Art News

Dominican Republic Museum to Honor Victims of Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo

SANTO DOMINGO (AP).- A new museum honoring the more than 50,000 people who died under former dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo opened Sunday, a day before the 50th anniversary of his death. Officials unveiled for the first time what is believed to be a comprehensive list of those killed during Trujillo’s 1930-1961 regime. The $2.7 million museum, located in a renovated colonial home in the capital, Santo Domingo, also features a re-creation of a prison torture chamber, along with audio of some of the actual torture sessions. In 1937, Trujillo ordered the killings of 20,000 Haitian migrants in his quest to cleanse his country, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. Soldiers raided shantytowns and sugar cane fields as they executed migrants along the shores of the Massacre River