Conference

Border of Lights: The 1937 Massacre and Statelessness in the Dominican Republic

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Abstract

This presentation centers on Border of Lights, also known as Frontera de Luces in Spanish, a movement and three-day event on the Dominican-Haitian border each October that seeks to commemorate, collaborate, and continue the legacy of hope and justice that defines the two countries sharing the island of Hispaniola: Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The significance of the event scheduled during the first week of October each year marks the date of the Haitian Massacre (October 2-4, 1937), also known as The Parsley Massacre or El Corte. Over the three-day course of this race-charged genocide, ordered by the infamous Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, an estimated 20,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were killed along the Dominican-Haitian border. Border of Lights also works to bring awareness to the recent Tribunal Court Ruling in the Dominican Republic (TC-0168) that retroactively strips the citizenship of Dominicans of Haitian Descent, leaving an estimated 200,000 ethnic Haitians stateless. I am one of the co-founders of Border of Lights and will share my personal experiences along the Haitian-Dominican border (as related to Border of Lights) as well as explore how my research approaches both literal and figurative borderlines.