Dominican Republic is the country that makes up the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean region. Haiti covers the island’s western end. The Dominican Republic is about 575 miles (925 kilometers) southeast of Miami, Florida. The country is a land of fertile valleys and forested mountains.
Santo Domingo, a busy port city, is the capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic. The country’s name in Spanish, the official language, is Republica Dominicana.
Christopher Columbus landed on Hispaniola in 1492. Some historians believe he is buried on that island in the Columbus Lighthouse in Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo was the first city in the Western Hemisphere that was founded by Europeans and is still inhabited. The Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, which was established in 1538, is the oldest university in the Western Hemisphere.
During much of its history, the Dominican Republic has been ruled by dictators and by other countries. United States troops occupied the country twice in the 1900’s to halt fighting between political groups there.
Government.
A president heads the Dominican Republic. The president appoints a Cabinet. The national legislature consists of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. The people elect the president and legislators to four-year terms. All citizens who are at least 18 years old may vote. Married citizens younger than 18 also may vote.
The Dominican Republic is divided into 10 regions. These regions are subdivided into 31 provinces and one national district—the capital. The president appoints provincial governors and comuna (rural county) leaders. The people elect the leaders of the country’s municipios (townships).
People.
Most Dominicans speak Spanish and follow other ways of life brought to their land from Spain. The early Spanish colonists nearly wiped out the Indigenous (native) Taíno people who lived on the island before the Spaniards arrived. During the colonial period, Europeans brought Africans to Hispaniola and enslaved them. Today, African influence in the Dominican Republic is strong.
About 75 percent of the people have both African and European ancestry. About 10 percent have fully African ancestry, and about 15 percent have fully European ancestry. Some descendants of people who were enslaved in the United States live near Samana Bay in the northeast. A small group of European Jews settled near Puerto Plata in the north about 1940.
Most Dominicans who live in rural areas work on farms. Some own small farms and raise their own food. They sell some of what they raise to buy clothing, household goods, and other items. Other Dominican farmers work for wages on large plantations, especially sugar plantations. Many Dominican farmers live in two-room shacks that have thatched roofs and dirt floors. But small bungalows built by the government are slowly replacing these shacks.
Most city dwellers earn a living as factory workers, government employees, or street vendors. Many of them live in crowded, old Spanish-style apartment buildings. Dominicans dress in much the same way as people in other Western countries.
Dominicans love music that mixes the rhythmic pounding of African drums with such instruments as the accordion, guira (a metal cylinder that the musician plays with a special scraper), and guitar. Dominicans enjoy dancing the merengue, which is the national dance, and the bachata. Merengue and bachata are distinctive styles of music as well as dances.
Most Dominicans are Roman Catholic. Some people who live near the Haitian border practice Vodou (see Vodou).
Children between the ages of 7 and 14 must attend school. The government supplies most of the funds for most schools. Most Dominican adults can read and write.
Land.
Hispaniola is formed by the peaks of two undersea mountain chains, one coming from Cuba and the other from Jamaica. The Dominican Republic is a mountainous land. The Cordillera Central (Central Mountain Range) runs from northwest to southeast through the center of the country. Duarte Peak, which rises 10,417 feet (3,175 meters) above sea level in the Cordillera Central, is the highest point in the Caribbean. The land west of the Cordillera Central is mostly dry and desertlike. Mountains in the west include Sierra de Neiba and the Sierra de Bahoruco. Lake Enriquillo, the lowest point in the Caribbean at 150 feet (46 meters) below sea level, lies between these mountains.
The Cibao lies north of the Cordillera Central. The Cibao is an area of pine-covered slopes and a fertile plain called the Vega Real (Royal Plain). It is the country’s chief agricultural area. The Cordillera Septentrional (Northerly Range) is in the far north.
The eastern end of the Dominican Republic is less mountainous. Most of the country’s sugar cane is grown along the southern coast east of Santo Domingo and in other eastern areas.
The Dominican Republic has a warm, tropical climate all year. Temperatures vary little and seldom go below 60 °F (16 °C) or above 90 °F (32 °C). The country averages about 60 inches (150 centimeters) of rainfall a year. The rainy season lasts from May to November in the south and from December to April in the north. Hurricanes sometimes strike the Dominican Republic.
Economy.
The Dominican Republic has a service-oriented economy. Service industries account for about two-thirds of both the country’s employment and its economic production. Tourism is important to the country’s economy. The country’s tropical weather and beautiful beaches attract millions of tourists each year. Dominicans living overseas contribute much to the economy by sending money to their relatives at home.
Manufacturing is also important to the country’s economy. Cement, clothing, and food are produced for domestic use. Many Dominicans work in free trade zones—that is, industrial areas with factories that produce such products as clothing for export. The United States is the Dominican Republic’s main trading partner.
Most Dominicans live in urban areas, and agriculture has become less important than it once was. However, the country’s broad, fertile plains are heavily farmed to produce avocados, bananas, papayas, pineapples, rice, sugar cane, and tobacco. In the forest-covered mountain foothills, coffee and cacao beans (seeds used to make chocolate) grow in the shade of fruit and mahogany trees. Farmers also raise beef and dairy cattle and chickens.
The Dominican Republic is an important producer of nickel. The country mines clay, copper, gold, gypsum, limestone, and silver as well.
Some radio and television stations are government owned, and others are privately owned. A number of cities, including Santo Domingo, have international airports.
History.
Christopher Columbus landed on Hispaniola on Dec. 6, 1492, on his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere. He ordered Fort Navidad built on the north coast from the ruins of his flagship, the Santa Maria. He returned in 1493 with 1,200 to 1,500 men to seek the island’s gold. Columbus found that the Indigenous people had destroyed the fort and killed the men he had left behind. Thousands of Spanish colonists soon came to Hispaniola. They conquered the Indigenous people and established towns on the north coast. In 1496, they founded La Nueva Isabela (now Santo Domingo).
By the mid-1500’s, the scarcity of gold in Hispaniola sent Spaniards in search of more promising lands. They moved on to Cuba, Mexico, and Peru. Hispaniola had barely 30,000 inhabitants and produced little of value. It was neglected by Spanish trading vessels. Pirates and Dutch, English, and French merchants began trading with the people in the small ports on the northern and western coasts.
In 1606, Spain ordered all Spanish settlers to move to the Santo Domingo area to strengthen the defense of Santo Domingo and increase trade for Spanish merchants there. This plan backfired when non-Spanish settlers moved into the abandoned lands in the interior and on the northern coast. By the Treaty of Aranjuez of 1777, Spain turned over the western third of the island (now Haiti) to France. The French section prospered, but the Spanish section suffered from neglect. Black enslaved people in Haiti, led by Toussaint Louverture and others, rebelled against their French masters and conquered the whole island by 1801. France and Spain recovered their colonies for brief periods after 1801, but the Haitians gained control of the island again in 1822.
Dominican heroes Juan Pablo Duarte, Francisco del Rosario Sanchez, and Ramon Mella led a successful revolt against the Haitians in 1844. From 1861 to 1865, at the Dominicans’ request, Spain governed the country to protect it from the Haitians. Dictator Ulises (Lilis) Heureaux, who ruled the country from 1882 to 1899, left it in debt to several European nations. The United States took over the collection of customs duties in the Dominican Republic from 1905 to 1941 and used the money to pay the debts. From 1916 to 1924, U.S. Marines occupied the Dominican Republic to keep peace between rival political groups and to prevent anarchy (complete disorder) in the area during a critical time in world affairs.
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina seized power following a revolt in 1930. He ruled the Dominican Republic harshly for 30 years, allowing little freedom and imprisoning or killing many of his opponents. Trujillo carried out some beneficial projects, such as rebuilding Santo Domingo after a destructive hurricane in 1930. He ruled efficiently, and the country prospered economically. But the people gained little or no benefits, because all the profits were channeled to the Trujillo family. In 1937, Trujillo ordered the murder of ethnic Haitians in the Dominican Republic. Thousands of Haitians were killed in what became known as the Haitian Massacre of 1937.
Conspirators shot and killed Trujillo in 1961. A power struggle then began among the military, the upper class, and people who favored democracy or Communism. Juan Bosch, an exiled writer and popular foe of Trujillo, promised land and economic aid to the people. He was elected president in 1962, but military and upper class leaders ousted him in 1963. They charged him with allowing too many Communists in the government. Military leaders then formed a three-member junta (council) to govern.
Rebels who supported Bosch tried to seize power in 1965. They captured parts of Santo Domingo, but met strong military opposition. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic in April 1965 to maintain order. Some members of the Organization of American States also sent troops. A truce was arranged in May 1965. The last foreign troops left the country in September 1966.
In June 1966, Dominican voters elected Joaquin Balaguer president over Juan Bosch. Balaguer had served as president from 1960 to 1962, chiefly during the Trujillo dictatorship. Balaguer was reelected in 1970 and 1974. In 1978, Antonio Guzmán was elected president. In 1979, a hurricane killed more than 2,000 people in the Dominican Republic, and about 200,000 others lost their homes. The hurricane caused an estimated $1 billion worth of property damage.
In 1982, the voters elected Salvador Jorge Blanco president. Guzmán died a month before he was to leave office. Vice President Jacobo Majluta then served as president until Blanco’s term began.
Balaguer again served as president from 1986 to 1996, when he stepped down following claims of electoral fraud. He was succeeded by Leonel Fernández Reyna of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD). Balaguer ran for president again in 2000 but lost to Hipólito Mejía Dominguez of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). Under Mejía, the country suffered a financial crisis. Former president Leonel Fernández was reelected in 2004 and 2008. The economy improved significantly under Fernández. In May 2004, flash floods from torrential rains caused widespread destruction on Hispaniola. About 680 people were killed or reported missing in the Dominican Republic.
Danilo Medina of the PLD was elected president in 2012 and 2016. In 2020, during a worldwide outbreak of the disease COVID-19, voters elected businessman Luis Rodolfo Abinader as president. Abinader belonged to the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM). He was reelected in 2024.
