Haiti's 1842 earthquake and Dominican independence movement

Dominican Republic History

The Dominican Republic was a nation bound by the Haitian government before rebelling and becoming an independent nation. During this time of political upheaval and social uprising, various men stood forth as the leaders of the policy-changing movements that were occurring at the time. After one of the founding fathers of the Dominican Republic, Juan Pablo Duarte, was exiled, two men came into power: Pedro Santana and Buenaventura Baez (San Miguel, 2009). Both men contributed greatly to the political and economic demise of the Dominican Republic. These two self-proclaimed generals initiated the time period known as the Era of the Dual Cuadillos.

Pedro Santana, the first self-proclaimed President and later dictator of the Dominican Republic had a background in the military. It was this exact background that gave him to power to overtake Duarte's government and appoint himself the Dominican Republic's first President after obtaining freedom from Haiti (San Miguel, 2009). Unlike Duarte who believed in Democracy and the election process, Santana was much more forward and took over the Dominican Republic with the intentions of creating a much larger military presence in order to keep Haiti away. Although in the beginning Santana drafted a constitution that was largely modeled after those of Haiti and the United States that distributed a balance of power among various branches, he contributed to its ineffectiveness by subsequently adding that he would have total and complete power over all governmental processes (Gregory, 2007).

The Dominican Republic was affected greatly by the tenure of Santana.

He appointed his own officials to high political positions after executing the government officials that disagreed with his philosophy. He also established the printing of paper money, with insufficient funds to back it up, in order to build a strong and heavy military presence in the Dominican Republic, even after they had already been freed from Haiti. This created the collapse of the Dominican Republic's currency and complete downfall of the nation's economy (Gregory. 2007). He heavily favored military control of the country as a means of redeeming its once stable economy. Santana made attempts to connect with foreign leaders in order to form alliances with nations such as Spain, France, and the United States, but neither country wanted anything to do with the Dominican Republic (San Miguel, 2009). After several failed attempts at ruling such a dissipating nation, he chose to have an election in order to hand the power over to one of his acquaintances, the second self-proclaimed general: Buenaventura Baez.

Despite the change in the head of the political power in the Dominican Republic, very few policies actually changed at first. Baez was president of the legislature during Santana's years of political power, but once he was declared president of the country, he became even more aggressive than Santana was and paved the path for the baecistas movement, while ridding the country of santanistas, followers of former President Santana (San Miguel, 2009). Baez restructured the military as it was during Santana's rule and as a result created a counter-military group that acted more as a militia than an actual standing military. However, Baez was more successful in managing foreign affairs than Santana was (San Miguel, 2009).