The 1935 census revealed that several border towns were of Haitian majority ; between 1920 and 1935 the Haitian population in the Dominican Republic doubled . In 1936 , Haiti received several of these villages located in La Miel valley after a revision of the borderline . Between 1935 and 1937 the dictator Rafael L. Trujillo imposed restrictions on foreign labor and ordered the deportation of Haitians in the border area , but these measures failed due to a corruption scheme involving Dominican military men , civil authorities , and US-owned sugar companies , in the trafficking of undocumented Haitian immigrants . After April 1937 , Cuba began the deportation of thousands of Haitians ; this led to the arrival of unemployed Haitians en masse to the Dominican Republic . In August 1937 , amid a tour to border towns , Trujillo received complaints of looting , pillaging and cattle raiding , and people insinuated that he had no control over the Haitians . Drunk at a soirée , Trujillo decided that every Haitian should be annihilated . Lieutenant Adolf " Boy " Frappier , a German adviser to President Trujillo , advised him to use the shibboleth '' perejil '' ( Spanish for " parsley " ) to identify Haitians by their accent , because the " r " in '' perejil '' was difficult for Haitians to pronounce properly . Thousands died along the borderland , the Northwest Line and the Cibao , and thousands more fled to Haiti . In 1975 , Joaquín Balaguer , the Dominican Republic 's interim Foreign Minister at the time of the massacre , put the number of dead at 17,000 . Other estimates compiled by the Dominican historian Bernardo Vega went as high as 35,000 . Haitians that were working for the American sugar companies , or living in the East of the country , were not harmed
Thousands died
Parsley massacre
Haitians in the Dominican Republic