The Taino – indigenous inhabitants of Hispaniola prior to the arrival of Europeans – divided the island into five chiefdoms and territories. Christopher Columbus explored and claimed the island on his first voyage in 1492; it became a springboard for Spanish conquest of the Caribbean and the American mainland. In 1697, Spain recognized French dominion over the western third of the island, which in 1804 became Haiti. The remainder of the island, by then known as Santo Domingo, sought to gain its own independence in 1821 but was conquered and ruled by the Haitians for 22 years; it finally attained independence as the Dominican Republic in 1844. In 1861, the Dominicans voluntarily returned to the Spanish Empire, but two years later they launched a war that restored independence in 1865. A legacy of unsettled, mostly non-representative rule followed, capped by the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo from 1930 to 1961. Juan Bosch was elected president in 1962 but was deposed in a military coup in 1963. In 1965, the US led an intervention in the midst of a civil war sparked by an uprising to restore Bosch. In 1966, Joaquin Balaguer defeated Bosch in the presidential election. Balaguer maintained a tight grip on power for most of the next 30 years when international reaction to flawed elections forced him to curtail his term in 1996. Since then, regular competitive elections have been held in which opposition candidates have won the presidency. Former President Leonel Fernandez Reyna (first term 1996-2000) won election to a new term in 2004 following a constitutional amendment allowing presidents to serve more than one term, and was later reelected to a second consecutive term. Following the two-term presidency of Danilo Medina Sanchez (2012-2020), Luis Rodolfo Abinader Corona was elected president in July 2020.
Economy
A surging middle-income tourism, construction, mining, and telecommunications OECS economy; major foreign US direct investment and free-trade zones; developing local financial markets; improving debt management; declining poverty.
Population
The population is 10,790,744 (2023 est.) which consists of a mixed 70.4% (Mestizo/Indio 58%, Mulatto 12.4%), Black 15.8%, White 13.5%, other 0.3% (2014 est.)
note: respondents self-identified their race; the term “indio” in the Dominican Republic is not associated with people of indigenous ancestry but people of mixed ancestry or skin color between light and dark
Afro-Dominicans (also referred to as African-Dominicans or Black Dominicans) are Dominicans of predominant or full Black African ancestry. They are a minority in the country representing 7.8% of the Dominican Republic‘s population according to a census bureau survey in 2022. However, other estimates put them as high as 35% of the Dominican population. About 4.0% of the people surveyed claim an Afro-Caribbean immigrant background, while only 0.2% acknowledged Haitian descent. Currently there are many black illegal immigrants from Haiti, who are not included within the Afro-Dominican demographics as they are not legal citizens of the nation.
The first black people in the island were brought by European colonists as indentured workers from Spain and Portugal known as Ladinos.[6][7] When the Spanish Crown outlawed the enslavement of Natives in the island with the Laws of Burgos, slaves from West Africa and Central Africa were imported from the 16th to 18th centuries due to labor demands. However, with the decline of the sugar industry in the colony the importation of slaves decreased. Many of these Africans eventually intermixed with the Europeans, Mestizos, and Natives creating a tri racial Creole culture.
In the 19th and 20th centuries black immigrants from the French and British West Indies, as well as the United States came to the island and settled in coastal regions increasing the black population. The Afro-Dominican population can now be found in most parts of the country, from coastal areas such as San Cristobal and San Pedro de Macoris to deep inland areas such as Cotui and Monteplata. However, the southeast portion of the country and the border region have the highest concentrations of Black people in the country, while the central Cibao region has the lowest.
There is a lack of recent official data because the National Office of Statistics (ONE) has not released racial data since 1960, though the Central Electoral Board collected racial data until 2014. The 1996 electoral roll put the figures of “black” at 4.13% and “mulatto” at 2.3% of the adult population. The 1960 population census (the last one in which race was queried) placed it at 10.9%. According to a 2011 survey by Latinobarómetro, 26% of the people surveyed identified themselves as black.