The last survivors: Elders recount the 1937 Parsley Massacre and life after in Haiti

DOSMONT, Haiti —  All along the border that separates Haiti and the Dominican Republic are small villages that never make waves. Among them are Dosmont and Ferrier, two places that are no more than 20 miles from Dajabon, the Dominican Republic border town—about 20 minutes by car.

In these sleepy villages of about 30,000 inhabitants is a special group of residents whose presence has drawn many to the town, like moths to a flame, over the years. A group whose numbers dwindle each year.

It is a special group whose members wish they had never shared the common experience that binds them: The 1937 Parsley Massacre. Or, as Haitians in that part of the country call it, the Masak Kout Kout, in which more than 20,000 Haitians were slaughtered. Ranging in age – from 89 to 111 – many were babies when their families fled a ‘madman’s spear,’ literally, bayonets and machetes. They ended up on this side of the border with scarcely any official acknowledgment, much less any recompense. 

Eighty-seven years later, recognizing they have more days behind them than ahead, their message via The Haitian Times is clear: We’re still here. We still deserve justice. And some of us want reparations for that genocide.

Vital Princivil, 111

Vital Princivil lives alone in a four-room thatched home with a tin roof in Ferrier. At age 111, he is one – if not the oldest – of the Parsley Massacre survivors.

On a recent September day, Princivil sat on a white chair on his porch, a tin overhang shielding him from the sun. For about an hour, Princivil told his tale of the “kout kouto,” alternating between Spanish and Creole. 

When he was around 20 years old, he lived with his parents and godparents in Monte Cristi, the small village where he was born along a river the Dominican Republic and Haiti share.

As a family, their business was making and selling charcoal. Princivil’s task was to take the charcoal to market to sell off the street.

“Carbón, carbón,” he used to yell, going from street to street.  

On the evening of Oct. 3, after making his sales, Princivil decided to stay out for a little fun. When he returned home, an argument broke out.

“My godmother said, ‘Ah, you’re staying out late with women, get out of my house,’” Princivil recalls.

“Survival has its burdens”

He hitched a ride to La Romana, a mountainous part of the border where he had other relatives. The car broke down, so he decided to head to his other parents in Ferrier, on the Haiti side of the island.

The next day, word reached Princivil in Ferrier that Haitians in Monte Cristi were being slaughtered.

“My father told us that as he was running from the partisans, he got to the bridge border and saw my godfather Steven’s body,” Princivil said. “He jumped over the corpse as he ran.”

“I did not die in this massacre only because the car broke down and I went to Haiti instead of returning to my godparents,” Princivil said. 

Life in Haiti after the massacre was tough. Along with his father, who had fled the Dominican Republic and all his possessions, he resumed making and selling charcoal.

“I didn’t have the chance to go to school or learn a trade in Haiti after the massacre because I was born in the Dominican Republic in Monte Cristi. My birth certificate is still there.”

Still, Princivil remade a life in Ferrier. He married in 1953 and bore seven children. As an adult, he completed high school, became a mayor-assessor and then a Court of Justice clerk.

These days, he enjoys staying home, waiting for the arrival of many of his grandchildren and visitors.

As for the massacre, Princivil sees it as the will of God, saying, “There are things that neither money nor forgiveness can erase.”

Though his memories are filled with sadness, he remains resolute in sharing his story to ensure that the horrors of the past are not forgotten.

“Survival has its burdens,” he says. “I carry the weight of their memories.”

---

Soirélia Anténor, 103

As a 15–year–old in 1937, Sorélia Anténor remembers the week of the massacre well. Over five to seven days, she often told her children, Trujillo’s soldiers turned their guns, knives, machetes and sticks on anyone they thought was Haitian. 

Her family and friends in Dajabon began to flee. She and her parents, Victor and Regine Antoine, decided to avoid the Ouanaminthe bridge. Her cousins Marguerite and Prévilia decided to cross there.

“They killed them all before they crossed the bridge,” Anténor says. “I crossed the jungle on foot with papa and Manman.”

On their way east, they often passed the bodies of fellow Haitians.

Now 103, Anténor’s breaths hitch when she speaks and she groans in agony every few moments. A mother of six, grandmother of 23, and great–grandmother of 22, she is also considered one of the oldest survivors of the massacre.

“I crossed the jungle on foot with papa and manman”

Anténor is deaf and has lost much of her mobility, her great-granddaughter, Rose Carlie Abel who helps care for the centenarian, told The Haitian Times. Along with the physical ailments, impoverishment makes caring for Anténor difficult. 

All her life, Anténor worked her plot of land in Dosmont until she was about 80. She sometimes sold sugar and fuel by the gallons to take care of her six children, two of whom have died. Between the trauma of the massacre and the lack of funds, the family suffered. There were no savings for old age.

“She lives in the pain of poverty,” Abel said. “Some compensation would be very useful for us to take care of her before she dies.” 

---

Damusca Bien-Aimé, 102

At age 15, Damuscar Bien-Aimé was a constant companion to his father on their vegetable farm in Ferrier. One day, the pair looked out over their sweet potato fields and saw people running towards their farm from the Dominican side, which Haitians call Sendomeng, a Creole derivative of Santo Domingo.

“I was in the fields when the Haitians began to flee from the violence,” he recalls. “They came running, saying, ‘Over in Sendomeng, a bunch of Haitians are dying under kout kouto and the bullets of Trujillo’s partisans.’ We ran away and found a way to run over the border.”

As the first people the fleeing Haitians came across, the Bien-Aimé family farm served as a sort of welcome center. Some came injured and bleeding, disoriented and in shock, exhausted and weeping.

“My father and I gave them a place to stay, some food and fields to work until they could get back on their feet,” Bien-Aimé said. “We did what we could to help,” he says.

One of the stories he heard about why the Kout Kouto occurred is that the massacre stemmed from a failed land deal between Trujillo and Vincent, the Haitian president at the time. Whether the story is true is not known, as there are many theories. But the potential economic roots made an impression nonetheless on young Bien-Aimé. 

“We did what we could to help”

After the traumatic experience, Bien-Aimé went on to continue with school, completing sixth grade before dedicating his life to farming. He raised eight sons with his wife, Adriene Philogène. He struggled all his life to provide for his family, sometimes making cement blocks to support his children.

Today, he participates in community efforts demanding justice and reparations for the massacre victims. Bien-Aimé believes in using potential compensation to benefit people in need in the area, especially the victims and the families of victims, rather than random individuals in government. He points to an example of monies from the diaspora that helped build the Massacre River canal to irrigate the Maribarou plain.

“We must be vigilant in this process to obtain apologies and compensation from the Dominicans,” he said. “We need to ensure it helps everyone, especially the families of victims,” he insists.

Bien-Aimé remains hopeful that compensation will lead to better support for his family and the community, emphasizing, “Compensation should benefit those who suffered,” he said. 

“If they apologize sincerely,” Bien-Aimé added, “we’ll accept it.”

---

Dumel Saintilnord, 89 

Dumel Saintilnord lives in constant pain. An ever-present ache he has felt since escaping, barely, the tip of a Trujillo partisan’s spear when he was 2 years old. He’s now 89.

Saintilnord speaks openly about this pain. From the yard of his daughter’s home here, where he is surrounded by fruit trees, he likes to sit in their shade and share the pain he has lived with all his life. He tells this story to his children, their children, and visitors who come by from everywhere. He wants them all to understand how horrendous those five days were in 1937.

“They beheaded people like they were laboratory animals. They shot men, women and children like wild animals, and burned down houses,” Saintilnord recalls.

With his gaze fixed on the distance, his face appears wan as his mind goes back nine decades. Despite everything, a glimmer of resilience and dignity emanates from his face.

“I remember everything my father and other survivors told me,” he says, in a somber tone.

His parents, Percius Saintilnord and Rémilia Philidor, had lived on the Dominican side of the border, in Dajabon. They farmed land there, growing beans and corn, and raised cows and goats. Saintilnord was born on that land less than two years before the massacre. 

One day, word spread that Trujillo fanatics were out looking to kill Haitians. His father sprinted into action, leading their family through the woods, with the sound of their hurried footsteps chasing them, and past the muffled screams of victims. As they fled, the family often saw the blood staining the earth and vegetation.

“My father, my mother and six cousins ​​tried to cross the border,” Saintilnord recalled recently. “My father did his best to get around Trouillot’s partisans and enter Haiti safely. I lost my aunt, who had seven children.”

For decades afterward, Saintilnord worked with his father in his fields. He attended school through the third year of elementary education. He married at 29 and he and his wife Marie had seven children, five boys and two girls.

Today, the great-grandfather of 17, lives with his daughter Eveline Saintilnord. She takes care of him by providing him with the necessary assistance so that he can see happy days.

“They beheaded people like they were laboratory animals”

Part of that is telling the story of their escape to as many people as possible to gain some justice.

“They want us to die more than they admit their guilt and provide justice and reparations for the crimes committed against Haitians,” Saintilnord said. 

He lamented that no government authorities – local, municipal, or national – have ever come to see him or check on survivors like him. Only the grassroots organizations have supported him at times.

“In the state I’m in, I can’t work, I live a hell of a life,” he said. “My children and my family manage as best they can with me.”

“I am waiting for my death,” Saintilnord added, in a matter-of-fact tone. “Before dying, I would like to receive this ‘compensation.’  [If] I got this money, it would help me go to the hospital, ease my pain, and provide for my family and children.”

---

Kirsil Joseph, 89

Kirsil Joseph is one of those people who almost can’t help smiling. Sometimes, while recounting atrocities, her eyes wander and her cocoa-brown skin gets a bit saggier as she recalls trauma. But seconds later, her smile is back.

“Wi, pitit mwen,” she says in Creole, back to the present. “Yes, my child.”

She’s ready to share her story, with all the incredulity the tale merits in her voice and eyes.

You see, Joseph cheated death as a baby.

“Trujillo fanatics were throwing children up into the air, waiting for them to fall back on the tip of their knives,” she recalls. “[They] were killing children and adults alike.

“When the troops came up close to my father, my mother, me, and a cousin, as he faced this danger of death, my father defended us with his machete.”

“They were catching children on the tip of their knives”

She sits with a calm yet determined expression, her frail body shows the wear of almost nine decades but her spirits remain young and strong as she recounts the distressing memories of 1937. 

“I was a year and a few months old during the Kout Kouto operation,” she says. 

“We left everything in the Dominican Republic to escape death. Even my birth certificate,” she says, with a smile. “My dear late father fled with me at full speed to Haiti in Capotille, then to Dosmont.”

Born in Soudjang, a town in the Dominican Republic, Joseph had only known the province of Dajabon. Her family cultivated land and sold products there. 

After their escape to Dosmont, Joseph grew into adulthood and worked as a farmer. With no means for the family to support themselves in Haiti, Joseph couldn’t go to school. They lived quietly on a parcel of land the Haitian government gave to some people at the time.

“I am currently living on the land of the colony where President Vincent built a house to enable us to work,” she explained. “He gave us some bowls and tin spoons to eat with.”

On that land, Joseph and her husband Benoit Joseph raised 10 children, four of whom are still alive. At 78, when she could no longer work in the fields, she turned to her neighbors. With their contributions of 5 cents here, 10 cents there, Joseph was able to start selling mayi moulin and diri – ground corn (mayi moulin) and rice (diri) – to make ends meet. 

From her home right next door to a son’s house, the grandmother of 12 said she leads a modest life. In her jovial way, she added that her main gripe is that she can no longer go about her regular activities, like selling peanuts. 

“Nothing interests me on this earth anymore,” Joseph said, sounding disgusted for a few seconds. “When everything goes wrong, I pray to God to come to my aid. I am just waiting for my death.”

Beyond that, she would like to feel some sense of justice. The remorse, disappointment and pain of the 1937 atrocities have left a bitter taste in her mouth. She says she is not interested in money from the Dominican Republic. For her, it’s more about righting a wrong.

“We have waited too long,” she said. “Where is our justice?” 

The post The last survivors: Elders recount the 1937 Parsley Massacre and life after in Haiti appeared first on The Haitian Times.

---

The last survivors: Elders recount the 1937 Parsley Massacre and life after in Haiti was first posted on October 4, 2024 at 6:46 pm.