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The history of the Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic history dates back to
1492 when it was explored on Columbus' first voyage. He named it La
Espanola and his son Diego was its first viceroy. The capital, Santo
Domingo, was founded in 1496 and is the oldest settlement in the western
Hemisphere.
The country has had a stormy history with many different countries wanting
to own a piece of it. It was originally a colony of Spain, but Spain ceded
the colony to France in 1795 and this lasted until 1801 when the Haitian
blacks conquered it. Then in 1808, the people revolted and captured Santo
Domingo the next year, thus setting up the first republic. Spain regained
control in 1814, but by 1822 they were overthrown by the Haitians again.
In 1844, the Haitians were thrown out and the Dominican Republic was born.
It would stay that way as a province of Spain until 1865. President
Buenaventura Baez was faced with economic shambles and tried to have the
country annexed to the US, but the US refused. This continued until 1934
when the US finally sent in a contingent of marines.
A sergeant in the Dominican Army, trained by the marines, overthrew
Horacio Vasquez in 1930 and established a dictatorship that lasted until
his assassination in 1961. Juan Bosch, of the leftist Dominican
Revolutionary Party, became the first democratically elected president in
four decades. This lasted until 1963, when Bosch was ousted and a military
backed civilian was installed. Leftists rebelled against the new regime in
1965 and then the US sent in marine troops again. In 1966, Joaquin
Balaguer won the leadership of the country in a free election. In 1982,
Balaguer was defeated, but was again elected as president in May 1986.
In 1996, the US raised Leonel Fernandez secured more than 51 % of the vote
with the help of Balaguer. He was praised for selling state home
enterprises and other things, but was condemned for not fighting the
corruption and alleviating poverty. In August of 2000, Hipolito Mejia was
elected amid popular discontent over power outages. In 2001, the army was
deployed to fight crime in the major cities and in 2004 Fernandez was
again elected with 57 % of the vote and vowed to rescue the country from
it's current economic woes.
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