1937, October 2–5: (The Trujillo Massacre: The Massacre River, 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians Butchered, the Charnel Convoys, and $30 a Head): The Massacre River,…

1937, October 2–5: (The Trujillo Massacre: The Massacre River, 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians Butchered, the Charnel Convoys, and $30 a Head): The Massacre River, which separates Ouanaminthe from its Dominican twin Dajabón, defines the frontier for some forty-five miles in the North — the river’s name dates from 1728, commemorating the slaughter of a band of boucaniers by outraged Spanish colonists. For three days and nights beginning October 2, 1937, on orders from Trujillo, the Dominican army and Policía Nacional systematically butchered some 15,000 to 20,000 Haitians not only along the Massacre but as far away as Samaná Bay, Barahona, and San Pedro de Macorís. The first outbreak took place at Bánica, ten miles southeast of Cerca-la-Source, where 300 Haitians were shot and hacked to death. In Santiago, some 1,900 were herded into a barracks compound where — on express orders to use clubs, machetes, or primitive weapons, not firearms — killer squads hacked indiscriminately at women, children, and men until their arms were tired and fresh executioners replaced them. Army trucks hauling mutilated dead into desolate ravines left trails of stinking, stale blood along streets and roads; at ports, charnel convoys unloaded bodies onto commandeered fishing boats which shuttled them offshore to swarming shark and barracuda. At Montecristi for three successive nights, moaning files of Haitians were herded to the end of the customs wharf, to be clubbed or bayoneted and kicked into deep water; others were marched inside the gloomy fort and buried by night in and beyond the moat. Bands of deportees were led to the sea to board ship for Haiti, but there were no ships — only bludgeons, bayonets, machetes, and finally the sharks. American Minister Henry Norweb wrote Sumner Welles that the drive was conducted with ruthless efficiency, the technique designed to give the Dominican government an opportunity to disclaim all responsibility — following a house-to-house canvass, Haitians were rounded up, cited for deportation proceedings, passed through immigration control offices which reported them deported to Haiti, and then murdered by Dominican troops. Throughout, care was taken not to molest Haitians working on foreign-owned property or in towns where foreign witnesses might be. Vincent’s reaction was supine — the Haitian government said not a word until October 9. By January 12, 1938, Trujillo had settled out of court: the Dominican indemnity was to be $750,000 — $30 a head for 15,000 murdered Haitians — subsequently whittled down to $525,000 cash following a secret visit to Port-au-Prince by Anselmo Paulino-Alvarez, later Trujillo’s secret-police chief, with a suitcase containing $25,000 in small bills. With what was left over, the Haitian government compensated survivors at about two cents a head — at this time a good pig would have brought $30 in the market. U.S. Minister Ferdinand Mayer wrote Welles that the whole thing was pretty venal, quoting rumors that Vincent was striving to avoid difficulties because of sums of money accepted from Trujillo before the incident. British Minister Shepherd reported that educated Haitians preserved an admirable balance, but this attitude was in large measure due to the contempt in which the educated Haitian held the peasant, whom he regarded as belonging to a race apart — it was only too easy for a mulâtre regime of the South and West to preserve its balance when the only victims were noirs of the North. The Dominican Foreign Ministry once again took the occasion to suggest to the Nobel Prize Committee that Trujillo and Vincent share a Peace Prize for having settled what Mayer described as another grim chapter in the bloody history of Dominican and Haitian relationships.