Talk:Parsley massacre

Haitian massacre or parsley massacre ?
I would like to invite contributors to discuss the change of name for this article. Why Parsley Massacre as oppose to Haitian Massacre?

Parsley Massacre is the most distinct name for the massacre. Haiti Massacre seems too general.

Btw, the template for this doesn't seem right as a "battle." In the vein of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide articles, it shouldn't have such a table on the right. Also, I'll add this event to the list of massacres —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.123.209.60 (talk) 04:54, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, this event is aptly named The Parsley Massacre based on one of the tactics used by Dominican soldiers to differentiate between dark skinned Dominicans and Haitians. The soldiers would ask dark skinned people in border towns to pronounce the word "perejil" (parsley). People of Haitan descent, whose native language is the French dialect "Patois" have a hard time pronouncing the "l" at the end of the word, and would give themselves away as being haitian the moment they spoke the word.  -- 61.34.59.166 13:35, 17 November 2007

why this doesn't mention the fact that Cuba deported over 50,000, so there was massive migration to DR from the Haitian side, that would over take over 5 province in less then 3 months. DR and Haiti had no set bonders so Haiti could have had claim to those land and Trujillo did ask the Haitian gov't to stop it people from crossing the border illegally. the point it much more complicated then a race issue, it was more about land... NOT EXCUSING TRUJILLO but he did he had do to protect the land...I don't agree with the method but i do agree with the result, we got keep land that is rightfully ours. How come no one mention the genocide that took place in DR (Santiago, Mao) by Haitians hands in the early 1800s AvFnx 02:43, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

If you can find sources on the killing of Dominicans by Haitians in the 1800s, then present them here. I agree, however, that the Dominican-Haitian articles on Wikipedia (ESPECIALLY antihaitianismo) have WAYYYYYY oversimplified the relationship between both nations. You can't transplant the typical European/U.S.A. view on race to the island of Hispaniola, yet that's exactly what these articles try to do. A case I've brought up many times is that despite certain parties wanting to paint Dominicans as racists against "blacks", no explanation is given as to why 45% of the population voted for Jose Francisco Pena Gomez...EYDrevista 04:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

understandable cause but still a terrible event in dominican & haitian history...methods were horrific & evil... Goolag 07:54, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

infobox
I have yet to se any article on wikipedia relating to massacres that uses the MILITARY CONFLICT box to describe a massacre (see List of massacres). It is inappropriate, not to mention innaccurate, to describe the Republic of Haiti as a combatant in this event. EYDrevista (talk) 23:48, 19 November 2007 (UTC) Also, the infobox doesn't mention anything that isn't already mentioned in the article itself.

i took an infobox that was on the holocaust and made a few changes and placed it on this page. Armyguy11 (talk) 01:36, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

The infobox has now been half-assedly changed to an unattractive, horizontal box that adds nothing to the article other than summarizing it. The Holocaust article doesn't have such an infobox *(all the infoboxes as of right now relate to numbering the victims by location/ethnic group)*. Look, at the end of the day the infobox just doesn't really help the article, as the information is already presented succinctly in the article. All it is doing right now is a) unnecessarily cluttering the article and b) breaking with the trend of no infobox being used in most "massacre" or "genocide" articles.EYDrevista (talk) 05:53, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

If you looked at the holocaust there are actually several infoboxes. This is one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust#Soviet_POWs You said before there wasn't any infobox and now most don't have one. Well I moved it lower in the article so it will be less cluttered. It was in the article for a long time until removed at this point and then removed again. I agree with the original contributer of the infobox and would like to get his opinion on this. Armyguy11 (talk) 06:41, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Armyguy, I did mention that there were infoboxes in the Holocaust article of a different kind (I have put these in asterisks so you can read them easily). Yes, the article had an infobox for the longest time, and it wasn't helping any. Now I see that you have moved the info box one paragraph down, which doesn't help much, but meh. (Btw, the infobox has an unused column at the end.) I'm leaving it in there for now, it seems to mean a lot to you. By the by, I was checking around my old edits and I noticed why this bothers you so much. It's not the infobox, but rather the fact that I criticized your childish pluralizing (using apostrophes!) in the antihaitanismo article. Don't take these things personally, man. EYDrevista (talk) 07:04, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * When I originally placed the military conflict template on the article, I was basing its use off of a similar application in an article on a massacre during the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately that was quite some time ago so I can't recall which article. It was mostly in an effort to wikify an article that was otherwise quite scholarly but not conforming to Wikipedia's style standards. I'm certainly not married to the infobox being used here, and the current horizontal infobox currently does nothing good for the article in my opinion.--RosicrucianTalk 15:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Rosicrucian, I'll remove the infobox :) EYDrevista (talk) 23:54, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Alright, an infobox is helpful. Which is what we all need to understand. i placed it in the bottom. Armyguy11 (talk) 02:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Infoboxes that only summarize content within the article itself are much less helpful at the bottom. I'm not certain that placement really enhances the article as opposed to it being removed altogether.--RosicrucianTalk 03:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

alright, when will a consensus be reached? Armyguy11 (talk) 22:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Explain why you think it needs to be there. I see no reason why it should be, and several why it shouldn't, explained above. Plasynins (talk) 22:41, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

if you read above i gave an answer several times. please do not stalk me. thank you. Armyguy11 (talk) 22:43, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You said: "Alright, an infobox is helpful. Which is what we all need to understand."
 * You have not responded to the arguments as to why it should be removed. Plasynins (talk) 22:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

there was a box there before, but no one seemed to like it. they had whatever reasons to remove it. i made a new box so a consensus can be reached. Armyguy11 (talk) 23:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

But why does there have to be a box at all? Infoboxes aren't required or anything. If the same info is already there in the body, there's no need for a box. The article is not so long as to need a summary. Anyway you guys need to stop edit-warring. Yemal (talk) 23:10, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The holocaust has a similiar box. This was a similiar incident. Armyguy11 (talk) 23:13, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, but look at the size of that article, it is many times as large. There it looks like an infobox summarizes the info in a helpful way, because the article is so lengthy. I don't think you can directly compare it to this one. And the horizontal one is really sort of awkward, agreement with User:Rosicrucian's statement above about this. Surely you can see why a horizontal box can't go on the top like that. Yemal (talk) 23:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

If a vertical box is made can an infobox be agreed upon? Armyguy11 (talk) 23:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Why do you want an infobox so badly? The information about the casualties is right there in the first paragraph. The other stuff can just be added as well. I don't see what the purpose of a box would be.Yemal (talk) 23:25, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I have to say, the random adding of the Parsley Massacre's infobox at the top of articles like Antihaitianismo and the spamming of unrelated talkpages to try to drum up support don't make me very favorably disposed to the box's inclusion.--RosicrucianTalk 01:55, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Actual origin of name
Should be some explanation of the "shibboleth" aspect which gave this its name; see http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2003/ling001/shibboleth. html etc. -- AnonMoos (talk) 20:23, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Here is an article

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti-archive/msg00235.html UnclePaco (talk) 05:36, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

The wording is confusing now. A paragraph states as fact that the shibboleth was used to decide whether to murder each person, and then the very next paragraph says "the explanation is based more on myth than on personal accounts." So is it true or not? Qwertie (talk) 06:04, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

correction to source citation needed
I don't know how to fix this but the author Richard Turits is cited as Richard Turtis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by OrizagaJones (talk • contribs) 06:43, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

OrizagaJones (talk) 06:49, 25 July 2009 (UTC) Also I would like to respond to a previous post on antihaitianismo and the imposition of American concepts of race. I have done some research in this area and would be glad to contribute more. It is quite baffling to those of us who are used to race being a "color" issue!

Population of the Dominican Republic
pnh (talk) 11:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC) The article says "The Dominican Republic, the former Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, resides on the eastern portion of the island of Hispaniola and occupies two-thirds of the island's land while having just five-million inhabitants." However, Wikipedia's own article about the Dominican Republic gives that country's population as 10,090,000. If the Parsley Massacre article means to indicate that the DR's population at the time of the massacre was 5,000,000, this should be made clearer. I'm not going to edit the article because I have no knowledge of the demographic history of the Dominican Republic.

Are mass graves indicative?
There have been massacres which have not involved mass graves. Why should the lack of one here indicate anything about the scale of the massacre? I think the last line of the introduction should be deleted as it is speculative and possibly biassed. &#32;  Djapa Owen (talk) 15:06, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, considering that each and every one of the widely diverging figures given here and there for the massacre -- 20,000, 5,000, 25,000, 35,000, 2,000, 18,000 -- are totally unsupported and undocumented, yes, the lack of one single little mass grave does not plead for a high figure. --Lubiesque (talk) 16:39, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

The lack of support and documentation is a separate issue and I do not know enough to address that, but there have been much larger massacres which have not involved mass graves. The Indonesian killings of 1965–66 resulted in half a million dead but nearly all were either burnt in their homes, left for their family/friends to bury or thrown in rivers or the sea. There are no known mass graves there but that pogrom was well documented. The comment about mass graves is illogical and should be replaced with something like "The total number of deaths is disputed to this day." &#32;  Djapa Owen (talk) 16:55, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * No mass graves in Indonesia? http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-1998/byrne.html


 * I don't agree to limit the mention of the lack of reliable figures to half a dozen words like you suggest, since the whole thing about a "massacre" is the number of victims. The subject needs to be treated thoroughly.
 * In his 1966 book, Crassweller writes on page 156: "A figure between 15,000 and 20,00 would be a reasonable estimate, but this is guesswork" (that says it all...). In his 1998 highly documented book which is an indictment of the Trujillo regime, Lauro Capdevilla writes "5,000 to 20,000 victims". He does not elaborate and gives no sources.


 * Someone could state flatly "2,000 victims" and he/she would be no more no less credible than Crassweller or Capdevilla. In fact, in the absence of any mass grave, he/she might well be closer to the truth.--Lubiesque (talk) 17:22, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Those born to foreigners on Dominican soil NOT automatically Dominican citizens
"Of the tens of thousands of ethnic Haitians who died, a majority were born in the Dominican Republic and belonged to well-established Haitian communities in the borderlands, thus making them Dominican citizens".

The previous paragraph has multiple problems, for which I have deleted it. First, as indicated in the introduction to the article, the "tens of thousands" victims claim is at best unsupported by any evidence, and at worst a deliberate exaggeration. Second, the claim that "a majority were born in the Dominican Republic" is totally unsupported by any evidence, and highly dubious considering the location of the events, in the border areas. Finally, even if any was born on Dominican soil, that by itself would NOT make him/her a Dominican citizen. Most countries on earth do NOT award citizenship solely based on birthplace, so-called jus solis without restriction. The US and Canada are among the very few that do. Some, like Haiti itself, award citizenship strictly on the basis of blood line, so called jus sanguini. Since 1929, the DR has had a restricted jus solis policy, that excludes from this privilige anyone considered "de tránsito" ("transient") by Dominican authorities...Dominican judicial and administrative authorities have historically held that anyone lacking legal permanent residence was "de transito" for citizenship purpose, and hence excluded from jus solis priviledge, as were ilegal residents. A recent ruling by the Dominican Constitutional Court upheld previous rulings and policies on this matter. Virgrod (talk) 13:58, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I have reinserted this section as it is referenced from a reliable source. I removed "tens of" from the first sentence as this was not supported by the reference. If you have a good reference for your argument you should put your argument into the article with that citation. However, this is a controversial topic so it makes sense to give both sides of the argument not just one. Please reply to it, don't just delete it. &#32;  Djapa Owen (talk) 14:59, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * As far as the official Dominican citizenship policy, I have an excellent reference: a much-talked-about recent ruling by the constitutional court, which is available for download at their site http://tribunalconstitucional.gob.do/node/1764 ...It is unfortunately in Spanish, and I know of no translation. That is the OFFICIAL position, regardless of what any other author may say, and whether anyone may agree or disagree with it...And it is as I wrote above, which you can verify by reading the ruling, if you are able to read Spanish. As far as the claim that "the majority" of the victims had been born on the Dominican side of the border (which would NOT make them Dominican citizens anyway, as discussed above), I would like to know how did the author verify their place of birth, which may have happened decades before the event... Obviously s/he can claim whatever s/he wants in his/her paper, but presumably some justification is necessary...Asking the victims was obviously impossible, and to my knowlege there is no comprehensive list with names that the author could have checked against birth records...so how does the author reach/support his/her conclusion about the birthplace of the victims? Can you post the exact wording explaining this? Virgrod (talk) 15:38, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Casualty numbers
Quite an argument is developing in the body of the article and the reference section about the estimated numbers of casualties. It is quite appropriate for the article to discuss the fact that there is controversy on the subject, but the body of the article is not the place for the argument to take place, and especially not in the lead. This is obviously an emotional subject for many people, but the article must remain respectful, reasonable and stay based on reliable sources. &#32;  Djapa Owen (talk) 04:50, 23 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Why not? I figure if there's a controversy on the actual number of people that were killed, that should definitely be mentioned in the lead. Actually, it should be among the first things mentioned, specially when you consider that the often touted estimates, which have zero basis, are about double of what's historically been reported. As you know the absolute highest figure given by Haitian officials is 12,166, yet many people still believe that around 20,000-30,000 people were killed in this incident. IslandMan89 (talk) 06:12, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

When you take into account that an average battle of the Second World War would see deaths around 1500 on one or both sides, even 12,000 murders over the course of just a few days in one location is honestly horrendous. I don't know why people would feel the need to inflate the already harrowing estimates unless doing so from some position of honest - if incorrect - assessment. What political or social goal would be gained? Who benefits from it? The best one can do is list the range of estimates and who's said what, which is already in the article. That's as good as one can make it unless some definitive data comes out in the future. 2601:87:4400:AF2:8838:985F:9F0C:AFEB (talk) 03:31, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Parsley Massacre. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070319013505/http://www.encyclopedia.com:80/doc/1G1-151974298.html to http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-151974298.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 12:31, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on Parsley Massacre. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150812200410/http://tribunalconstitucional.gob.do/sites/default/files/documentos/Sentencia%20TC%200168-13%20-%20C.pdf to http://tribunalconstitucional.gob.do/sites/default/files/documentos/Sentencia%20TC%200168-13%20-%20C.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 00:04, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Joaquin Balaguer
The article states that in 1975 Joaquin Balaguer was the intering foreing minister, but he was the President of the country at the time. Don't know if the mistake is from the source of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.149.118.124 (talk) 20:15, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

The motives given for the massacre is too simplistic
it isnt simply racism or a hate for hatians. There is a difference of culture, a difference of language spoken. The hatians were occupying dominican land. 144.62.185.127 (talk) 11:39, 13 September 2023 (UTC)