1. The Dominican Republic By: Maggie Frost

2. History • The Dominican Republic occupies 2/3 of the Island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles. • Around A.D. 600, the Taíno Indians , a late Stone Age culture, arrived on the island • Christopher Columbus reached the island on his first voyage, on December 5, 1492, naming it La Española • In 1493, Christopher Columbus came back to the island on his second voyage and founded the first Spanish colony in the New World, the city of Isabella • In 1496, his brother Bartholomew Columbus established the settlement of Santo Domingo de Guzmán on the southern coast, which became the new capital • Sugar Cane was introduced to Hispaniola from the Canary Islands, and the first sugar mill in the New World was established in 1516, on Hispaniola • The first major slave revolt in the Americas occurred in Santo Domingo during 1522, when enslaved Muslims of the Wolof nation led an uprising in the sugar plantation of admiral Don Diego Colon, son of Christopher Columbus.

3. Government! • The country first gained its independence in February of 1844, when it broke away from Haiti, and officially regained it – after one of its leaders gave it back to Spain – in 1865. • the Dominican Republic (República Dominicana) is a republic (or “representative democracy,” • Under its constitution, the Dominican Republic is governed by three independent branches, much like the United States: an executive branch (consisting of an elected president and vice president and a cabinet appointed by the president); a legislative branch with an elected bicameral Congress (consisting of the 32-member Senate and the 150-member Chamber of Deputies); and a judicial branch with judges chosen by the Senate. The Judiciary is headed by the Supreme Court of Justice, a 16-member body appointed by a bipartisan National Judicial Council. • The country is divided into 31 provinces and the National District of Santo Domingo, the capital, where the president’s official residence is the National Palace • Each province is headed by a governor appointed by the country’s president. There are also 124 municipal districts governed by elected mayors and municipal councils • The current president is Leonel Fernandez

4. Weird Stuff In part, some Dominicans have nicknames – or odd variations in name spelling – to ward off evil spirits that might be cast upon them by a witch doctor. (A name like Michael, for instance, might be spelled “Mycul; a girl might be named “Niurcanis.”) Dominicans who believe in witch doctors think that if the evildoer doesn’t know the correct spelling of a name, then the spell can’t be successfully cast

5. Society • Dominican society is highly stratified, with social standing largely based on economic class, and sometimes race. • Unfortunately, Dominicans as a group seem to suffer from a shame of material poverty • Both fabulous wealth and grinding poverty are on prominent display in the Dominican Republic, and the middle class has been shrinking of late. The fear of appearing poor – or, worse, being mistaken for poor – is very real here • This fear might explain at least some of the condescension many Dominicans feel toward the mostly desperately poor black Haitians who live in the DR, trying to seek out a living. You’re not as poor as you think you are, the perhaps subconscious feeling seems to go, if somebody else is poorer. • Many mixed-race Dominicans insist that they are in fact “Indio,” meaning their brown complexions come from their Taíno ancestors and not from the African slaves who replaced the native labor force once it had been wiped out by disease and oppressive conditions • Dominicans range from blonde-haired and blue-eyed on one end of the spectrum to dark-skinned and coarse-haired on the other. Nearly three-quarters of the population – and the most representative Dominicans – are brown-skinned and fill up the large gap in between.

6. The Beaches! • Playa Boca Chica • Playa Caribe • Playa Bayahibe • Playa Dominicus • Playa Juan Dolio • Isla Saona • Playa Borinquen

7. Bibliography