Seminar | Kout Kouto: Genocide in the Caribbean and the Stories of Betrayal

Caribbean Studies Seminar Series.

22 October | Online, 4-5pm.

Speaker: Sophie Maríñez (CUNY).

This talk draws from a chapter in Spirals in the Caribbean that brings together constitutional legislations, the history of genocides, and their subsequent re-narrations, confirming once again how genocides do not take place in a vacuum but often stem from legal apparatuses, such as constitutions, court rulings, and decrees. I take my cue from Ruling 168-13 issued in 2013 by the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic, which denationalized hundreds of thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent effective retroactively to 1929. I delve into that pivotal year in world history to examine why Dominican congressmen reformed the Constitution not once but twice in only six months. As they did so, they introduced territorial claims in Haiti and an exception to the jus soli clause on nationality that established the nation as openly anti-Haitian. These 1929 constitutional reforms, I contend, laid the groundwork for the genocide committed against Haitians and Black Dominicans in 1937. The fact that the judges of the Constitutional Court cited the second reform as the legal basis for their ruling in 2013 reveals their disturbing perspective on what constitutes a bona fide Dominican national identity to them.

Meanwhile, a trope of sisterhood keeps recurring as writers and historians describe a reality of historical alliances, cultural mixedness, and friendship between the two populations, who share a bond forged through the joys and tribulations of everyday life. That is why Haitian survivors of the 1937 genocide used Kout Kouto (“knife-stabbing” or “back-stabbing”) to describe what they experienced: a devastating betrayal by those they thought were their friends, brothers and sisters, and, in the case of Black Dominican victims, their own people. […]

More informations HERE