The memoir and the article: By the time my mother married my father, however, she knew all about the true nature of the dictatorship. Thousands had lost their lives in failed attempts to return the country to democracy. Family friends, whom she had assumed had dropped away of their own accord, turned out to have been disappeared. My father had been lucky. As a young man, he had narrowly escaped to Canada after the plot he had participated in as a student failed. This was to be the first of two escapes. That same year, 1937, El Generalísimo ordered the overnight slaughter of some eighteen thousand Haitians, who had come across the border to work on sugarcane plantations for slave wages. It was from my father that my mother learned why Trujillo hated blacks with such a vengeance, how he disguised his own Haitian ancestry, how he lightened his skin with makeup.
–“A Genetics of Justice,”
Julia Alvarez
The method his soldiers used in 1937 to try to identify those who would be killed was cruelly unique. When confronting someone in the lands along the border with Haiti, they would hold up a sprig of parsley and ask what it was. If the person responded by trilling the "r" in perejil (Spanish for parsley), he would be free to go. Anyone who didn't trill the "r" was thought to be a Haitian Creole speaker—and was likely to be killed.
–“Remembering to Never Forget,”
Mark Memmott
Step-by-step explanation:
Both authors, Mark and Julia are describing the same event. That event is considering the culling of Haitians in those land where they were not welcomed. Although that they were describing the same thing they did it both in two different ways.
Julia is describing the facts and anecdotes that her family had experienced. With that, we can feel and see that she is talking the truth because she is having evidences from the good known source and that source is her family.
At the other side, Mark is reporting the events from the source that isn't known to us.
- Mark is describing everything about the victim identification methods of them ''The method his soldiers used in 1937 to try to identify those who would be killed was cruelly unique.'' He is just describing the facts but we cannot know how does he know those things so his source is unknown.
- On the other side, Julia is considering reasons behind the killing in her speech ''It was from my father that my mother learned why Trujillo hated blacks with such a vengeance, how he disguised his own Haitian ancestry, how he lightened his skin with makeup. ''