Dominican Republic: History

Pre-20th-Century History

The earliest known inhabitants of the Dominican Republic reached the island around 2600 BC, using dugout canoes that allowed them to ride the current from South America throughout the Antilles. They were primarily nomadic hunter-gatherers who used stone tools and left little behind. A second group, often referred to as the Salanoids or ancient Arawaks, landed on Hispaniola around 250 BC. The group spread throughout the Caribbean.

A third migration, from Venezuela, swept through the Antilles about 2000 years ago, and by 700AD occupied the Dominican Republic and most of the surrounding islands. This society's complex hierarchical structure allowed for specialization in fishing, worship, art and farming. They called themselves the Taíno (friendly people), and an estimated 400,000 of them lived on Hispaniola when Christopher Columbus got off the ship to greet them. Folks on another island had told Columbus that there was gold to be found there, and the anxious Italian set off in the night to find it, accidentally dashing the Santa María offshore.

Columbus named the island Hispaniola ('Little Spain') and returned with a thousand colonists the following year. Naturally it was the Taíno who were set to work to build this vision, and within six years of Columbus' arrival they had been thoroughly decimated by cruel working conditions and European diseases. Though some independent communities survived in hard-to-reach areas of the island, much of the original culture was lost.

The original Spanish settlement near Isabela was abandoned after just a few years and settlers shifted to the present site of Santo Domingo, where Columbus' son, Diego, tried to flesh out his father's blueprint. Hispaniola, however, ran out of gold rather quickly, and Santo Domingo soon lost prominence when gold and silver were discovered in Mexico and Peru. Pirates ransacked Spanish settlements, particularly in what's now Haiti, and Spain finally gave up on the western third of the island and ceded it to France in 1697 - a decision it no doubt came to rue as the French turned what became known as Haiti into the world's richest sugar cane producer.

The slave rebellion in Haiti was initially supported by the Spaniards, but their politicking backfired when revolutionary leader Toussaint L'Ouverture invaded the eastern part of Hispaniola, took Santo Domingo and freed the island's 40,000 slaves. This prompted much of the Spanish elite to relocate to neighbouring islands like Puerto Rico and Cuba.

Toussaint was eventually driven back to the formerly French territories, and Haiti declared independence in 1804. Then, they invaded the eastern half of the island again in 1821. This time they stayed for 23 years, looting the country, freeing the slaves (again) and bringing economic activity to a standstill. A nascent Dominican nationalist movement formed during the occupation and beat the Haitians back to the eastern side of the island in 1844. The leader of this important revolution was Spanish dandy and all-around ass-kicker Juan Pablo Duarte, now hailed as the father of the Dominican Republic.

While various military men and families with money fought for control of the fledgling government, one General Santana actually allowed the republic's annexation by Spain just to stay in power. The poorly armed Dominican population fought Spanish troops so well that on March 3, 1865, the queen of Spain annulled all claims to the island. The DR has been fully independent ever since.

Much damage had been done to urban infrastructure and the agrarian economy in the course of the war, however, and things weren't looking good. More military men and moneyed families crawled out of the woodwork, playing tug-of-war for the next 35 years with what was left. There was some progress, particularly under liberals General Luperón and Father Arturo (1879-1882), and Ramón Cáceres (1905-1911), but overall things were a bit of a mess.

Modern History

The neighbouring United States saw trouble in the Caribbean as opportunity for expansion, and in 1916, US troops moved in. Like the Spanish, who lost interest when the gold ran out, however, the USA became bored with the island when it became clear that the Germans probably weren't going to attack the Panama Canal after all, making the DR a bit less strategically important. In 1924, they stepped back, and President Horacio Vásquez stepped up.

The new president built roads and schools, initiated irrigation programs and got the economy hopping. Just when things were going really well, army chief Rafael Leonidas Trujillo got jealous of all that power he didn't have (he had been siphoning money off the military budget for years, but sometimes wealth just isn't enough) and forced Vásquez to resign. From 1930 to 1947 (and indirectly until 1961), Trujillo dispensed with the formalities of democracy and got down to business. Repression, murder and torture went side by side with building, land reform and economic success during the Trujillo administration. Authoritarianism is efficient, at least.

The resumption of free elections pitted the usual suspects against one another: reform-minded liberals, military men and wealthy families all fought for the brass ring. The Dominican Republic continued to diversify its economy, build schools and slowly move forward almost in spite of its leadership (not to mention the increasingly regular rolling blackouts caused by increasingly run-down infrastructure and inadequate power plants).

Recent History

The long rein of Joaquin Balaguer finally ended in 1996 in a cloud of corruption. Leonel Fernandez Reyna, of the leftist Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), won the subsequent election, but the PRD returned to power in 2000 with Hipolito Mejia at the helm.

Civic life in recent years has been punctuated by the devastation wreaked by the hurricanes that pass across the island seasonally and by the death of Balaguer in 2002 at the age of 95. He'd dominated political life for a half-century. Civil unrest has become more common in recent years in response to the government's economic policies, particularly in regard to increasing prices and power cuts.

President Mejia was defeated in May 2004; he was replaced by former head of state Leonel Fernandez. At about the same time, 2000 people in the country's southwest perished or went missing as a result of severe flooding.

Back to top ^