HISTORY OF DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region.
The western third of the island Hispaniola is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are occupied by two countries, Saint Martin being the other. Its size is 48,700 km² with an estimated population of almost 10,000,000.
The Tainos
Spanish Rules
French rule
Independence
The voluntary colony and the Restoration republic
U.S. interventions and occupation
The Era of Trujillo
Post-Trujillo
1978 to present
The Taínos
Hispaniola was inhabited by the Taínos, an Arawakan-speaking people who may have arrived around A.D. 600, displacing earlier inhabitants. The Taínos called the island Kiskeya or Quisqueya, meaning « mother of the earth » , as well as Haití or Aytí, and Bohio. They engaged in farming and fishing, and hunting and gathering. There are widely varying estimates of the population of Hispaniola in 1492, including one hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, and 400,000 to 2 million.
By 1492 the island was divided into five chiefdoms.
Within a few years following the arrival of European explorers the population of Taínos had declined due to a change in their lifestyle, the introduction of diseases such as smallpox, and enslavement. By 1711 they numbered 21,000. The last record of pure Taíno natives in the country was from an 1864 account by a Spanish soldier, who wrote of Taínos shooting at Spanish soldiers and fleeing, during the Restoration War.
Taíno cave paintings can still be seen in a variety of caves around the country.
Spanish Rule
Christopher Columbus landed at Môle Saint-Nicolas, in northwest present-day Haiti, on December 6, 1492, during his first voyage. He claimed the island for Spain and named it La Española. Eighteen days later his flagship the Santa María ran aground near the present site of Cap-Haitien. Columbus was forced to leave 39 men, who built a fort named La Navidad (Christmas). He then sailed east, exploring the northern coast of what is now the Dominican Republic, after which he returned to Spain. He sailed back to America three more times.
After initially friendly relations, the Taínos resisted the conquest. One of the earliest leaders to fight against the Spanish was the female Chief Anacaona of Xaragua, in the southwest, who married Chief Caonabo of Maguana, of the center and south of the island. She was captured by the Spanish and executed in front of her people. Other notables who resisted include Chief Guacanagari, Chief Guamá, and Chief Hatuey, the latter of whom later fled to Cuba and helped fight the Spaniards there. Chief Enriquillo fought victoriously against the Spaniards in the Baoruco Mountain Range, in the southwest, to gain freedom for himself and his people in a part of the island for a time.
By the late–1500s, the majority of Taíno people had died from European infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, from mistreatment, suicide, the breakup of family unity, starvation, forced labor, torture, and war with the Spaniards. Most scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, infectious disease was the overwhelming cause of the Taíno population decline. The Taíno survived mostly in racially mixed form, and today most Dominicans have Taíno ancestry.
In 1496 Bartolomeo Columbus, Christopher's brother, built the city of Nueva Isabela (New Isabella), now Santo Domingo, in the south of Hispaniola. It was one of the first Spanish settlements (the previous ones had also been on Hispaniola), and became Europe's first permanent settlement in the « New World ».
The Spaniards created a plantation economy on Hispaniola, particularly from the second half of the 16th century. The island became a springboard for European conquest of the Caribbean islands, called Las Antillas (The Antilles), and soon after, the American mainland.
French rule
France came to own the whole island in 1795, when by the Peace of Basel Spain ceded Santo Domingo as a consequence of the French Revolutionary Wars. At the time, slaves led by Toussaint Louverture in the western part (Haiti) were in revolt against France. In 1801 Toussaint Louverture captured Santo Domingo from the French, thus gaining control of the entire island.
In 1802 an army sent by Napoleon captured Toussaint Louverture and sent him to France as prisoner. However, Toussaint Louverture's successors, and yellow fever, succeeded in expelling the French again from Saint-Domingue. There the rebels declared the independence of Haiti in 1804, while to the east, France continued to rule Spanish Santo Domingo.
In 1808, following Napoleon's invasion of Spain, the criollos of Santo Domingo revolted against French rule and, with the aid of Great Britain (Spain's ally) and Haiti, returned Santo Domingo to Spanish control
Independence
In 1838 Juan Pablo Duarte founded a secret society called La Trinitaria that sought pure and simple independence of Santo Domingo without any foreign intervention. Ramón Matías Mella and Francisco del Rosario Sánchez (the latter of partly African ancestry), despite not being among the founding members of La Trinitaria, were decisive in the fight for independence. They are now hailed, together with Duarte, as the Founding Fathers of the Dominican Republic.
On February 27, 1844, the Trinitarios, as the members of La Trinitaria were known, declared independence from Haiti. They were backed by Pedro Santana, a wealthy cattle-rancher from El Seibo, who became general of the army of the nascent Republic and is known as « El Liberador » . The Dominican Republic's first Constitution was adopted on November 6, 1844, and was modeled after the United States Constitution.
The decades that followed were filled with tyranny, factionalism, economic difficulties, rapid changes of government, and exile for political opponents. Threatening the nation's independence were renewed Haitian invasions occurring in 1844, 1845-49, 1849-55, and 1855-56.
Meanwhile, archrivals Santana and Buenaventura Báez held power most of the time, both ruling arbitrarily. They promoted competing plans to annex the new nation to another power: Santana favored Spain, and Báez the United States.
The voluntary colony and the Restoration republic
In 1861, after imprisoning, silencing, exiling, and executing many of his opponents and due to political and economic reasons, Santana signed a pact with the Spanish Crown and reverted the Dominican nation to colonial status, the only Latin American country to do so.
His ostensible aim was to protect the nation from Haitian reconquest.
But opponents launched the War of the Restoration in 1863, led by a group of men including Santiago Rodríguez and Benito Monción, among others. General Gregorio Luperón distinguished himself at the end of the war. Haitian authorities, fearful of the re-establishment of Spain as colonial power on their border, gave refuge and supplies to Dominican revolutionaries.
The United States, then fighting its own Civil War, vigorously protested the Spanish action.
After two years of fighting, Spain abandoned the island.
The Restoration was proclaimed on August 16, 1863.
U.S. interventions and occupation
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt sought to prevent European intervention, largely to protect the vicinity of the future Panama Canal, as the canal was already under construction.
He made a small military intervention to ward off the European powers, proclaimed his famous Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, and in 1905 obtained Dominican agreement for U.S. administration of Dominican customs, then the chief source of income for the Dominican government.
A 1906 agreement provided for the arrangement to last 50 years.
The United States agreed to use part of the customs proceeds to reduce the immense foreign debt of the Dominican Republic, and assumed responsibility for said debt
The Era of Trujillo
When Vásquez attempted to win another term, opponents rebelled in February, 1930, in secret alliance with the commander of the National Army (the former National Guard), General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, by which the latter remained 'neutral' in face of the rebellion.
Vásquez resigned. Trujillo then stood for election himself, and in May was elected president virtually unopposed, after a campaign of violence in which he eliminated his strongest opponents.
On November 25, 1960 Trujillo killed three of the four Mirabal Sisters, nicknamed Las Mariposas (The Butterflies). The victims were Patricia Mercedes Mirabal (born on February 27, 1924), Argentina Minerva Mirabal (born on March 12, 1926), and Antonia María Teresa Mirabal (born on October 15, 1935). Minerva was an aspiring lawyer who was extremely opposed to Trujillo's dictatorship since Trujillo had begun to make rude and sexual advances towards her. The sisters have received many honors posthumously, and have many memorials in various cities in the Dominican Republic. Salcedo, their home province, changed its name to Hermanas Mirabal Province (Mirabal Sisters Province). The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is observed on the anniversary of their deaths. The lives and resistance of Las Mariposas is told in In the « Time of Butterflies » by Julia Alvarez.
For a long time, the US supported the Trujillo government, as did the Roman Catholic Church, and the Dominican elite. This support persisted despite the assassinations of political opposition, the massacre of border Haitians, and Trujillo's plots against other countries. The US believed Trujillo was the lesser of two or more evils.The U.S. finally broke with Trujillo in 1960, after Trujillo's agents attempted to assassinate the Venezuelan president, Rómulo Betancourt.
Trujillo was assassinated on May 30, 1961 in Santo Domingo.
Post-Trujillo
A democratically elected government under leftist Juan Bosch took office in February, 1963, but was overthrown in September.
After nineteen months of military rule, a pro-Bosch revolt broke out in April, 1965. U.S. president Lyndon Johnson, concerned over the possible takeover of the revolt by pro-Castro or other communists who might create a « second Cuba » , sent the Marines days later, in Operation Powerpack. They were soon joined by a comparatively small force from the Organization of American States.
They remained in the country for over a year and left after supervising elections in 1966 won by Joaquín Balaguer, who had been Trujillo's last puppet–president.
Balaguer remained in power as president for 12 years. His tenure was a period of suppression of human rights and civil liberties, ostensibly to prevent pro–Castro or pro–communist parties from gaining power in the country. His rule was further criticized for a growing disparity between rich and poor. It was, however, praised for an ambitious infrastructure program, which included large housing projects, sports complexes, theaters, museums, aqueducts, roads, highways…
1978 to present
In 1978, Balaguer was succeeded in the presidency by opposition candidate Antonio Guzmán Fernández, of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). Another PRD win in 1982 followed, under Salvador Jorge Blanco. Under the PRD presidents, the Dominican Republic experienced a period of relative freedom and basic human rights.
Balaguer regained the presidency in 1986, and was re-elected in 1990 and 1994, this last time just defeating PRD candidate José Francisco Peña Gómez, a former mayor of Santo Domingo. Both the national and international communities generally viewed these elections as major frauds, leading to political pressure for Balaguer to step down. Balaguer responded by scheduling another presidential contest in 1996, which was won by Bosch's Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) for the first time, with Leonel Fernández as its candidate.
In 2000 the PRD's Hipólito Mejía won the election when his main opponents Danilo Medina (PLD) and a very old Joaquín Balaguer decided not to force a runoff after Mejía got 49.8% in the first round.
In 2004 Fernández was elected again, defeating President Mejía, and reelected in 2008 against the PRD's Miguel Vargas Maldonado, a former minister in Mejía's government.
Fernández and the PLD are credited with a number of initiatives that have moved the country forward technologically, such as the completion in 2008 of the Metro Railway (« El Metro » ) — now available for public use.
In the 2006 elections, Fernandez's PLD won 60% of seats in the House of Representatives and 22 of 32 Senate seats, as well as a plurality of mayoral seats. On May 16, 2008, President Fernández was reelected President with 53.8% of the vote.
His new term runs until 2012.