A Critical Approach to Studying the Trujillo Dictatorship
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina was the thirty-sixth and thirty-ninth president of the Dominican Republic (1930–38 and 1942–52, respectively), and he ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in May 1961. He was a military strongman and dictator during the years he did not serve as the elected president. In this chapter we explore the lessons covering his three-decades-long dictatorship in the Ciencias sociales: octavo grado (Social Studies: Eighth Grade) produced by the Secretaría de Estado de Educación y Cultura. We analyze how the lessons on Trujillo take a critical approach to explaining to Dominican schoolchildren the impact of Trujillo’s reign on the Dominican Republic. We argue that despite the lessons’ seeming goal of fostering critical analysis in the classroom, the curriculum fails to offer a meaningful account of how Trujillo further expanded and more deeply embedded an anti-Haitian, antiblack ideology in the Dominican Republic. As Silvio Torres-Saillant notes, during the Trujillo dictatorship “the Dominican state became most emphatically committed to promoting Eurocentric and white supremacist views of Dominicanness.”1 According to Henry Louis Gates, Trujillo “craftily used anti-Haitian sentiment to solidify his power and perversely to unite the nation around a supposedly common enemy.”2 The eighth-grade social science textbook curriculum on Trujillo leaves a significant void in explaining and critically constructing in the minds of Dominican schoolchildren how Trujillo firmly implanted the Haitian Other master script that had been constructed by the country’s founding fathers in Dominican society. We provide evidence of Trujillo’s staunch antiblack, anti-Haitian ideology to demonstrate that this void could be meaningfully filled. In this chapter we investigate how the textbook activities largely fail to maximize an opportunity to deconstruct the antiblack, anti-Haitian ideology that Trujillo formalized into national policy, thus effectively leaving intact and propagating the otherness of Haitians. The curriculum focuses on remedying the damage done by Trujillo to the racial pigmentocracy narrative rather than on the broader idea of the role of blackness as a potential source of a shared common ancestral history with Haitians.
Although these eighth-grade lessons employ more critical thought-based activities than the lessons on national identity in the second-grade textbook, the Trujillo lessons can leave a gap in students’ understanding of Trujillo’s lasting impact on racial identity in the Dominican Republic and the anti-Haitian, antiblack sentiment that is still pervasive today. We analyze the readings, activities (actividades), and workshop (taller) for chapters 4, 5, and 6. These sections consistently demonstrate an emphasis on student investigation and collaborative work, make connections to previous knowledge, and ask questions about Dominican society—specifically about the legacy of the Trujillo regime. These often reflect a grounding in critical constructivism, critical thinking, as well as a strong emphasis on outside resources from the wider Dominican community—all of which could potentially serve as tools for addressing the Haitian Other master script narrative. However, even with the addition of these higher-order frameworks, the textbook either attempts to “correct errors” that students may have previously learned about Dominican identity or fails to concretely guide students to a deep understanding of the havoc wrecked on the country’s social fabric by Trujillo’s racial policies. The textbook misses the opportunity to categorically acknowledge the sway that the Haitian Other master script still holds in contemporary Dominican life. At the end of the lessons, the master script remains intact and Trujillo remains at the center of it.
Ciencias sociales: octavo grado lends itself to a critical constructivist examination because the lessons are tightly linked to the basic tenets of pedagogical critical thought. Throughout the text, students are asked to critically evaluate how Trujillo came to power, how he governed, and how his dictatorship shaped Dominican identity and its relationship to Haiti and Haitians. These activities reflect a fundamental premise of critical constructivism, that “the world is socially constructed—what we know about the world always involves a knower and that which is to be known. How the knower constructs the known constitutes what we think of as reality.”3 In this chapter, we use a selection of critical constructivism framing tenets to examine how these lessons about the Trujillo regime attempt to articulate a more complex and challenging perspective on Dominican identity and history in comparison to the social science textbooks we discuss in chapter 4. The lessons in Ciencias sociales: octavo grado ask students to critically consider how Trujillo, in the role of the knower, actively promoted a vision of Dominican identity that relied on inaccurate and negative representations of the Haitian Other. One tenet of constructivism is that “all knowers are historical and social subjects. We all come from a ‘somewhere’ which is in a particular historical time frame. These spatial and temporal settings always shape the nature of our constructions of the world.”4 Chapters 4, 5, and 6 employ a single unifying theme that speaks to this quotation from Kincheloe. The chapters move beyond a mere presentation of general ideas and abstract points for students to ponder. Instead, students are required to use their own somewhere, the Dominican Republic, as the specific context to consider international relations, domestic politics, and democracy or the lack of it. This three-chapter sequence outlines the Trujillo regime from its beginning in chapter 4, “Economía y Población bajo la Dictadura de Trujillo” (Economy and Population under the Trujillo Dictatorship); to its middle in chapter 5, “Política y Cultura bajo el Régimen de Trujillo” (Politics and Culture under the Trujillo Regime); to its end in chapter 6, “Caída de la Dictadura y Búsqueda de la Democracia” (Fall of the Dictatorship and Search for Democracy). The opening of chapter 4 indicates that students will be asked to observe less obvious “wrongs” to understand how Trujillo’s military background shaped his rise to power. “Aunque Trujillo no subió al poder por un golpe de Estado, lo hizo de manera fraudulenta y con poco apoyo nacional. Como ya leíste en el capítulo anterior, su base de apoyo fue el ejército. No obstante, ese gobierno no se puede catalogar como un gobierno militar. Se trataba de un presidente que venía del ejército, pero que encabezaba un gobierno civil. Las elecciones sirvieron de pantalla al autoritarismo del Movimiento Cívico, encabezado por Estrella Ureña y Trujillo. (Even though Trujillo did not rise to power by a coup d’état, he did it by fraudulent means and with little national support. As you already read in the previous chapter, his base of support was the military. Nevertheless, that government cannot be catagorized as a military government. It was based on a president who came from the military but headed a civil government. The elections served as a backdrop to the authoritarianism of the Civic Movement, headed by Estrella Ureña and Trujillo.)5
This introduction asks students to consider the difference between a military government and a civil government. Trujillo had a strong military background, which was acquired under the tutelage of the US military during its occupation of the country from 1916 to 1924, but he did not come to power by military force. This is the more obvious framework that the text attempts to expand upon, pointing out that even though Trujillo came to power by popular support, the Dominican Republic was still ruled by an authoritarian body that carried out his will. In narrow terms, it is true that Trujillo did not force his way into power with the help of the military. However, Trujillo did use the military as a governing tool that operated behind the ineffective smoke screen of the Civic Movement.
It is precisely this awareness of Trujillo’s slippery political maneuvering that adds to the depth of a later section in chapter 4 that asks students about the assassination of two contemporaries of Trujillo, whom he saw as political threats. “Estos caudillos regionales fueron eliminados por Trujillo en los primeros años de su régimen. Esa situación benefició a Trujillo, pues se dio cuenta de que la capacidad militar le daba mayores ventajas para controlar al resto de la sociedad y sobre todo a los otros caudillos que aún vivían. Tan pronto subió al poder se produjeron una serie de asesinatos de personas que manifestaron no estar de acuerdo con el nuevo jefe político-militar de la nación. Algunos se salvaron porque se fueron exilados del país. Para perseguir a sus adversarios utilizó una banda conocida con el nombre de ‘La 42.’” (These regional strongmen were eliminated by Trujillo in the first years of his regime. That situation benefited Trujillo, leading him to notice that the power of the military gave him great advantages to control the rest of the society and above all the other strongmen who were still alive. As soon as he rose to power, a series of assassinations were carried out of people who were not in agreement with the new political-military leader of the nation. Some of them were saved because they were exiled from the country. To persecute his adversaries, he used a group known by the name of “the 42.”) This section of chapter 4 continues to develop slightly more nuanced definitions of a good and legitimate government versus a bad and murderous dictatorship. The way the text presents Trujillo’s rise to power highlights that point. The military did not get him into office but it did carry out his bloody biddings to keep him there.
The fundamental question about how it was possible for Trujillo to be democratically elected by el pueblo, the people, and then go on to rule the country for thirty years as a military dictator goes uninvestigated. The textbook makes an effort to point out the disconnect between how Trujillo was elected versus how he ruled; however, students are not asked to think critically about the state of the Dominican people at that time and what motivated them to elect Trujillo in the first place. What did Trujillo explicitly offer or symbolically represent to the Dominican public that seemed so attractive? Who was established as the knower prior to Trujillo’s election, and did that have an impact on how the public saw his possible role as the nation’s leader? The lack of attention to these questions, and the myriad of other related questions that could be asked, greatly restricts the premise that “all knowers are historical and social subjects.” Previous chapters in the textbook are dedicated to earlier Dominican presidents and to the United States’s occupation. However, a connection between the governments and leaders to Trujillo’s ascent goes unmentioned. Such a discussion goes unacknowledged as a critical thread that students should be invited to examine more fully and seek intersections between the “knower” and the “nature of our constructions of the world.”
A second important tenet of constructivism is that “not only is the world socially and historically constructed, but so are people and the knowledge people possess. We create ourselves with the cultural tools at hand. We operate and construct the world and our lives on a particular social, cultural and historical playing field.”6 In another section from chapter 4 titled “Clasificación de comportamiento democrático y participativo y comportamiento autoritario” (Classification of Democratic and Participatory Behavior and Authoritarian Behavior) we see a connection to Kincheloe’s idea that the social, historical, and cultural elements of knowledge are inextricably linked. The instructions for this activity are in the closing taller section: “Con ayuda de tu maestra o maestro, divide el curso en subgrupos. En cada subgrupo se discuten ejemplos de comportamiento democrático y participativo y comportamiento autoritario. Pueden tomar ejemplos de la historia o actuales de su comunidad o la vida nacional. Luego de enumerar los ejemplos, se describen y se clasifican según el tipo de comportamiento. Por último se justifica por qué se incluyen en un tipo u otro.” (With help from your teacher, divide the class into small groups. In each small group discuss examples of democratic and participatory behavior and authoritarian behavior. You can take examples from history or from current events from your local community or from national life. After listing the examples, describe them, and classify them according to the type of behavior. Lastly, justify why each is included in one type or the other.)7
This activity underscores the social nature of critical knowledge building in two ways. First, the basic structure of the assignment is social in nature. Students must talk with each other to decide with whom they want to work and how the group will work together. Decisions about which students will conduct which tasks must be made. Discussions and negotiations about individual strengths, weaknesses, and preferences are also likely steps the students will go through in the task’s early stages. Second, the content itself is drawn from a social dynamic, either on a local or national scale. The assignment connects knowledge from the pages of the textbook to knowledge that the students can draw from their own experiences within social contexts that are more relevant to their own lives. The knowledge students already possess about their local community, as well as the wider Dominican nation, serves as their most immediate tool for contextualizing the new information that the textbook presents. In Kincheloe’s words, they are exploring both the contemporary and the “historical playing field.”8 However, we suggest that students are still not being asked to use the tools that they just practiced to study the Trujillo dictatorship in any meaningful way. The structure of the activity lends itself to asking what were the “tools at hand” prior to and during the Trujillo years, in addition to asking what cultural tools Trujillo used to craft his identity with the Dominican public in order to be elected. The basic framework for critically constructing knowledge is present in only a small portion of the activity’s structure and certainly does not define the intent of the activity. Woefully missing is a clear way for students to apply that framework to the Trujillo regime, which reduces the activity to more of an exercise in the steps of knowing rather than knowing.
Constructivism also holds that “constructivists are as much concerned with the process through which certain information becomes validated knowledge as with committing lots of it to memory. They are also concerned with the processes through which certain information was not deemed to be worthy or validated knowledge.”9 As chapter 5 continues its lesson on Trujillo’s years in power in the Dominican Republic, its focus shifts away from a catalog of key names and dates and moves toward a closer examination of Trujillo’s role in deciding what information was taught in schools and why he deemed that information to be worthy or validated knowledge. The section titled “Cultura autoritaria bajo el régimen de Trujillo” (Authoritative Culture under the Trujillo Regime) leaves little room for misunderstanding that this section’s aim is to show Trujillo as the antithesis of critical thought, especially regarding his vision of what constituted a “real” Dominican education:
Como puedes ver en el documento anterior, junto a la represión y el terror, el régimen organizó una fuerte campaña educativa y cultural para condicionar la conciencia de los dominicanos y las dominicanas, sobre todo de los jóvenes. Difundió la idea de que para garantizar la unidad de la nación era necesario eliminar los partidos políticos y crear uno sólo donde se defendiera el verdadero interés nacional. Con esa finalidad fundaron el Partido Dominicano, cuyo lema era: Rectitud, Libertad, Trabajo y Moralidad. El lema retrata la naturaleza del partido, pues en ninguna parte se habla de democracia o de participación. Una de las ideas inculcadas fue de que Trujillo, era una especie de mesías que había venido al mundo para salvarnos de aquellos que querían seguir en el desorden. La obra del “Jefe” como se le llamaba, era la de construir una Patria Nueva, basada en el nacionalismo. Ese nacionalismo era chauvinista, basado en ideas exageradas sobre la patria. Además de que identificaba a la patria con la persona de Trujillo. A éste se le bautizó como el Padre de la Patria Nueva y Benefactor de la Patria.
(As you can see in the previous document, along with the repression and terror, the regime organized a strong educational and cultural campaign to influence the conscience of the Dominican people, especially that of the youth. The regime spread the idea that in order to guarantee the nation’s unity it was necessary to eliminate the political parties and create a single party where the true national interest would be defended. With this aim they founded the Dominican Party, whose motto was: Rectitude, Liberty, Work and Morality. The motto describes the nature of the party but nowhere does it mention democracy or participation. One of the instilled ideas was that Trujillo was a kind of Messiah who had come to the world to save us from those who wanted to continue in chaos. The work of the “Jefe,” as he was called, was to build a “New Fatherland,” based in nationalism. That nationalism was chauvinistic, based on exaggerated ideas about the nation. In addition to identifying the nation with the person of Trujillo, he was given the name “Father of the New Nation” and “Benefactor of the Nation.”)10
The text speaks directly to student readers, which heightens their sense of connection to the message of the lesson, as Kincheloe suggests. The subtext says to students that the act of reading this particular school lesson, which criticizes el Jefe,” is precisely what you would not have been allowed to read during the period of Dominican history we are studying. The students, working in the active role of constructivist learners, are challenged to wrestle with an increasingly contradictory and negative portrayal of Trujillo. The previous lesson reinforced the idea that Trujillo did not use military force to gain power and that the country maintained democratic structures at the beginning of his reign. However, Trujillo did order the assassination of his rivals for his own political benefit and positioned himself to be the only constructor of validated knowledge for the entire country, specifically for the captive audience in the nation’s classrooms. The chapter’s opening question underscores the tone of the entire chapter: “¿Recuerdas cuáles son los derechos humanos?” (Do you remember what human rights are?) However, a consideration of these events through the lens of the Haitian Other master script is still problematic. If Trujillo is el Jefe (the Boss), then who is/are el pueblo (the people)? Who gets to be part of the Dominican pueblo and who does not? What are the implications of using religious imagery and references as a framework for understanding Trujillo’s role in Dominican society? These questions are just a small example of how to address the Haitian Other master script weakness found in this activity, especially as the text begins to position Trujillo as a more complex figure with questionable motivations and goals for the Dominican nation and its relationship to Haiti and to Haitians living in the Dominican Republic.
Another key dimension of critical constructivism “involves the complex interrelationship between teaching and learning and knowledge production and research.”11 The next activity in the textbook gives students the opportunity to assume each of the roles Kincheloe mentions. In the following lesson from chapter 6, students work collaboratively to deepen their knowledge of the last Horacio Vásquez administration and of the Trujillo government. “El propósito de esta actividad es evaluar el último gobierno de Horacio Vásquez y el régimen de Trujillo. Es conveniente que el curso se divida en equipos y cada uno escoja un gobierno. Es importante seguir el procedimiento señalado en la actividad similar del Capítulo 1 de la Unidad 1. Al final de la evaluación, se puede organizar un panel para exponer al curso los resultados de la evaluación de cada equipo con una discusión amplia sobre los mismos.” (The purpose of this activity is to evaluate the final government of Horacio Vásquez and the Trujillo regime. It is a good idea for the class to divide itself into teams and for each one to select a government. It is important to follow the instructions shown in the similar activity from chapter 1 of unit 1. At the end of the evaluation, a panel can be organized to share the results of the evaluation of each group with a full discussion about the same topics.)12
The basic structure of the lesson ties directly to the complex interrelationship that Kincheloe defines. In the role of researcher, students are required to gather information and to produce documentation of their findings. In the role of teacher, students present their results to the class. In the role of student, they learn, interpret, and analyze the information from other groups to prepare for and participate in the class discussion. Throughout this process, students are placed in a context where they should be critical of the information they encounter and create. The activity mentioned as a guide from chapter 1 highlights specifically those qualities.
* Discutir en el aula el criterio sobre cuándo un gobierno se considera “bueno o malo,” “positivo o negativo para el país,” “democrático o dictatorial.” Luego de la discusión con tus compañeras y compañeros, se llega a un acuerdo sobre el criterio o los criterios con que se van a juzgar los gobiernos.
* identificar y describir las medidas tomadas;
* agrupar las medidas según sean económicas, políticas, sociales, culturales;
* clasificar las medidas de cada grupo según las consideren positivas o negativas y explicar por qué las consideran así;
* juzgar en qué grado las medidas tomadas durante los gobiernos, concuerdan con el criterio o los criterios previamente definidos.13
* (Discuss in the classroom the criteria about when a government is considered “good or bad,” “positive or negative for the country,” “democratic or dictatorial.” After the discussion with your classmates, come to an agreement about the criterion or criteria by which you are going to judge the governments.
* Identify and describe the measures taken;
* Group the measures according to whether they are economic, political, social, cultural;
* Classify the measures of each group according to if you consider them positive or negative and explain why you consider them as such;
* Judge to what degree the measures taken during the governments are in line with the criterion or criteria previously defined.)
Students go step-by-step through the essential elements of critical thought and analysis. Most importantly, students are asked to develop their own rubric for the evaluation instead of merely applying one provided by the textbook. By deciding which factors to evaluate, as well as actually conducting the evaluation itself, students are responsible for producing, documenting, and explaining the knowledge they have worked to create.
Again, we see that the task students are charged with is more connected to understanding the process of analysis rather than actually analyzing the Trujillo regime and extrapolating the lessons learned to understand the role of Trujillo in implanting an antiblack, anti-Haitian ideology in today’s Dominican Republic. It is hard to imagine what better content than the dictatorship itself could be included in this lesson as a follow-up to the process just outlined for students. Laying out the elements of the Haitian Other master script and how they were at play under the dictatorship through educational, social, and political policy should be a vital piece to guiding students to constructing knowledge about the Trujillo years. Students are asked to make value judgments about the goals and inner workings of the government in leadership at the time. But what is sorely missing is instruction on how to understand why the administration chose to operate in such a fashion at all. No deeper frameworks that emphasize “why” or “how” are used in this lesson.
Another tenet of constructivism is that “critical constructivists are concerned with the exaggerated role power plays in these construction and validation processes. Critical constructivists are particularly interested in the ways these processes help privilege some people and marginalize others.”14 The section titled “Trujillo y Haiti” from chapter 5 is the clearest example of how Kincheloe’s framework for critical constructivism can be used to understand the role of Haiti and Haitians in Dominican textbooks. The power dynamic between Dominicans and Haitians living in the Dominican Republic is one of marginalization and otherness. This chapter brings us closer to a critical questioning of the Haitian Other master script than we have seen in the book’s previous chapters.
Donde más se evidenció el uso del miedo para mantener la población asustada y pensando que sólo Trujillo podría defenderla, fue con respecto a Haití. Desde 1860, los haitianos habían anunciado que no volverían a invadir el suelo dominicano y nos apoyaron en la guerra de la Restauración. A pesar de eso, Trujillo y los intelectuales que le apoyaron, revivieron los viejos sentimientos de rechazo hacia los haitianos que causaron las guerras y conflictos desde principios del siglo XIX. Como ya sabemos, la mano de obra haitiana era aprovechada en la industria azucarera por ser muy barata y fácil de trasladar . . . En las escuelas y los periódicos, no se hablaba de un proceso migratorio, sino de una amenaza militar. Igualmente se decía que la presencia de esos inmigrantes dañaba nuestra cultura, pues influenciaban el idioma, la religión y las costumbres . . . Es decir, que aunque los ingenios se beneficiaban del trabajo mal pagado que ofrecían los haitianos, el gobierno utilizó la presencia de ellos en el país para asustar a los dominicanos y las dominicanas . . . . Esa campaña facilitó que se genera una visión negativa de los haitianos, dando fuerza a prejuicios como: los haitianos comen gente, su religión es salvaje, su lengua es primitiva, son atrasados, son la causa de muchas enfermedades, vienen a robar.
(Where the use of fear was most evident in order to keep the public frightened and thinking that only Trujillo could defend them was with respect to Haiti. Since 1860 Haitians had announced that they would not again invade Dominican soil and they supported us in the War of Restoration. Despite that, Trujillo and the intellectuals that supported him revived the old feelings of disapproval toward Haitians that caused the wars and conflicts since the beginning of the nineteenth century. As we already know, the Haitian labor force was taken advantage of in the sugar industry because it was very inexpensive and easy to relocate. . . . In schools and newspapers, a migration process was not spoken of, but rather a military threat. It was also said that the presence of those immigrants would harm our culture because they were influencing our language, our religion and our customs. . . . That is to say, even though the sugar refineries benefited from the poorly paid labor that Haitians offered, the government used their presence in the country to frighten Dominicans. . . . That campaign made it possible to generate a negative vision of Haitians, giving strength to prejudices like: Haitians eat people; their religion is savage; their language is primitive; they are backward; they are the cause of many illnesses; they come to steal.)15
This passage aims to detail exactly what the misperceptions of Haitians were and to clarify that those ideas were politically motivated tools used to strengthen Trujillo’s hold on the Dominican people. The ideas are underscored as intentionally inaccurate and malicious and provide further evidence of Trujillo’s dictatorial reign. The content of “Trujillo y Haití” raises the fundamental issue of how the Haitian Other has been used as a scapegoat in Dominican society for political gain. Kincheloe’s words easily frame themselves around a victimized, marginalized, and othered Haitian figure that is being simultaneously forced out of the country to protect Dominican identity and shipped into the country to increase Trujillo’s personal fortunes through their ill-paid labor in the sugar industry.
The section “Trujillo y Haití” attempts to present a critical perspective on the image of the Haitian Other and give students a means to critically analyze that manufactured negative representation. In a taller activity at the chapter’s end, students are asked to conduct a small group activity on the Trujillo ideology. The topics include the involvement of the Roman Catholic Church and the school system in perpetuating that ideology. “Por último, se discute en plenaria cuáles aspectos de la ideología trujillista todavía persisten en nuestro país.” (Finally, discuss as a class which aspects of the Trujillista ideology still exist in our society.)16 Students are asked whether they can identify the Haitian Other master script in some of the country’s most influential and revered institutions. This section completely shifts gears from being more process-focused to being more application-focused in a context that highlights Kincheloe’s most basic touchstones of critical constructivism: power, privilege, culture, and knowledge. In the book’s final section, “La Cultura Dominicana después de la Muerte de Trujillo” (Dominican Culture after the Death of Trujillo), students are invited to continue that work by considering how power, privilege, culture, and knowledge have all converged to marginalize the Haitian population within the Dominican Republic and to skew how Dominicans saw, and often still do see, themselves as victims of a negatively perceived Haitian influence. Students are finally given license to critically evaluate whether that perception, the Haitian Other master script, died with Trujillo or still shapes their world today. The first question of the section is “¿Consideras que la cultura dominicana ha sufrido cambios desde la dictadura de Trujillo? ¿Por qué?” (Do you think that Dominican culture has suffered changes since the Trujillo dictatorship? Why?)
El trujillismo trató de ocultar algunos de los rasgos sobresalientes de nuestra identidad cultural, como fue el caso de la raíz africana en la composición social y cultural de los dominicanos. Desde mediados de los años sesenta se produjo desde la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo un movimiento preocupado por rescatar nuestra verdadera historia, que ofreció una nueva interpretación de los hechos. Esos investigadores se interesaron en explicar el papel de los africanos que llegaron a la Isla y los aportes que realizaron en las diferentes vertientes de la vida cotidiana, así como en el arte y la religión.
Con ese esfuerzo se le puso término a la idea que nos impuso el trujillismo de que nuestro origen era exclusivamente europeo y aborigen, haciéndonos sentir avergonzados de nuestro origen africano. La cultura dominicana es única. En ella se siente la influencia de los aborígenes, los europeos y los africanos. Pero donde ninguno de esos componentes logra diferenciarse como algo propio. Nuestra sociedad es como un árbol frondoso sustentado por tres raíces.
(Trujillismo tried to hide some of the distinguishing traits of our cultural identity, as was the case of the African origin in the social and cultural composition of Dominicans.
Since the mid-sixties, a movement has been taking place at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo that is focused on rescuing our true history, one that offered a new interpretation of the facts. Those researchers were interested in explaining the role of the Africans who arrived on Hispaniola and the contributions they made in the different aspects of daily life, as well as in art and religion. That effort put an end to the idea that Trujillismo imposed on us that our origin was exclusively European and indigenous, making us feel embarrassed about our African origin. Dominican culture is unique. In it, the influence of the indigenous, the Europeans, and the Africans is felt. But none of those components manages to differentiate itself as its own entity. Our society is like a leafy tree supported by three roots.)17
Our analysis of the Trujillo lessons and activities reveals that the textbook still fails to fully portray the violent and lasting impact of Trujillo’s dictatorship. This is despite the fact that this activity comes after pages of historical information on Trujillo, which do include pointed acknowledgement of his anti-Haitian policies. The glaring lapse concerning the massacre of thousands of Haitians and others assumed to be Haitian who lived along the countries’ border in October 1937 renders the rest of the section’s material without the weight and context that it rightly deserves—and frankly needs—to reflect the omnipresent Haitian Other master script narrative still at work in the Dominican Republic today. Upon Trujillo’s orders, segments of the Dominican military descended on the border region to murder Haitians living on the Dominican side of the border as part of the dictator’s effort to “Dominicanize” the region. Howard writes about the massacre, known informally in the Dominican Republic as el corte (the harvest):
Anti-Haitianism has been, and remains, virulent. The most remarkable and disturbing manifestation of this hatred was the massacre in October, 1937 of around 12,000 Haitian peasants in the western provinces of the Dominican Republic by the army and police of the dictator Trujillo. Racism was a founding component of trujullismo, the intellectuals of the era seeking to consolidate the Dominican nation-state on the superiority of hispanidad. The creation of enduring myth was a key element to establish the legitimacy of the dictatorship. Firstly, the ideology of Trujillo’s regime created the image of a dangerous external enemy to legitimize the nationalist efforts of the dictatorship. The effect of the massacre was to heighten this conception of Haitian laborers in the Dominican Republic as the enemy within. Secondly, it attempted to “save” the Dominican nation from “Africanization” and the “illegal” entry of Haitian immigrants.18
We maintain that the textbook does not truly engage students in a critical discourse about the present-day implications of Trujillo’s ideology because it fails to present a transparent discussion about systemic racism, violence, and the invention of a politically motivated hispanidad to create race-based antagonism between working- and middle-class Dominicans and Haitian laborers. By extension, we also contend that the Trujillo section can be viewed as perpetuating the Haitian Other master script. The absence of clear connections between past atrocities and present injustices leaves an insurmountable void when teaching students how deeply the Haitian Other master script continues to guide the ethos of the Dominican Republic’s most influential institutions, including the public education system. This issue is not in question, as the activity would have students believe. The influence of the Haitian Other master script is a point of fact that must be examined, even by eighth graders, to arrive at a critical understanding of Trujillo’s dictatorship and its impact on current issues of power, class, race, and marginalization. When students are given the opportunity to evaluate how the knowledge gained from textbooks shapes how they understand their own world—leaning toward a critical approach—Kincheloe’s words come to life: “The knowledge of the classroom is constructed where students’ personal experience intersects with academic knowledges.”19