“El Corte”: A Forgotten Genocide
By Peter Everett The Massacre River today. The Fateful Day Rushing water separates the Dominican Republic from Haiti, water that ran red for seven days in October 1937. It is known as the Massacre River. The water holds memories - it remembers the screams, the bullets, the bayonets - but most of all, it remembers the rise and fall of machetes. It tastes the blood, Haitian blood. Rafael Trujillo, the dictator ruling the Dominican Republic, ordered his soldiers to use machetes (a traditional farming tool) to make the killings appear to be justified, simply Dominican farmers on the border defending themselves from a Haitian incursion. However, the brutality of the massacre belied such a story. At least 12,000 Haitians were killed, and in horrific fashion: babies' heads were dashed against…