Dominican Republic
History
Do you know about the Dominican Republic History?
I know that reading about the Dominican Republic history it
is not absolutely necessary to travel there, but don't you think that it would
be so much better if you know a little about the country you will be
visiting? If you don't want to read the entire history, then you have the
choice to read the following summary. Remember : knowledge is power!
The point of origin in the Dominican Republic
History can be viewed when the Spanish discovered the island La Española
(the island consist of
Dominican Republic and Haiti) in December 1492. The man
leading the expedition was named Christopher Columbus. In that time, the island
was already populated by the Taínos Indians which greeted the Spanish in
a very friendly manner. At the time there was approximately 600,000 of them. By
the way, the
word Taínos meant “good” in their language and the island was named was
Quisqueya.
After his arrival, Christopher Columbus named the island
La Española
and after he saw the way the peaceful natives behaved, he got enticed by the
island even more. In his chronicles he talked about the high mountains, great
valleys and beautiful natural resources the island had. After
exploring part of the island he noticed the gold deposits in the river which got
his attention even more. On Christmas Eve, 1492, the Santa Maria ship crashed on
a reef a couples of miles east of Cap Haitien.
Continuing with the Dominican Republic History, after salvaging what they could they were forced to
create a small settlement called “el fortín de navidad”. He left a small crew of
his people there before returning to Spain when he came back he found that the
settlement has been destroyed by the Indians. The cause was that the crew he
left started abusing the Indians until they got tired of it.
The capital of Dominican Republic is Santo Domingo,
and was created in 1496. It is the oldest
European settlement in the Western Hemisphere. Spain gave the territory to
France in 1795, and Haitian under Toussaint L'Ouverture conquered
it in 1801. In 1808, the people revolted and captured Santo Domingo the next
year, setting up the first republic.
Then, Spain regained title to the colony in 1814. In 1821 The
rule of Spain was overthrown, but in 1822 the colony was conquered again by the
Haitian. In 1844 the Haitian were thrown out, and the Dominican Republic was
established, headed by Pedro Santana. Uprisings and Haitian attacks led Santana
to make the country a province of Spain from 1861 to 1865.
After a couple of years a man named Rafael Trujillo took
control of the Dominican republic. He ruled the Dominican republic for 31 years
(1930-1961) with the blessing of the united states
government. He committed many crimes and tortured a lot of people. He was
assassinated in 1961 by gunmen hired by the CIA after committing many mistakes
like the massacre in the border of Dominican Republic and Haiti. After
Trujillo's assassination, his vice-president at the time, Dr. Joaquín Balaguer,
took control of the presidency. A Little time after that Juan Bosch was elected
by the people to be president.
After that chaos started to reign once again as unsatisfied
people started blaming the government for their life conditions and a rebel army
started to be formed. Seeing this the president of the united states Lyndon B.
Johnson sent a military force to reestablish order. A little afterward the
president Juan Bosch abandoned the presidency.
In the next years, many presidents came to power. The corruption of
the government and the lack of interest to improve the working conditions of the
poor citizens kept being one of the main concerns year after year. In 1996 Leonel Fernandez was elected
president of Dominican Republic in the hope of that his reforms would
finally help the people to achieve what they always wanted.
In 2000, even when the country was experiencing the greatest
economic growth in their history, Leonel Fernandez was voted out under the
suspicion of corruption. In 2004 , Leonel Fernandez returned again the presidency.
Hopefully the reelection of Leonel
Fernandez will help the country to increase again the economy, and also for
the workers to achieve a better way of life.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this summary of the
Dominican Republic History!
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