History of the Dominican Republic

History of the Spanish colony Hispaniola (until 1844)

For the history of the pre-statehood area of ​​the Dominican Republic, see the main article: Hispaniola .

First republic

On February 27, 1844, Santo Domingo separated from Haiti and became independent from the Spanish crown. The country was named Dominican Republic .

Juan Pablo Duarte , who together with Ramón Mella and Francisco Sánchez founded the organization "La Trinitaria" in 1838, which campaigned for the country's independence from Spain, but who had to go into exile during the occupation of his country by Haiti, was offered the presidency. However, he sought free elections, but was again forced into exile by Pedro Santana . Santana became the first president and remained so until 1861.

From 1849 to 1859 attempts to recapture Haiti were fought off in bitter wars.

Renewed Spanish rule (1861 to 1865)

From 1861 to 1865, Pedro Santana returned the republic to Spanish administration to ward off new Haitian attacks. Santana became captain general of the again Spanish province of Santo Domingo. In 1863 a restoration war began to regain statehood.

Second Republic (1865 to 1916)

The Caribbean at the end of the 19th century

Dominican Republic loan dated 1893

On March 3, 1865, there was renewed separation from Spain and the final restoration of the Dominican Republic's statehood. In 1871 the attempt to join the republic to the United States failed due to a narrow vote in the US Congress. In 1874 a peace treaty was signed with Haiti.

From 1882 to 1899, Ulises Heureaux ruled the state as dictator. In 1899 he was murdered. The national debt had reached at that time already fantastic proportions and still continued to grow. Ruinous conditions and numerous changes of government followed. In 1905 and 1907 the United States finally intervened in the military, which took control of the country in a convention signed in Santo Domingo on February 8, 1907. This control was lifted in 1940.

American occupation (1916 to 1924)

Dominican Republic. Marines in action during the American protectorate. 1920s

During the US military intervention in the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924 , the United States Marine Corps acted as the occupation force. Following the example of the Gendarmerie d'Haïti , the Marine Corps founded the Guardia Nacional Dominicana , which was used together with the Marines to counter insurgency against the so-called gavilleros in the east of the country. The foreign debt fell, the infrastructure was expanded; for the first time there were roads connecting all regions. Around 1920 the republic had around 1 million inhabitants.

Third Republic (1924 to 1930)

The American occupation was followed by several years of democratic governance.

Trujillo dictatorship (1930 to 1961)

Metal sign with political propaganda (1955): Trujillo is a national symbol in this home

The democratic government was overthrown in 1930 by Army General Rafael Trujillo , who ruled the country with a hard hand in the years that followed. In 1942 women's suffrage was introduced. Trujillo's attempts at modernization failed; however, mismanagement and corruption led to the island's economic decline. In 1960, the Organization of American States (OAS) imposed sanctions on the country for Trujillo's involvement in the attempt to assassinate Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt .

From late September to mid-October 1937, Trujillo had an ethnic cleansing carried out in which - according to the best possible estimate - around 18,000 Haitian immigrants were murdered. The projections are based on reports that a. with the help of the Jesuits of Dajabón crossed the border to Ouanaminthe and from there to the Bishop of Cap-Haïtien, Jean-Marie Jan. According to other estimates, the Dominicans murdered between 9,000 and 20,000 Haitians. The massacre came to be known as el corte .

Jewish emigration

In 1938 Trujillo opened his country to Jewish emigrants from Europe after an international refugee conference in Evian could not agree on which countries should take in the roughly 300,000 German Jews who had fled Hitler's Germany. Trujillo offered to settle on the north coast, around the municipality of Sosúa . Trujillo wanted to take in a total of 100,000 people, but in fact only around 800 Jews came from Europe by the end of 1941, when the USA entered the war. They also included the poet Hilde Domin, who died in 2006, and her then better-known husband Erwin Walter Palm . Trujillo did not act on humanitarian grounds. The dictator, who had gained power in the country with the help of Washington after the unrest and in return supported American economic interests in the region, was a racist. With the help of the emigrants he hoped to “whiten” the population of his country. He also speculated on the gratitude and support of supposedly wealthy, influential Jews in the United States. The refugees who came to his country initially had no idea of ​​this. In many cases they were Germans who had found asylum in France by 1939 . In the spring of 1939, the French authorities refused to extend their residence permits to many of these Jewish emigrants, without giving any reason.

A specially founded organization, the "Dominican Republic Settlement Association" (Dorsa), bought the dictator's fallow land of a former banana plantation near Sosúa . The Dorsa recruited refugee Jews from all over Europe and collected donations to organize the diplomatically complicated and also expensive trip around the world. She wanted to set up a model agricultural project, the first kibbutz in the Caribbean, which succeeded after many economic setbacks. In 1942 a flourishing small town had emerged. The lack of women was a major social problem, as many settlers hardly spoke any Spanish and, for religious reasons, did not want to marry a Dominican woman.

After the end of the Second World War , most of the refugees emigrated to the USA or Israel , only a few returned to Germany. However, there is still a small Jewish community in Sosúa today.

Chaos and Military Government (1961-1965)

At the beginning of 1962, a transitional government took over the office of Joaquín Balaguer and Rafael Filiberto Bonelly . In 1963 Juan Bosch was elected president, but was deposed in the same year by a military junta. This in turn was relieved of political power in 1965 by other army units with US support in Operation Power Pack .

Fourth Republic (since 1965)

This unstable political situation after Trujillo's death was brought to an end by the invasion of US and OAS troops in 1965. Balaguer, elected in 1966 with the support of the USA, ruled until 1978. His successor in the presidency was Antonio Guzmán Fernández , who committed suicide in 1982 on charges of corruption. His successor in office was Salvador Jorge Blanco , who, however, lost the office to his predecessor Balaguer in 1986. The 1990 and 1994 presidential elections confirmed Balaguer in office, but the latter were viewed as rigged. Under national and international pressure, Balaguer moved the next presidential election forward to 1996. This won Leonel Fernández . Hipólito Mejía won the 2000 ballot against the re-running Balaguer. Mejía gave the office to Fernández in 2004. Even two years after coming back to power, President Fernández met with great approval from the population with his “Safe Quarter” program, which provided for a larger police presence in the slums. In parliament, however, his Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD) failed to win a majority in the 2006 elections. He therefore had to rule against an opposition majority from the social democratic Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD) and the right-wing conservative Partido Reformista Social Cristiano (PRSC). In 2012 Leonel Fernández, who was not allowed to run again after two terms in office, was replaced by his party colleague Danilo Medina .

literature

• Lester D. Langley: The Banana wars. United States intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934 . Revised edition. Dorsey Press, Chicago IL 1988, ISBN 0-256-07020-2 . Originally published under the title The banana wars. An inner history of American empire, 1900–1934 . University of Kentucky Press, Lexington 1983, ISBN 0-8131-1496-9 .
• Hans-Ulrich Dillmann , Susanne Heim: Vanishing Point Caribbean - Jewish Emigration in the Dominican Republic . Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2009.
• Carsten Holm: Expulsion into paradise. Jews in exile in the Caribbean . In: Der Spiegel ONLINE from December 26, 2006. (About: Kurt Luis Hess)
• Frauke Gewecke : The will to the nation. Nation building and drafting of national identity in the Dominican Republic . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-89354-068-7 .
• Mario Vargas Llosa : The Goat Festival

Web links

• DR Portal: All Presidents of the Dominican Republic

Commons : History of the Dominican Republic  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.fullbooks.com/Santo-Domingo6.html
2. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 438
3. ^ Frank Moya Pons: The Dominican Republic since 1930 . In: The Cambridge History of Latin América , Vol. 7: Latin America since 1930: Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990, ISBN 0-521-24518-4 , pp. 509-543, here p. 517.
4. ^ Jean-Marie Jan: Collecta pour l'histoire du diocèse du Cap-Haïtien , Vol. 4: Diocèse du Cap-Haïtien. Documents 1929-1960 . Simon, Rennes 1967, p. 82.
5. ^ Nick Davis: The massacre that marked Haiti-Dominican Republic ties. In: BBC News . October 13, 2012, accessed November 20, 2012 .