Wen 丨 Lu Tingyan
Parsley and slaughter
Parsley, also known as parsley, is an annual herb. It was first produced in the Mediterranean region and is recorded in the flora of Greco-Roman BC. It has a special aroma that masks the fishy smell of some ingredients and is a common ingredient and seasoning in European, Middle Eastern and American cuisine. In terms of medicine, it has the effect of lowering blood pressure and diuresis, and is often used for dietary therapy, and has been used as a medicinal diet by the Egyptians since 1500 BC.
Parsley first appeared in the Americas as a product of colonial trade. Beginning with Columbus's great seafaring discoveries in 1492, the Americas entered centuries-long European colonial rule. Parsley, on the other hand, was brought in by the British in the 17th century. Dominated by the White European model, the Latin American diet was a combination of the Inca or Aztec civilizations native to the Americas, and even some of them were european-centric. Even in traditional dishes such as Cazuela in Chile or ajiaco in Cuba, the smell of parsley is accented. But with the passage of time and the gradual fading of colonial hatred, parsley has become a part of Latin American culture for Latin Americans, and has not been marked by hatred or humiliation.
Although not a symbol of colonial culture, parsley has another historical image in Central America and the Caribbean, not with its own aroma, but with the bloody smell of genocide. In Haiti in 1937, a massive genocide unfolded, killing more than 20,000 Haitians known as the parsley massacre. It is called la masacre del perejil in Spanish, or more simply "el corte". There are few records in China, and the Spanish parsley perejil is translated into English parsley, and then translated to Chinese, resulting in a mistranslation and becoming a massacre for coriander (this pot, coriander means not back). The massacre was carried out by Rafaeal Trujillo, the ruler of Haiti's neighboring Dominican Republic. This has caused great devastation in the Caribbean, where populations have always been small, and has also caused indelible and permanent trauma to the relations between the two countries.
All this starts with Haiti and Dominica, two old enemies who are dependent on each other and love each other and want to kill.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located on the east and west sides of the same island, across the sea from Cuba and Puerto Rico. Influenced by colonial history, the island is called Spanish island in both English and Spanish, while the country is pronounced Hispaniola or even Haitian island according to the Spanish pronunciation. Arriving in 1492, Columbus established the first colony in the Americas the following year, which was later named Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo means holy Sunday in Spanish, and it is rumored that Columbus landed on the island on a Sunday, which was later continued by the name of the Dominican Republic). During the dispute, the island's indigenous Taino people were mostly extinct, and later a large number of African black slaves were transported to the island to maintain the labor force of the European sugar and tobacco industry in the Americas, which made the population of the island now predominantly black or melanic (mestizo Mestizo in Spanish).
In the centuries that followed, the Spanish island changed hands several times under different european powers and became a gathering point for pirates of many countries. By the early 17th century, French power was beginning to gain the upper hand, and by 1665, one-third of the Spanish island was under French control. In 1697, 1797, the defeat of the West French War, the island of Spain was completely ceded to France. But like other Latin American countries, the independence of the Spanish island became extremely difficult due to the constant occupation and interference of European powers and the rising United States. In the process, many regimes on the island were erected, civil wars and foreign wars were intertwined, and it was difficult for a lasting government to be sustained. Led by the slave-born black leader Toussaint Louverture and others, the Black Revolt in Haiti broke out (Louverture was a black slave by birth, but under the influence of white plantation owners, could read French, sporadically dabbled in European Enlightenment ideas, but was later trapped by the French, forced to negotiate peace, and eventually died in the prison of the French). After years of chaotic fighting, the State of Haiti struggled to declare its independence. But the regime that followed continued to toss, including the independence of Dominica in the eastern part of the island.
In the process of gaining power, the leaders of the various forces were more or less dependent on the Spanish and French armies, sometimes to the West, sometimes to france. The two countries also did not reach the consensus of the common retreat of Europeans, Haiti was more influenced by France, speaking French, while the Dominican Republic spoke Spanish, and the two sides were hostile to each other and deeply resentful.
In 1937, Trujillo of the Dominican Republic came to power and implemented a repressive dictatorship. In order to maintain the Dominican border, a large-scale sweep was carried out at the two junctions, killing all Haitians. But because the two countries were mostly black and difficult to distinguish by appearance, Trujillo thought of using language differences. According to the recollections of soldiers at that time, in the army at that time, Dominican soldiers would hold up a handful of parsley, and if they touched the Shanghainese, they would not say the correct name in Spanish, and they would all be killed. And the parsley massacre is also called for this reason.
Because of this history, parsley has become a bloodier object than guns and cannons in the Caribbean generation, rather than just a plant or ingredient. But interestingly, as an import of The European maritime colonial trade, parsley not only does not reflect the racial contradictions between the Caribbean and the Europeans, but instead points directly to the dispute between two island nations on a small island in the Caribbean Sea. This undoubtedly shows some historical clues to the complexity of the political positions of many countries in the Caribbean and Central America today. Unlike some countries in Latin America with a pronounced nationalist bent, the Central American generation's position on European countries and even the United States, which has long been politically mediocre, is less black and white. For example, in the 2012 referendum in Puerto Rico, the general abstained from voting on whether to change the status quo in relations with the United States, and half of the voters chose to maintain the existing relationship. In the subsequent "How to Change Relationships" vote, more than sixty percent of the voters chose to become the fifty-first state of the United States. The influence of both Europe and the United States is far more complex than imagined. The looseness of power in the Caribbean and the instability of the regime can also be seen from the parsley thing.