The anarkismo.net site has just posted an analysis of the 1937 massacre of Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic that appeared originally in Workers’ Forum in January 2008. For those unfamiliar with this despicable chapter in Haitian-Dominican relations, the article opens with a brief summary:
A little over 70 years ago, from October 2nd to October 4th 1937, 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrant workers were massacred in the Dominican Republic. Most were slaughtered with bayonets and machetes by the Dominican army and some Dominican big landowners. Infants had their heads smashed against walls. Women were speared with pitchforks. Many who were attempting to escape back to Haiti were captured at the border and killed. These murders were ordered by Dominican dictator Raphael Leonidas Trujillo, in an effort to “cleanse” the border region and expropriate small peasants or “conuqueros” so that big landowners could take over their lands.
The international outrage brought on by this massacre was soon abated by an agreement between both governments, on January 31, 1938, to settle “these few incidents on the border between some Haitians and Dominicans.” The Haitian government of Sténio Vincent capitulated completely and dropped all proceedings in international court. The Dominican Republic agreed to pay $750,000 in compensation to the victims. Eventually, $500,000 was paid, amounting to about $25 to $33 per murdered Haitian. No one was ever brought to justice.
For the full article follow the link below. The massacre has been the subject of a number of books, most of them—like Freddy Prestol Castillo’s El Masacre se pasa a pie—not translated into English. For an English novel on the subject read Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones.
Article at http://www.anarkismo.net/article/13460
Repeating Islands 
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The historical chronicle, duly documented, states that on a date such as today April 3 in 1805, Haitian invading troops committed the savage and barbaric slaughter in the town of Moca, known as El Degüello.
The quantification of victims of that time passed to knife, sabers or bayonets, were estimated at about half a thousand, a very high amount judging by the small population and the readiness in its realization. In fact, some scholars and historians have referred at different times .Antonio Delmonte and Tejada, Javier Angulo Guridi, Jose Gabriel Garcia, the Leonidas brothers and Alcides Garcia, Benjamin Summer Welles, Ramon Marrero Aristi and others are among them.
Summer Welles, for example, (in the same affirmation as the others) points out that on that date “the residents were gathered in number of five hundred, in the church to witness a solemn Te-Deun in thanksgiving … (and) ahía mansalva were beheaded without mercy … ”
Anticipating everyone, Gaspar Arredondo and Pichardo, a young lawyer from Santiago who had resisted along with others the criminal attack in that city made by the Haitians before the event of Moca, having had to flee to Cuba, he would write from there, his “History of my departure from Santo Domingo on April 28, 1805”, a chronicle written with the solid support of a narrative made by someone who was a witness and actor at the same time. In that History, he relates, that the Haitian commander had imparted the order to his troops “that women of all classes and ages meet in the church and men in the plaza, since all, under the good faith of the capitulation held with the neighboring parties, should obey the chief’s preventions They all obeyed, believing that some pardon or grace was going to be proclaimed in their favor, and the pardon was to cut them all after the meeting was held, like cornered “It qualifies that as a” dreadful sacrifice, sacrilegious and barbarous. ”
The Moca is just the most revealing and scandalous point of that orgy of blood, terror and looting that Haitian troops carried out on this side of the border in the year 1801 and 1805, perhaps because the population was concentrated gear Number in the church and the invaders did not need much effort for execution. In his History, Arredondo and Pichardo qualifies as slaughter the slaughter carried out by the Haitians in Santiago on February 28, 1805 who entered “blood and fire with all the of the country to make way for the capital “and adds that” all that population and the peoples of the transit, were reduced to ashes by the black troops in their retreat, destroying even the altars. “The priests they found were prisoners, and then sacrificed. He continues to narrate how they took on foot to Haiti, to those who left the octogenarian vicar Pedro Tavares alive among them, many of whom died of hunger and thirst along the way.
The validity of the narrative of Arredondo and Pichardo, is supported by the facts and the unanimous affirmation of the stories (which are many) and recorded information of the time.
Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi, in his book Invasions Haitianas of 1801, 1805 and 1822, collects significant documentation originated at the time and as a result of the events, which constitute the unequivocal proof of the devastation, the gratuitous and unnecessary murders, the looting and desolation to which Haitians subdued our territory especially in 1801 and 1805.
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Someone could naively think (to the satisfaction and enjoyment of interested parties) that around these facts there is an over-dimensioning and exaggeration. However, if the well-known documentation is observed carefully, without disdaining in any way the opinion of some French officials of the time both on the side of Haiti and on this part, and the communications of officials of other nations to their respective governments and their judgments On the radically different character of one nation and another, the understanding of the gravity of those scenarios of looting, terror, and blood will have to be reached without a doubt.
We will also come to the judgment that, rather than overestimating the fact, there is an undervaluation, ignorance and forgetting of what is part of our history and that marked, the spirit of the Dominican nationality.
When reading the address that Dessalines made to the Haitian people on April 12, 1805 on his return from the site of Santo Domingo, to give an account of his glorious deed done on this side of the island, you can measure the pride of a sovereign emperor with signs of joy and joy for the crime, terror and looting carried out. Among other things, he regrets not having “crowned his campaign with complete and complete success” but, in compensation, he tells his people that “you have at least the consolation of thinking that the city of Santo Domingo, (it is) the only place that survives the disasters of the devastation that spread to considerable distance in the part before Spanish … “. Later he will say that “having been taken by fire and blood all the outside of Santo Domingo, the rest of the inhabitants and animals (were) plucked from their soil and driven to our homeland …”.
Also in his Diary of the Campaign, he will say that “… the sacking of the city of Santo Domingo was the only thing that was missing to complete his projects …” and he confesses to having left the order to his chief leaders so that “the cavalry It spread on all sides, destroying and burning everything in its path. ” He adds, in addition, to have ordered his generals to “push (they will take to Haiti) in front of them the rest of the inhabitants, of the animals and the beasts”.
It is opportune to point out that the reign of crime, terror and looting that subjected this part of the island in 1801, 1805 and the disastrous occupation of 1822 to 1844 not only caused personal and material damage. These invasions and the state of anxiety and permanent threats that Haiti subjected to this part of the island, forced the emigration of many of our best men and families in search of a tranquility and security that was taken from them here.
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