- ". . . Why the river's name was changed to Massacre. Before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, the indigenous Taino and Arawak people called the river Guatapana. However, in 1936, the centuries-old name was changed. Dominican Dictator Trujillo ordered the genocide of all blacks living in the DR who could not pronounce the Spanish verb, pereir, “to perish”. Spanish r's are tricky for Haitians as are English r's. In a few days time, an estimated 25,000 were slaughtered by machete, knives or bullets. Haitians fleeing to their homeland were tracked
down and butchered by machetes when the bullets ran out. The waters of the Guatapana River ran red with Haitian blood and a horrified nation renamed it.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Why it's called the Massacre River
My husband is still hoping for a mission trip to Haiti this year--now probably postponed to April. The Massacre River separates Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Why the unusual name? In today's letter, Pam Mann, a missionary/teacher in Ouanaminthe from Upper Arlington Lutheran Church writes:
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This is an interesting post because it is different than what I have come across while researching the Haitian Massacre of 1937. Apparently the river was christened the Massacre River after Spanish settlers killed French buccaneers in 1728. It was centuries later in 1937 that Dictator Truijllo ordered the Parsley Massacre that took place largely by the Massacre River, but at this point the river had already been known by this name, not after like this post suggests.
Also interesting is the fact that this post suggests that the genocide was of "all blacks living in the Dominican Republic." Trujillo specifically ordered Haitians to be massacred, not black Dominicans, and the massacre was ordered to be isolated to just the border region and some areas of Santiago.
Lastly, pereir is not a word in Spanish...but it might be in French or something? The commonly held idea that you might be referring to is that Dominican soldiers who were committing the massacre, in order to distinguish ethnic Haitians from Dominicans living in the border region (because at this time there was a lot of mixing of the two as the border region was unregulated and as a result there was free movement from one side to the other), they would make people pronounce words like "tijera" (scissors), "claro" (of course) or "perejil" (parsley) because, like you said, the Spanish "r" is hard for Kreyol speakers to pronounce. The fact that they forced people to pronounce the Spanish word for parsley is how the massacre has received its name of the Parsley Massacre.
There are a lot of myths that circulate about this massacre...that's actually what I'm researching. But if you want a really quick (20ish minutes) look into this topic, you should watch the film "Frontiers: Haiti and the Dominican Republic".
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