Overduewith interest: New trial and reparations demanded for Parsley Massacre   

DOSMONT, Haiti — In the last year of Marcellus Jean’s life, his wife Elcilie Jean found herself having to take up a collection from family and friends to pay for medical care. The costs for the Parsley Massacre survivor totaled about 15,000 gourdes, about $113 USD, every three months. When he died last month, the family had to borrow more money and sell parcels of land to pay for his funeral.

To Uraymond Jean, a grandnephew of Marcellus, the lack of funds was one more injustice the family had to endure. Speaking from the relative’s home, a tin-roof adobe-style structure, on the day before the funeral Uraymond said reparations may have been life-saving.

“He was old for sure, but if he had received money, he probably would’ve still been here,” Uraymond said, holding a mini bottle of Rhum Barbancourt. “There are some costs he would’ve been able to manage.”

Another mourner, 100-year-old Michaelle Matthieu, would also like to receive reparations. When she was 13, former Dominican President Rafael Trujillo’s goons killed members of her family and stole their goods, including a coffee plantation. After her parents fled to Haiti, they didn’t have the funds to send her to school. She ended up working long, painful hours as a farmer all her life. 

Sitting in the courtyard of her home in Cité Planto, a neighborhood in Ouanaminthe, Matthieu said she too would like to hear an apology from the panyòl, Creole for Hispanic. But, she’s also realistic.

“I’m close to dying,” said Matthieu, a great-grandmother who says she has lost count of her progeny. “But if money comes, I will take it with me to my death bed.” 

Such lament over reparations is not uncommon among some Parsley Massacre survivors and their families. Over the years, it has risen and now fuels a demand for not only a new reparations agreement that people will actually receive, but also a trial to seek justice. Together, these entities are petitioning the United Nations to demand that the Dominican Republic be prosecuted for genocide. They hope a new, more transparent process will lead to justice and appropriate reparations.

Jesula Blanc, founder and manager of the North-East Gender Platform (PGNE), said she gave the petition to a United Nations agent who visited Ouanaminthe in October 2023. Blanc also plans to send a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and is collecting acts of consent from survivors to do so.

“If this case was handled properly, things would not have gone this bad,” Blanc said.

First reparations agreement was “disrespectful”

Voices like these from northeast Haiti join a global movement seeking reparations for historical wrongs perpetrated against people across the globe, particularly Black and brown people. The most well-known may be the efforts of African Americans seeking reparations from the U.S. government for racism and slavery. Less known, but more similar, to Haiti’s plight is Namibia, where German troops killed tens of thousands of people resisting colonialism from 1904 to 1908. Guatemalans are demanding reparations for 669 massacres that killed or disappeared 200,000 people during a 36-year civil war in the 1960s.

In the corner of Hispaniola where many of the families and advocacy groups reside, the 1938 reparations agreement is simply “disrespectful.”

Richard Turits, an associate professor of history at the College of William & Mary, studies the Hispanic Caribbean and Haiti. According to his research, Dominican Republic President Trujillo agreed to compensate victims of the massacre in an agreement signed by then-Haitian President Sténio Vincent. According to Turits, the United States brokered the agreement, which the pair signed in Washington D.C. on January 31, 1938.

Trujillo signed the agreement to avoid international arbitration, stating his country would send $750,000 USD to Haiti. At the time of the negotiation, the recognized death toll stood at 12,000 — meaning it would have equated to about $62 per victim. In 2024 dollars, the amount is equivalent to $16.7 million, roughly $1,380 per victim, according to the U.S. Inflation Calculator.

The Dominican government claimed “no responsibility whatsoever” for the killings in the indemnity agreement, Turits said. In an article analyzing the aftermath, Turits wrote that Trujillo’s government only ever sent $525,000 of the money due to Haiti.

Trujillo may have also handed out bundles worth $25,000 in cash to politicians in Port-au-Prince, according to an account of “Red Heat: conspiracy, murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean” by Alex von Tunzelman. According to von Tunzelman, none of the money ever reached victims or the bereaved.

In Dosmont, survivors Dumel Saintilnord and Kirsil Joseph told The Haitian Times that the government built three plantations and some houses for the victims. Made of a mud-and-cement mixture and covered with sheet metal, the structures resemble the home Marcellus died in recently.

No one there received cash directly, they said.

“We don’t know anything about this,” said Elcilie, the widow of Marcellus, who died Sept. 7.

New trial and process required 

Supporters of the new effort seeking justice reject the premise that the massacre was a “border conflict,” as some official Dominican accounts have called it. They are crying out for two reasons. First, monies from an initial reparations agreement between the Dominican and Haitian governments, brokered by the United States, are long overdue. Second, they say, the initial agreement was insufficient as it allocated only $750,000 for the genocide. Therefore, they require a more equitable amount that accounts for the loss of life and property as well as the generational burdens of the losses. 

On a more practical and urgent note, families and advocates say as the survivors have aged, their care has fallen on the shoulders of relatives and villages with little means to support their health needs. In an humanitarian sense, some advocates and families also say, reparations would help ease the toxic tensions between the two nations. Perhaps, they might even serve as a deterrent to current mistreatment Haitian migrants face in the Dominican Republic.

The groups handed a petition to the UN in October 2023 and are waiting for a response to proceed with a trial. If the Dominican Republic is found culpable, then it should be ordered to pay reparations to survivors, Blanc said. 

Another issue is later estimates put the number dead at nearly double, if not triple, since 1938. Advocates also looked at the losses in terms of how it set families back financially. 

“They must reevaluate because they did not evaluate how many assets the Haitians had,” Blanc said. “Haitians spent a lot of time working in the Dominican Republic. Twenty-thousand people, so about $35 to each Haitian who died. This is disrespectful.” 

As of this writing Blanc had not heard back from the UN about her petition, a modest 2-page request in French. Yet, the act of sending the request itself signals the existence of the many flaws, factors and conflicting tales that have dominated official accounts on the world stage.

Formal apology might bring some relief  

One reason is that the impact of the massacre reverberated in ways beyond a simple cash payment. 

For Joseph Mistidor, a 73-year-old planter, the lack of compensation means he only made it to the sixth grade. Mistidor, who lives in Paredes, another small village near Ouanaminthe, explained that although he was not born in the Dominican Republic, his parents were left impoverished after losing their land, crops and animals in the Dominican massacre. 

Even now, decades later, he considers himself as a malere, Creole for an impoverished person. One who cannot afford medical treatment feet so swollen, they poked through his sandals last month. 

“My life would’ve been easier,” Mistidor quickly answered when asked about his outcome if his family had received reparations. 

“After the rain comes the rainbow,” he added. “They have to give us a little something as compensation. That would’ve been good. That’s exactly what I need.”

Money aside, some also view an apology as a necessity in resurfacing this massacre.

“We never heard them say ‘padon,’” said Elcillie Jean, the Creole word for apology. 

“It would be normal [a standard step] for them to do so,” the widow said. “That would ease the pain. A lot of Haitians fled to Haiti and live in poverty so I would be happy if they were to do that.”

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Overduewith interest: New trial and reparations demanded for Parsley Massacre    was first posted on October 8, 2024 at 10:39 am.