Dominican History
Taíno Indians
For at least 5,000 years before
Christopher Columbus discovered America for the Europeans, the island,
which he named Hispaniola, was inhabited by indigenous peoples whom he
called "Indians." Anthropologists have traced multiple waves of
indigenous immigration from two principal places. Some of the early
Amer-Indians came from Central America (probably Yucatan and Belize) and
some came from South America, descendants of the Arawakan Indians in
Amazonia, many of whom passed through the Orinocco Valley in Venezuela.
It is from the blending of these waves of indigenous immigrants that the
Taíno Indians, the people who welcomed Columbus on his arrival, are
believed to have originated.
The word Taíno meant "good" or
"noble" in their language, which they showed Columbus and his Spanish
crew with their peaceful and generous hospitality. Early Spanish
chroniclers document they saw no Taíno Indians fighting amongst
themselves—in fact, they substituted a ballgame called batey for
battles. If two Taínos had an argument, they would choose a team of
players and, in front of their kacikes ("chiefs") and all their people,
would play the game, which was somewhat similar to today´s soccer. The
winning team won the argument…. By the end of the 15th century, the
Taíno were well organized into five political units called kacikazgos
and were considered to have been on the verge of moving from a nation to
nation-state. Estimates based on recent archaeological and demographic
research indicate there were probably several million Taíno living on
the island at this time.
When Columbus crossed the
Atlantic with his crew of Spaniards, he made stops on what are now known
as the islands of the Bahamas and Cuba before landing on the island he
named Hispaniola--the Taíno called it Kiskeya, Haití, and Bohío (there
were several different indigenous tribes and nations on the island, each
with its own language, although Taíno was predominant). It was
Hispaniola that got the Spaniards excited for several reasons. Columbus'
journal is full of descriptions indicating how beautiful the island
paradise was, including high, forested mountains and large river
valleys. He described the Taíno as very peaceful, generous, and
cooperative with the Europeans, and as a result, the Europeans saw the
Taíno as easy targets to conquer. In addition, they saw the Taíno had
gold ornaments and jewelry from the deposits of gold found in
Hispaniola's rivers. So after a month or so of feasting and exploring
the northern coast of Hispaniola, Columbus hurried back to Spain to
announce his successful discovery--but he had lost his flagship and had
to leave many of his crewmen behind.
Spanish, French and Haitian Conquests
On Christmas Eve 1492, after
returning from two days of partying with their Taíno hosts,
Columbus'
flagship, the Santa Maria, ran afoul on a reef a few miles east of
present-day Cap Haitien, after the entire crew, except for a 12-year-old
boy, had fallen asleep. With the help of the Taínos, they were able to
salvage all of the ship's valuables, but the ship itself was lost.
Before departing, Columbus ordered a small fortress built from the
flagship´s timbers and left behind a group of 39 of his crewmen to
collect gold until his return. He named this settlement Fortalesa La
Navidad ("Fort Christmas").
Within a short time after
Columbus' departure, the Spanish settlers began fighting amongst
themselves, with some even killing one another. They deeply offended the
Taínos by raping their wives and sisters and forcing both men and women
to work as their servants. After several months of this abuse, a kacike
by the name of Caonabó attacked the settlement and killed the Spanish
settlers. When Columbus returned to the island with a large expedition
the following January, he was shocked to find his men all dead and the
fort burned to the ground.
The first permanent European
settlement, Isabella, was founded in 1493, on the north coast of the
island, not far from where Puerto Plata is now. From there the Spaniards
could exploit the gold in the Cibao Valley, a short distance away, in
the interior of the country.
The Spaniards brought horses and dogs, and
combined with their armor and iron weapons, as well as their invisible
allies, disease germs against which the Taíno had no immunities, the
Taíno were unable to resist for long. An expeditionary force was sent to
capture Caonabó and another to put down a unified force of thousands of
warriors at the site today known as Santo Cerro, after which the Taíno
were forced into hard labor, panning for gold under conditions that were
repressive and deplorable.
Columbus' brother, Bartholomew,
was appointed governor while Christopher continued his explorations in
the Caribbean region. After the discovery of gold on the island´s
southern coast, Bartholomew founded the city of Santo Domingo in 1496.
The Spaniards were jealous of the Columbus brothers' (Italian)
leadership and so began accusing them of mismanagement when reporting
back to Spain. These complaints had them relieved of their positions and
Christopher and his two brothers were brought back to Spain in chains.
Once there, it became evident that most of the accusations against them
had been grossly exaggerated and Queen Isabella ordered their release.
Their successor as governor of
the new colony, Nicolas Ovando, of Spain, decided to take action to
"pacify" the Taíno once and for all. He arranged for Anacaona, the
widely respected Taíno kacika ("chieftess" or "queen"), the widow of
Caonabó, to organize a feast, supposedly to welcome the new governor to
the island. When 80-plus of the island's kacikes were assembled in
Anacaona's large wooden caney ("palace") near the site of today's Port
au Prince, in Haití, the Spanish soldiers surrounded it and set it on
fire. Those who were not killed immediately were brutally tortured to
death. After a mock trial in Santo Domingo, Anacaona was also hanged.
Ovando ordered a similar campaign to kill all the Taíno kacikes in the
eastern part of the island. With few remaining Taíno leaders, future
resistance from the Taíno was virtually eliminated. It was a pattern
that Spaniards carried into the rest of the Americas.
Unlike Europeans, Africans, and
Asians (who had exchanged diseases for centuries along with commercial
goods), the remaining Taíno did not have immunities to the diseases that
the Spaniards and their animals carried to the Americas. Forced into
brute labor and unable to take time to engage in agricultural activities
in order to feed themselves, famine accelerated the death rate. To
escape from the Spaniards, some Taíno adopted the tactic of abandoning
their villages and burning their crops. They fled to less hospitable
regions of the island, forming cimarrón ("runaway") colonies, or fled to
other islands and even to the mainland. Smallpox was introduced to the
island in late 1518 and the indigenous death rate accelerated. After 25
years of Spanish occupation, there were fewer than 50,000 Taíno
remaining in the Spanish-dominated parts of the island. Within another
generation, the survivors had nearly all become biologically mixed with
Spaniards, Africans, or other mixed-blood people--had become the
tripartite people today known as Dominicans. Some modern historians have
classified the acts of the Spaniards against the Taíno as genocide.
In the first decade of the 1500s,
one of the Taíno kacikes, Hatuey, escaped to Cuba, where he organized
armed resistance against the Spanish invaders. After a brave but uneven
struggle, he was captured and burned alive. As the flames leaped
upwards, a priest attempted to convert him to Christianity o that Hatuey
could go to Heaven. Hatuey asked if there were Spaniards in Heaven, and
when the priest answered, "Yes," Hatuey refused his blessing. The most
successful resistance against the Spaniards took place on Hispaniola
from 1519 to 1534, after the Taíno population had been almost completely
decimated. This occurred when several thousand Taínos escaped their
captivity and followed their leader Enriquillo to the mountains of
Bahoruco, in the south-central part of the country, near the present
border with Haiti. It was here, after raiding Spanish plantations and
defeating Spanish patrols for 14 years, that the very first truce
between an Amer-Indian chief and a European monarch was negotiated.
Enriquillo and his followers were all pardoned and given their own town
and charter.
By 1515 the Spaniards realized
that the gold deposits of Hispaniola were becoming exhausted. Shortly
thereafter, Hernándo Cortés and his small retinue of soldiers made their
astonishing conquest of Mexico, with its fabulous riches of silver.
Almost overnight the colony on Hispaniola, which was usually called
Santo Domingo after its capital city, was abandoned and only a few
thousand "Spanish" settlers remained behind (many of whom were the
offspring of Spanish fathers and Taíno mothers). Columbus' introduction
of cattle and pigs to the island had multiplied rapidly, so the
remaining inhabitants turned their attention to raising livestock to
supply Spanish ships passing by the island en route to the richer
colonies on the American mainland. Hispaniola's importance as a colony
became increasingly minimized.
By the middle of the 17th
century, the island of Tortuga, located to the west of Cap Haitien, had
been settled by smugglers, run-away indentured servants, and members of
crews of various European ships. In addition to capturing livestock on
Hispaniola to sell for their leather, Tortuga became the headquarters
for the pirates of the Caribbean, who predominantly raided Spanish
treasure ships. This area became the recruiting grounds for expeditions
mounted by many notorious pirates, including the famous British pirate
Henry Morgan.
The French, envious of Spain's
possessions in the Americas, sent colonists to settle Tortuga and the
northwestern coast of Hispaniola, which the Spaniards had totally
abandoned by 1603 (under royal mandate, the island's governor, Osorio,
forcibly moved all Spaniards to a line south and east of today's San
Juan de Maguana). In order to domesticate the pirates, the French
supplied them with women who had been taken from prisons, accused of
prostitution and thieving. The western third of Hispaniola became a
French possession called Saint Domingue in 1697, and over the next
century developed into what became, by far, one of the richest colonies
in the world. The wealth of the colony derived predominantly from cane
sugar. Large plantations were worked by hundreds of thousands of African
slaves who were forcibly imported to the island.
Inspired by events taking place
in France during the French Revolution and by disputes between whites
and mulattos in Saint Domingue, a slave revolt broke out in the French
colony in 1791, and was eventually led by a French Black man by the name
of Toussaint L'ouverture. Since Spain had ceded the Spanish colony of
Santo Domingo to France in 1795, in the Treaty of Basilea, Toussaint
L'Ouverture and his followers claimed the entire island.
Although L'Ouverture and his
successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, succeeded in re-establishing order
and renewing the economy of Saint Domingue, which had been badly
devastated, the new leader in France, Napoleon Bonaparte, could not
accept having France's richest colony governed by a Black man.
Succumbing to the complaints of former colonists who had lost their
plantations in the colony, a large expedition was mounted to conquer the
Blacks and re-establish slavery. Led by Napoleon's brother-in-law,
General Leclerc, the expedition turned into a disaster. The Black army
definitively defeated the French, and the Blacks declared their
independence on January 1, 1804, establishing the Republic of Haiti on
the western third of the island of Hispaniola.
The French retained control of
the eastern side of the island, however, and then in 1809 returned this
portion to Royal Spanish rule. The Spaniards not only tried to
re-establish slavery in Santo Domingo, but many of them also mounted
raiding expeditions into Haiti to capture Blacks and enslave them as
well. Due to the neglect of the Spanish authorities, the colonists of
Santo Domingo, under the leadership of José Núñez de Cáceres, proclaimed
what came to be called the Ephemeral Independence. In 1822, fearful the
French would mount another expedition from Spanish Santo Domingo to
re-establish slavery, as they had threatened to do, Haiti's President
Jean-Pierre Boyer sent an army that invaded and took over the eastern
portion of Hispaniola. Boyer once again abolished slavery and
incorporated Santo Domingo into the Republic of Haiti.
For the next 22 years the whole
island of Hispaniola was unified under Haitian control--Dominicans call
the period "The Haitian Occupation." Due to their loss of political and
economic control, the former Spanish ruling class deeply resented the
occupation. During the late 1830s, an underground resistance group, La
Trinitaria, was organized under the leadership of Juan Pablo Duarte.
After multiple attacks on the Haitian army, and because of internal
discord among the Haitians, the Haitians eventually retreated.
Independence of the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola was officially
declared on February 27, 1844, and the name República Dominicana
(Dominican Republic) was adopted.
The Trinitaria leaders of the
move for Dominican independence almost immediately encountered political
opposition from within, and in six months were ousted from power. From
this time on the Dominican Republic was almost constantly under the rule
of caudillos, strong military leaders who ruled the country as if it
were their personal fiefdom. Over the next 70 years, the Dominican
Republic had multiple outbreaks of civil war and was characterized by
political instability and economic chaos.
For the next quarter of a
century, leadership seesawed between that of General Pedro Santana and
General Buenaventura Báez, whose armies continuously fought each other
for political control. In an effort to maintain some type of stability,
the two military leaders and their armies resorted to outside
assistance. In 1861, General Pedro Santana invited Spain to return and
take over its former colony. After a short period of mismanagement by
Spain, the Dominicans realized their mistake and forced the Spaniards
out so they could restore the Republic. Another attempt was made for
stability when Dominicans invited the United States to take over a
decade later. Although U.S. President Grant supported the request, it
was defeated by the U.S. Congress.
During the 19th century, the
country's economy shifted from ranching to other sources of revenue. In
the southwestern region, a new industry arose with the cutting down and
exporting of precious woods like mahogany, oak, and guayacán. In the
northern plains and valleys around Santiago, industry focused on growing
tobacco for some of the world's best cigars, and on coffee.
In 1882, General Ulysses Heureux,
known as "Lilis," came into power. His brutal dictatorship consisted of
a corrupt regime that maintained power by violent repression of his
opponents. Lilis handled the country's affairs so poorly that it
regularly rocked back and forth between economic crisis and currency
devaluations. Following his assassination in 1899, several individuals
came to power, only to be rapidly overthrown by their political
opponents, and the country's internal situation continuously degenerated
into chaos.
Around the turn of the century,
the sugar industry was revived, and so many Americans came to the
Dominican Republic to buy plantations that they came to dominate this
vital sector of the economy. In 1916, Americans, wanting to expand their
influence and power in the Dominican Republic, used the First World War
as an excuse to bring in U.S. Marines to "protect it" against
vulnerability to large European powers such as Germany. They had used
this argument just prior to send U.S. Marines to occupy Haiti.
The U.S. occupation of the
Dominican Republic (called the "intervention" in U.S. history books)
lasted 8 years, and from the very beginning the Americans took complete
control. They ordered the disbanding of the Dominican Army and forced
the population to disarm. A puppet government was installed and obliged
to obey orders from the occupying U.S. Marine commanders. A re-modeling
of the legal structure took place in order to benefit American
investors, allowing them to control ever greater sectors of the economy,
and remove customs and import barriers for any American products being
brought into the Dominican Republic. Although many Dominican businessmen
experienced losses due to these changes, the political violence was
eliminated and many improvements in the Dominican Republic's
infrastructure and educational system were introduced.
Trujillo, The Dictator
One of the changes the Americans
made was to establish and train a new army, which had previously been
done in next-door Haiti. Their reasoning was that an internally trained
army would maintain law, order, and public security. In both the
Dominican Republic and Haiti, the end result was to shift power away
from civilians to the military. During the time of the American
occupation, the Quartermaster of the new Dominican Army was a former
telegraph clerk by the name of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. This
unscrupulous strongman utilized his powerful position to amass an
enormous personal fortune from embezzlement activities, initially
involving the procurement of military supplies. Although the Dominican
Republic had its first relatively free elections after U.S. forces left
in 1924, within a short time Trujillo was able to block any government
reform actions, and in 1930 he took complete control of the country´s
political power.
Using the Army as his enforcer,
Trujillo wasted no time in setting up a repressive dictatorship and
organized a vast network of spies to eliminate any potential opponents.
His henchmen did not hesitate to use intimidation, torture, or
assassination of political foes to terrify and oppress the population to
ensure his rule and amass his fortune. Before long he consolidated his
power to such a degree that he began to treat the Dominican Republic as
his own personal kingdom. He was so arrogant and confident that, after
just six years at the head of government, Trujillo changed the name of
the capital city from Santo Domingo (which name had existed for over 400
years), to Cuidad Trujillo (Trujillo City).
Trujillo received American
support of his leadership because he offered generous and favorable
conditions to American businessmen wanting to invest in the Dominican
Republic. More importantly to the U.S., after World War II, Trujillo
showed his political support of the U.S.A.'s stand against the evils of
communism. By 1942 Trujillo even arranged to repay all of the foreign
debt due to the U.S., which had for decades limited the Dominican
government´s economic initiatives. But after several years of
confiscating ownership of the majority of the most important domestic
businesses, he began to take control of major American-owned industries
too, in particular, the very important sugar industry. These take-over
activities, combined with Trujillo's meddling in the internal affairs of
neighboring countries, led to increasing U.S. disenchantment with the
Dominican Republic's dictator.
One of Trujillo's most notorious
acts was committed against the Dominican Republic's neighbor, the
Republic of Haiti. For centuries there had been a lack of clear
definition of the border between the two countries--a source of
aggravation and conflict for both. Not only had the border area become a
nest for incessant smuggling activities, but also thousands of Haitians
had begun to settle the lands around the ambiguous frontier. Trujillo
had never hidden his racist ideas about the "inferiority and
unattractiveness" of the black-skinned Haitians, so in 1937, after first
negotiating an internationally lauded border agreement with Haiti's
president, he ordered his army to oversee the massacre of all Haitians
on the Dominican side of the border. It is estimated that as many as
20,000 unarmed men, women, and children, many of whom had lived in the
Dominican Republic for generations, were slaughtered in a bloodbath of
violence. Most of this bloodshed took place around the border town of
Dajabón and the aptly named Massacre River.
In an attempt to deflect
international criticism of this horrendous massacre, Trujillo offered to
accept into the Dominican Republic as many as 100,000 Jewish refugees
from Nazi Germany. But when it came to action, a total of only 600 or so
Jewish families were offered refuge in 1942, settling in what is known
today as the El Batey section of Sosua (about 20 kms east of Puerto
Plata). Of these families, only a dozen or so remained permanently in
the area, although they contributed greatly to the region´s economic
development.
Trujillo remained in power for
more than 30 years, but toward the end of his reign he succeeded in
alienating even his most avid former supporters, including the U.S. The
final straws came when he ordered the assassination of three
upper-middle class sisters—Patricia, Minerva, and María Teresa
Mirabal—who were members of the June 14th Movement to topple his
dictatorship, and when he was linked with an abortive assassination
attempt against Venezuelan President Rómulo Bétancourt. On May 30, 1961,
Trujillo's personal automobile was ambushed upon returning from a
rendezvous with his mistress, and the dictator met a violent end. At his
death, he was one of the richest men in the world, having amassed a
personal fortune estimated to be in excess of $500 million U.S. dollars,
including ownership of most of the large industries in the country and a
major sector of productive agricultural land.
Modern History
After Trujillo's assassination,
his vice-president at the time, Dr. Joaquín Balaguer, took control of
the presidency. A year and a half later, Juan Bosch, of the Dominican
Revolutionary Party (PRD), was elected president. Bosch's socialist
program was judged to be too extreme by the U.S., who were then paranoid
about the possible spread of communism after Fidel Castro's successful
revolution in Cuba, and because the Dominican Army had maintained
Trujillo in power for so many years. The army's proponents maneuvered to
block every one of Bosch's legislative reforms, and only nine months
later they engineered a coup d'état to oust him from the presidency.
The following two years saw
political and economic chaos in the Dominican Republic. This culminated
when the disatisfied working classes, allied with a dissident army
faction, rose in rebellion and took action to re-establish
constitutional order on April 24, 1965. U.S. President Lyndon Johnson
ordered the U.S. Marines to occupy the Dominican Republic (again), this
time under the pretext that communists were responsible for the
political uprising.
A year later, former leader Dr.
Joaquín Balaguer was elected president once again, with U.S. help, in
what was acknowledged by all observers to have been a rigged election.
Balaguer remained in power for the next 12 years, winning re-election in
both 1970 and 1974. In both instances the opposition parties maintained
that the elections would again be rigged, so they did not even nominate
candidates to participate in the electoral races.
In the elections of 1978, the
Dominican citizens showed their desire for change by electing Dr.
Antonio Guzmán of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). Balaguer and
his supporters had become aware of the pro-PRD movement during the
campaign and election, and unwilling to cede defeat, attempted to put an
end to the vote counting in order to maintain Balaguer in the
presidency. But under international pressure, particularly President
Jimmy Carter's government in the U.S., Balaguer was forced to admit
defeat and step down.
Just before Guzmán's 4-year term
ended in 1982, he committed suicide, allegedly after becoming aware that
close family members were involved in massive corruption and
embezzlement of government funds. Dr. Salvador Jorge Blanco, of the same
political party, replaced Guzmán as president. Blanco continued in the
time-honored Dominican tradition of rewarding family members, close
friends, and political supporters with lucrative governmental posts. His
term in the Dominican Republic Presidency was, in the end, marred by
allegations of massive corruption and misappropriation of government
funds. He was later found guilty of both and convicted to 20 years in
prison.
Thoroughly disillusioned by the
mismanagement and corruption of the leaders of the Dominican
Revolutionary Party (PRD), Dominicans returned to the polls in 1986 to
opt again for Dr. Joaquín Balaguer. Due to divided and disorganized
opposition parties at the next elections in 1990, Balaguer was once
again re-elected. With all of his years as President of the Dominican
Republic, he had become almost as dictatorial as Trujillo.
During this period, the
international community condemned the Dominican government for their
continued exploitation of Haitian braceros (sugar cane workers). It has
been alleged that thousands of these workers were forced to do
backbreaking work for long hours under the hot sun, under the
supervision of armed guards. International observers reported that
laborers were forced to survive in deplorable living conditions. They
were paid only pennies for their toil and were not permitted to leave
their places of employment, conditions that have been likened to
slavery. In June 1991, bowing to international pressure, all of the
Haitian workers were deported. It is suspected that some of these
working and living conditions continue to exist for Haitians in the
Dominican Republic today--thousands of Haitians work in mainly heavy
manual labor and low-paying jobs in the construction and agricultural
industries within the Dominican Republic, jobs scorned by the bulk of
Dominican citizens. Given the chaotic state of the Haitian Republic, it
is understandable that anything offered in the Dominican Republic is
more than welcomed in terms of work and living conditions, for something
is better than nothing.
In 1994, at 88 years of age,
Balaguer once again declared victory in an election that the O.A.S. and
other international observers unanimously agreed had been rigged.
Thousands of names of supporters of his main opponent, José Francisco
Peña Gómez, of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), had been removed
from the voting. In an effort to avoid a major outbreak of violence,
Balaguer and Peña Gómez met and negotiated an agreement whereby Balaguer
promised to remain in power no longer than two years and not to run for
re-election after that. Run-off elections scheduled for May 1996 had
early returns showing Peña Gomez holding a plurality. On July 2, 1996,
Dr. Leonel Fernández and his Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) edged out
Gómez because Balaguer gave his support to help Fernández come from
behind and win with 51% of the vote. According to international
observatory organizations, the election was declared clean. The
Dominicans seemed to accept the vote with little protest and waited,
hoping to see significant government reforms from Fernández.
Leonel Fernandez |
|
Part of Leonel Fernández's
reforms depended on his party gaining a majority in the elections for
the National Assembly in May 1998. A few weeks before the elections were
held, Peña Gómez died of cancer. The Dominican Republic declared a
two-day mourning period to honor the politician who many believed would
have been president had past elections not been tampered with. Election
results in the National Assembly election gave a majority to the Peña
Gómez party, which opposed Fernández's, showing people's shifting
opinions and the beginnings of true democratic elections in the
Dominican Republic.
In 2000, Fernández was voted out
of office in remarkably free and fair elections, particularly by
Dominican standards. Although the country was enjoying its greatest
economic growth and success in its history, voters chose Hipólito Mejía
of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), due to their increasing
distaste over the alleged corruption permeating the Fernández
administration. The election gave Hipólito and his party control of the
executive branch, a majority in the upper house legislature, and near
control of the lower house.
Up until 2001, tourism and
manufacturing sustained the Dominican Republic's economy with an
impressive seven percent average annual growth. Added to the expansion
in these sectors, the Dominican Republic received substantive
remittances from Dominicans living outside the country, the majority of
whom were now living and working in and around New York/New Jersey.
The following two years saw the
hopeful signs exhibited early in Hipólito's administration give way to
political scandal as well as a global recession. In 2003, the Dominican
Republic's third largest private financial institution, Banco
Internacional (Baninter), went into bankruptcy due to enormous fraud
engineered by the bank's owners and administrators. Shortly thereafter,
two other major Dominican banks also declared bankruptcy. The impact on
the Dominican economy was devastating. By January 2004, a mere seven
months after Baninter's collapse, the peso-to-dollar exchange rate had
fallen to 50:1 (down from 16:1, where it had held steady from 1996
through 2002). To make the economic situation even worse, for a time the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) suspended their loans to the
Dominican Republic, citing Hipólito's purchase of two private energy
facilities (which were once owned by the Dominican Republic and sold to
private holders by Fernández during his administration) and spending on
public programs they believed were used solely to boost Hipólito's
reputation with the country's poor. The loans were eventually dispersed
but not before the peso's exchange rate went down even further against
the U.S. dollar.
During Hipólito's time in office,
he orchestrated a constitutional amendment allowing sequential
presidencies (which was previously prohibited), although he vowed
publically over and over that he would not run again in 2004--but he
did. In May 2004, the country's citizens, desperate for a return to
prosperity, and despite having accused his previous administration of
corruption and fraud, again voted in Dr. Leonel Fernández and his
Dominican Liberation Party (PLD). Although all educated Dominicans knew
it would take severe measures and many years to restore the country to
prosperity after the economic chaos of 2003-04, in less than a year it
was clear that the hoped for miracle--a return to the stability,
economic growth, and success their country experienced in the
1990's--was not going to happen. Complaints began to arise, especially
from the resource poor masses who, along with the tiny middle class, are
hardest hit by the new taxes that have been levied to secure and pay
back the billions of dollars in international loans that the Fernández
administration took out to stabilize the country's finances and help
bring about positive change; unfortunately, one of Fernández's most
expensive projects is an underground Metro system for Santo Domingo that
has already cost many times its proposed total and is nowhere near
completion. At least Fernández did manage to stabilize the peso, but
there are accusations that the peso has been pegged artificially high
against the U.S. dollar and that when it falls, the country will again
fall into economic chaos…. Since 2009, the peso has been slowly but
steadily declining in value.
Despite inflation, increasing taxation, growing complaints, and
general strikes called against his administration, Fernández ran again
for the presidency in 2008, promising the country's citizens that the
next time around he would devote more money and energy to education and
the needs of Dominicans in the countryside. So far, Fernández has
managed to avoid the accusations of personal corruption that plagued his
predecessors, but the same cannot be said of those who assist him
within his administration. In 2012,Danilo Medina from the PLD party won the election for the presidency bringing stability in the political and economic arena
Even with its many problems, in
recent decades the Dominican Republic has evolved into a reasonably free
and democratic nation, with a growing middle class. Political
demonstrations take place openly and freely in the streets, and
politicians are able to campaign without being censored. Average
Dominican people are involved in the political arena and the country's
newspapers provide a free and open flow of information for its citizens.
Despite these advancements, the country is still watched over by the
National Police and Army, which tend to act in the interests of the
politicians holding power (although no one in the military can vote).
The threat of force, along with continual widespread corruption among
those in power, need to be overcome before the Dominican Republic can
call itself a true and developed democracy.
Rafael Trujillo (derecha) junto a Anastasio Somoza, en 1952. (W/ikimedia Commons)
Rafael Trujillo junto al presidente haitiano Paul Magloire, en 1951. (Wikimedia Commons)
