DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Bloody Boundary

The bloodstained boundary between Haiti and the Dominican Republic was threatened with bloodshed again. According to persistent reports, “incidents” along the frontier were approaching a state of undeclared war. Said one Dominican exile in a nearby country: “Not a day passes without some Haitian being murdered in the Dominican Republic.” Said a Haitian official: “I expect there will be a war within two or three months.”

Driven by land-and-belly hunger, Haitians often slip across the boundary of the Dominican Republic, whose dictator is “Generalissimo” Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. In 1937, Trujillo’s army massacred thousands of Haitian settlers, burned their bodies or tossed them into common graves.