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History of
Dominican Republic
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 for
archaeologists to examine. A second group, often referred to as the
Salanoids or ancient Arawaks, landed on Hispaniola around 250 BC.
The group, easily traced because of their distinctive ceramics,
spread throughout the Caribbean.
A third migration,
from Venezuela, swept through the Antilles about 2000 years ago, and
by AD 700 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 Hispanola 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 ready to make it the centerpiece of
Spain's new empire. 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 neighboring 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.
Various military men
and families with money fought for control of the fledgling
government, one General Santana actually allowing 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.
The neighboring
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 1930-1947 (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 increasing infrastructure and inadequate power
plants). |
