28):
policies became increasingly anti Haitian. The Dominican government eventually was
ordered to pay five thousand dollars of restitution. That was
a really tiny amount of money considering what had happened,
and very little of that money actually reached any survivors.
General Trichillo and his government and the army faced no
punishment or retribution for this massacre. Thanks to Eves Jeff

(04:53):
Coote for her research work today on this podcast, and
a Teri Harrison for her audio work on this show.
You can subscribe to This Day in History Class on
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and you can tune in tomorrow for one nation's second
attempt to colonize another