History of the Dominican Republic

History of the Dominican Republic

For at least 5,000 years before Christopher Columbus "discovered" America for the Europeans the island, which he called Hispaniola, was inhabited by Amer-Indians. Anthropologists have traced 2 major waves of immigration, one from the West in Central America (probably Yucatan) and the second from the South, descendant of the Arawakan Indian tribes in Amazonia and passing through the Orinocco valley in Venezuela. It is from this second source that the ancestors of the Taino Indians who welcomed Columbus on his first voyage originated.

The word Taino meant "good" or "noble" in their language, and not only were the Indians peaceful and generous in their hospitality, but early Spanish chroniclers document that no Spaniard ever saw Indians fighting among themselves. By the end of the 15th century the Tainos were well organized into five tribes, and are considered to have been of the verge of civilization and central government. Recent estimates indicate that there probably were as many as 200,000 Tainos on the island at the time.

When Columbus crossed the Atlantic with his crew of Spaniards, he first came to islands in the Bahamas and then Cuba before landing on the island of Hispaniola. But this was the place that really got them excited for several reasons. First, his journal is full of descriptions indicating how beautiful was this island paradise he had discovered, with high-forested mountains and large river valleys. Furthermore, the inhabitants were very peaceful and docile, and even though they were very generous and cooperative, the Europeans quickly realized that with their lack of iron weapons and European technology, the Indians could easily be conquered and put to work for them. But, ...

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...to be inferior. In 1937 he took action to resolve this problematic issue by giving the order to his army to massacre all Haitians found to be in the Dominican Republic. Estimates of as many as 17,000 unarmed Haitian men, women and children were slaughtered in a bloodbath of violence, particularly around the border region of the town of Dajabon and the aptly named Massacre River.

To attempt to deflect international criticism of this notorious scandal, Trujilo offered to accept to the Dominican Republic as many as 100,000 refugees from the scourge of Nazi-Germany in Europe. But when it came to action, only about 600 Jewish families were offered refuge in 1942, and came to settle in what is known today as the El Batey section of Sosua, opposite the small bay from the fishing village of Charamicos. Of these, only a dozen or so families remained there in the long run.