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Dominican Republic
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The
Dominican
Republic , (Spanish: República
Dominicana) is a country located on the eastern
two-thirds of the Caribbean island of
Hispaniola, bordering Haiti. Hispaniola is the
second-largest of the Greater Antilles islands,
and lies west of Puerto Rico and east of Cuba
and Dominican Republic. A legacy of unsettled, mostly
non-representative rule lasted for much of the
20th century; the move towards representative
democracy has improved vastly since the death of
military dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo in
1961. Dominicans sometimes refer to their
country as Quisqueya, a name for Hispaniola used
by the native Taíno Indians. The Dominican
Republic is not to be confused with Dominica,
another Caribbean country.
History
Main article: History of the Dominican Republic
The country has had a history of changing
ownership, with occasional attempts at
independence and self-rule. First a Spanish
colony and then a French colony, it was
subsequently ruled by Haiti and then Spain
again, and later the United States twice ruled
Dominican territory.
In the beginning the island was primarily
inhabited by the Taino, a branch of the Arawaks.
Taino means "the good" in that native language.
A system of Cacicazgos (chiefdoms) was in place,
and Marien, Maguana, Higuey, Magua and Xaragua
(Also written as Jaragua) were their names.
These chiefdoms were then subdivided into
subchiefdoms. The Cacicagzos were based on a
system of tribute, consisting of the food grown
by the Taino. Among the cultural signs that they
left were cave paintings around the country,
which have become touristic and nationalistic
symbols of the Dominican Republic, and words
from their language, including "hurricane" (hurrakan)
and "tobacco" (tabakko).
The arrival of the Guamikena (the covered ones)
On December 5, 1492, the Europeans arrived.
Believing that these beings from over the
horizon were in someway supernatural, the Taínos
feted the Europeans with all the honors
available to them. This was a totally different
society from the one the Europeans came from.
One of the things that piqued the curiosity was
the amount of clothing worn by the Europeans.
Therefore they came to call them "guamikena"
(the covered ones). Guacanagarix, the chief who
hosted Christopher Columbus and his men, treated
them kindly and provided him with everything
they desired. Yet the Taínos' allegedly
"egalitarian" system clashed with the Europeans'
feudalist system, with more rigid class
structures. This led the Europeans to believe
the Tainos to be either weak or misleading, and
they began to treat the tribes with more
violence. Columbus tried to temper this when he
and his men departed from Quisqueya and they
left on a good note. Columbus had cemented a
firm alliance with Guacanagarix, a powerful
chief on the island. After the shipwrecking of
the Santa Maria, he decided to establish a small
fort with a garrison of men that could help him
lay claim to this possession. The fort was
called La Navidad, since the events of the
shipwrecking and the founding of the fort
occurred on Christmas day. The garrison, in
spite of all the wealth and beauty on the
island, was wracked by divisions within and the
men took sides, that evolved into conflict
amongst these first Europeans. The more
rapacious ones began to terrorize the Taino,
Ciguayo and Macorix tribesmen up to the point of
trying to take their women. Viewed as weak by
the Spaniards and even some of his own people,
Guacanagarix tried to come to an accommodation
with the Spaniards, who saw his appeasement as
the actions of someone who submitted, they
treated him with contempt and even took some of
his wives too. The powerful cacique of the
maguana, Caonabo could brook no further
affronts, attacked the Europeans and destroyed
La Navidad. Guacanagarix, dismayed as he was by
this turn of events did not try too hard to aid
these guamikena, probably hoped that the
troublesome outsiders would never return.
However, they did return.
The twentieth century
The twentieth century was marked by repeated
U.S. intervention in local affairs. The reason
for this was the island's strategic location in
the middle of the Caribbean Sea. During the
World Wars the islands of the Caribbean were
used as stop-off points for German U-boats from
which to plan possible attacks against the North
American continent. During the Cold War, Soviet
and capitalist ideologies clashed openly on the
island. Apart from tentative U.S. support for
the Trujillo dictatorship (1930-1961) (though
this faded during his final years), the largest
example of this was the 1965 invasion by
American troops in the midst of a Dominican
civil war, an uprising that was sparked by an
attempt to restore the republic's first
democratically-elected president of the 20th
century, Juan Bosch, who had been overthrown by
a right-wing coup in 1963. Following this civil
war, and America's deployment of troops in
Operation Power Pack, Joaquín Balaguer
(1966-1978) was democractically elected, winning
by 57%. Juan Bosch's constitutional government
never returned to power. The Johnson
administration justified the 1965 intervention
by stating that it suspected many of Bosch's
supporters were pro-Cuban
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Background:
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Explored and claimed by Columbus on his first voyage
in 1492, the island of Hispaniola became a
springboard for Spanish conquest of the Caribbean
and the American mainland. In 1697, Spain recognized
French dominion over the western third of the
island, which in 1804 became Haiti. The remainder of
the island, by then known as Santo Domingo, sought
to gain its own independence in 1821, but was
conquered and ruled by the Haitians for 22 years; it
finally attained independence as the Dominican
Republic in 1844. A legacy of unsettled, mostly
non-representative, rule for much of its subsequent
history was brought to an end in 1966 when Joaquin
BALAGUER became president. He maintained a tight
grip on power for most of the next 30 years when
international reaction to flawed elections forced
him to curtail his term in 1996. Since then, regular
competitive elections have been held in which
opposition candidates have won the presidency. The
Dominican economy has had one of the fastest growth
rates in the hemisphere. |
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Location:
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Caribbean, eastern two-thirds of the island of
Hispaniola, between the Caribbean Sea and the North
Atlantic Ocean, east of Haiti |
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Geographic coordinates:
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19 00
N, 70 40 W
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Map references:
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Central America and the Caribbean |
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Area:
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total: 48,730 sq km
land: 48,380 sq km
water: 350 sq km |
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Area - comparative:
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slightly more than twice the size of New Hampshire
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Land boundaries:
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total: 360 km
border countries: Haiti 360 km |
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Nationality:
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noun: Dominican(s)
adjective: Dominican |
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Ethnic groups:
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white
16%, black 11%, mixed 73% |
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Religions:
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Roman
Catholic 95%
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Languages:
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Spanish |
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Currency:
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Dominican peso (DOP)
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Currency code:
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DOP
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Exchange rates:
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Dominican pesos per US dollar - 17.310 (January
2002), 16.952 (2001), 16.415 (2000), 16.033 (1999),
15.267 (1998), 14.265 (1997) |
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Internet country code:
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.do
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