User:Cornelius mastermind/Racism in the Dominican Republic

Discrimination Against Haitians
Trujillo's authoritarianism culminated in the 1937 massacre of Haitian peasants on the border with the Dominican Republic. Before the Haitian Massacre, also known as the Parsley Massacre, led by Trujillo, President Lescot's had claimed Trujillo's motives behind his acts of violence towards Haitians in the Dominican border. Lescot's accusations of "material acts of violence and the continual violence of writings, practiced in the Dominican Republic against the Haitian People," challenge the idea of an economic, political, and military pan-American solidarity that the US government had promoted since the inauguration of the "Good Neighbor" policy in the early 1930s. The Good Neighbor policy was enacted by President Roosevelt in hopes of ensuring a mutual friendly relationship between the U.S and the nations of Latin America.

With Dominican civilians and local authorities participating in the massacre, many of them assisted the army by identifying and locating Haitians, while others helped Haitians hide and flee. Generally civilians who were recruited by Trujillo were prisoners from other areas of the country or local residents already tied to the regime. Above all, local Dominican civilians were compelled by the army to burn and bury the bodies of the victims, which played a role in the growth of Anti-Hatianism. With the rise of the sugar-plantation economy in the early twentieth century, as US sugar firms in the Dominican Republic imported Haitian laborers, led to opposition transforming into a dread of inundation by a Black sub-proletariat. Anti-Haitianism has continued to grow and diffuse during the last 60 years, as Haitian migrants to Dominican sugar zones and other areas—mostly far from the frontier regions—actually increased in number after the massacre. These migrants have been subjected to extraordinary exploitation and continual human rights abuses.

The Aftermath Of The Haitian Massacre
In October 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina commanded his army to kill all "Haitians" living in the Dominican Republic's northwestern frontier, which borders on Haiti, and in certain parts of the Cibao region. Many targeted Haitians were mostly small farmers, many of whom had been born in the Dominican Republic (and thus were Dominican citizens according to the Dominican constitution) and some whose families resided in the Dominican Republic for generations. Racial dimension to Dominican anti-Haitianism, as Haitians have been identified in the Dominican Republic as "black" in contrast to Dominicans who, evidently since the colonial era, have rarely constructed such identities for themselves. In the pre-massacre period, the colonization period served and gave voice to the anti-Haitian nationalism that had originally molded the concept of anti-hatianism.