Summary

At a lunch hosted in honor of Simon Gittleman, Trujillo’s old teacher in the marines, Gittleman asks Trujillo what his hardest decisions has been. Trujillo replies that it was in 1937, when he massacred Haitian immigrants in order to, in his mind, preserve the Dominican Republic. Flashbacks alternate with Trujillo’s conversation with Gittleman, telling the story of the Haitian genocide.

In 1937, Chirinos and Agustin Cabral are counselling Trujillo on the waves of Haitian immigrants. According to their reports, the immigrants displace Dominican laborers, and worse, the Dominican language, religion, and race: Dominicans are mostly white, while many Haitians are black. They accuse the Haitians of taking over Dominican land and raping Dominican women. At the lunch in 1961, Trujillo describes how he travelled the length of the border to see it with his own eyes, while recalling historical conflicts between Dominicans and Haitians.

After...