The life of Haitians in the reign of Rafael Trujillo illustrated by Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat was born on January 19, 1969 in Port-au- Prince, Haiti; she was separated from her father when she was two years old as he immigrated to the United States to find work. When Danticat was twelve, she moved to Brooklyn and joined her parents and two new younger brothers. Adapting to the new family was difficult, and she also had difficulty adapting at school, because she spoke only Creole and did not know any English. Other students taunted her as a Haitian "boat person," or refugee. Danticat graduated from Barnard College with a degree in French literature in 1990, and worked as a secretary, doing her writing after work in the office. She applied to business schools and creative writing programs. She was accepted by both, but chose Brown University's creative writing program, which offered her a full scholarship. Danticat has won a Granta Regional Award as one of the Twenty Best Young American Novelists, a Pushcart Prize, and fiction awards from Seventeen and Essence magazines. She is also the recipient of an ongoing grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation. The novel The Farming of Bones is a collection of stories that have been hailed for their lyrical intensity, vivid descriptions of Haitian places and people, and honest depictions of fear and pain. The story takes places in the decades of 30s, during the reign of Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina in Dominican Republic with the ideology of ethnic cleansing.

"El Corte," the cutting, it was one of the worst massacres of modern times, though much of the world seems to have forgotten about it. It took place in the Dominican Republic in 1937 by the orders of Rafael Trujillo. Trujillo was a military leader and former sugar plantation guard that have trained in the U.S. Marines from 1916-1924. With the occupation of the United States of his country, it managed to get himself elected president in 1930. Seven years into his rule, Trujillo secretly ordered the killing of thousands of immigrants most of them sugarcane cutters from Haiti. In his view, the Haitians was considered inferior beings and simply become too numerous. Due to the growing of xenophobia under the command of the ruler Trujillo, the Dominicans were told: Our motherland is Spain; theirs is darkest Africa, you understand? They once came here only to cut sugarcane, but now there are more of them than there will ever be cane to cut, you understand? Our problem is one of dominion Those of us who love our country are taking measures to keep it our own. The military were instructed to use machetes in their murdering, in the hope of putting the blame on civilians. Some Haitians were given a choice either jumping off a high cliff or being hacked to death.

The conditions for the Haitians was harsh and miserable, they have to endure the slave-like conditions imposed by the neighbors sharing the same island La Espaola. The prejudice against the Haitians was perverse, since color

is not the determinant because is apparent in both countries, only the language differentiate the people. For example, the Dominicans were able to trill the r in parsley in response to the question "Que diga perejil?" many Haitians could only say "pewegil." Thus, when Trujillo ordered the roundup of Haitians, they would be spared if they knew as well how to say the Spanish pesi as to say the French perejil. In the aftermath, the President of Haiti, Stenio Vincent dispatched government officials to various sites only to record the testimonies of victims and to give them stipends. The citizens wondered why the Haitian government did not avenge the slaughter of its people. Danticat remembers this event as farming of human bones and all those "nameless and faceless who vanish like smoke into the early morning air." Tensions continue between the Dominican Republic and its much poorer and culturally different neighbor Haiti even at the death of Trujillo. For example, in the 1998, at least 14,000 Haitians were exiled in many cases minus possessions and paycheck. However, there is a slight faint sign of hope in the relation between both countries, in the same year a direct mail service was established between the two countries; previously mail between them had to be routed by way of Miami.