The Founders of the Dominican Republic Were Racists?


The Dominican Republic as seen from above. The brownish parts are semi-arid areas, the greener parts are wetter and the gray are urbanized areas.

A common misconception, particularly abroad, is that racism gave origin to the Dominican Republic. This notion also feeds into the thinking that if the Dominican Republic was founded on racism, similar to other countries such as Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), anyone that support and defend the Dominican Republic is himself defending a racist country and, by association, himself is a racist. This implies that Dominicans, regardless of race and color, themselves are racists manifested by their pride in the existence of their country. This, of course, is not true but this notion exists among certain people. For the most part, people that hold this view are ignorant of several aspects of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic. They are also ignorant of the defenders of the Dominican nationality when its existence was threatened or under domination by another country, whether it was Spain in the 1860’s or Haiti in the 1820’s.

“Form an opinion about a man and what he created after you know him, not before.”

The Founding of the Dominican Republic

Dominicans of all colors paying respect to the founding fathers at the Altar de la Patria in Santo Domingo. The harmony between the races and colors is the very foundational value of the Dominican Republic. To be a true Dominican, you must emulate those that founded the country, where racism had no room to settle. It could be said that if a Dominican takes a racist stand, from that point forward he or she stops being a true Dominican.

The Dominican Republic was actually founded on the principle of equality of all races and colors. The concept of no discrimination towards someone based on his race or color didn’t became a foundational concept for the sake of chance, but rather this was a belief exhuded by the founding fathers themselves. It should be noted that this was the belief in the middle of the XIX century, a time when in other countries the notion of racial exclusivity was common.

In the same token, the Dominican Republic wasn’t born as a slave country, unlike other countries such as the United States or Brazil. No contradiction exist among Dominican founders unlike the founders of other certain countries with the notion that all men are free and created equal. Things such as signing a declaration of independence that says that all people are free while the signers themselves owned slaves and slavery wasn’t outlawed until more than 8 decades after its independence is unknown in the Dominican Republic. Lets not even get into what happened after independence with things such as racial segregation, another thing that never existed in the Dominican Republic.

The Case of Juan Pablo Duarte

Juan Pablo Duarte, one of three founding fathers of the Dominican Republic.

Juan Pablo Duarte was born on January 26, 1813 in Santo Domingo and died on July 15, 1876 in Caracas, Venezuela. He lived in the Dominican Republic for most of his life and from cradle to grave considered himself a Dominican. Unfortunately, he was forced into exile and lived his final years in Venezuela. He was the son of Juan José Duarte from Jerez de la Frontera, Spain and Manuela Díez from El Seibo, Dominican Republic.

Despite they were an accommodated family with Juan José owning a small family business and lived a comfortable life (though not luxurious by any means) in Santo Domingo, the family suffered several vissitudes. Among the hardships were several forced exiles starting in 1801 during the invasion of Toussaint Loverture when Juan José and Manuela Díez were forced to leave the island and settled in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Their first son Vicente was born there, the only of their 11 children born outside Santo Domingo. This forced exile lasted until 1810 because they refused to be French regardless if the rulers were black, as in the case of Toussaint, or white, as in the case of Leclerc and other Frenchmen. It should be noted that the Duarte Díez family was not in Santo Domingo during the 1805 invasion by Jean Jacques Dessalines in which Santo Domingo was seiged for about a month and widespread massacres and destructions was committed to the Dominican population. Once the Dominican territory was recuperated from the French in the Reconquest War (Guerra de la reconquista) headed by General Juan Sánchez Ramírez and the territory was returned to Spain (it wasn’t until the Treaty of Paris of 1814 that Spain and France signed to recognize France returning to Spain ownership of Spanish Santo Domingo and despite that the Dominican territory was included as Spanish territory in Spain’s first constitution of 1812, also known as “Constitución de Cádiz”), the Duarte family which consisted of Juan José, Manuela and the infant Vicente returned to Santo Domingo along with thousands of Dominicans that were exiled in Puerto Rico.

Bust of Juan Pablo Duarte in front of the house where he lived on Isabel La Católica Street in Santo Domingo. This was also the home of the his parents, brothers and sisters; because he never left his childhood home to live in a different house in Santo Domingo.

During the Haitian Domination (1822 – 1844) the family, which was larger and included Juan Pablo, opted to stay in Santo Domingo. It was subjected to and witnessed several acts of oppression by the Haitian government and army on the Dominican population. This included the prohibition of Spanish (something Dominicans ignored judging that Dominicans never learn French or Haitian Creole), the closure of the New World’s Oldest University which was a source of pride to Dominicans, and other injustices that were formal. There were many informal injustices too such as Haitian soldiers imposing sexual advances to many Dominican women and girls including married women in front of their husbands and refusal was almost always met with being shot to death.

Juan Pablo Duarte Wasn’t Anti-Haitian or Anti-black

One of the largest busts of Juan Panlo Duarte is found in Santo Domingo Este.

The trauma the family lived through during the various Haitan incursions and the policies adopted by Jean Pierre Boyer that implied an economic retrocesion and deprioritized public education among other things, had a strong imprint on Juan Pablo Duarte. However, Juan Pablo was clear from the very beginning that this was an effect from Haitian politicians and not the Haitian people in general or black people in particular. Racism and the injustices due to the color of the skin had no space in his heart. Under this premise he said the following in 1838.

TRANSLATION: “I admire the Haitian people from the moment I read about their struggle against a much stronger power, see how they beat them and how they made themselves free from the horrible condition of slavery, and constitute themselves into a free and independent nation…”
– Juan Pablo Duarte in a letter to José María Serra in 1838.

It’s impossible for someone that harbors hatred for the Haitians to admire them in any shape or form. A racist would never say that either of a black people, whether they are Haitians or from the other communities around the world constituted by a black majority. If we take into account that this revelation he wrote in a letter destined for someone who wasn’t a Haitian or black himself nor married to such a woman and that this letter was never meant to be made public, it further increases the notion that Juan Pablo, the main founder of the Dominican Republic, wasn’t anti-Haitian and anti-black.

“A man is defined by the content of his character and not by his color or race.”

The one thing that is clear is that Juan Pablo was, like most Dominicans, anti-Haitian government, not the Haitian people. This premise becomes obvious as we continue to read the 1838 letter.

TRANSLATION: “I recognize two virtues [in the Haitians], their love of liberty and their bravery; but the Dominicans, who havd gloriously spilleed their blood on many occasions, have do it so its oppressors demand their obedience despite the Dominican sacrifices? No more humiliation! No more shame! If the Spaniards have their own Spanish Monarchy and the French their own; even the Haitians formed their own Haitian Republic, why do us Dominicans should be subjugated to France, to Spain and now to the Haitians without thinking of forming their own country like the rest? A thousand times no! No more domination! Long live the Dominican Republic!”

Juan Pablo Duarte and His Belief in the Union of the Races

Statue of Juan Pablo Duarte in Santiago de los Caballeros.

Juan Pablo Duarte had other qualities and among them was poetry. He wrote several poems concerning various topics ranging from love to patriotism and others. He wrote a poem titled “Unión de las razas” (Union of the Races). In this poem he mentions the following.

TRANSLATION: “The whites, the blacks, the indigenous and the mixed…”
TRANSLATION: “…Lets show the world that we are brothers.”
– Juan Pablo Duarte

There really is not much to say regarding what he meant. The guy was all for the friendly treatment of all men regardless of color or race. He was in favor of racial mixture too, as it becomes evident in this frase.

TRANSLATION: “According to Emiliano Tejera, in design of our tricolor flag, Duarte was inspired in the rational principle of the fusion of the races that will be the salvation of tropical America, giving her a population appropriate to its needs.'”
TRANSLATION: “The Dominican flag can accommodate all races. It doesn’t reject one race or gives privileges to another. In its own shadow all races can grow, mix and prosper.”
The large white cross in the Dominican flag signifies the union of all the races and colors of the Dominican people. The flag itself was the idea of the country’s founding father, Juan Pablo Duarte, and reflected his unshackable conviction of racial equality. It’s one of the few, if not the only, national flag in the world that among the various meanings of its symbols are the no exclusivety of the blacks or the whites or the mixed race. Despite a few minor modifications, mostly to the coat of arms, the flag remains with the same meanings that it had when it first waved in the air in 1844.

The Case of Gregorio Luperón

Gregorio Luperón, the leader of the restoration of the Dominican Republic 1863-1865 and during that time, Juan Pablo Duarte followed his leadership as a subaltern. To Duarte it didn’t matter that a white man was following orders from a non-white. All races were equal to him and all true Dominicans.

Gregorio Luperón was born on September 8, 1839 in Puerto Plata and died in the same town on May 20, 1897. He became to greatness as a general for the Dominican forces during the Restoration War (1863 – 1865). After the war he was the president on two occasions, vice president on two occasions and he was the Minister of the Armed Forces of the Dominican Republic.

General Gregorio Luperón House Museum in Puerto Plata.

Not once did he expressed or even hinted to racial discrimination or color prejudice towards whites or he himself suffering racial discrimination or color prejudice. It should be noted that he spent most of his life in the Dominican Republic and spent much of his life in the Cibao Valley, which has not just one of the most densely populated area of the country, but also the whitest. In fact, at his time the whites were the majority of the population in the Cibao Valley and many towns were towns where the whites were more numerous that the mixed race or the blacks.

A statue of General Gregorio Luperón on a horse and holding a machete on his right hand.

Not only did he never complained or expressed any type of racism towards other Dominicans or that he received to himself, but his following words denote a special preocupation with the wellbeing of Juan Pablo Duarte, despite by this time he was exiled in Venezuela.

Santiago Castro VENTURA; “Duarte en la proa de la historia“, 2005; Pg. 250.

TRANSLATION: “…Help us as much as you can to reduce the difficulties of the very important and honorable attempt to bring General Juan Pablo Duarte to his country, worthy patriot, father of our country and hero of all our strifes. A man that after giving his life for our nationality, received as appreciation the expulsion from his native soil…”

To those words are added the fact that during the Restoration War, Juan Pablo Duarte followed the orders from General Gregorio Luperón. He didn’t care that he was white and Luperón wasn’t as such he had no problems following orders from Luperón.

The Case of Francisco del Rosario Sánchez

Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, one of three founding fathers of the Dominican Republic.

Francisco del Rosario Sánchez was born on March 9, 1817 in Santo Domingo and died on July 4, 1861 in San Juan de la Maguana. His prominence arose once he joined the secret society La Trinitaria founded by Juan Pablo Duarte and led to the creation of the Dominican Republic. It should be noted that Juan Pablo Duarte as the founder accepted Francisco del Rosario Sánchez as a member of La Trinitaria despite he was of mixed race. At that time, something like that would had been unheard of in countries such as the United States. As a member of La Trinitaria began his formal workings to help in creating the independence of the Dominican Republic.

The real man is the one you get to know. Your opinion based on assumption is just that, a man that exist in your mind only.”

Francisco del Rosario Sánchez name was further catapulted in popularity during the era when the Dominican Republic was dissolved as the country became an overseas province of Spain. The situation forced him into Haitian territory and there he gathered a group of Dominicans that exiled themselves on the basis of the return of the Spanish authorities. With the group formed, he headed an invasion from Haiti in 1861 with the intent of putting an end to Spanish rule and re-establishing the Dominican Republic. It was at this time that he said the following.

TRANSLATION: “I enter through Haiti, because I can’t do it from anywhere else. If anyone wants to dishonor my name because of that, tell them that I’m the Dominican flag.”

Francisco del Rosario Sánchez was captured by Spanish troops and he was ordered to be tied to a pole and killed on the basis of treason to the Spanish authorities and an impediment to the reincorporation of the Dominican territory to Spain. He is considered one of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic and was a close friend of Juan Pablo Duarte.

House where Francisco del Rosario Sánchez was born and lived in Santo Domingo. It’s not clear in the image, but the plaque of stone in beige on the façade explains the historical meaning of the house as the one that belonged to Francisco del Rosario Sánchez’s family.

The friendship that Francisco del Rosario Sánchez had with Juan Pablo Duarte included being well regarded by Duarte’s family. At a time when Duarte was in hideout as the Haitian guards were searching for him in order to kill him prior to the establishment of the independence of the Dominican Republic, at a certain point Francisco del Rosario Sánchez was at the home of Juan Pablo Duarte. Due to his hiding, he wasn’t there. At a certain point he confronts Juan José, the father of Juan Pablo, and asks him to say where is Juan Pablo hiding because he made a promise that nothing should happen to either of the two without the presence of one of them. The well being of the founding fathers of the country meant to have the protection from their friends.

The Case of Matías Ramón Mella

Matías Ramón Mella, one of the three founding fathers of the Dominican Republic.

Matías Ramón Mella was born on February 25, 1816 in Santo Domingo and died on June 4, 1864 in Santiago de los Caballeros. He was also a close friend of Francisco del Rosario Sánchez and of Juan Pablo Duarte, and is the third founding father of the country. His rise to fame wasn’t limited to his role leading to the independence of the Dominican Republic, but of what took place on the night of February 27, 1844. He joined a group of people that gathered by the Puerta de la Misericordia, the closest gate to the Caribbean Sea of the wall that protected to Santo Domingo. Once he shot into the air from his rifle known as the “trabucazo,” the Dominican Republic was born.

Statue of General Matías Ramón Mella by the Puerta de la Misericordia in Santo Domingo. This was the exact spot where the Dominican Republic was born on the night of February 27, 1844. Later on that same night, the Dominican Republic was officially proclaimed by the nearby Puerta del Conde.

Matías Ramón Mella was involved in the Restoration War in the attempt to eliminate Spanish rule and re-establish the Dominican Republic. General Gregorio Luperón was his leader and his friend, from whom took orders. In addition, he took part in some of the attacks on the Spanish troops and with following through with the plans to restore the republic and recruit young men, particularly in the Cibao, which at that time was the most populous part of the country. Unfortunately, he was struck with dysentery and died in the year before the Dominican Republic was restored as an independent country, just as he wanted. Fulfilling his desire, he was buried with the Dominican flag covering his casket despite the Dominican Republic hadn’t been re-established at the time. When his remains were removed from the Santiago Municipal Cementery to be placed in the Oldest Cathedral of the New World in Santo Domingo, the Dominican flag was discover along with his casket.

The Relations between the Dominican Colors and Races

Juan Pablo Duarte’s fusion of all the races is readily on display throughout the Dominican Republic.

The belief in the union and friendly treatments of all the races is evident among Dominicans before Juan Pablo Duarte’s birth as well as after his death.

Only five years for Juan Pablo Duarte to unfortunately die, the United States government sent a commission to the Dominican Republic to analyze every aspect of the country geographically, socially and everything else with the intention of annexing the country to the United States. With this exhaustive information, they were to organized a long report and present it to the US government in Washington DC. They were to read the report prior to congress and the senate voting on whether to annexed the country, something that wasn’t approved due to one extra voted against it. In this report it mentions the following.

Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo…”; 1871; Pg. 98.

Baní was one of the whitest towns in the country and it should be noted that in 1871 it had something unheard of in other democratic countries, a black mayor in a town where 80% of the inhabitants were white and the same in the surrounding rural districts.
Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo…”; 1871; Pg. 13.

It should be noted how the commission sent by the US government to the Dominican Republic and that covered every region of the ccountry describes the Dominican population as a whole in 1871.

“To judge a man by his color or race constitute an act of racism towards someone that is on your side, but you don’t know because you don’t know him.”


On the same page a mention is made regarding racism among Dominicans at a time when racism was the norm in countries such as the United States.
Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo…”; 1871; Pg. 14.

Racism among Dominicans was hardly in existence at a time when there was a widespread belief that the decline of the whites was due to political and social causes. With political causes it refers to actions taken by the Haitian government, first with Jean Jacques Dessalines in his invasion of 1805 and then with Jean Pierre Boyer in his invasion in 1822 – 1844 with their policies of intending to eliminate or reduce the Dominican white population and increase the black population. With social causes, it refers to racial mixing which was never looked down upon nor discouraged since the times the Dominican territory was part of the Spanish Empire.

The following parts are even older from 1798 in “A Topographical and Political Description of the Spanish Part of Santo Domingo” by Moreau de Saint-Méry. Notice what is underlined in white.

In the “Present State of the Spanish Colonies” by William Walton published in 1810. He was English from Kingston, Jamaica and spent many years in Santo Domingo. Naturally, he contrasted many things as they were in Santo Domingo with how he knew them in Jamaica. Here he relates how the slaves or the blacks were trieated in Spanish territories and this contrasted sharply with how the slaves were treated in his native Jamaica and in other colonies such as the French’s Saint-Domingue.

Here he is noticing a difference with how he knew slaves were treated in British colonies such as Jamaica or the ones in North America that later would become the United States.

The following is on page 184 in “The Present State of Haiti” by James Franklin published in 1826.

Lastly, the following is in “Puerto Rico Past and Present, and San Domingo of Today” by Alpheus Hyatt Verrill published in 1914. He was from New Haven, Connecticut, United States and details extensively in the book everything he witnessed in his travels through Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Alpheus Hyatt VERRILL. “Puerto Rico Past and Present, and San Domingo of Today“; 1917, pg. 233.
An African American describing the Dominican Republic after he has visited multiple times and is able to contrast reality on Dominican soil vs the anti-Dominican propaganda abroad.
On November 2021, a Haitian woman named Mary says (in Spanish) that she lives in the Dominican Republic and among the Dominicans. She can attest that Dominicans are not racist. She says that sometimes she gets calls from abroad where people ask her in what country she lives in and once she says Dominican Republic, the people that never lived in the country nor lived among Dominicans try to tell her that the DR is racist and Dominicans are bad. She says that only someone that lives among Dominicans truly know how Dominicans are like and she confirms that Dominicans are not racist. She also says that first you should get to know a people and then form an opinion about them.

That’s the difference between knowing a country because you live in it vs believing anti-Dominican propaganda meant to present Dominicans and the Dominican Republic as something they aren’t.

Why Dominicans See Themselves as A Different People from the Haitians

A painting of Rosa Duarte, a sister of Juan Pablo, as her remains were moved to the National Pantheon in Santo Domingo. Her contribution in the independence of the Dominican Republic is invaluable and her writings on her brother helped further understand Juan Pablo Duarte.

Here we make a small emphasis on why the Dominicans have always seen themselves as a different people from the Haitians. This thinking was widespread in the entire Dominican society including Juan Pablo Duarte himself.

The reason is because the Dominican people are a continuation of all the people that inhabited Hispaniola before the creation of Haiti in 1804. At the time of Haiti’s independence around two-thirds of the Haitians were born in Africa. This contrast with Dominicans where the vast majority was born on the island and descended in an unbroken chain from the peoples that arrived at different times and mixed with the Dominican population that was there. This is evident in many ways including the most recent, ancestry DNA testing. While among Haitians it isn’t common to see things such as amerindian DNA in their individual ancestry DNA results, among Dominicans some amerindian DNA is present in the individual results. This means that Dominicans have in their descendancy people who ceased to exist in their pure form in the XVII century, at least around 200 years before the independence of Haiti. This also means that part of the Spanish ancestry found in Dominicans and part of the African ancestry corresponds to Spaniards and Africans that settled on the island during the end of the XV century and during the XVI, XVII, XVIII and the first years of the XIX centuries prior to the independence of Haiti. In essence, most Dominicans already existed under a Spanish identity, a Spanish language and other cultural entities with the respective mixes that included inputs from the Taino indians and the Africans for centuries before most Haitians arrived on the island.

Genetic results evidence vast differences in the ancestral DNA of the typical Dominicans versus the Haitians, such as this one from 23andme. Namely, the former on average are not majority Sub-Saharan African while in the Haitians are. Dominicans also have a considerable more European and amerindian ancestral DN<a.

This difference in time between when most Dominicans already existed on Hispaniola and the existence of the Haitians manifested in other ways. One of those ways is language. The Dominican Republic is where Spanish has been spoken the longest in the Western Hemisphere and is the birth of Hispanic America. To this day, over 99% of Dominicans born on Hispaniola speak Spanish as a mother tongue. On the contrary, most Haitians speak Haitian Creole, which is a Haitian created language with the fusion of several African, French and Spanish languages. A very small proportion of Haitians speak French as a mother tongue and generally, one that speaks Haitian Creole only doesn’t fully understand French and vice versa. A Haitian can’t speak to a Dominican in his native tongue unless the Dominican learn the language of the Haitians and the Dominican can’t speak to the Haitians in his native tongue if the Haitians don’t learn the language of the Dominicans first. In a similar token, today there are many television channels in Dominican TV from Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries and despite they are in a dialect often different from the dialects of Dominican Spanish, Dominicans understand with not much effort and these channels are quite popular. Those same channels would be hardly understood by Haitians and, in fact, channels from Spanish-speaking countries are not very popular in Haiti.

This marked difference in language, which isn’t common on islands, was referenced by Dr José Núñez de Cáceres in 1822 as he effectuated to change of government to Haiti. Prior to departing Santo Domingo forever, he said the following to Jean Pierre Boyer.

TRANSLATION: “…language is a communication instrument among men and if they are not able to understand each other, they will not communicate with each other. This is a separating wall as incapable to overcome as are the natural imposition of the Alps and the Pyrenees.”

This difference in language and the importance it is for different peoples is noted in our very days. We see how much of Europe has made an economic and partially political union with the European Union. Despite most of the integrated countries are rich countries and it’s easier to unite rich countries than poor ones, we can still see that each country maintains its language. Portuguese in Portugal, Spanish in Spain, Frech in France, Italian in Italy, etc. If all countries are forced to subjugate their own language for the sake of one language for the European Union, rest assured the European Union will be a failure. The same holds true elsewhere in the world and Hispaniola is no different.

Once more the foundational belief of the Dominican Republic of the equality of the races is seen in its deputies in the Chamber of Deputies in Santo Domingo.

We have also seen that the identities of the different European countries in the European Union remains defined. In fact, when a country doesn’t see that its best interests are represented by policies of the European Union, things like “Brexit” with the removal by its own decision of the United Kingdom from the European Union takes place. The rest of the world and Hispaniola in particular is no different.

There are many other differences between the two countries of Hispaniola, but there are a few similarities too which are natural to all human societies precisely due to the human quality of all. All humans bleed red blood when cut, have the same bodily necessity, cry when in pain and laugh when in joy; feels the cold and feels the warmth; est, drink and sleep. The existence of differences doesn’t negate the existence of similiarities. Never-the-less, when the similarities are less than the differences, they must not be negated either.

Juan Pablo Duarte, like all Dominicans, was very aware of these differences that were made more obvious as the Haitian Domination implied that Haitian soldiers and politicians would be in close proximity to the dominated Dominicans. No one needed to tell Dominicans how different are the Haitians, they see it day in and day out.

The Dominican Nation Precede the Creation of the Dominican Republic

Title of the “Declaration of Independence of the Dominican People. Anyone could think this corresponds to 1844 against the government of Haiti, but this was the declaration of independence of Spanish Haiti from Spain on December 1, 1821 and headed by Dr José Núñez de Cáceres. Although this independence was put to an end by the invasion of Jean Pierre Boyer and the start of the Haitian Domination in February 9, 1822; it should catch the attention that the people of Spanish Haiti were not called Spanish Haitians but rather Dominicans. The same name the Spanish-speakers of Hispaniola had for centuries before that moment. It should also be noted that the Dominican Republic would come to existence 22 years after this event. This difference is only found in societies where the nation predates the state and those are few and far between. The Dominicans is one of those few.

It should be noted that several countries in Latin America that were part of the Spanish Empire got their independence for neighboring countries that either invaded them or through other machinations became owner of the territory.

– Dominican Republic (from Haiti)
– Panamá (from Colombia)
– Venezuela (from Gran Colombia)
– Ecuador (from Gran Colombia)
– Uruguay (from Brazil)
– Guatemala (from the United Provinces of Central America)
– El Salvador (from the United Provinces of Central America)
– Honduras (from the United Provinces of Central America)
– Nicaragua (from the United Provinces of Central America)
– Costa Rica (from theUnited Provinces of Central America)
– Cuba (from the United States)

In the cases of the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Uruguay; for a time they were incorporated by neighbors of a different culture, language and tradition; but, the people continued with their own culture, language and traditions inherited from at least 300 years of belonging to the Spanish Empire. Basically, the Dominican Republic didn’t become Haitianized from the less than one generation of Haitian rule and Uruguay didn’t become Brazilian during the time it belong to Brasil nor Cuba became American. Similarly today the Kurds are very different from the Iraquis, the Turkish and the Syrian despite the territory they inhabit is ownec by those three countries.

Furthermore, the Dominicans were a nation well before the creation of the Dominican Republic and this contrast sharply with the Haitians who first witnessed the creation of Haiti and many years later the gradual appearance of the Haitian nation. In this sense, Dominicans were more similar to the modern day Kurds in Syria, Iraq and Turkey or the Sahuari in Morocco, nations without their own country yet. The arise of the Dominican Republic was simply an act of self preservation against a situation where the survivability of the Dominican culture was in danger of disappearing in the name of cultural absorption by one of its neighbors.

If Racism Didn’t Create the Dominican Republic, What Did?

Coat of arms of the Dominican Republic.

In order to understand the origin of the Dominican Republic, it must also be understand what the Haitian army did to the Dominican population during the Haitian Domination 1822 – 1844. To this is added the identity of Dominicans and the existence of the Dominican nation centuries before the independence of the Dominican Republic.

In order to be concise given the length of this article, we will limit to cite the letter sent by Mr Francisco Brenes to Mr Francisco González de Linares, Governor of Puerto Rico. This copy of this letter is from September 22, 1822. Notice that the Haitian Domination officially started on February 9, 1822. In other words, within 7 months of starting the era of Haitian rule it manifest a general unhappiness among Dominicans.

We will translate what is underlined in red only.

TRANSLATION: “…it cause a generalized unhappiness among the whites, blacks and mixed race Dominicans…”

Notice that the desire to end Haitian rule was due to the treatment from the Haitian government and especially the Haitian troops stationed in every town. This generalize treatment is what deepened the dislike of Haitian rule to the point that all Dominicans, regardless of race or color, were unhappy with the situation.

The truth shall set you free!

TRANSLATION: “…the calm nature of the Spaniards (Dominicans because Spaniard was everyone that lived in the territory of Spain and the Dominican Republic was a territory of Spain)…”

“…the ones expecting the privileges [offered by the Haitian government] are seeing its people being unarmned, its haciendas falling in disrepair, its urban properties being expropiated, its religion contantly insulted and the Haitian troops insulting them at every instance? How can the Dominicans get used to the Haitian government that has proven to be arbitrary and they are seeing their wives and daughters sexually violated or killed for resisting sexual violation by the Haitian troops?”

“…they are seeing the favorites of the Haitian government becoming owners of their cattle heards, horses, sheeps and pigs…”

“…they can’t find resources to eat…”

“…every Dominican expressed a desire to see the time of the end of the Haitian Domination which has proven to be so cruel…”

Although this letter was several months after the start of the Haitian Domination, the Haitian authorities proved to be swift and efficient in capturing the leaders of multiple Dominican uprisings against Haitian rule and killing them. The coup d’etat that took place in 1843 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti against then ruler Jean Pierre Boyer meant the Haitian troops were concentrated in returning the peace to Port-au-Prince. That was the perfect moment for the movement of the independence of the Dominican Republic, which already existed for several years but had not been put in energetic action until then. This movement headed by the young men Juan Pablo Duarte, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez and Matías Ramón Mella was successful in achieving its goal for one reason that differentiate this from all other Dominican uprising: while the Haitian government was searching for them very diligently in order to kill them and put an end once more to a Dominican uprising, this time the Haitian authorities never caught them. Once the group of young men success in effectuating the separation from Haitian rule, the rest of the Dominican population followed as finally what they thought would never happen was happening before their eyes. Once that happened, the Haitian Domination was over. A nation that existed without its own government and country finally had one.

TRANSLATION: “The Dominican nation is free and independent, and it isn’t and can’t ever be part of any other country, property of a family or person and much less a foreigner.”