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
Alcazar de Colon
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".
For decades, Santo Domingo colony was the headquarters of Spanish colonial power in the New World. But after the Spanish conquest of the mainland empires of the Aztecs and Incas, the importance of Hispaniola declined and Spain paid less attention to it. French bucaneers settled in the western part of the island, and by the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick, Spain ceded the area to France. With colonial settlement and the development of a plantation economy dependent on slave labor, it grew into the wealthy colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), with four times (500,000 vs. 125,000) as much population as Spanish Santo Domingo by the end of the 18th century. By then, enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue outnumbered whites and freedmen by nine to one.
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
Faro de Colon
After six years in power, President Ramón Cáceres (who had himself assassinated Heureaux) was assassinated in 1911. The result was several years of great political instability and civil war. U.S. mediation attempts by the William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson administrations achieved only a short respite each time. An ultimatum by Wilson in 1914 telling Dominicans to elect a president or see the U.S. impose one resulted in Ramón Báez Machado's election. Relatively free elections put former president (1899–1902) Juan Isidro Jimenes Pereyra back in power in 1914. In order to achieve a more broadly supported government, he named opposition individuals to his Cabinet. But this brought no peace and, with his Secretary of War Desiderio Arias maneuvering to depose him, Jimenes resigned on May 7, 1916, eschewing the U.S. offer of military aid against Arias.
Wilson thus ordered the U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic. U.S. Marines landed on May 16, 1916, and had control of the country two months later. The military government established by the U.S., led by Rear Admiral Harry Shepard Knapp, was widely repudiated by Dominicans. Some Cabinet posts had to be filled by U.S. naval officers, as Dominicans refused to serve in the administration. Press and radio censorship was imposed, as were limits on public speech. Guerrilla war against the U.S. forces was met with a vigorous, "often brutal" response.
But the occupation regime, which kept most Dominican laws and institutions, had its positive effects. It largely pacified the country, revived the economy, reduced the Dominican debt, built a road network that at last connected all regions of the country, and created a professional National Guard to replace the warring partisan units.
Opposition to the occupation continued, however, and after World War I it increased in the U.S. as well. There, President Warren G. Harding (1921–23), Wilson's successor, worked to end the occupation, as he had promised to do during his campaign. U.S. government ended in October 1922, and elections were held in March 1924.
The victor was former president (1902–03) Horacio Vásquez Lajara. He was inaugurated on July 13, and the last U.S. forces left in September. Vásquez gave the country six years of good government, in which political and civil rights were respected and the economy grew strongly, in a peaceful atmosphere.
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.
There was considerable economic growth during Trujillo's long and
iron-fisted regime, although a great deal of the
wealth was taken by the dictator and other regime elements. There was
progress in healthcare, education, and transportation, with the building
of hospitals and clinics, schools, and roads and harbors. Trujillo
also carried out an important housing construction program and instituted a
pension plan. He finally negotiated an undisputed border
with Haiti in 1935, and achieved the early end, in 1941, of the
1906 agreement with the U.S. He made the country debt-free in 1947, a
proud achievement for Dominicans for decades to come.
But all this was accompanied by absolute repression and the copious
use of murder, torture, and terroristic methods against the opposition.
Moreover, Trujillo's megalomania was on display in his renaming
after himself the capital city Santo Domingo to Ciudad Trujillo (Trujillo City),
the nation's — and the Caribbean's — highest mountain Pico Duarte (Duarte Peak)
to Pico Trujillo, and many towns and a province. Some other places he
renamed after members of his family.
In 1937 Trujillo (who was himself one-quarter Haitian), in an event known
as the Parsley Massacre or, in the Dominican Republic, as El Corte (The Cutting),
ordered the Army to kill Haitians living on the Dominican side of the border.
The Army killed an estimated 17,000 to 35,000 Haitians over five days,
from the night of October 2, 1937 through October 8, 1937. To avoid leaving
evidence of the Army's involvement, the soldiers used machetes rather than
bullets. The soldiers of Trujillo were said to have interrogated anyone with
dark skin, using the pronunciation of perejil (parsley) to tell
Haitians from Dominicans. As a result of the massacre, the Dominican Republic
agreed to pay Haiti US $750,000, later reduced to $525,000.
On November 25, 1960 Trujillo killed three of the four Mirabal Sisters,
sometimes 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 repression 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 construction of housing, theaters, museums,
aqueducts, roads, highways, and the massive Columbus Lighthouse, completed in
a subsequent tenure in 1992.
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") — although this is
not yet available for public use. In the 2006 elections, Fernández'
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.