Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (1891-1961), Benefactor of the Fatherland, Saviour of the Fatherland, Father of the Fatherland, Restorer of Financial Independence, Champion of World Peace, Protector of Culture, First Anticommunist of the Americas, Outstanding and Most Illustrious Generalisimo, ruled the Dominican Republic (DR) from 1930 to 1961 through fear, torture, assassination, massacre and genocide.
In the US, Secretary of State Cordell Hull in 1937 called him
“one of the greatest men in Central America and in most of South America.”
In 1939 West Point gave him a 21-gun salute. His playboy son dated Hollywood star Kim Novak.
All that came after the Parsley Massacre of 1937 when he “whitened” the DR by carrying out a genocide against Haitians in the north-west. His army killed between 18,000 and 35,000 men, women and children, cutting them to pieces with machetes.
He pushed antihaitianismo (racism against Haitians) – even though his grandmother was Haitian. The history taught at school in the 2010s is still screwed up while most Afro-Dominicans say their dark skin is native American. About 90% of Dominicans have African blood. Trujillo lightened his own skin several times a day.
In 1938 at the Evian Conference the DR was the only country willing to take in large numbers of Jews fleeing Hitler – because Trujillo wanted to whiten the country!
His two most treasured awards:
- the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Gregory from the Vatican,
- a small service medal from the US Marines.
US President Woodrow Wilson in the 1910s had sent the military into Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, the DR and elsewhere, which led to the dictatorships of Batista, Somoza, Duvalier and – Trujillo. It was part of Wilson’s Bad Neighbour Policy (my name) to remake these countries in the interests of Wall Street and US business.
US Marines occupied the DR from 1916 to 1924 to help US sugar interests. To guard US interests after they were gone, the Marines trained the Dominican National Guard, leaving Trujillo in command. Six years later Trujillo overthrew the government.
Trujillo’s rule was supported by the US, its business interests, the Catholic Church and the DR’s White elite. Trujillo made Catholicism the state religion. He had a few dark-skinned army officers, but most Afro-Dominicans lived in poverty and fear.
He renamed Santo Domingo “Trujillo City”. His statues were everywhere.
Trujillo had a monopoly on salt, tobacco, oil, cement and flour – but not sugar. Sugar accounted for over half of DR exports.
Trujillo moved on US sugar interests and White elite business interests.
Then the Catholic archbishop turned against him.
Then he had the country’s hope, the Mirabal sisters, killed, three of the country’s greatest heroes, they who had plotted his overthrow.
Then the White elite turned against him.
Then the US ambassador turned against him.
Then the US president, John Kennedy, sent the CIA to kill him.
On May 30th 1961 his blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air was shot up outside the capital. He died.
Years of unrest followed and another US occupation (1965-1966). Four thousand died fighting the US in the slums of Santo Domingo, from rooftops and in the streets. In the end, Joaquín Balaguer, Trujillo’s right-hand man, became president.
See also:
- Welcome to Hispanic Heritage Month 2014
- Julia Alvarez, “In the Time of the Butterflies” (1994)
- Race in the Dominican Republic
- American Empire
- Jews
- Hitler: Race and People
The funny thing about this bozo was the fact that he was a direct descendant of the sister of the man who founded Haiti. Black self-hatred is a bitch.
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“Black self-hatred is a bitch.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This needs to change! Will it take another 500 years to undo this disease, or is there a shorter solution to this madness?
Ideas? Thoughts?
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Trujillo could have lived a long and happy life, “loved” by U.S. foreign policy wonks and hailed by neoliberals as the closest thing the DR had to a Francisco Franco (seems like a backhanded compliment to give, doesn’t it?) if he simply didn’t mess with America’s money.
By muscling in on the sugar racket, he signed his own death warrant. Not that I have any sympathy for the sonofab*tch.
Just another example of how U.S. foreign and economic policy poisons practically everything it touches.
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In The Time of The Butterflies staring Selma Hayek was very good. It told the story of the Mirabel sisters. It was very tragic. Trujillo had them executed. He was a demon.
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Just Me
“Black self-hatred is a bitch.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This needs to change! Will it take another 500 years to undo this disease, or is there a shorter solution to this madness?
Ideas? Thoughts?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I am an Indian. You should see Brown self-hatred when we are in the company of whites!
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I remember my mom buying Domino sugar in the grocery store when I was a kid. I had no idea it came from the Dominican Republic, but I did know it came from somewhere tropical and far away because it was “pure cane sugar” and sugar cane does not grow in the frozen high prairie of the upper Midwest where I grew up. But sugar beets do, in abundance, and I always wondered why we in the north country bought cane sugar, shipped from thousands of miles away, rather than beet sugar made literally in our backyard. The answer of course was “the power of advertising”, which even at a young age for some reason I was able to see through.
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An excellent bk on Trujillo is ‘The Feast of the Goat’
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@Just Me
Simple.
It’ll end when white/European hegemony ends. That’ll take some doing, but it can be done.
Every dog has its day. The Chinese understand that well. The Spanish and French have learned that lesson and the British are learning it, as well. America will learn it too, eventually.
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Mack – what will the world be when white hegemony ends? Haiti? Liberia? Mexico City? Civilization is a tough row to hoe for many cultures around the world.
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GroJo@ The funny thing about this bozo was the fact that he was a direct descendant of the sister of the man who founded Haiti. Black self-hatred is a bitch.
Linda says,
Trujillo was not seen as black by Haitians or Dominicans because both have always made a clear distinction between who they considered black and who was not.
Dessalines probably hated mixed “gens de couleur” people more than he hated whites.
Race and colour had always played a large part in the islands story.
There was never a binary system of “black and white” on the island (or Caribbean); mixed people were looked at as a 3rd “race” by both blacks and whites.
Trujillo’s attitude did not develop out of a vacuum. The problem began way before Trujillo, he was just the “icing on the cake” –who took this sad tale to it’s tragic ending.
If anything – the story between Haiti and Dominican Republic is an example of “Colourism” and racism gone wrong
mainly because of the silent “war” between black, mixed-race, and white society — they all came together to fight in Haiti’s war of Independence and they also fought each other since before the War.
In 1790, the mixed “gens de couleurs” got caught up in the French Revolution fever, and led an uprising in Haiti (Saint Domingue) to fight for the mixed race class to have equal rights to whites. The white French army sent in it’s black soldiers to crush the uprising;
and vice versa, when the black slaves started their uprisings, the white French army recruited the mixed-race soldiers to fight them.
Toussaint, the father of the Revolution, in the beginning had fought with the French against the black slaves. (Toussaint was a free black man) but, even this show of “betrayal” was a strategy for him to gain the freedom of black people, using the French to get what he wanted.
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comment in moderation, so initially, this seems out of left field
Colourism /racism gone wrong:
There was no white majority who could impose a “one drop rule” on the island. As mentioned, the 3 groups (black, mixed, white) would be allies and also fight each other
http://www.uky.edu/~popkin/Haitian%20Revolution%20Lecture.htm
Since the start of the insurrection in 1791, several black generals had emerged as leaders of the movement fighting the French and the whites in Saint Domingue.
Most of them had allied with France’s enemies, England and Spain, and some had sold slaves to the Spanish to raise money for their troops. Even the news of the French emancipation proclamation did not persuade most of these generals to change sides.
One of the black leaders did rally to the French side in early 1794, however. His name was Toussaint de Bréda; in 1794, he began to call himself Toussaint Louverture (“Toussaint the Opening, or the Way”). Originally a slave, Toussaint had been freed before the Revolution and at one time owned a small plantation with 15 slaves.
By 1794, he had built up the best-organized and most effective military unit on the island. When he decided to join Sonthonax (white) and the French republicans in May 1794, the military balance soon shifted in their favor.
By the summer of 1794, the combined forces of Toussaint and the French had regained the upper hand in Saint Domingue, although the British continued to hold part of the island until 1798.
Toussaint had received the rank of general in the French forces. During this period, he steadily increased his power at the expense of a series of French generals and political figures sent to govern the island.
He also outmaneuvered the leaders of the free coloreds and rival black commanders. Toussaint conducted secret negotiations with the British that led to their withdrawal from Saint Domingue in 1798; he also had contacts with the United States government, which was then involved in a virtual war with France and was happy to undermine French control over their colonies.
Toussaint made a point of including some people of mixed race and even some whites in his ruling elite, but he did not allow them any independent authority.
In 1799-1800, he fought a bloody war against the remaining leaders of the mixed-race group, who had taken control of much of the west and south of Saint Domingue during the earlier fighting.
In 1801, he crushed a rebellion by one of his closest followers, Moyse, who had favored dividing land more evenly among the former slaves.
Toussaint’s success also depended heavily on his ability to play the different white powers against each other. At crucial moments in his career, he benefited from support from the Spanish, the British, and the Americans.
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and Abagond, just to give reason as to why I wrote about Toussaint and Haiti, is because
The history and racism of the Dominican Republic, prior to Trujillo, cannot be talked about as a “separate” story from Haiti because they share a history and aspects of culture.
On the other post, Biff, in his feeble attempt to show black leaders of black majority countries, as inept and unable to manage — he used Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Bermuda as Caribbean countries run by white and mixed race governments, and this is why they achieved more “success” than Haiti or various African countries.
What he and other people either don’t know or understand is that Haiti, as a new Republic, had mixed race leaders also
and it was these leaders who sold Haiti down the river and screwed over the Dominican Republic, it was not the “black” leaders who fought hard to gain Haiti its freedom.
and it needs to be remembered and understood that on this island, these people did not believe in a one drop rule, the “mixed race” as a racial group was very real to them, as I showed in my previous comments,.
and each group fought to gain advantages for themselves… that is why there was so much animosity.
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The main reason that the Dominican Republic fought against Haitian rule, was not because they did not want to be ruled by blacks (the racism went both ways)
they got mad because Jean-Pierre Boyer, the mixed-race President of Haiti from 1818 to 1843, the man who united both sides of the island– betrayed the Dominicans.
Boyer, used the rationale of not wanting the Spanish side of the island to fall into French or Spanish hands and that’s why he invaded it:
at the request and with the blessing of several white/mixed Dominican generals and upper class leaders.
The Spanish side of the island cared about it’s economy because the French side was always richer and they wanted prosperity. Some Dominicans looked towards South America and others Haiti.
http://countrystudies.us/dominican-republic/4.htm
By 1808 a number of émigré Spanish landowners had returned to Santo Domingo. These royalists had no intention of living under French rule, however, and they sought foreign assistance for a rebellion that would restore Spanish sovereignty.
Help came from the Haitians, who provided arms, and from the British, who occupied Samaná and blockaded the port of Santo Domingo. The remaining French representatives fled the island in July 1809.
The 1809 restoration of Spanish rule ushered in an era referred to by some historians as España Boba (Foolish Spain). Under the despotic rule of Ferdinand VII, the colony’s economy deteriorated severely.
Some Dominicans began to wonder if their interests would not best be served by the sort of independence movement that was sweeping the South American colonies. In keeping with this sentiment, Spanish lieutenant governor José Núñez de Cáceres announced the colony’s independence as the state of Spanish Haiti on November 30, 1821.
Cáceres requested admission to the Republic of Gran Colombia (consisting of what later became Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela), recently proclaimed established by Simón Bolívar and his followers. While the request was in transit, however, the president of Haiti, Jean-Pierre Boyer, decided to invade Santo Domingo and to reunite the island under the Haitian flag.
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Boyer did not deliver his promise of prosperity and both Haiti and the Dominicans suffered economically, especially since it was Boyer who made the deal with France and bankrupted the island.
and just to highlight the difference, the difference between the 2 sides of the island before the Haitian revolution, came down to money.
The French side got rich using plantation agriculture and the Spanish side of island was poorer because they raised livestock and cattle.
http://countrystudies.us/dominican-republic/4.htm
The twenty-two years of Haitian occupation witnessed a steady economic decline and a growing resentment of Haiti among Dominicans.
The agricultural pattern in the former Spanish colony came to resemble the one prevailing in all of Haiti at the time– that is, mainly subsistence cultivation with little or no production of export crops.
Boyer attempted to enforce in the new territory the Rural Code (Code Rural) he had decreed in an effort to improve productivity among the Haitian yeomanry (poor/working class), but the Dominicans proved no more willing to adhere to its provisions than the Haitians had been.
Increasing numbers of Dominican landowners chose to flee the island rather than to live under Haitian rule; in many cases, Haitian administrators encouraged such emigration, confiscated the holdings of the émigrés, and redistributed them to Haitian officials.
Aside from such bureaucratic machinations, most of the Dominicans’ resentment of Haitian rule developed because Boyer, the ruler of an impoverished country, did not (or could not) provide for his army.
The occupying Haitian forces lived off the land in Santo Domingo, commandeering or confiscating what they needed to perform their duties or to fill their stomachs. Dominicans saw this as tribute demanded by petty conquerors, or as simple theft.
Racial animosities also affected attitudes on both sides; black Haitian troops reacted with reflexive resentment against lighter-skinned Dominicans, while Dominicans came to associate the Haitians’ dark skin with the oppression and the abuses of occupation.
side note:
keep in mind that the Spanish side had less “black” people than the French side and that many of the Dominican black people were free because Spain had allowed them to buy their freedom
and unlike the French, the Spanish did not import in large numbers of Africans slaves.
by the end of the 18th century, in the Spanish side of the island, Santo Domingo, there were about: 40,000 white/mestizo landowners, 25,000 mixed-race gens de couleur and 60,000 black slaves
In French Saint-Domingue (Haiti), about 30,000 whites, 27,000 mixed-race gens de couleur, and at least 500,000 black slaves.
The black slaves in Spanish side had a different life than the black slaves of French side, based on the agricultural system.
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OK Abagond, I’m done taking over your blog 🙂
Thank you for your patience
I just wanted to put some historical background on the “what’s and why’s” of the racism in Haiti/ Dominican Republic and how it produced a tragic monster like Trujillo.
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“Trujillo was not seen as black by Haitians or Dominicans because both have always made a clear distinction between who they considered black and who was not. Dessalines probably hated mixed “gens de couleur” people more than he hated whites.” The first sentence is more or less correct and the second is an absurd bit of speculation. There’s zero evidence that Dessalines hated “gens de couleur” that was a myth created by mulatto ideologists to justify their pretensions to be beings apart from and better than blacks. It is the madness that led Trujillo, the great great grandson of Marie Noële Dessalines, sister of Haiti’s founder Jean-Jacques Dessalines, to murder Haitians in 1937. This reminds me of the saying that once a mulatto gets on his high horse he swears no black woman gave him birth. Dessalines’s wife was a ‘gens de couleur” in English, a colored woman, he also tried to effect an alliance with PÉTION (Anne Alexandre SABÈS) by marrying his daughter to him to seal their political alliance. This is a man he defeated during the siege of Jacmel. He offered his protection to defeated white enemies such as the Poles left stranded on Haiti after the collapse of Napoleon’s attempt to massacre the black and mulatto populations to restore slavery as he did in Guadeloupe. The racism didn’t go both ways as you would like to pretend. In order to end the bitter and absurd ‘race’ question Dessalines, ever the radical, proposed that all Haitian citizens would be ‘blacks’ regardless of phenotype. His wish was honored in a fashion since the word for a man in Haiti is “neg” a creole derivation of the French negre or negro in English. The ‘massacre’ of white French was his burnt offering to solidify the alliance of blacks and colored as well as those whites who cast their lots with the new nation. A man who hated whites wouldn’t have allowed Pierre Nicolas MALLET A/K/A Mallet the good white to sign the act of independence of Haiti. He would not have had as one of his trusted lieutenants at the siege of Crête-à-Pierrot Louis Daure LAMARTINIERE(a man who could easily ‘pass for white’ and his wife Marie-Jeanne DAURE, whose name became synonymous for female courage. I found a number of other things to object to in Linda’s comments but I’ll stop here.
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GroJo, The first sentence is more or less correct and the second is an absurd bit of speculation. There’s zero evidence that Dessalines hated “gens de couleur” that was a myth created by mulatto ideologists to justify their pretensions to be beings apart from and better than blacks. I found a number of other things to object to in Linda’s comments but I’ll stop here.
Linda says,
GroJo, I want to thank you for sharing this piece of history.
Please don’t hold back, tell us what you know. I’m an outsider looking in and can only tell what I have learned and what is put in history books.
what you just mentioned is fascinating– it gives an even more vivid perspective on the relationship of race on the island and it shows it is not so “cut and dry” as historians try to make it.
That was my point of pointing out that the 3 groups on the Hispaniola isle, have a long complicated history that cannot be broken down into a “one drop” of just black or white.
Being that you are Haitian, I want to see the history from your perspective, because as you mentioned, all I can do is repeat what the common folklore is,
which is that Dessaline’s hated the coloured class (gens de couleur) but as you just pointed out — either he didn’t hate them or he did, but he was smart enough to make alliances with them to advance his cause.
but from what I’ve read, it was also his alliance with the Coloured’s that led to his death, because they were plotting to take over the leadership.
Having a coloured wife did not mean that Dessalines could not have held animosity towards the Coloured class as a whole group.
Isn’t that something that we discuss here on the blog, that its’ possible for white people to be married to black or Asians and still be prejudice or racist.
Also, my personal opinion, I don’t hold up Dessaline as a symbol of racism. That time period was rife with distrust, rivalry, prejudice/racism between the 3 groups in the Caribbean.
and to me, Dessalines was a man of the times and he did what was necessary to secure Haiti’s freedom at a time when white supremacy was crushing the whole world.
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Good points George, it’s curious you chose places with homogenous populations. I’m not certain about Bombay (Mumbai) as a quick look tends to show religious cultural breakdown instead of racial, but for the Chinese cities mentioned, 93 and 95 percent Chinese. What do you think America will look and act like post white hegemony? More like China, or more like Latin America?
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I have only met one guy from DR in my life, and this guy was very proud of his westafrican ancestry. We were coworkers for some time. He is also the most successful man on the partner market I have ever met. In fact he knew that both things relate: he mainly is so successful with women because he is “black”.
Like many, many black men he had no problem immigrating to my him country germany, because he just married a german women. By the way: as most german women prefer men of westafrican ancestry over men of eurasian ancestry I can just say to every men between the age of 20 and 50 in Haiti, Nigeria Ghana and so on: if you want to have Schengen Visum, if you want to have access to a very well established welfare state, just come to germany. There are millions of german women who want nothing more than marry you and have your children. You don´t need to apply for asylum, don´t need to have a workplace in germany, just come over here and by virtue of your racial privilege of being perceived as the most attractive you will get everything you want.
This guy from the DR I knew left his german after some time, when he had his resident permit, and from there on continued to have life as in paradise with all those young german women. He actually told me that it were over 1000 women, and I had no reason to doubt this number.
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Having previously lived on the East Coast (New England, specifically), I can only shake my head at remembering all the times I’ve come across other people from the D.R. who share this sickness of colorism/self-hate mentality that Trujillo sickengly displayed towards those with darker skin-although there have been a decent amount of folks who had no such qualms with their mixed-heritage as well (so there’s hope).
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And Monster of All Monsters.
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Linda wrote: “There was never a binary system of “black and white” on the island (or Caribbean); mixed people were looked at as a 3rd “race” by both blacks and whites.” The claim that a “binary system didn’t exist in St-Domingue is not accurate because you could be blond, blue eyed and still be considered not white. The label for such people was “sang mêlé ” i.e. mixed blood. The mixed race person enjoyed no special rights as such. Note that Vincent Ogé was fighting for equal rights for mixed race people under the banner of the Society of the Friends of Blacks. We know he had not the slightest intention to free black slaves so ‘blacks’ here meant mixed race people who descended from blacks. Mixed race rhetoric never denied their ‘blackness’, no they claimed to be the vanguard of the ‘race’ who would trail-blaze the path to full equality with whites and their darker and less civilized brethren would follow in their trail in some distant future. I would argue that there was a binary system that was a variant of the ‘one drop rule’ of the USA that took into consideration the demographic reality of St-Domingue. The one drop rule was due to the fact that black and mixed race freemen owned a quarter of the wealth of St-Domingue, lower class whites insisted on their ‘rights’ as whites and demanded due deference to their race, such as the right not to call such non white successes “sir” and have them step out of the way when they crossed path on the sidewalks, etc.
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As for Biff’s claim that the absence of whites in charge was the cause of Haiti’s ‘failure’ he should explain how come blacks and mixed race people had more success than some pure whites to the point that even under slavery they controlled a quarter of the wealth while some of those whites would starve to death because they couldn’t cope.
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Great article!
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@ Gro jo
There’s no comment by Biff in this thread. Did he say this elsewhere?
blacks and mixed race people had more success than some pure whites to the point that even under slavery they controlled a quarter of the wealth while some of those whites would starve to death because they couldn’t cope.
Actually, would you mind going into it further?
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Yeah, I was responding to something Biff said on another thread. Non-whites had a monopoly on coffee growing and constituted 1/4 the total wealth of St-Domingue. Prior to becoming the leader of the black struggle for emancipation, Toussaint Louverture was an entrepreneur who owned slaves and if memory serves me a capital of either 65,000 or 650,000 Livres, sorry can’t tell you how much that was in dollars. Julien Raimond a mulatto who helped write Toussaint’s 1801 constitution came from a family of wealthy mulatto planters Vincent Ogé was a lawyer and a businessman with international connections. If you were white without a trade, family connections or couldn’t find a mulatto heiress wanting to give her progeny a ‘racial’ upgrade starvation was most likely your fate. As for Biff’s claim of racial IQ superiority, I would like to hear his explanation of the fact that a 12 year old black slave on the island of Reunion by the name of Edmond Albius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Albius invented a technique that allowed the pollination of vanilla orchids faster and more profitably than what white botanists came up with. His technique allowed planters to grow vanilla outside of their native soil in Mexico. Albius died in poverty while millions were made from his innovation.
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Legion,
I brought up Biff’s statements that he made on the Dominican thread because he tried to make a correlation between skin colour and leadership = prosperity, GDP
As usual, he spends time discussing IQ and how black people can’t manage or lead without white people’s assistance
and this is a 2nd time that Biff has tried to say that white European admixture is a possible factor in why some “black” people/ countries are more successful than others.
Biff to Abagond
“There is another more insiduous form of racism at work here. I am surprised that Abagond missed it. I was checking out these two countries on the same island with similar populations (Haiti around 10.7 million and DR with approximately 10 million), and then I found one thing totally off. DR’s GDP was listed at $5,763 per person, while Haiti’s was listed at $473.3. I checked it again, but there it was on Wikipedia. Why would DR’s GDP be more than 12 times Haiti’s?”
Abagonds response
There is no clear relationship between race and GDP per person in the Caribbean:
there are plenty of Blacker countries that are higher or almost as high as the DR: Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, etc. Haiti is an outlier and therefore proves little. If Bermuda or the Bahamas are exceptional cases, then so most likely is Haiti.
then Biff attempts to whitewash Jamaica to explain why its GDP is better than the DRs:
Biff@ Re: Jamaica, I was just looking at its info the other day and was surprised (or not really) to see they had maintained a British form of government and recently elected mostly mixed and white leaders. Not sure about the other countries you referenced.
Haiti might be an outlier in some respects. However, it along with 17 other almost all black countries are featured in the bottom 20 of the 228 ranked countries of the world in terms of GDP per person (PPP). Meanwhile, I counted 41 almost all black countries in the bottom 50. That doesn’t seem like a pure coincidence.
and I brought up Biff’s statements in this thread because I felt it was worth noting that it was the leaders in Haiti with the white admixture that sold the country out — so whatever new race realist “theory” he is trying to invent, does not hold water.
Linda @ On the other post, Biff, in his feeble attempt to show black leaders of black majority countries, as inept and unable to manage — he used Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Bermuda as Caribbean countries run by white and mixed race governments, and this is why they achieved more “success” than Haiti or various African countries.
What he and other people either don’t know or understand is that Haiti, as a new Republic, had mixed race leaders also
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Gro Jo @ Non-whites had a monopoly on coffee growing and constituted 1/4 the total wealth of St-Domingue.
As for Biff’s claim of racial IQ superiority, I would like to hear his explanation of the fact that a 12 year old black slave on the island of Reunion by the name of Edmond Albius, invented a technique that allowed the pollination of vanilla orchids faster and more profitably than what white botanists came up with. His technique allowed planters to grow vanilla outside of their native soil in Mexico. Albius died in poverty while millions were made from his innovation.”
Linda says,
GroJo, very interesting information. See, this is the type of information that white western education leaves out of the text books.
and this is the type of information that black people and everyone else needs to know, so that white people can stop thinking that they did everything on their own, all by themselves.
As politician Elizabeth Warren said, “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.”
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[…] Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (1891-1961), Benefactor of the Fatherland, Saviour of the Fatherland, Father of the Fatherland, Restorer of Financial Independence, Champion of World Peace, Protector of Culture, First Anticommunist of the Americas, Outstanding and Most Illustrious Generalisimo, ruled the Dominican Republic (DR) from 1930 to 1961 through fear, torture, assassination, massacre and genocide.- Click through to read more – […]
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Trujillo was something else! One of the more interesting dictators of Latin American history. The only problem I see here is a failure to discuss why Trujillo orchestrated the massacres of 1937? It might have been due to economic depression and a lowered demand for Haitians or Dominicans of Haitian descent? Was it part of a broader political project to ‘nationalize’ the borderlands in order to enhance his own power.
Robin Turits and Lauren Derby have written about this, but the problem with them is they’re two white Americans traveling around Haiti and the DR, doing oral interviews with older people whose first language is either Spanish or Creole.
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The paisley massacre came about during the time of the realignment of the border between haiti and DR. The Dominicans had lost approx 5,000 sq. km to haiti in the 1929 redrawing of the borders, including the hometown of General Pedro Santana, the military hero of the Dominican independence war against the Haitians.
This came about after decades of Haitian infiltration into Dominican territory. The U.S.( who still occupied Haiti) held a plebescite along border towns to decide whether to remain as part of DR or become part of Haiti. Even after 2 generations living in Dominican territory the majority Haitians opted to switch allegiance and vast fertile lands were lost to haiti.
A few years later, by 1937, the Haitians were now encroaching on the new border lands, squatting in foreign lands, circulating their currency, spreading the practice of voodoo which is anathema to christianity and changing the language of the areas. not to mention the constant cattle rustling and other thefts
Trujillo, on a tour of inspection of the new borders was entertained by locals who complained of the Haitian incursions and thievery. During the night he was told the story of the massacre and genocide the haitians committed in 1805 from the border to the middle of dominican territory. This ethnic cleansing was perpetuated by dessalines who had an unsatiable thirst for spilling white blood.as he had already massacred all the french colonists (over 25,000) just months after defeating the french army to gain independance in jan. 1804.
Upon hearing this story known to Dominicans of that area as the ” Beheading of Moca”, Trujillo declared in a drunken stupor that the thievery and depradations by haitians in DR territory was at an end.
” The haitians believe there is no law, no authority here,. They will soon learn that here…there is law, here… there is authority”. Next day he gave all haitian nationals in the border towns 72 hours to vacate the country.. Those that did not heed his warning paid with their lives as many dominicans did in the terror years to come under his despotic rule.
So was it the story of haitian atrocities against defenseless civilian populations 100 years before, the recent border incursions and rustling and thievery of that time or the loss of massive fertile lands at the beginning of his reign that set him off? The answer is probably all of the above fueled by rum rage the night before.
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“The paisley massacre came about during the time of the realignment of the border between haiti and DR.”
The paisley massacre eh? Everybody else calls it the parsley (perejil in spanish) massacre. I guess you have something against paisley patterns to libel them so shamelessly. There was no dr in 1805. The Haitian army could have massacred the entire population of the eastern side of Haiti if they had wanted to because the ratio of the entire population to it was 8 to 5. Being a bs artist, you left out the fact that the territory was occupied by the French who were busily kidnapping Haitians and selling them into slavery. Emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines put an end to this nonsense by sending his army eastward. He destroyed Jean-Louis Ferrand’s army but did not finish it off during the siege of santo domingo because he received false information that a French fleet was about to land on the west side of Haiti. He did what any soldier worth a damn should, he made sure not to leave anything his enemy could use behind him. Were innocents killed? No doubt, but name me a war where that did not occur?
” The Dominicans had lost approx 5,000 sq. km to haiti in the 1929 redrawing of the borders, including the hometown of General Pedro Santana, the military hero of the Dominican independence war against the Haitians.”
This is the first time I’m hearing this, please provide the source for your claim? The territory in question has been Haitian since 1822 when the people who lived there chose to be Haitian: “On December 1, 1821 it was declared in Santo Domingo the independence of the Republic of Spanish Haiti by the European-born and Criollo white colonial aristocracy, but this action was not supported by the population with any degree of African descent (including many slaves and servants who were phenotypically white), who were wary of the rule of pure whites, and preferred to unite with the French Haiti, because there was no slavery…Neighboring towns and cities like Hincha (now Hinche), Juana Méndez (now Ouanaminthe), San Rafael de La Angostura (now Saint-Raphaël), San Miguel de la Atalaya (now Saint-Michel-de-l’Atalaye), or Las Caobas (now Lascahobas), among others, remained isolated with little communication with the Dominican capital whilst there were a growing Haitian influence as the gourde circulated and in addition to the Spanish language, Haitian Creole was also spoken. Eventually these cities would be disputed between the two countries.”
“A few years later, by 1937, the Haitians were now encroaching on the new border lands, squatting in foreign lands, circulating their currency, spreading the practice of voodoo which is anathema to christianity and changing the language of the areas.”
dominicans as the defenders of western civilization, hilarious. We both share the same Africanized culture, Haitians have nothing to teach dominicans as far as vodou is concerned, I know that from first hand experience.
“Trujillo, on a tour of inspection of the new borders was entertained by locals who complained of the Haitian incursions and thievery. During the night he was told the story of the massacre and genocide the haitians committed in 1805 from the border to the middle of dominican territory.”
Really? Did he forget that he was the great great great grandson of Marie Noële Dessalines, sister of Haiti’s founder Jean-Jacques Dessalines? You dr clowns are funny, your Trujillo’s great great grandfather on his mother’s side was a gentleman named Barthélémy CARRIÉ born in Port-au-Prince in 1804, his father, Trujillo’s great great great grandfather, Bernard Philippe Alexis CARRIÉ was born in Arcahaie, Haiti. He was Boyer’s commandant of the Spanish speaking side of the island of Haiti. Maybe you want Port-au-Prince and Arcahaie as well as Hinche? Hell, why not the whole island while you’re at it, after all it all used to belong to Spain!
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@ gro jo
Well said!
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