Lauren H. Derby & Richard L. Turits, *Terreurs de frontières: Le massacre des Haïtiens en République Dominicaine en 1937*. Port-au-Prince: Centre Challenges, 2021. 307 pp. (Paper US$21.00)

"How can violence transform the opinions we may have of an entire people?" Lauren Derby and Richard Turits wondered when they first embarked on research about the massacre perpetrated in 1937 by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo against the residents of the borderland between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Originally published as separate articles in Spanish and English, and then integrated into Turits's *Foundations of Despotism* (2003) and Derby's *The Dictator's Seduction* (2009), their work is now available for the first time in French, translated by a superb team of translators working under Watson R. Denis. *Terreurs de frontières* fulfills the important task of bringing the authors' work to readers in Haiti and across the Francophone world. Most importantly, it reunites in one place what until now had been scattered in articles and book chapters, making the book a fundamental account of the reasons behind the massacre and its consequences across the island.

Derby and Turits address the question of how violence transforms perceptions by dismantling some of the misconceptions about the massacre that have emerged over time. For example, they contest a dominant misconception that claims Haitians as the massacre's sole victims, arguing that most of the victims were in fact born and raised on Dominican soil, many of them from generations of parents and grandparents who had legally migrated to the Dominican side. By constitutional standards, they were Dominican citizens but identified either as Haitians or Dominicans depending on the circumstances. By cultural standards, the authors argue, the line differentiating Dominicans from Haitians in the borderlands was never a clear-cut demarcation. Historical experiences added more complication, as this population shared long, intertwined, anticolonial, and antiauthoritarian moments of collaboration harking back to the nineteenth century and turning this region into a fuzzy, uncontrollable "refuge" (Michiel Baud's term), or center-island (Anne Eller's).

One of the most compelling findings from the interviews Derby and Turits conducted with the massacre's survivors was the strong degree of community integration among Haitian and Dominican residents prior to the massacre. Cultural hybridity came hand in hand with great socioeconomic and demographic equality, as they shared a life based on subsistence agriculture, local markets, hunting and animal farming, and specialized trades. Dominicans in the borderlands did not perceive Haitians as poor, backward, or foreigners, as became the case later.

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Published with license by Koninklijke Brill NV | DOI:10.1163/22134360-09701028

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© SOPHIE MARÍNEZ, 2023 | ISSN: 1382-2373 (print) 2213-4360 (online)

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Derby and Turits dismantle two other misconceptions: that the massacre took place in the sugar plantations populated by Haitian migrants, and that it resulted from alleged historical animosities stemming from the island's unification under Haiti in 1822–44. Nothing could be further from the truth, they argue. The massacre, known by Haitians as *kout kouto* (“betrayal”) and by Dominicans as *El Corte* (“the Cut”) (and not the poetic misnomer “Parsley Massacre”), resulted from Trujillo’s strategy to impose his power over the island, including Dominicans, who, fearing the regime, distanced themselves from the “enemy,” lest they, too, incur the dictator’s wrath. In other words, the massacre lent power to an anti-Haitian ideology that, until then, only certain elites shared. As the migration of Haitian workers to sugar plantations increased, politicians and intellectuals bolstered their anti-Haitian ideology with new anti-immigrant discourse, showing that the exacerbation of anti-Haitianism resulted from the massacre and exploitation of Haitian workers, not the other way around.

The introduction to *Terreurs de frontières* reviews the two nations’ historical relations, building on the important works of Maria Cecilia Ulrickson, Andrew Walker, and Anne Eller. A new chapter by Derby discusses the Citadel’s significance and the rumors that developed in Haiti, which, she argues, emerged from the population’s deep mistrust of their government. Two rumors stand out: that Trujillo had planned to buy the Citadel, and (most significantly, considering recent *New York Times* articles on the expropriation of Haiti by France and the United States) that the occupying Marines had built a tunnel from the Citadel to New York to channel gold directly to Wall Street. While the first rumor reflected the threat to Haiti’s sovereignty posed by Trujillo’s ambition, the latter, Derby argues, reflects the role of Wall Street in Haiti’s expropriation, as shown by Peter James Hudson, who had claimed (in *Bankers and Empire*, 2017) that City Bank’s seizure of Haitian national reserves fueled the development of “racial capitalism.” The volume ends with several poignant survivors’ testimonies, showing the profound impact of the 1937 genocide.

*Terreurs de frontières* reunites old (but not dated) and new research on the 1937 massacre, offers new bibliographical references on Haitian-Dominican studies, and stands as a must-read for both new readers and seasoned scholars. The authors might want to consider embarking on a similarly transformational project—in Spanish—targeting readers in the Dominican Republic and the rest of the Americas.

Sophie Maríñez

Borough of Manhattan Community College & The Graduate Center,
City University of New York, New York NY, U.S.A.

smarinez@bmcc.cuny.edu